more on reading

An interesting commentary from n + 1:

Link


i will say I have mixed feelings about this publication, not because I don't think it's good and insightful and thoughtful, but because of their whole "we're so sincere," anti-Eggersard (Eggersian? Eggers-esque?) stance---though to be honest, I'm not sure if this was a stance envisioned by its celebrated creators or invented by the critics (or maybe a bit of both?). If the former, it does feel a little self-important and contrived: (whiney tone)" I wanted to be Eggers! That 30-something idiot got to it before I did, so now we have to do something different!" And, of course, I suppose each movement is a backlash or response to (derivative of?) the one before it, right? Although these are both pretty contemporary. Who knows. I'll stop there. hope you enjoy the read. and hope the link works.

Bad date.

Why does life keep getting more stupid and disappointing as I get older?

completely nonliterary penguin joy

probably this belongs in the comments. but it makes me so happy, and i don't think you can put videos in the comments. maybe i need to get my own blog where i can put random clips of events i witness at the grocery store late at night.

midnight crazy

So, I'm up. It's nearly two in the morning, and I have five more papers to grade because I spent the day missing appointments, being a terrible teacher, dozing on my sofa, eating chips and hummus and olives while reading gossip sites, and watching reruns of Making the Band 3. Ah, the life of a productive writer. Anyhow, this is for all my poets out there: a piece by a South African poet named Dennis Brutus. Just because. Excuse me if my taste is juvenile. I'm no poet, but I love poetry.


Nightsong: City

Sleep well, my love, sleep well:
the harbor lights glaze over restless docks,
police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets

from the shanties creaking iron-sheets
violence like a bug-infested rag is tossed
and fear is immanent as sound in the wind-swung bell;

the long day's anger pants from sand and rocks;
but for this breathing night at least,
my land, my love, sleep well.

Q&As Rule (for real)

George Saunders on the manuscripts of successful applicants to Syracuse University:

--the sense that it’s not just showing off
--it’s an instinct that there’s a person behind this story…[I couldn’t hear the rest and my notes seem to indicate that he went on to discuss giving them “craft” or “crack” {probably not} maybe “a crack” like a crack at Syracuse? I need to work on my handwriting]
--sometimes it’s a mess [the questioner asked if the work that stood out was most often “polished” or “complete”]
--but if it feels real, if it has a human soul, an intelligence and a kindness—I’m excited by those people.

Me too, Mr. Saunders. Saunders himself seems like such a kind man (this based on the two minutes where I blabbed away about how much I loved him and he managed to make it far less awkward than this kind of exchange usually is, especially for me. Some people seem to manage to get their books signed gracefully and without humiliation. The others in attendance [Toochi, Big Concrete, Glass as Selves, and Beefsteak/T-Bone] strike me as just such people). He also managed to answer the question (I seriously love Q&As so much) “Is it difficult to get published?” in a sincere and still somehow encouraging way—he seemed genuinely stupefied by how difficult it actually is.

In addition to bad handwriting, I have very poor hearing (this is why I talk so loud, people) but I wanted to add these little notes and misquotes because they touch on what I love so much about Saunders the interviewee (as opposed to the writer): this willingness to be earnest, to be heartfelt, to say plainly these essential things, the ones that, if said in workshop, or at least the workshops I’ve been in, might be deemed too sentimental. Too gushy-mushy. I’m big gushy mushy mess, though, and I love George Saunders big time for being so honest and plainspoken/eloquent (how does he manage both?) about what, while it may seem obvious, seems to not even be taken into consideration in the workshop setting (again, in my experience). Or maybe I was too busy taking notes during all those workshops to notice when we talked about the kindness and soul behind the stories that were up that night?

For more of this goodness, check out this interview. The last answer in particular, I love.

Thank God.

The Olde Windbagge of Pretentione is finally leaving, and not a moment too soon.



Tasting Notes man, Tasting Notes man, whose vortex will you slide down next....

free love on the free love freeway

To the local robots: I have three luxury deluxe seats in the Hyundailicious available to transport interested parties to the George Saunders fiction reading extravaganza tomorrow night in Ypsilanti. We will get there with time to spare; you can count on it. Let me know if you would like it to be your butt in one of those seats.

when there are no customers

I guess I'm not going to respond to bizness's lovely post--ahh, bizness how I do miss you and your spoken words that lead nowhere (unlike your written ones)--largely because, well, I simply don't read anymore. Either I'm becoming a Philistine or I'm writing a damn good novel; the jury will be in sometime this winter, b?

Okay, but here is what I want to write:

I'm meant to speak at a wedding this spring. Not a toast, but something spoken, something written by me and spoken during the ceremony, somewhere near the front of a church in northern Ohio. All places I have either not recently or ever been familiar with. Speaking of love, speaking in a church, that state--all foreign to me.

But that is not what I've come here to speak of.

Because this person is very special to me, extraordinarily special to me, I think she is the finest person I've ever known. bizness will know her as my perfect friend. I don't know how to describe it--she's just a good, good, incredibly accomplished, quite intelligent person who happens to have the levelest head I know--

she's just, like, a wise person, you know? She's one of those people about whom you can only and most fittingly say is 'wise.' And so I've got to say something at her wedding.

Leaving aside how honored, et cetera et cetera, and also how genuinely surprised--she also has a lot of friends? people who are, too, ostensibly wonderful?--I want to ask the following question:


If I never wrote anything worthwhile and if I never got published, indeed if I stopped writing after that wedding, and if I what I write for that occasion--the occasion of the wedding of a wonderful person in the world and my life--is perfectly suited, brings down the house and honors them fittingly...if that is it for me, and nothing more, will my ability as a writer have been well discharged? I mean, can anything possibly be that important? And would I dare trade? And would it be ignominious if I did?

I'm not really asking a utilitarian question--as in, are five minutes in Ohio worth sacrificing the value to later generations of a larger body, et cetera (and we're glad Fyodor didn't trade in his share of the canon for a wedding speech on a winter afternoon in Russia)--so much as...wondering what use is our gift? This gift that we all share. Why do we have it? And what's it worth? And is it still worth(y/while/et al) even if we never get published? Or if what we get published is not well received...?

There's a saying, from some Native American tribe if my quotations calendar of that year of my high school life is to be trusted, and it goes something like this:

If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect many customers. But a diamond is still a diamond, even if there are no customers.

Obviously, or maybe not so obviously, this is--I would like this to be a continuation of the thread started by jesmimi, and taken by me in perhaps another, different direction than she had intended it, but still, here we are, debating, I hope, what we think of as the true value of what we have, and why we have it, and if it retains value whether or not we use it for commercial purposes. And whether or not it feels valuable. Because I mean, what is a diamond if you're standing in the middle of a desert or at the bottom of the ocean, drowning or dying of thirst, but what we've got in our hands...there's this thing in the palm of your hands....

Or maybe I'm saying something else--can someone tell me what I mean? Because words are always like windows anyway, refracting light by various degrees, and I might be drunk and I'm definitely listening to eddie's iPod, and I'll be fucked if I can trust anything I write when I'm listening to people like Deathcab for Cutie. Because they can be so good.

the new nickel

Five short stories that have delighted and/or disturbed me in the past two weeks (Disclaimer: I’m quite a glutton when it comes to short stories, and reading student fiction makes me especially indiscriminate; I adore everything I read that’s not about reptile time travel and murder by flute [ask me for details!], so if you’re not interested in my meandering praise of several short stories, skip all this. Or better yet, post something new for me to read, perhaps your own list? Lists are pretty pain free.):

1. “Child’s Play” by Eric Puchner (from his new collection, Music Through the Floor). Project X left me constantly yearning for characters that speak in a way that feels as real to me as Shepard’s, and this story delivered. As I’ve told some of you, “Child’s Play” drove me to consider composing my first Amazon reader review (I haven’t done it yet) because when I looked the book up (looking for my like-minded community of Puchner-lovers) there were none. I’m daunted by that little “Be the first person to review this item” link. It feels like too much pressure when all I really have to say will make me sound like a preadolescent boy (apparently the voice I so savor, as my fondness for Project X and “Child’s Play” proves) incapable of any real endorsement beyond yeah, awesome, it totally ruled. The very last line of the piece was expected in a way (I’d say in the best way, really, but maybe in the way that youpeople refers to as being too “pressed penny” perfect). This story utterly crushed me; it’s alive with longing and cruelty, I’m thinking of it still.
2. “Natasha” by David Bezmogis (in Best American Short Stories 2005). Somehow I ignored Bezmogis, despite his appearing everywhere, and despite even my mother trying to foist the collection into my hands. You were right, Mom. The very last line of this piece (my litmus test, I guess) disappointed me a little bit but I still rushed to Shaman Drum and bought his collection.
3. “Until Gwen” by Dennis Lehane (Also in this year's Best American Short Stories). I think a couple of you are Lehane fans (Toochi? Big Concrete?). I have no experience with him other than viewing “Mystic River” when it came out and being totally enamored of the first half (it was shaping up to be one of my favorite kinds of movies, a character-driven suspense that doesn’t totally blow) and really disappointed by the finish (Ugh, that finger-pointing move at the parade. This doesn’t give anything away to those of you who haven’t seen it, but those who have will know what I’m talking about). I started “Until Gwen” twice and didn’t feel moved to finish but now that I have I don’t know what my problem was. Michael Chabon says in his intro that he selected the stories that “pleased [him] most” and those of you who have been keeping up with his other introductions in recent years know that he’s into good genre fiction, weary of “dewy epiphanies” and interested in stories where stuff happens. I’m not used to reading stories where so much stuff happens (I don’t want to give too much away, but there *is* a heist.). I was unexpectedly slayed by the finish (and, as is becoming quite clear, the ending of a short story gets disproportionate weight with me); I needed to sit down (I was reading it on the elliptical machine at the YMCA which speaks well of the story’s suspense as I can usually only muster the energy to look at pictures of celebrities in sparkly outfits while I half-ass it for twenty minutes and the thirteen-year-old next to me eats Cheetos. I kid you not! She was actually eating Cheetos while she was working out. Excellent.).
4. “The Rules” by Andrew Foster Altschul (One Story Issue #62). This is another one that I picked up several times and abandoned (I’m a total tease!) but that I’m now wishing I had in actual book form so I could find it (I love One Story but I’m always losing the damn things). This story is beautiful and sad and has this somewhat complicated but still somehow swirly, hazy (or maybe it only seems hazy to can’t-remember-anything-me) structure to it, and it managed to be both delicate and brutal (in its content and execution). It had one of those “surprising but inevitable” endings (I’m always using that phrase and have realized I have no idea where it actually comes from; so many people toss it around in workshop, and I encounter it sometimes in reviews. I recently saw it attributed to Charles Baxter, but it must have been around longer, no?) that managed somehow to be truly inevitable and still devastatingly surprising. A finish that leaves you begging, no no no no.
5. “Battery” by Masticated. This story is not yet published, but will be soon. Watch out for this one; it’s a killer.
   

Sorry for such a long post! Sheesh. I’d love to hear your five things. Five any things. It doesn’t have to be stories (for those against reading). Maybe the five best movie previews you’ve seen lately, that you’re sure the movie won’t live up to (Do they ever anymore? And how can I get a job as a movie-preview maker? Wouldn’t that be delightful? I think it would be nice to make movie previews for movies that will never actually be made, all promise, no disappointment.).

So are we fish? Or are we Jesus, makers of them....

the important elements


(Come up with your finest text-reduction of a plot or a finale. Let the rest of us try to guess. Here I'll go first [it's a finale]:

mrrygoround: fee-b fee-b fee-b...so happy)

of course, the other response could be, Who gives a fuck?

I'm talking about jesmimi's complaint. And I'm saying who gives a fuck because does this really change what we do, and what we expect? And if it does, should it?

None of us, obviously--hopefully--got into this line of work because of the pay. So. So there's now left the question of why we got into it at all and while some might say that it's because we can't do anything else, ultimately this reasoning is a little bankrupt, as people who have no innate capabilities succeed at things every day; it's just a matter of deciding to do something, learning how to do it, and applying ourselves to it. (Also please note: this line of reasoning is especially bankrupt when one considers the nice little Talented & Gifted worlds most of us come from.) So. So there are not now the matters of our getting into it for the pay and of our getting into it because it was the only thing we could do, leaving many many reasons, but probably just one (or both) of two: because we love to write, and/or because we have a vision, an unimpeachable, indefatigable artistic vision. Also maybe a message. (One way that this word--"vision"--has been interpreted in the literary world has been as "message.")

So. And whatever. Whatever because whether it pays $40k or $400k--or, god forbid, $4M--still I'm gonna write because still I'll have a way of looking at the world I'll feel compelled to share with said world, and still I'll have things I need to say. Hell, even if I don't get published at all, ever, I'm not completely convinced I'll stop writing. Novels, maybe--because jesus christ this is a pain in the ass and the closest thing I've had in my life to a full-time, permanent position--but most likely not stories, most likely I'll just keep writing and writing those fuckers until the magazine editorial world collectively pulls its head out of its ass and publishes me. But maybe that's me. But that's probably not just me. I've been writing in some form or other since I was 8, and consitently since I was 19. It's how I interact with the world; it's how I keep sane.

But back to the money, because yeah sure it would be nice, but as I said hell no I didn't expect that shit. I never expected that shit. Oh sure, I dream, dream every day of just how exactly my show on Oprah would go, just how many gasps and deflated hopes there would be when all those women in the audience learn I have no love to give, but I don't count on that shit, I don't count on that and money and truth be told, deep deep down, I in no way presume that I'll be able to do more than eke out an existence until someone rich and close to me dies and leaves me some money. Good then. Can't wait for that shit.


Maybe the thing is to embrace our future poverty. Maybe the thing to do is to reorient what we want and expect out of this patriotic^, writer's life, and how we gauge satisfaction and happiness. Small presses are good; online zines can provide a forum. Or maybe we should all get together and do what Eggers did: start a goddam press of our own and publish our own shit. Fuck these giant publishing houses and fuck the slovenly American public they cater to. Illiterates all and swine, and we have nothing to offer them but pearls.

You just worry about your end of the bargain. Let that other shit work itself out.


^In that we are not living abroad. Well, none of us except masticated.

Amend

I'm adding this to clarify: when I posted last, I didn't mean to imply that it's impossible to sell fiction. In fact, I've met with several really passionate, great editors and publishers who have responded well to my work and are interested in it. My point was that when I looked at the houses' catalogs for future seasons, there was so much nonfiction and genre fiction, and very little literary fiction. That is all. I have a hangover, so I'm going to lie back down and go to sleep now. Ignore the little drunk dude in the corner.

Forget about it

Remember how the agents came to visit the program and freaked us all out by telling us we should be writing novels? Remember how they told us short story collections are damn near impossible to sell? Well, I have another tip for everyone: if you really want to assure publication, forget novels. Write nonfiction. Nonfiction sells. Also, genre fiction sells. Anyone want to write a chick-lit supernatural mystery thriller with zombies and and guns wielded by girls in short skirts with manicured hands? Sounds like a bestseller, huh? It is a bestseller.

But that's not what we're writing for. We're not writing so our readers can sink into a TV-induced stupor and fall asleep slightly titillated and relaxed and numb to the world: we're writing to inspire and awaken. Write what you love. The publication process might be a little more complex and tortuous, but at least you will be the writer you want to be.

John Fowles on the So-Now-What-The-Fuck-Do-I-Do Question

From his New York Times obituary:

"In one way at least teaching is a good profession for a writer, because it gives him a sharp sense of futility."

Say no more.

file this under: So Now What the Fuck Do I Do?

I'm wondering.

I'm wondering what do we do, what kind of life do we live, should we starve, or ought we purchase granite counter tops? Most of us have been at least partially yuppified at one or various or all points in our lives--do we succumb to that propensity for easiness* and seek out the middle class life, or do we say screw it and suck it up and just be poor until our big break comes, even if it never comes?

I am, of course, speaking from a very real place. I almost got Google-made^ just a few weeks ago, and for the months preceding it and for the weeks since I've been applying and looking for jobs of its ilk all over the Bay Area. "[I]ts ilk"? You know: office jobs, jobs with salaries and paid vacation, jobs without punchcards and with 401ks. Adult jobs. Jobs for people who, if they were jobless like me, wouldn't be spending their downtime going everyday to cafes in order to write the novel they're writing. Because they most likely wouldn't be writing one. Because not all of us are writers.

But I am, and if I am indeed a writer what am I doing looking for other work? For real work, that is, 40+-hour a week work, 401k work, a job I wouldn't be ashamed being caught by my Choate buddies in.** Pynchon did it for a spell (advertising)...and, uh, well, what did Bellow do? And Roth? Anyone else I'm missing? No I'm not including academic jobs--that's different, not what I'm getting at here. I'm not yet sure why but it is. [And don't worry, poets, I know all about Stevens (doctor) and Eliot (banker), but you all are a special case, different, and I'll get to you down below.]

Do you see what I'm getting at here? Maybe you don't--here, an anecdote: After Stage 7 of the [11 Stage] Google Process was complete, I was walking back to a cafe I often write in, 16th between Valencia and Guerrero, and on my way in I had a flash of whatthellamIdoing? It was tangible, and it made sense. I was walking back into that cafe, thinking of all the work I would have to do if I got the job, thinking about how long the shot was that I would even get it, I was thinking of myself as I had always, until about a year ago, thought of myself, as a Destined Writer...I was thinking all these things, and it occurred to me, What the hell am I doing? Do I really want this job? Do I want all that comes with it? Shouldn't I try to tough it out with all the rest of the artists in town, tending a bar somewhere, slinging coffee somewhere else, working the register at a bookstore.... Because me, youpeople, I'm not made for this, and I've known I'm not made for this, known it for years. A job? Business Casual clothes? Planned vacations?.... And then my inner Holden came out and all I wanted to do was smoke a cigarette and think about how I didn't feel like doing anything, not really. And then I just got depressed.

But do you see what I'm saying? I feel trapped between two worlds: the one that was promised to me by Choate and Williams and my upper middle class, half-Jewish Connecticut childhood, the one that was promised to me by me by all my younger selves...and the one that I've come to feel in my adult years is more like home, comes a whole lot closer to making sense for who I am, not who I was raised to be. The Yuppie World versus the Bohemian World, or something like that.^^ Because I feel like I'm at an impasse here, right now. Live like Henry Miller (okay not exactly like Henry Miller) (well, maybe exactly like Henry Miller), or live like someone else, like my father, like most writers now live, safely ensconced in their middle class worlds, no longer bleeding meals from willing friends, through with the 17-year-old maturity level so oft associated with artists, "the creative types"....

Poets: In a way, this is both not addressed to you, and addressed to you more than to anyone else. Because you guys, of course, can never hope to make a living on just your art--sorry, but you knew, right?--so the whole alternative means has always been on your radar, in fact probably walked through your door about a half-pace behind Poetry. So what do you all think, have you ever thought about pursuing a 9-5/M-F job (outside of academia) in addition? And where have you imagined yourselves? Did you ever say, Fuck it, I'm gonna just bartend and go to artist's openings and put lots of gel in my hair, maybe toss my head in an oven when I'm 33...? And was there a struggle? Is there still?


Happy Sunday to you all. Yes I swore in the title to this post.


*This phrase, "succumb to that propensity for easiness," is actually not meant to be judgmental, denigrating. Rather, it seems the most accurate way to describe the relationship I, for one, have with this life choice, whether to make it, the fact that living the other, bohemian way would be to me more of a struggle, and so a longer, harder leap to take.

^As in, I almost convinced them to employ me; I figured since "google" has all but become a verb in the English [other languages??] vernacular, I'd here coin another possible usage.

**No really, that happened. Chicago. 2002. I was working the register at Starbucks and I saw in line a girl I went to Choate with, perfectly adorned with husband, rings, and a weekend off from a clearly office job. It was the closest thing to petrifying shame that I have ever experienced.

^^God, come to think of it that would make a great Celebrity Death Match, wouldn't it? (dxm hands off--that's my story idea.)

Hirsute Hotties

I'm sorry, I feel I should be responding intelligently to Glass As Selves's concerns about dwelling in the aesthetic past, but I just had to share this with you all:

http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/Gallery/gallery.html

My favourite is the rather woeful Eduardo of Mexico City, contestant in the "Sideburns" category.

(And about Glass As Selves's theory on why aesthetic "schools" pop up, I'm curious to test the milk part. I don't think we all drank the same kinds of milk growing up: I, for one, drank some vile soy-based milk substitute called Sobee or Sogee or something like that because I had a violent allergy to milk as a child. So if you guys end up forming a school and leaving me out, we'll know that it's mostly the milk.)

generational poetics

I just returned from a very strange party/reception in honor of a visiting poet who happens to be pretty amazing and important in certain circles of the poetry world. Her reading was fantastic, and it was an honor to eat olives and cheese and brownies with her, however jet-lagged she may have been. What struck me, though, and what strikes me often in the company of older poets who know each other, is the heavy nostalgia for that time when they were the "next big thing," or when they were "the thing." Not one of the conversations tonight had much to do with what's going on the poetry world NOW, which is so strange to me--these are breathing people, living writers working and influencing each other and us young'uns in this current world and they just can't seem to move past their past.

Will this happen to us? This is not to say I don't love hearing stories of certain "famous" poets running into a certain other fame-poet in her underwear. In fact, it's a nice change from the barrage of talk about what's going on now in poetry, where we might be going, etc., etc. These are important things to figure out, of course, even though they deny any actual conclusions. And this is exciting--trying to figure something out that is actually happening before our eyes. In fact, I bet it's exciting like it was for those couple handfuls of writers in New York in the 60s who, without really knowing it, became part of a "school" of poetics...

I guess what I'm trying to get at here, ever so inarticulately (it was the cheese and brownies and wine at the party, I swear), is my interest in what binds together certain groups of writers, how we define ourselves by that, if we'll define ourselves by that in the future and always refer back to that aesthetic or generational bond at that future party where we wear aluminum suits and take off in our space-pod vehicles for the hotel. I mean, of course we'll have aesthetic penchants in common, as we're raised on the same images, the same news, the same kinds of milk. But what is it in each generation that compels writers to come together and write similarly (or just have the same intentions and interests in mind)? Oh, these are dumb questions, all been asked before... But do you see what is so strange about it all? I mean, is it mere coincidence that a small group of people on one coast were writing poems (and keeping them to themselves) similar to a group of writers on the other at the very same time? Is it something in the air that creates these strange and seemingly random aesthetic pops?

Hmmpf. This blog thing scares me. Trying to be smart for others is like trying to tie both shoes at once. Impossible!

the DBMB

l first of all, cheese, here's what she looks like. A bit spare and thin, with beady eyes, and a face that makes me think of razor blades. So.

Now that that's out of the way, my first reaction to cheese with a spoon's apoplectic reception to Ms. Kakutani's review was that it (MK's review) sounds like this same old DB Myers bullshit, viz. writing is on the page to do its job and only to do its job; let's leave looking beautiful to women (or vases, or perfect shadows at two in the afternoon or the like). As most of you know or can glean, I really hate the DB Myers Bullshit--which I'll acronmymize henceforth into DBMB--a school of thought that would have excoriated Joyce in his day, and does excoriate DeLillo, Proulx, and others now. (For those of you who have never been exposed to the DBMB business, you can ask Kilduff for a copy of M's wonderful essay, "A Reader's Manifesto," which was published in the Atlantic a little over a ago.) And what's the problem here, now, with writers like DeLillo and Proulx (and, one must presume, Pynchon and Roy and Nabokov)? Well, the problem is that in the "growing pretentiousness of American literary prose" the writing is on display, turning cartwheels or Triple Lindies and generally always jabbering in the background like an idiot behind the on-the-field sportscaster at a baseball game.

So then--it's the writing that's getting the way, is it? The actual prose? Yes yes, right--and you know, I've always felt that we writers should leave the job of writing to the, um, to the...painters. Yeah, yeah that's it, to the painters.

Fucking moron, and a fucking moron not just for this obvious reason (which is, admittedly, a bit specious (in that our dictate as writers does not necessarily demeand from us even mauvish prose)). No, a fucking moron because his argument is entirely predicated on the notion that the English language is not a living language, that it's rules do not change, or have not, or will not henceforth. A perfect example of this comes when he writes, "Coming from insiders to whom a term like 'fabulation' actually means something," and then blah and then blah and then blah. "[T]o whom a term like 'fabulation' means something"?? As in, then, at the very moment of his writing, unknown/unknown/2004, no new words shall ever enter the language. Not "fabulation," not "google," not "DBMB," not anything. English, to Myers, is apparently a dead language, no longer expandable. A bit like Colorado, I guess. I can only presume that the same fount that gave birth to his distaste for added words also gave birth to his anger at modern writers' penchant for coming up with new ways to describe things.

Oh, man, this DBMB really gets me going. Sorry about that.

In fact, I'm so sorry that I won't post my second reaction, which is that, given the passages she excerpts, maybe she's not way off base? I'm sorry cheese, but anyone who describes "a youthful crush as a 'storm of passion' that left 'the frail wings' of his emotions 'burned and blasted by love's relentless flame'" should maybe cut the high drama. Now that shit is purple.

Please Shoot Michiko Kakutani

What does she look like, anyway? I imagine her blacktoothed and humpbacked, with rhinoceros eyes and an evil laugh. Narsty old crone. What the hell is her problem? She must've written 53 books and failed to publish them all to be able to secrete the quantity of venom that she does.

I'm referring, of course, to her review of John Banville's _The Sea_, in which her basic premise seems to be that the book should not have won the Booker Prize because it contains many words she does not understand.

Last night I had an almost identical conversation with Jasper at Ashley's about someone else's work, except that Jasper was being *facetious* when he said, "I hate his work because he uses words I don't know and it makes me feel stupid."

Also M.K. blathers on a bit about how the book doesn't have a plot and is purely meditative. Ahem. Since when is plot a necessary thing in a good book? _The Sea_ has the most gorgeous language, but I guess Ms. Kakutani doesn't really like that sort of thing.

Ekphrasis

I've been investigating the etymology of Ekphrasis, and the best I can come up with is this: Ek (Greek for out), and phrasis (to speak; or, phratto). So, a sort of speaking in response to something out there, i.e., art? Not the nicest, neatest derivation.


party woo.

what am i doing here?

I want to move a conversation initiated by starrykick into the spotlight that is robotdinosaurswithhumanheart’s homepage. So can I just paste what I wrote in response to her question: “Are these blog responses supposed to be like, updates on what's going through my tired little brain, or more like arguments I would urge my comp students to make? will someone tell me what to do?” ? Or is that lazy? Am I supposed to revise (re-VISION, people) my thoughts for (re)consumption? Can I get through a paragraph without a parenthetical?

In any case:
oh, starrykick, please not arguments you'd tell your comp students to make. or i guess the ones you tell them to make would be great, the ones they *actually* make, however, are strictly off limits. not that there's any danger of that in this place, where even the tired brains are so lovely and lively.

i overuse the word lovely, but i almost always mean it.

also, i think we can do whatever we want in this space. our readers are probably only ourselves, right? my guess is that since we've just come out (or are in) the program here (it sounds so AA-esque when i call it the program) and we're a team not only out of mutual admiration for one another's dancing/karaoke/cooking skills (willingness perhaps a better word in some cases)but because of our shared pursuit of this thing called being writers (or, being ultimate masters of all fine[st] arts) that our topics will lean literary, but I certainly wouldn’t want to limit anyone’s input, and am more than happy to read tips and tricks for keeping those ladybirdbeetle monsters out of the house. I want to be a part of this space (oh, here comes my women’s center vernacular) largely because I hope it will allow us to keep the conversations we had (more) regularly while still in the program going even as we splinter and spread. Maybe I’ll move this comment into a post and open this up for discussion as well? Why not? It’s not like I have any papers to grade or lonely, withering stories to attend to.

Is there any way to move something from comments to the main page more gracefully? Blogs are weird.

continuing the pattern of pasting meta-commentary from responses/reactions into actual posts

I already posted this as a comment, but figured I'd a) follow bizness's lead, b) take this opportunity to one-up/ get the goat of said bizness (2200 miles not able to keep me from doing what I do best) and c) affirm what I said in the comment. Because I think it's so important. Also because I'm right. Anyway, here it is:

and am more than happy to read tips and tricks for keeping those ladybirdbeetle monsters out of the house.

It seems, rather, that what we've got here is a pretty special compilation of voices, and perhaps this compilation of talent and intellect would be mitigated by the discussion of trifles? I don't know about you all, but I log on to this blog (frequently, as can already be gleaned) for a specific kind of salve and balm, go to the trouble of digitally traveling to this specific place because I want my mind to be torqued and piqued in specifically, and yes exclusively, literary ways. I go to other places to gossip and chat--as I'm sure do you--and it seems, in my life at least, that these places, the chatty ones, outnumber the literary ones, which I believe we're trying to cultivate, and should.

So my two cents to starrykick are this: I would love to hear any and all literary updates from your tired brain, even if they're merely observational (of culture, society, politics, philosophy), and the only thing 'literary' about them is the way they're presented. Also more academic arguments are acceptable (to me, at least, although I will join bizness's chorus and adjure that they not be arguments the students themselves would make).

Here, how about this as a loose guideline: let's make this a sort of online Harper's, or better yet Believer, minus the interviews. Thought-provoking, insightful, (inciteful), witty, stylish. And, eminently, the work of writers. Because that is who we are. Because this, of all things in our lives, is what we cannot avoid.

putting the truth in its place

So I'm reading about this project called The Clock of the Long Now--research for the novel, god I love this job--and I came across this:

Ten thousand years - the life span I hope for the clock - is about as long as the history of human technology. We have fragments of pots that old. Geologically, it's a blink of an eye. When you start thinking about building something that lasts that long, the real problem is not decay and corrosion, or even the power source. The real problem is people. If something becomes unimportant to people, it gets scrapped for parts; if it becomes important, it turns into a symbol and must eventually be destroyed. The only way to survive over the long run is to be made of materials large and worthless, like Stonehenge and the Pyramids, or to become lost. The Dead Sea Scrolls managed to survive by remaining lost for a couple millennia. Now that they've been located and preserved in a museum, they're probably doomed. I give them two centuries - tops.

The fate of really old things leads me to think that the clock should be copied and hidden. The idea of hiding the clock to preserve it has a natural corollary, but it takes Teller, the professional magician, to suggest it without shame: "The important thing is to make a very convincing documentary about building the clock and hiding it. Don't actually build one. That would spoil the myth if it was ever found." In a way, Teller is right.

Which reminded me of what my friend Greg said to me this summer at the Pig Roast, when Eddie and I confessed to not having actually Cannondonged to get there (SF to Boston in a straight, dizzying shot):

Don't ever let the truth get in the way of a good story.

(And actually, it was Errol Morris who told this to Greg.) But anyway, what does this say about what we do? The documentary of a fake clock's fake construction standing somehow in perfect stead for the real thing. One car, two people, three thousand miles, and who's to say, if we don't, that it didn't happen? And if we don't tell those people in Vermont, they leave that weekend telling their friends that two guys ran a car three thousand miles across the country in one glorious run. And what, weeks from then, in all those tertiary people's minds, could ever differentiate it from truth?

What I mean to say, is, suspension of disbelief or no, what we write in fiction never really happens and yet no one reads it that way, and yet, on some level, readers take it for gospel, for truth. It speaks to them; they carry it with them, and believe in it, and care.

So why not put fiction, and our capacity to create it, in more parts of our lives?

on the subject of reading (and, tangentially, Jim Shepard)

Once I sat in a room with many young people and Denis Johnson--brought to the many young people by the gentleman in the title of this post--and DJ said something that at the time surprised me, but does not now. Someone, a young person, asked him who/what he read of late and he said that he didn't read that much anymore, and that he rarely finished books.

I guess I bring this up because I haven't finished a book since school ended, haven't even started one for months. Granted I'm in a state of mind right now that precludes ambitious activities such as novel-reading, but aside from that is it possible that my present and Denis Johnson's at-least-past are the kinds of future we novelists have to look forward to? Because for real, how or why would I devote time and energy to keeping track of another narrative when it's as much as I can do--usually more than I can do--to keep track of my own?

Or maybe it's a little like the bluegrass musician who listens to death metal when he comes home from the studio (Believer readers check out your July 2004 issue, the interview with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats), or the software tester who wants, when he comes home, nothing to do with computers or the internet (see Park, Eddie). Or the gerontologist who needs to molest children. That sort of thing.

But so the thing I'm saying or the question I'm asking is this (and I guess this is more for the novelists than the poets): how many writers do we know who also are voracious readers of books and novels? I'm being lazy--I know this--and certainly I could knock off at least one short story a week just on my BART rides into and back from the city--ibid, and to a greater degree, poems--but am I being that lazy?


Also, who's with me on changing our moniker from "a 'place / to put the precious useless things'" to "a 'sieve... / to put the precious useless things'"? It seems, perhaps, more fitting? As in, on a daily basis we lose so much, even if we "place" it in a forum such as this....

i heart jim shepard

I just finished Project X and thought I might bring some book-talk to the blog. Often when I finish a book, I read every review I can find of it, even the user reviews on Amazon—desperately seeking out a community of readers. I never post my own reviews, so it’s not much of a conversation. Tonight I thought hey, I know a community of readers! Why don't I engage with them? This might be one sided as well, though, since I’m not sure if any one else has read Project X. I finished it an hour ago, but I needed that long just to stand up. I’m still carrying the book around with me, reluctant to let the characters go, unwilling to have that story be over. It’s less than two hundred pages; most of you could finish it in an afternoon. You should, if you have the chance [I hear you: When will you have the chance? You should, now].

In workshop it was well known that I had a penchant for the character driven story. I just started the fiction unit in my 223 class last week, and I think my students already have a sense that I don’t really care what their characters do, so long as those characters are interesting. Project X’s narrator, Edwin, is so painfully real to me that I could weep. I was just talking to the main squeeze (who finished this book a week or two ago) about the narrator’s little brother as if he were a person in my life, like, Oh can you believe that thing Gus said? He’s so funny; I love that kid. And I really sort of do.

The book gets pretty high-tension towards the end, but whatever you do do not do not do not skip to the end. Do you people do that?

Dinosaur Fires

If you look very closely, you will see the dinosaurs' fires. I think there a lot of dinosaurs in India. What are they burning? Not books. Maybe sticks, maybe newspapers, maybe they're making s'mores or roasting a pig. Maybe they're not thinking about the poems they should be writing and instead reading Christine Hume's Alaskaphrenia, stumbling across the lines: "I'm not right. I'm interfered with / and bent as light. I tried to use the spots, / for months I tried with rings. / Only now I'm thinking in cracks / that keep a modern light / lunged." Oh robot heaven! Keep those fires burning and on both ends. To procrastination!

skeleton makeup

is hard to get off. when I woke up this morning I still had it all over my eyes and neck. I'm considering teaching in that bony shirt, though. I think this blog needs some poetry, right off the bat. so here's a line from Dan Chiasson I've been thinking about that seems to encapsulate the idea of blogs: "O slave, sieve, place / to put the precious useless things"

who the fuck are you people? code names? and who told me i have to not be nasty? that was an e-sentiment conveyed in j-text and -tone, so i'm kind of confused.

life is all about being nasty and stomping on little things that can't run from you. like l'il brudder. and one's lungs. "being nice and caring is for my fictional world," he said, becoming the first so far to talk about 'writing.'


now if you'll excuse me, strangers, i have to stop being mean and go work on my novel.

links and shit

I had to be the first one to cuss on the new blog. Yes, dinosaurs have filthy mouths too. Anyhow, as far as the links go, please add a section where we can link our blogs, you bloggin genius, you. Who else but the bizness could create a blog at 1 AM buzzin on sparks? Mwoi!

oh boy.

Do you know that Antonya Nelson story, "Irony, Irony, Irony?" Well, there's this little kid who says all this totally wonderful, crazy, stuff, like, "Toochi, toochi, I have a tail." And "Bumpershoot, bumpershoot, get me out of here."

is this it?