robotdinosaurswithhumanhearts

Jesmimi

2008-02-02T05:54:00.000-08:00

A big congrats to Jesmimi! If you don't already know why, go to her blog and see for yourself.

2007-11-29T11:52:00.000-08:00

The First Step
⎯C. P. Cavafy
(trans. Evangelos Sachperoglou)

The young poet Eumenes complained
to Theocritus one day:
“Two years have passed since I began to write,
and all I’ve composed is just one idyll.
It is my only completed work.
Alas, it’s high, so I see,
the stairway of Poetry is so very high;
and from the first step, where I stand,
miserable me, I’ll never climb higher.”
Theocritus said: “These words
are blasphemous and unbecoming.
Even though you stand on the first step,
you still ought to be proud and happy.
To have come so far is no small matter;
to have done so much is great glory.
For even this first step is still
by far above the common people.
In order to set foot upon this step,
you must be in your own right
a citizen in the city of ideas.
It is both difficult and rare
to be made a citizen of that city.
In its agora you come across Lawgivers
that cannot be deceived by any opportunist.
To have come so far is no small matter;
to have done so much is great glory.”

Cannery Row

2007-08-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

I read this book many months ago. I loved this book. I loved the way it meandered around in it's setting, got lost in anecdotes on characters, anecdotes that went off on tangents, before the story eventually settled on something resembling a plot, dropped it for a while and picked it back up in the end. That plot? Mack and the boys throwing a party for Doc, such a nice guy.

Are stories allowed to do that anymore? Some novels, maybe, but what about short stories? Stewart Dybek comes close in his collection I Sailed with Magellen. Look at "Blue Boy". It's the kind of fiction that punches out a large space for itself, a space larger than needed for the plot that drops in. Or he makes it seem that way. The story is roomy, yet every word counts. I guess the opposite of this, the more commonly accepted story, is one we describe as "tight". Granted, a novel has more room to be loose than a story does, but couldn't there be more loose stories? And what makes them loose? Their focus on setting? Is it that no one cares to read them that much, journals have no room for them, or editors have no patience for them? Or all three? Or any combination of the above?

I suppose the purpose of this post is to ask whether any of you robots could suggest stories similar to those described above, or authors who write such stories. Much appreciated.

From Baxter

2007-08-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

I know all of you who took Nancy's workshop still have Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House. I dusted off my copy to revisit a few of his gems. Here's one of 'em from On Defamiliarization that addresses emotion in fiction:

"The fallacy of much fiction is that in any particular moment we are feeling one emotion, when in fact we are feeling many emotions at once, many of them contradictory, such as lust and gloom. But of course lust and gloom often go together, as do depression and cheerfulness. What is a bored ecstasy like? What does one feel in the midst of pessemistic hope? Is there such a thing as furious tenderness? Why are so many psychopaths lovable? The monsters we have all known in our lives are monsters almost by definition because they are often not monsters, and we expect them to be one way, and they turn out to be another. That's why we admitted them into our lives in the first place.

"Psychopaths, afterall, are great charmers. Bad people are good people who have gone on a sort of lifelong spiritual vacation, and who remember to be decent from time to time.

"....Instead of making our narrative events and our characters more colorful, we might make them thicker, more undecidable, more contradictory and unrecognizable."

Congratulations for Peter

2007-08-08T15:33:00.001-07:00

I'm doing my part to revive this damn thing because I miss all of you folks, and I wish we conversed more. I read over at the blog-that-shall-not-be-named (because several of us lurk there) that Peter Ho Davies is on the long list for the Booker Prize. Congratulations to Peter!

And here are pieces of a poem (I know that's probably sacrilege to cut a poem into pieces and post it, but I can't help it) by Michael Ondaatje called Burning Hills that I'm posting in the hope it will jump-start this place.

So he came to write again
in the burnt hill region
north of Kingston. A cabin
with mildew spreading down the walls.
Bullfrogs on either side of him.

...

What he brought: a typewriter
tins of ginger ale, cigarettes. A copy of Strangelove
of The Intervals, a postcard of Rousseau's The Dream.
His friends' words were strict as lightning
unclothing the bark of a tree, a shaved hook.
The postcard was a test pattern by the window
through which he saw growing scenery.

...

There is one picture that fuses the five summers.
Eight of them are leaning against a wall
arms around each other
looking into the camera and the sun
trying to smile at the unseen adult photographer
trying against the glare to look 21 and confident.
The summer and friendship will last forever.
Except one who was eating an apple. That was him
oblivious to the significance of the moment.
Now he hungers to have that arm around the next shoulder.
The wretched apple is fresh and white.

Since he began burning hills
the Shell strip has taken effect.
A wasp is crawling on the floor
tumbling over, its motor fanatic.
He has smoked five cigarettes.
He has written slowly and carefully
with great love and great coldness.
When he finishes he will go back
hunting for the lies that are obvious.

The older of the two Karens told me that when I moved from Ann Arbor, I would miss that community of writers, my friends, that I had become a part of. And she was right. I do. So post, damnit!

SPRING

2007-07-26T07:33:00.000-07:00

The loveliest
thing:

a man
moves slowly
through the crush

holding a full
trimmed sheet cake
above his head.

--Susan Hutton

What It Looks Like Here

2007-07-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

I was just rereading the brilliant and heartfelt conversation you robots (hello! dear robots! I miss you!) were having awhile back about sentimentality and emotion in fiction. I'm on hold with the insurance company that's taken 6 weeks to decide if I'm eligible, meanwhile I'm paying an arm and half a leg and a few toes for medication I need, dear god do I need it. Anyways, the insurance company is not the point, though in a way it is relevant in the way that it represents the soulless writing that is out there without a soul and lacking souls and stuff. I can't bear to read that stuff--who can?--and do anything to avoid it to the point of wanting to read the saddest possible words with saddest possible music on the record player (Songs: Ohia, anyone?)... just to feel something, already. Lately I've been working on putting together a poetry manuscript for my dear friend who died 2 years ago and came across a spontaneous journal-like passage about not wanting to write sad poems, not wanting to write about death. (Yes, it's striking that she would say such a thing considering what happened--all her poems are like this, eerie and sad and prescient.) It reminded me of a moment in the prison workshop a couple summers ago when one of the inmates asked me why my poems are so dark. I didn't know what to say, though I did know that my poems are often kind of dark, if not expressly so, then suggestively. I'm not such a sad person--I like to think of myself as relatively positive, considering the state of the world--but my default emotion in my poems seems to be sadness, or some sort of grief, something darkly dark. What I'm wondering is--why is this my default emotion? I'm not looking for psychoanalysis, though lord knows it might be helpful. I guess I'm just curious as to whether or not sadness is the easiest thing to approximate in poems and/or fiction, and if it's the easiest thing to respond to, or the easiest emotion we recognize in ourselves and therefore in the writing we read. I too want to weep, sob even, at the end or beginning or anytime in a novel and though it happens less in poems, I think, I gravitate toward the poems that leave me feeling a little hollow or sad... What's interesting here, of course, is that there are many kinds of sadness and sometimes the tears at the end of something are more about the beauty or the happiness or just the depression of having to pick out a new book. Housekeeping is perhaps the most memorable book to have had this effect on me--I was paralyzed for days by it and couldn't put my finger on what was so crushing about it. And perhaps, or of course, that was why it was so moving. BUT there was sadness there... And I'm more often than not crushed or moved by the expression or imagining of that emotion in anything I read than anything else. I'm also interested in what my friend Greta said: She didn't want to write about death. But she did, and so have I and I'm willing to bet we all have, even it's just been in failed attempts that seem sentimental or unreal. And some of us (I include myself among you) feel a little morbid in this sense, fascinated with literal and physical death and the grief that accompanies it. I don't necessarily want to write about death, either, but maybe I could forgo this and be more comfortable with it if I understood my compulsion to do so...

She slips her cool bouquet of fingers into my hand.

2007-05-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

Well hello dead blog! Hello blog on life support, and no I am not doing anything in my power to resuscitate, so it goes! You go on limping, I go on limping, we go on limping together but in separate hobbles to the same distant, unreachable sunset! The sunset that is so mournfully glorious! The sunset you don't want to end but you need to, because if it didn't it would just be a bruised and lame day. All of you, it would be a bruised and lame day.

No, I am not drunk! I am not drunk yet!

But what I do have to report is this: there is so-so story full of the kind of language that makes you long for the days when this language we all speak was new on our lips, and everything we said was for the first time. I mean this--

Now it's dark. This is an instant when the carnival lights have finally bullied the sun away, and the sky glows the colors of infection. The egrets notice, and all at once they flee the drainage canal behind the parking lot. They settle, pale and watchful, in the high limbs of the live oak trees behind the Giant Wheel, but they cannot sleep with the midway lights on them. For a time, the trees are whitely restless with the labor of the egrets stowing and unstowing anxious wings.

Now how about that? Even my impending return to San Francisco, nearly hobbled by weepy dreams yes weepy dreams where I, as Spiderman, weep at the thought of flinging spiderwebs from my wrists onto the next building because five moments after I do I'll be floating in an arc in full sight of the Bay, of the Bridge, of any number of hills that last summer, in the full and warm light of the love that was then blossoming in my heart for that inanimate city--I was crying, in my dreams as Spiderman I was crying because I would see her again, this City I've been away from for so long--even now, at this incipient moment, my heart is stayed by the writing representative of which is the above paragraph. A section of this story begins with this paragraph, and ends with a paragraph that begins with,

The felonious old electricity crackles in my groin.

Hoo boy. Check out this month's Harper's. As the Olde Windbag is of course now gone...

oh no!

2007-03-19T01:08:00.000-07:00

when i signed in (as robotdinosaurswithhumanhearts--i was hoping to change our blog colors in an attempt to re-reinvigorate discussion) blogger requested an 'upgrade' to google or something. i foolishly complied and now a bunch of stuff is missing--including some of our fine robotdinosaurs! these people:
knee hi mink, Big_Concrete, glass as selves, sefket, ray-ray, mother of bear, many copies, Kinky McDoogle, Esq., !devotchka!, DeusExMachina, party of my heart, Toochi-toochi

are missing from the sidebar! i will try to fix this, but maybe the quickest route to figuring out what's wrong would be all the above lovelies posting. why not just tell the other robotdinosaurs some good news. or tell us where you live, what you're reading, what you had for lunch.

Or I could just eat wasabi....

2007-02-13T12:56:00.000-08:00

This is sort of related to Toochi-Toochi's post below and I could've posted it as a comment but I am feeling exhibitionist, which is rare, so I thought I'd seize the feeling and run with it.

I'm not going to blame MFA programs because I don't think they're the only, or even the main, cause of this phenomenon but so much recent stuff I read is oh-so-clever, such smooth talk, such lithe vocabularies, and so little else -- it's been so long, so very long, since I've read anything recent that made me cry. Is it just me? Am I just not finding the right books? This has been an obsession of mine for a while. I keep coming back to it; I may have already posted about it here but I am too lazy to scroll down and see if I did and anyway almost no one posts on here so it's not like I'm taking up space that someone else wanted and besides only 3 (three) people still read this thing so it's not like I'm taking up too much collective time either.

I like to cry when I read. At the ends of books, in the middle, even at the beginning if it feels earned (actually, if it doesn't feel earned, I *don't* cry, so I guess I don't need to qualify that). I cry while reading *children's* books, not just the obvious ones like Charlotte's Web and Watership Down (homeless bunnies! Who doesn't cry for them?), but even The Railway Children, The Wind in the Willows, certain bits of The House at Pooh Corner. So it's not like I'm a hard sell. But more and more it seems that sentiment has gone out of fashion, or that all sentiment is dismissed as melodrama, or that emotion can only be approached with irony. Maybe it's the South Asian in me -- maybe I'm hard-wired to love emotion writ large, on the Bollywood scale: loud, wet tears, sadness that kills, fury that makes people gasp. Oh, don't get me wrong, I think Bollywood simply transcribed makes for ATROCIOUS fiction, and there are a few writers who do write like that, all of whom I despise, yes, despise. But the other extreme seems like such a poor and dry place. I'm tired of tongue-in-cheekness and McSweeney's and stories from the point of view of quirky misfits doing strange and quirky things that don't change anyone's lives.

I'm feeling curmudgeonly, it's true. But on a less curmudgeonly note, I looked at P. Ho D.'s novel, just at the dust jacket, and it left me feeling hopeful. I haven't read it yet but I am hopeful that it might make me cry. Has anyone here read it? I am a total sucker for wartime romance. It almost always makes me cry, all that impetuousness and fatalism. I cried and cried and cried when I read _The Heat of the Day_ (Elizabeth Bowen, you must read it if you haven't) and I cried at _A Very Long Engagement_, which almost everyone else hated and the critics panned for being cheesy. So maybe PHD's book will make me cry, and then I will feel better about the state of contemporary literature.

If you've read anything lately that made you cry, let me know. I'm making a list.

2007-02-02T12:39:00.000-08:00

A Salon Letter from an MFA student about her doubts about an MFA program has set off a ton of blogochatter, from the sincere to the angry to the snarky to the MFA-programs-produce-a-lot-of-third-rate-poo-poo. Original post here: http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/tenn/2007/02/02/graduate_schools/index.html

AWP?

2007-01-29T21:22:00.000-08:00

Are any robotdinosaurs attending? It's in Atlanta; I was thinking about crashing it.

Nonfiction

2007-01-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

I was in the middle of reading Jesmimi's interesting post below, particularly struck by the aside,(Perhaps that was too much information for you--sorry.), when my mother's instant message popped up and blocked Jesmimi's text. Well, before that instant message popped up, I was thinking, Why the apology? Don't we love hearing the heretofore unspoken, private memories of our friends, acquaintances and total strangers? As readers we relish experiencing them, understanding them or, conversely, being left baffled by them. As writers, ditto. There should be more of that. More of the personal—our confidential moments willingly made public.

If you think this is leading to me posting nude photos of myself taken by bathroom mirror reflection, please rest assured. It’s not.

Instead, I thought I’d post the chat I had with my mother just now, give you a taste of the material I haven’t yet let fully into my writing (for those of you from the workshops). I just don’t know how to neatly get all the mess in, or neatly take the pieces out and pin them under the microscope like some foreign bacteria when, really, in this example, she’s no germ: she’s my sister. And tied up in my sister are all these conflicts that eventually branch out to me, intertwine with my conflicts, and suddenly I’m dissecting myself again instead of making up shit about a girl who is deservedly diagnosed with an incurable case of DUMB ASS by her very own mother.

mowdy1948: hey
joelbmowdy: hello
mowdy1948: what are you doing up so late?
mowdy1948: my mic is still not working...been buusy doing other stuff
joelbmowdy: I had to make lesson plans for my classes that start on monday
joelbmowdy: been working on it all day
joelbmowdy: and grading I was putting off
mowdy1948: your sister Brittany is a dumb ass
joelbmowdy: uh huh
joelbmowdy: what now
mowdy1948: long story short
mowdy1948: she left her friend dominique watching thte kids on Wed. night...i was a t work til 11 and came home to find her here...said Britt would be home by 12:30
joelbmowdy: ok--well, so far this is better than I thought. I thoughtyou were going to tell me she's pregnant again
mowdy1948: Dom comes in my room and wakes me up at 1 and says Britt had car trouble...she went in to NYC with Bradley...some ass hole from around here..young ..no teeth drives a Mercedes Suv
mowdy1948: she was going to go get her dad...call britt back and go and help them
joelbmowdy: mmhm
mowdy1948: Dom couldn't get in touch with her so figures that they were ok and went home
mowdy1948: Britt never arrived home..I had to go to work...no one to watch kids..kept Brianne (youngest sister) home..Britt's cell phone wasn't working but I had Bradley's#
mowdy1948: kept caling...no answer til arond 11:30
mowdy1948: got a man on the phone ..asked for her..he said she wasn't with him...he was Brad's uncle...had picked up his phone from the vehicle cause they had been arrested and he was on his way to court to bail them out
mowdy1948: Brooke (another sister) informed me that she heared they were going into NYC to get fake ID
joelbmowdy: oh that's smart.
mowdy1948: anyway..still no call from her..he would all me when he heard anything
mowdy1948: wait gets better
mowdy1948: so Shannon (another sister) goes online around midnight ...finds out where she is being held...calls and finds out it is for possession with intent to sell
mowdy1948: she didn't go before a judge til fri at 10:30 AM
mowdy1948: her charges were dropped, but bradley is on his way to rikers.
mowdy1948: here is her version...see if you can find the holes
joelbmowdy: This is terrible
mowdy1948: they were in the city and got a flat and couldn't find a tire store and yada blah blah blah
mowdy1948: they finally got it fixed and were just sitting in the car minding their own business when a bunch of plain clothes police rushed the car with guns drawn
mowdy1948: they were initially arrested because a guy in the back seat had an open bottle of beer.
mowdy1948: when the car was searched the police found a bottle of about 100 pain pills with Bradley's name on the rx bottle but they charged them anyway..oh and they confiscated the $6000.00 that he just happened to have on him because he had just sold his other car
joelbmowdy: this story you're telling has an interesting contrast to the profile picture of you smiling in mid dance step.
mowdy1948: Brittany said he takes these pills for back pain ( she thinks) and there were a lot because it is supposed to last 6 weeks
mowdy1948: i wasn't dancing...just sitting at my desk being tired....oh can you find the holes?
joelbmowdy: In his mouth? Wasn't the last boyfriend on pain killers, too?
joelbmowdy: You look like you're dancing.
mowdy1948: let me give the holes to you and see if you concur...oh by the way Bradley drives an expensive car "because he owns a pool company with his uncle"...did I mention he has few teeth?
joelbmowdy: Finiding the holes isn't the problem. I'm looking for the solid ground. Why all the guys on pain killers?
mowdy1948: I guess dating Brittany is a painful experience
mowdy1948: ok here goes..mastic beach+ ...young .+.drives expensive car = drug dealer....yuh think?
joelbmowdy: Bradley's been investing in the wrong kind of grill.
mowdy1948: uh...if you own an expensive car...do you not have roadside assistance or perhaps a spare tire?
mowdy1948: didn't have time to put his stash of cash away?
joelbmowdy: Maybe he was going to the dentist.
mowdy1948: It is illegal to dispense more than a month supply of controlled substance
mowdy1948: and if he was indeed taking that much in a month should he be driving?
joelbmowdy: The L.I.E. is a stressful stretch of road.
joelbmowdy: How are her kids?
mowdy1948: anyway..gotta go ...Brianne is vomiting and crying...we got a new puppy too. tell you more later
mowdy1948: her kids are great...they didn't even miss her.
joelbmowdy: Tell Brianne I hope she feels better.
joelbmowdy: soon.
mowdy1948: I had to take off from work to watch them...oh and I found 8 western union receipts...she has been sending the other asshole (other gut on pain killers) money in jail so he can call her
mowdy1948: bye for now.....love you!!
joelbmowdy: Love you, too.
joelbmowdy: bye
mowdy1948: she is a DUMB ASS
joelbmowdy: She'll learn, or she won't. It's out of your hands. Try not to let it kill you.

For all the wealth of material, it might be better to just leave the family unexamined, keep searching out the scraps I can get from friends, the anecdotes from acquaintances, the sideways looks at strangers on the bus, and let the family sneek in in dribbles as they always eventually do, making the work, somehow, though they are rendered unrecognizable, faintly about them anyway.

It's 4 AM, and I'm up

2007-01-06T02:09:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. I think this is only the second time I've actually posted an original post instead of a comment on this board, but since it's been a little quiet around here lately, I figured I'd clear my cyberthroat and say something. (This is almost as nerve wracking as commenting in workshop. My God.)

Anyhow, I recently purchased a new copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and when I thumbed through it, I remembered that I'm in it. Stay with me; I know this sounds weird. Anyhow, I read it for the first time when I was in high school, and around page 240 or so, a Buendia is introduced that seems to be...me. I swear. First, the character's name is Meme; my nickname is Mimi. Teenage Meme has a rigid, strict, authoritarian mother and an indulgent father: ditto for Mimi. Meme secretly rebels against her family and falls in love with a young greasy mechanic that no one approves of, and she sneaks him into her house at night for trysts. He is caught on his last night with her, shot in the back by a guard, and spends the rest of his days incapacitated and mute; as a teenager, I also snuck my rebel paramour into the house and was caught by my shotgun wielding mother who pointed a rifle at him and told him to get out of her house. Thankfully, she didn't shoot, but I'm sure that scarred him in some sort of way. (Perhaps that was too much information for you--sorry.) There are other weird characteristics we share, but I'll spare you the details.

Has anyone else ever encountered a character in a book that bore a weird resemblance to his or herself? Or am I the only delusional one?

(crickets chirp)

Moby Duck!

2006-12-17T11:22:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone will pick up the new Harper's; Donovan's got the Folio piece, and it is absolutely fantastic. Hooray Donovan!

howdy

2006-11-27T12:15:00.000-08:00

Hi all (it's Rachel L.),

I thought I'd do my part to revive the blog, since I loved reading it while it was jumping and was consistently lazy about contributing.

Get this: I'm reading Gilead and a waspy book about money management called "Rich Dads, Poor Dads" that my dad gave me...AT THE SAME TIME. It's not just contradictory; it's unholy. Anyway, it's been out for awhile, so this may be an unfashionable proclamation, but: Gilead just leaves me shaken. It reminds me of what I liked about religion when I was young (and maybe what I liked about writing back when I actually wrote)--I liked the imperative to examine and explore your motives and tendencies, to think of what would be virtuous, of how you would like to be, of what you respect...and then to go out into the world and try to remember it. Doesn't it seem like much of the bad you've done, you did because you simply forgot how you wanted to be?

On that note, check out these R Kelly videos: http://youtube.com/results?search_query=trapped+in+the+closet&search=Search

They're old news too, but I've rediscovered them and can't stop laughing.

I miss you guys.

R

Satisfaction

2006-11-15T02:37:00.000-08:00

What, is this my personal blog now or something? I feel ashamed to post twice in a row, like I'm the jobless no-life junkfood-guzzling loafer who doesn't change out of her pajamas till dinnertime and has whole conversations about ass-licking with her dog. Oh, wait, I *am* that jobless no-life junkfood-guzzling loafer.....

Anyway, I know some of you out there bemoan the fact that Harper's Magazine turned into one long left-wing rant in 2000 and never looked back, but like I said before, their ranting makes me happy, and this here below (you will have already seen it if you subscribe or read regularly), I don't know if it's a rant or a dare or a hoot, but it's oh-so-clever and I want to read it over and over again and so should you if you are the sort of person who will be glad that someone has stepped up to fill Lapham's reflective wing-tips:

http://www.harpers.org/OnSimpleHumanDecency=1149635660.html

Yes I know it's months old but I can't stop reading it.

Three Questions

2006-11-03T00:41:00.000-08:00

Ha! No one wants to be the first to answer Starrykick's summons. But the thought of her sitting before this moribund blog in her windowless office is so sad, people, isn't it sad? Isn't it? Where is everyone?

1) Has anyone read Kathryn Davis before? She had a brief mention in a sort-of-recent New Yorker and I got curious and started reading excerpts on Amazon. They are weird and wonderful. If anyone has actually read her, perhaps you can tell me if I should read something of hers from start to finish, and if so, what (please keep in mind that reading something from start to finish is a RARE and MAJOR commitment for me).

2) Has anyone every noticed how easy it is for a dog to look like a gangsta rapper if you put it in a hooded sweatshirt?

3) Does anyone else here read Tomato Nation, in particular the letters to the advice columnist(s)? A visiting friend who shall remain unnamed just introduced me to the website. Well, they were PRETENDING to be a friend, but I think they must be secretly plotting my ruin, because why else would anyone foist yet another addiction upon me? I mean, how could anyone have expected notoriously week-willed me to resist the variegated temptations of an unlimited reservoir of human foolishness on public display? Such great fodder for nightmares, indigestion, and stories, if I wrote them. I particularly recommend the letter about the roommate with the prolapsed anus.

Leftover Mashed Potatoes

2006-11-02T17:35:00.000-08:00

These leftover mashed potatoes have been made into a soup.

where are you robotdinosaurs??

2006-11-02T12:19:00.000-08:00

can we stage a resurrection? I think we should. the whole point was to keep in touch about writing matters when people moved away. well look, it's officially winter here, and it's been clear to me for some time that People Have Moved Away. so: please start by posting anything--a hello, an update, a book you're reading or thinking about reading, a rant about your students, a picture of a leftover pile of mashed potates. remember blogs? remember when they were hip? I want you back, people. Ready? Go.

This Is Just to Say

2006-09-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

That if you buy only one piece of music this year, it should be Beirut's Gulag Orkestrar. Please. It is wonderful. Fantastic. I can't get enough of it.

And if you only buy one book this year? Anyone? One anything else? Let's get some lists going.

a war worth fighting

2006-06-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Who else has www.kittenwar.com on their dashboard?

Apparently Angel Poo (right, or look under "winningest kittens") has won 75% of 796 battles. Crackers, please. That coy little paw! Those foldy ears! Let's make it 100%.

free fun at the aadl

2006-05-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

When I go to the public library, I like to pick up one of the free bookmarks that they give out at the front desk. Today I got this. I am confused and delighted. What to make of this? Are we meant to assume since "dooooo" is replaced by "read" that the rooster is telling us, "Do(oooo) read!"? I know that the rooster is not really telling us anything, but I have spent perhaps too much time thinking about this bookmark and the people that designed it, and whether they just wanted any excuse to include the word "cock" on a bookmark. (Hello new readers/searchers for roosters/porn/roosterporn!)

There were still a few bookmarks left, but I can't imagine they'll be there long.

Arms and Teeth

2006-05-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

So I was just reading "Kingdom Coming" -- Michelle Goldberg's bracing/horrifying investigation of the rise of Christian Nationalism and the efforts of various whackadoos to turn our nation into a theocracy -- and as I perused the platforms of said whackadoos, I kept thinking overmydeadbody overmydeadbody overmydeadbody. And then I thought, well, fuckadoodle, why not over THEIR dead bodies?

Here's my question: for those of you who identify yourselves as leftists, or even advocates of, say, a constitutional democracy, how do you feel about arming yourselves?

If you are going to be hated, shouldn't you also be feared?

What would it mean if every member of the ACLU was a trained sharpshooter, and declared that fact?

There's actually a website called Liberals With Guns. Maybe I'm just cracking up under the pressure, but...

Best Books Written Since My Birth

2006-05-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

Any thoughts on this list?

I haven't given it too much thought beyond noticing it's the #1 most e-mailed article today and was #2 yesterday. I have yet to even read A.O. Scott's related essay.

Perhaps some of you have considered this list (or your own) at greater length and wish to share. Beloved is certainly one of the finest books I've read in my 25 years on the planet, and maybe later I'll have the brainpower to think about why.

Magical Realism in Action

2006-05-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

Just in case any of you missed this, I thought I'd post it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/asia/09cnd-runner.html

Also because it made me think of this Rushdie quotation I read a long time ago, about how magical realism might've been invented because life in some places is too absurd and too huge for the language of realism. It's a familiar idea, of course, but Rushdie put it better than I can, so if anyone knows where I can find that quotation, let me know. I think it was in a book by someone called Daniel Chua, maybe (?), about postcolonialism or anti-imperialism or some such Thing.....

News Flash (woosh!)

2006-05-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

Why, you ask, does a story like this make the news? Maybe the creators of Southpark were right: everyone loves a cripple fight. The headline says it all.

Loose Motions

2006-04-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

Ha ha. The title is a reference to a conversation some of us had a few days ago; I think I'll just let the rest of you wonder about it (and no, it's not a problem currently affecting me, thank you very much).

Anyway, where is everybody? Shall we make more lists? Here are some things, literary and non-literary, currently making ME happy (and I hope you all appreciate the gall involved in creating a NEW POST for my list rather than appending it as a comment to Bizness's post):

1) Not having to teach anymore, particularly because it means I won't ever again have to lay eyes on a certain lumpy lab rat of a boy who only bought the textbook 3 weeks before the semester ended;

2) The tulips in my front yard -- we didn't plant them, so what a nice surprise! Tulips, where there were none before! Just like that! 0 effort, all reward! The tiger-striped ones are my favourite.

3) Frozen treats (and the weather to eat them in): lime popsicles, red bean popsicles, green tea mochi, passionfruit sorbet.

4) The hubbub over Kaavya Viswanathan (age 19)'s fourth-rate plagiarised novel:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/books/04/23/young.author.ap/index.html

And more here, to lend credence to the accusations of plagiarism:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=512968

I swear I wasn't originally jealous of Viswanathan's big contract, because what's to be jealous of? So some college sophomore writes a shitty book that everyone wants to read -- I do believe any of us could've written such a book as college, if not high school, sophomores. If anything, it made me sad (once again, or still) that that's what people want to read these days. But then, after the plagiarism accusation, when she came out and said she'd read both _Sloppy Firsts_ and _Second Helpings_, and that these books really "spoke to me," I thought, okay, this girl needs to be taken down. To find nothing better to copy, when Dickens and Nabokov and Rushdie and Ian McEwan exist or have existed, now THAT'S a crime.

5) This and other poems by Nancy Willard:

http://maggles.stumbleupon.com/

6) The Martin Amis story in the most recent New Yorker -- okay, at one point I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it because terror clogged my throat and I couldn't swallow my mochi (by the by, do you know that choking on mochi is one of the most common causes of death among old people in Japan?) -- also, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I can list this story as a thing that makes me "happy." Nevertheless, there it is. A thing that keeps me awake at night.

Won't you all come out to play? If not with lists, with amusements of your own?

small bright things

2006-04-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

When I move away, I’ll get my own blog and it will be nothing but useless lists. Until then, link-lists (with little to no book/writing related content) and the occasional embarrassing comment will likely be my only contribution to this fine robotblog:

Michael Chabon writes about the good his MFA program, with its “regular exposure to the healing rays of healthy disillusion, and in particular the hard-earned skepticism of grown women,” did him. I very much like the end, where Chabon manages to mention Doritos and the smallness of our lives in a single paragraph. (The Doritos-&-life-is-finite combo. actually seems a pretty natural match. Doritos totally freak me out though, for reasons I won’t get into here). [Via Bookslut]
I read “Black Hole” by Charles Burns this weekend and was mesmerized. Any recommendations of other graphic-novel/comic series that I should immediately read (besides Optic Nerve, Strangers in Paradise, and Jimmy Corrigan—my only other genuine forays into the genre) would be most welcome.
None of the aforementioned comics brings me as much glee as my new favorite. I sure hope there is more to come, and soon. (Click the pictures to make them bigger.)
The main squeeze and I saw “Thank You for Smoking”last weekend and both dug it (a two thumbs up from the Bizness/Squeeze duo is far rarer than the Ebert/Roeper variety). It was quick and fun; I’m not sure how long it will stick with me, particularly since it seemed to last a little over six minutes. The Michigan theater screening room was totally packed and while I love watching funny movies in full theaters (never were burp jokes funnier than when I watched “Monster’s Inc.” seated behind a class full of kindergartners) the laughter was so riotous as to obscure some of the very hilarity it was in response to. It reminded me of concerts where you can’t hear the singer’s banter over the fans. Let Debbie Gibson talk, people! (Hers was the first concert where I personally experienced this frustration).
As hard as I try, and the Squeeze can attest to the fact that I have been trying very, very hard, I cannot grow tired of this song.

Please: tell me about the ephemeral pleasures that have recently made you glad for your short, orangecheesefood-fingered time on Earth.

in the what of experience?

2006-03-20T10:20:00.000-08:00

This is a two-part question, first "deep" then shallow. Does anyone know anything about Lawrence Durrell? I'm asking because I have this quotation from him on my little bulletin board, and I've been thinking about it lately. I can't decide if it's really inspiring or sort of obnoxious in a self-help kind of way. Here it is:

"Somewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might surprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough."

It's from Durrell's book Justine, which is part of a four-book series called The Alexandria Quartet. I have never read these books. Maybe a character who's a real jerk says this statement, or maybe it's meant sarcastically. I know it as the epigraph from one of my favorite collections of poems: Order, or Disorder by Amy Newman.

I like the quotation, I think, because it is something I want very much to believe. I dislike it a little because it's so instructional: be more loving! You are not patient enough! These are concerns I have already, so I don't need Mr. Durrell to let me know how my lack of patience means not only that I'll never be a good kindergarten teacher, but also that I'll never surprise the order of experience.

If you've read Durrell, should I tackle this four-book series? Is he worth it? And what do you think about this order & coherence idea? Isn't it what really good writing does--brings a little order to the chaos?

The shallow: does anyone tape The West Wing? Because I really want to watch last week's episode where Josh and Donna FINALLY made out.

Someone Please Make This Man a Hero of a Novel, or a Poem, or a Story

2006-03-16T01:12:00.000-08:00

You'll know who I'm talking about.

2006-03-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

did you know the FEMA website is fun for kids? i like to picture old brownie sitting around the conference table okaying this. probably while the poor education specialist was presenting the portal plan, that dude was hunched over his blackberry betting on a stakes race. though come to think of it the whole thing likely dates from the clinton administration. maybe the best part: http://www.fema.gov/kids/games/maze/
don't forget to duck under the crackling power lines!
in sixth grade we had this reader--a landscape-format paperback with a full color, full bleed photo of an erupting volcano on the front--called DISASTERS. in it we read about the hindenberg, the galveston hurricane, the (old) sf earthquake.... the innocent dead on every page. is that kind of reading appropriate for sixth-graders? or, forget age. is it right to teach a mild middle school lesson on the backs of other people's tragedies? (oh how we learned good reading skills: find a quiet place, not too comfortable, not too warm, not in front of the tv.) even at the time it seemed as weirdly voyeuristic as it was fascinating.

2006-03-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

I've been reading Jesus' Son again for one reason or another, and when I came across this following paragraph it struck me as being the whole purpose of the collection, as though everything written before it existed just to give this passage its maximum effect, and everything written afterwards is merely a fuller cushion. And not necessarily because it, the passage, is in itself the most brilliant...although maybe it is...but just: this seems to be the whole point of what Johnson was trying to do here, here in these stories, arguably among the best put together in our lifetimes....

But without further ado:

There was a guy with something like multiple sclerosis. A perpetual spasm forced him to perch sideways on his wheelchair and peer down along his nose at his knotted fingers. This condition had descended on him suddenly. His wife was divorcing him. He was only thirty-three, I believe he said, but it was hard to guess what he told about himself because he really couldn't talk anymore, beyond clamping his lips repeatedly around his protuding tongue while groaning.

No more pretending for him! He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson, I really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I Likes Chocomuts

2006-02-22T20:39:00.000-08:00

This post isn't really about chocomuts, or chocolates for that matter, so move along now if that's what you're expecting or hoping for. I only borrowed the title from the "American Voices" column in The Onion, in which they ask the same six faces (with different names) every week what they think of a particular current issue? Anyway, one time the question was about US-Cuba relations or something and one of the guys said, "Uh, I likes chocomuts."

But what I really wanted to post about was this: remember when Jonathan Franzen was here, and he said -- either at his round table or his lecture, I can't remember which -- that the greatest novels are all comic novels? It emerged, subsequently, that he had people like Gogol in mind, but the comment got me thinking (I know, I've been thinking about it a long time). There are some amazing comic novels out there that say profound, uncomical things -- even if we want to talk only about 20th-century-and-later books, _Midnight's Children_ comes immediately to mind (or, really, any of Rushdie's books, but I don't know whether the rest of them qualify as great novels), as does Peter Carey's work in general.... But recently, for reasons of my own, I've been taking another look at _Atonement_, which I consider a great novel, and not comic at all. I also think it's one of the most moving novels I've ever read, as is _The Story of Lucy Gault_, also patently un-comic (if you haven't read these, bear with me, because I'll soon be getting to a point for which you won't have to have read them, and you'll probably come up with lots of examples I haven't read).

The point is this: I can't really think of a novel that combines the high humor and boundless energy of _Midnight's Children_ with the cathartic, punch-in-the-gut, let-me-just-lie-here-and-cry-for-a-week sadness of _Atonement_. _The God of Small Things_, at the mere mention of whose title our esteemed faculty (and many other people besides) shudder (but oh, I love that book, I do!) comes pretty close, I think (though how comic is its comedy to people unfamiliar with South Asian culture? I can't really tell). But I'm having trouble coming up with another recent novel that combines comedy and tragedy like that. Is it even possible to write a novel that's both comic in the grandest sense and moving in the best way? Because I just love bawling when I get to the end of a novel, but I also love wit and silliness and nonsense and playing with words, and I love a writer who can show off those aspects of his or her writerly personality. I really do. As writers, do we always have to choose? Is this a very foolish question with very obvious answers? Am I missing something? Are your bookshelves full of flawless tragicomic novels?

corazones dulces

2006-02-14T11:27:00.000-08:00

happy heart day, robotdinosaurswithhumanhearts. you can make your own chalky masterpiece here. i thought about trying to make this literary by asking for your favorite love poems or love stories or romances depicted in film, but really i just wanted to post this cute heart. i'd still love to hear what you love, though. xo.

Like a Rhinestone Cowboy

2006-02-05T14:20:00.000-08:00

This is a two-parter and more useless than precious, so be warned.
First part: Can we get a list of guilty-pleasure songs going? We all aspire to good taste, but, come on, that's hard to keep going 24/7. Besides, lists are fun.
Here's a few of mine to get you warmed up:
1. "California" by Phantom Planet (Theme from The OC)
2. "Shiny Happy People" by REM (Maybe too obviously bad)
3. "Milkshake" by Kelis (My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard)
4. "Me and Little Andy" by Dolly Parton (I'm so sorry)
5. "Rhinestone Cowboy" by Glen Campbell (There's been a load of compromisin')
I have more.

Second part: I remember waking up in our old house, which means I couldn't have been more than four, sneaking out to the living room and putting on a record of Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy." I knew I wasn't supposed to mess with the stereo and I vaguely knew it was too early, but I had to hear that song. I was in a cowboy phase. It couldn't be helped. But the song is the first one other than "The Wheels on the Bus" or "Zacchaeus Was A Wee Little Man" that I can remember really paying attention to, learning the words to and singing along to. I guess it's the first pop song I liked. What's the first pop song you remember liking?

This post contains no literary merit.

Post about the Black Eyed Peas. And also misery.

2006-01-31T14:00:00.000-08:00

Hey all. It's Rachel L. I won't type out my full last name for fear of exposing this secret little blog to the millions who have me on Google Alert. Bizness just invited me, and although I was initially certain I'd have nothing of value to contribute besides inappropriate jokes and updates on 2 Live Crew, I find myself already wanting to ask a really depressing question: what are your thoughts on writing and misery? I'm going to be frank: writing poetry depresses the shit out of me and for all of the obvious reasons: Introspection ends in the recognition of futility. Introspection magnifies and mythicizes one's mistakes. Writing often requires analysis of the past and all the bad memories thereof. Even good memories are often painful, in the way that snowfall and christmas lights and thinking about perfect fishing trips with your brother as a child make you cry. Beauty is painful. The sublime is painful. My arm is painful. Oh wait, that's because I did a cheesy aerobics class last night...or IS it? DAMN you, poetry!

Maybe this is specific to poetry and not fiction? Maybe this is specific only to me. Maybe this is specific only to people who would be depressed anyway, and writing only exacerbates it. But I feel like I remember being happier before I wrote poetry (though maybe that's because I was young and lithe and didn't have hormones). I wonder if what would make me happier is thinking about those fishing trips, watching the snow, crying, and leaving it alone.

Did I even ask a question? Oh, writing and misery? Does writing make you miserable? If so, what ever will you do about it? Anyone ever consider just stopping? There's also the entire side issue of writing making you miserable not for the personal, psychic crises it causes, but because it's so difficult not to sound like yourself...or for me not to sound like myself...which is taxing and sad. I give up. Thoughts?

Glad I can bring so much mirth to my inaugural post! I absolutely must end this on a lighter note. Hey did anyone hear that that song "My Humps" was the most successful download campaign ever...or something? I have no absolutely no documentation of this, nor can I cite where I heard it...or if I dreamed it...which would be alarming....

Love,
R

Thanks, Ralph. On to you, James.

2006-01-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

"These novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies--captivating books, if only a man knew how to choose among what he calls his experiences that which is really his experience, and how to record truth truly."

--RWE

and who's letting it (die)?

2006-01-27T02:15:00.000-08:00

Damn good social commentary on the Win/frey spectacle of yesterday's afternoon.

the story that just won't die

2006-01-26T12:59:00.000-08:00

okay, I don't exactly feel sorry for Frey, but still, embarrass & discredit the guy & be done with it already! Instead it looks like the scandal that rocked book clubs all across the land is going to ooze into its second month with Oprah's tearful reversal of her previous support for the book. Man, if you make Oprah cry hot tears of rage on TV, where can you hide? He's a ratfink, but any publicity is good publicity for book sales: when will this story die?

kumbayah

2006-01-17T20:20:00.000-08:00

So, the other day party of my heart & jesmimi & I did a little panel for MLK day on creative writing and social justice. Party organized it, it was great, a completely surprising number of people came, we all looked hot doing it, fine. Since then, I've been thinking about some of the issues we talked about: politics & aesthetics, who gets to speak for/to whom, teaching writing as a mode of social justice, beauty and morality, guilt, truth. Heavy stuff. What happened to me a little bit at the panel discussion is something that used to happen to me in grad school classes. I've thought about the issues, done some reading, I think I know what I want to say, and half way through saying it I feel 1) like I don't really even know what I'm talking about, and/or 2) like I am completely wrong and want to immediately reverse all my previous statements & argue the exact opposite. These are just the flashes I'm getting as words are physically coming out of my mouth. Sure, I get the occasional flash of "wow, hit that nail on the head, I didn't even know I had that in me," but those are few & far between.

I felt okay, even good, about the panel afterward though, but now my appetite is whetted. I want to think more about these things, so I figured I'd throw it out there. What do you all think about morality in your writing, or the responsibility of your art to contribute to The Greater Good? Have you read anything lately that seems relevant to these issues? We'll have our own little panel discussion here, and no aggressive nail-clipping, dog-rescuing Christian speakers will be able to muck up the Q&A.

(title=party thought we might start the panel with a rousing chorus of kumbayah, but we saved that for later, when the Christian speaker heard us gossiping about her & came back to kick our asses.)

And what about JT LeRoy?

2006-01-10T02:33:00.000-08:00

I came into the bookstore today all up and ready with my Frey news, ideas about how I would tell customers (on the sly, on the sly) that it was made up, cruel little schadenfreudes about making tense lesbians all flustered with disbelief/-appointment. I was gonna be the cool kid in the bookstore, finger on the pulse, but when I got in there--boom--there's talk of this.

[Quick summary for those who've never heard of LeRoy (as I hadn't) and who are too lazy to travel to link.... Or not; this shit's so complex; please travel to link and read and come back.]

And it's all so crazy, right? It's all so crazy and complex. I can't hold any of it in my mind, I can barely understand the first steps of these messes, and I know there are endlessly more. Layers inside layers. An enigma wrapped inside of Churchill's belly. Being made all the more complex by my having to now stand behind that rash call to arms of three months ago. To refresh everyone's memory:

What if we write non-fiction that's fictional? No I'm serious. This is kind of like my earlier post, the one about adding fiction to this world, little lies, small sparkles that aren't true.

.... Give them non-fiction, yeah, but make the shit up.

So yeah--there's that.

But what did I mean by that? Oh fuck I meant, in so many words, in four to be exact, A Million Little Pieces. But why do I not mean that now, and why does it feel like there's no way I could have meant it then? And why do I think what Frey did was wrong, and why am I uncomfortable, right now, with saying that?

His book had meaning, it meant something to me and it meant something to millions.

He lied.

How do I reconcile the two? How do we all?

On the one hand, it's so simple and it goes like this: The whole reason we are here to write--or the whole reason I am, and the whole reason I hope we all are--is to tell the truth, there is no point in writing if we are not revealing what we know to be true. This is why I don't read things that help me "get away," because "away" is not where I want to be, "away" is not at all where I want to be, I want to see things and help people and help people to see things. And if these things are true, and if what James Frey wrote is not, then no matter how much good his book effected, and no matter how much people may have been helped, he lied, and so he did not tell the truth, and so he did not effect good. His readers were lied to. His readers were disrespected.

But then there's this, from a December article on LeRoy in the Chronicle:

[Paul] Greenberg called the LeRoy debate a symptom of celebrity culture. "Celebrity has become a way of moving up to a higher class. Lesser writers, lesser artists are going to their real experience and to their memories just to promote their social ambitions."

...

Either way, Berkeley critic and author Greil Marcus sees something insidious behind the debate.

"What it all signifies to me is a deepening mistrust of the imagination, or the driving out of fiction by nonfiction," Marcus wrote in an e-mail this week.

"People will read fiction about a gender-confused teenage or preteen parking-lot hustler -- but only if they can believe that what they are reading is true. Then they can celebrate the person as an artist while avoiding having to actually engage with art."

A "driving out of fiction by nonfiction"--this is exactly what jesmimi was talking about in November. But I want to move past that and get to this: "Then they can celebrate the person as an artist while avoiding having to actually engage with the art." To wit, if people picked up AMLP and read the first few pages as a novel, as fiction, why, in this cultural milieu, would it have been so much less compelling? I'm culpable in this, too--I'll cop to that, I have to, I read it (the first several pages) in a store in Berkeley two summers ago and was transfixed--I can't at all guarantee that I would have bought it were it registered as fiction; I was riveted because it was memoir, because it was true. Because I could say to myself, every time I turned the page, This happened, this happened to someone, this happened.

But why is this? Of what is this a sign? Earlier in the article, there was a mention of a post-9/11 turn to reality, that somehow the incident--or perhaps the fallout--or what have you--somehow called for "the verity of non-fiction," in some fashion created "a tremendous thirst for authenticity." Leaving aside metaphysical inquries into the derivation of this feeling--viz., could this not just as easily have led to an avoidance of reality, a burrowing in, and away?--its existence can't be denied: jesmimi pointed to it this fall, Frey enacted it three years ago, and we all know how reality ('reality') TV has exploded in the past 5 years....

Oh, man, this fuckin post is everywhere, all over the place and of course it's also nowhere. But I'm gonna post it because I think there's at least something to wrestle with, and I'd love it if you all would take up the baton, even for just a few steps. This all is really blowing my mind, and I probably should have sat down for a minute before writing, probably should have laid down. So that's just what I'll do right now, and write more, maybe, in my morning.

2006-01-09T20:27:00.000-08:00

this article reminds me of a conversation had a while back (youpeople, i believe you were urging us to make up memoirs?) about memoirists taking "creative liberties." digested version, for those of you not into reading police reports as a form a procrastination, here.

As in, 'funny ha ha.'

2006-01-08T01:21:00.000-08:00

So, a funny thing is happening.

Sometime last fall, Matt Klam shared with the workshop some quote from some old(er) British writer that said something like, If you ever write a sentence that makes you satisfied--because it's nice, or deft, or cute, or knowing, or brilliant, and you get the picture--then you should immediately throw it out. Delete it. Banished.

Why? I don't know why, not exactly, just like I don't know exactly what the quote was, but I think the reasoning went something like this: We're not here to come up with zingers; we're here to say something honest. We're here to try, just once, to say something honest.

I think that's what he meant. And I'm pretty damn sure that's what Klam intended for us to think it meant. (He was big on cutting to chases, not being ornate.) Either way, that's pretty much what I, sitting in that Angell Hall classroom, took it to mean, and I remember thinking at the time, What horseshit. And I remember thinking at the time, Leave it to the scientists and the anthropologists to write truth unvarnished and -adorned, ugly and plain like those news anchors on Batman (the first one, people) after the make-up scare courtesy of the Joker. Splotched. Ashy. Etiolated. We're writers; half of what we do is make it sound nice. Otherwise any nitwit with an email account and enough fingers to type can be widely, and satisfyingly, read (forget for a moment blogs, okay?).

But a funny thing is happening. I'm starting to...if not agree with Klam and his limey hero, then at least, I don't know, at least I'm beginning to not stand up and scoff and shout against this position. And I'm beginning to tire a little of paper thin back flips.

Definition of terms: I'm not calling for owner's manual prose here. I'm not demanding that it be pared down. This is not a banner for clauseless sentences, I in no way want to do away with metaphors, similes, allegories, what I'm talking about is not gettothepointpeople. Rather, it's just....

I'm reading this book right now. The galleys, or the advanced reader's copy, or whatever they call it (love the bookstore job)--Which Brings Me to You, by Steve Almond and Julianna Baggott (man, would you check out the consonants on that girl??), "a novel in confessions." Boy and girl meet up at a wedding, both single and alienated (subtext: both single and alienating), they don't have sex in the coat closet because he thinks he likes her, they agree to send each other confessions in the form of letters. The trail of dead in their love lives. I didn't say it was plausible, but that's not the point.

The point is this: leaving Almond aside, I like the way this girl writes, but that's the problem. I like the way she writes. Understand? I like the way she writes. Eh? As in, she's writing, right, and I'm trying to feel something close to true; as in, she's writing, and I can feel her wanting to make those sentences, and not that those sentences are making her write themselves.

About a month ago I got a gift in the mail from a friend who was then traveling in Poland. A Soviet cigarette case with a lighter inside it, so that when you closed the case after extracting your cigarettes you could pull at a button/trigger/flange and light your cigarette. Way cool I thought, loved it so much that I decided to not continue quitting smoking like I'd started to, and when I busted it out a week later one of my friends out here, an Italian guy named Manlio (not a typo--pronounced 'Mah-lee-oh'), he said, Ohh, dees peece of sheet is yours?? I was flabergasted. How could he? What a great thing this was, what a babe magnet and what a party trick, and how could anyone but think that I possessed so much coolness to own such a thing, it was great.

But he was right. It is a piece of shit. The lighter stopped working two weeks ago, and it looks like if I want to use the lighter--that cute, fantastic sentence that makes people go aww--I'll have to fill it up with butane every fortnight. Dees peece of sheet.

I don't know I don't know, maybe it's because 45k words into my novel and so few of them are precious, so few sentences are the kind of beautiful I always hoped a child of mine would be, and so now I'm making a virtue of necessity, but maybe it's not that? Maybe language should be less about impressing people, and more about getting it right, whatever it is that's in our heads?

Sweet Life, or Suck It!

2006-01-03T12:26:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year.

Has anyone watched any of the clips on the
Wholphin DVD that came with this month's Believer? How about those different versions of the Turkish sitcom? As much as my eyes watered with embarrassment, for various reasons, I have to admit, I was cracking up. There is a certain element of "Aren't Turkish People Funny?" that made me a little uncomfortable, hence the eye watering, but I think it's safe to say that sitcoms from all cultures are pretty ridiculous, particularly ones that involve a wacky, eccentric neighbor and a hot, new secretary.

I think I'd like to write my own version.

Bad date.

2005-12-13T00:27:00.000-08:00

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

completely nonliterary penguin joy

2005-12-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

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.

Extraliterary Query of a Holiday Sort

2005-12-04T19:58:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody. It's been lovely reading this blog. I miss you guys. OK, so this post has nothing to do with writing or literature because, for better and worse, my life these days has nothing to do with writing or literature. Instead, it (this post, my life) has to do with children and the holiday season. This will be the bear's first Christmas, and though he is too young to do much of anything about it and won't for all intents and purposes remember anything about it in the years to come, I've got family traditions on the brain and would like to pick all of yours. I'd love to hear what holiday traditions or experiences you cherished most as a child and/or remember most fondly now. Thanks. Over and out.

midnight crazy

2005-12-02T22:14:00.000-08:00

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)

2005-11-30T16:08:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-11-29T00:07:00.000-08:00

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....

looting

2005-11-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

i've been flopping this thought over in my head the last two or three weeks, having once excavated it.
once at my house last year, must have been some party before joe kilduff showed up or maybe we were meeting to get cabs out to natalie and jeremy's--somehow we were talking about religion and the question got asked, what is theology, or more like, theology, what the fuck, how could an -ology, intellectual study of any kind, derive from something irrational as religious faith--
and so i think, faith can have intellect the same way fiction can. just because somebody made it up doesn't mean there's not truth in it, doesn't mean there aren't ideas in it.
the point being not to stand in defense of theology (which does fascinate me, but as i say that's not the point).
the point is it makes me think about the containment of truth in written things. i have some unshakeable bias toward nonfiction, not sure where it came from but the bias originates itself over and over again.
but i wonder if fiction (genesis or raymond chandler) needs a kind of nonfiction--some partial right-side-up delivery of its goods--to underpin it. i wonder if genesis is asking for theology. or i wonder if the two (f and nf) can be seen as complementary. can all texts be said to contain lines of fiction and lines of nonfiction? could a critic (a biased one, like me) find the 'nonfiction' in any novel? every reaction equal and opposite or something like that.

cities i could use right now
santa fe
chicago
oaxaca city, why not just move there?
maybe savannah or someplace with more color on the sides

free love on the free love freeway

2005-11-27T20:33:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-24T01:24:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-17T19:31:00.000-08:00

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.):

“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.
“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.
“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.).
“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.
“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....

2005-11-17T14:10:00.000-08:00

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?

2005-11-15T12:58:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-12T08:10:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

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?

2005-11-05T17:40:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-04T07:32:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-03T20:00:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-02T21:29:00.000-08:00

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

2005-11-01T14:25:00.000-08:00

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.

Reading Books is Overrated

2005-11-01T12:29:00.000-08:00

Ah, the world of blogging! Who thought I'd ever been doing this shit? I don't check my email for days at a time and I'm going to post random ramblings here? Well, it's supposedly addictive, so here's to a brave new world ...

Anyone who knows me knows that I fully share Denis Johnson's sentiment on reading books (ie. why bother?). It's a bland truism that "good writers are good readers," but it's also worth noting that reading too much simply screws up your voice. When I'm in the middle of writing a story, the last thing I want to do is get inside another character's head or picking up someone else's mannerisms. Actually, that why I love reading non-fiction. I can pick up lots in interesting information without having to worry about voice, narrative arc, dialogue, etc. Which brings me to a second question ... when people say good writers are good readers, are they talking about fiction/poems, or they talking about any reading?

On that note, I also just finished Project X by Jim Shepard. Wow, that's a good read. It's not a BIB (Big, Important Book) but it's a hell of story and I frankly didn't think Shepard had the guts to pull off what he did, especially at the end as Bizness mentioned. It's probably the most honest book I've ever read on being a loser in high school. Shepard gets all the details right, like sweating a storm when you can't open your locker, and only having "one pair of pants that aren't clown pants." Ha! That is so true. I wonder if this type of book can only resonate with people who have had crappy school experiences ... Hey, if anyone here was actually popular in high school, read Project X and let me know if you like it.

Ekphrasis

2005-11-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

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?

2005-10-31T21:58:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-31T19:41:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-31T12:32:00.000-08:00

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)

2005-10-30T21:51:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-30T20:23:00.000-08:00

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?

i like looking at rooms

2005-10-30T18:10:00.000-08:00

hi, dargie here, just played some frisbee and boy it was clear here today--i like how in ann arbor you when you look north or west down most streets you can see where they end in trees.

punkin,

d.

Dinosaur Fires

2005-10-30T16:45:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-30T13:55:00.000-08:00

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"

2005-10-30T11:06:00.000-08:00

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

2005-10-30T10:11:00.000-08:00

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.

2005-10-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

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."

2005-10-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

is this it?