July 31, 2007
Need a little dose of Noam Chomsky on this last day of July? Check this out, from Flak magazine:
. . .Chomsky does not abandon his umbrella thesis that the US government is making the world a more dangerous place, both at home and abroad.
Last time I was in NY, I ran into Zoe from Archipelago, who had her nose stuck in a book. I think she was swooning. So, needless to say, I found a copy of my own. Now my only regret is that I cannot erase it from memory and start it all over again. Why read Harry Potter when you can read The Dud Avocado, just reissued by NYRB? Oh, Elaine Dundy, where were you when I was 16, reading Catcher in the Rye?
In other news from the West, check out this hilarious interview with SARK ("Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy"), flower-child turned best-selling "deep thoughts"-style author. What does she regret? Wimping out when Maya Angelou invited her over for fried chicken.
Other inspiration gurus have flowered up the planet with their versions of affirming wisdom, but SARK is the whimsical, watercoloring queen. Years ago, her "How to Be an Artist" poster hung in your friend's mom's makeshift pottery studio. Her "Joy to Your World" calendar swung from the closet door of that ski chalet you rented once. Your beaming neighbor quoted from her inspiration phone line, (415) 546-3742. You thought: If I ever meet the woman behind this sparkling positivity, I will step on her sparkling foot.
So, I was in San Francisco a couple of weekends ago, and while this may be slightly old news, I was nonetheless delighted to discover that Stephen Elliott threw a beer at Howard Junker, founder-editor of Zyzzyva. Junker insulted Elliott while serving as a judge at the "Literary Death Match" sponsored by Opium. Sources say it was not just any beer, but a fine Belgian ale. . .
Hello! This is Emily (I work here), standing in for Jessa, who is—at this very moment—on her way to Ireland. Do you think she'll run into Irvine Welsh, who now calls Dublin home?
July 30, 2007
So that's it from me, actually. I've packed my bags with way more books than could ever be read by a human being in the time allotted (a little William James, some books on trees [it's a phase I'm going through], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Elizabeth Bowen, others I will not admit to reading to the world at large), and I've lined up some fantastic guest bloggers for you in my absence as well as a brand new issue that will be up tomorrow. I'll be on a farm, discussing pragmatism with cows. I will see you in September. Have a lovely, sweaty August.
Bookslut's Indie Heartthrob Interview Series
A weekly interview series where someone involved in the small press (be it writer, editor, slush slave, etc.) is thrown into the spotlight, grilled over the state of the independents and sundry other items, and quickly made to return from whence they came after having graced us all with their presence.
This week: Dedi Felman
Dedi Felman, a senior editor at Simon & Schuster, edits the webzine in translation Words Without Borders. With the scarce annual percentage of works translated into English, Words Without Borders hopes to break through the US's cultural isolation and reinstate the cultural cross-pollination from which our literary history originated.
How and why did Words Without Borders originate?
Words Without Borders (WWB) came into being to fill the tremendous gap left by commercial publishing for works not originally written in English. 50% of the books published in translation worldwide are translated FROM English, but less than 6% are translated INTO English. The figures for the number of literary works available to American readers in translation are even worse--maybe 30 works total are published per year. Words Without Borders combats the U.S.'s current cultural isolation by providing a window into what the rest of the world is thinking, feeling, and writing. We open doors to international exchange through translation of the world's best writing, publishing and promoting selected prose and poetry on the web, in print anthologies (the next one to focus on the Islamic world), and through special events that connect foreign writers to universities and to print and broadcast media. Monthly issues feature new selections of contemporary world literature, most of which would never have been accessible to English-speaking readers without WWB.
Between the site's launch in 2003 and the end of 2006, WWB published 600 pieces from 86 countries in 66 languages. Recent issues had themes such as The Magic Lanterns of Libya, Latin Labyrinths, International Noir, and African Voices. Upcoming features include Olympic Voices from China and Hollywood Around the World.
I should point out that there are editors out there like Drenka Willen at Harcourtor Barbara Epler at New Directions who continued their labors of love in the minefields of international literary publishing even as mainstream publishing turned its gaze inward, not to mention the newer faces on the scene who have appeared in recent years such as Jill Schoolman of Archipelago Books. But the overall statistics suggest that when it comes to letting in voices from abroad the US remains as closed off as say, Afghanistan. This despite the fact that some of our most cherished classics of literature--think Doestevsky, Tolstoy, or Kafka--heck, think Arabian Nights--come to us in translation.
WWB was the brainchild of Alane Salierno Mason at W.W. Norton & Co. I met Alane the day she had received the NEA grant that jumpstarted the magazine and immediately joined up; we hired Samantha Schnee (who has since moved to Texas) about 6 months later. Susan Harris currently does the lion's share of the work, co-commissioning and handling all of the contracts and permissions. Blake Radcliffe and Rohan Kamicheril are blogmasters and now that we're nearing the tail end of the redesign, there will be much more activity on that front soon (e.g. we're launching a new round of book clubs in September--first up, Chad Post and Simenon). We also hope to hire another editor shortly. But to return to your question, WWB originated as all of us believe that in an increasingly interdependent world, rife with ignorance and distrust, literature in translation has a critical role to play.
The webzine has undergone some recent changes from its original format. There are now more specific theme issues and much more frequent content than before.
After four years of one format, we decided that it was time to refreshen our look. The new format, which is still under development, will hopefully add more dynamism to the site. Quite honestly, this redesign was and continues to be a LOT of work: (one aside: if you think publishing literature in translation is difficult, try transferring HTML documents with diacritics into Unicode and then back into a new site. The result is not pretty. What was once a lovely accent aigu on our author's name is now an ugly box. Apparently, it's not just commercial book publishers who aren't ramped up to translate!) But this too shall pass and I think the main effect of creating a more dynamic site was achieved. We wanted to make the material from the archives (which has been building up into quite an impressive library) more accessible and we can now pull from the archives for features on the front page (featured author, featured translator, featured story etc.) We completely redid the navigation system and hopefully everything is easier to find. We also wanted to take advantage of the fact that we are a webmagazine with lots of fresh content every month, and so we decided to go to a daily/several times weekly roll out of features rather than rolling everything out on the first of the month a la a traditional print magazine. Finally, we are anticipating a lot of growth in our offerings for educators and students and we built a prototype of what will appear in this section of the site if and when we secure the funding.
What are some of the difficulties in running and maintaining a monthly webzine like this?
Uh, what isn't difficult? It's incredibly difficult to juggle everything with next to no resources and a lot of complicated steps before the piece sees the light of day--finding authors whose work we'd be interested in publishing when none of us speak the relevant language, finding recommenders, finding translators, evaluating samples, back and forth on whether/which selections will work for us, editing drafts, posting finished pieces, marketing and publicity, not to mention the book anthologies, events, fundraising, grant writing etc etc. Did I mention the next-to-no resources? And that most of us are squeezing this into our barely free time as we hold more than full time jobs. But we're all very dedicated to what we do and from the beginning it's been a terrific group of people to work with and we all inspire each other. And that really helps keep the momentum going.
What's in store for Words Without Borders? Will there be any new anthologies in the near future?
Right now we've got things going on every front. We have a jam-packed event schedule for the fall--more events for both our book anthologies: Literature From the Axis of Evil (New Press) and Words Without Borders: The World Through the Eyes of Writers (Anchor Books). We're also planning a Housing Works event featuring literature from the Portuguese World (including Lusophone Africa). We have two more anthologies in the works: one on the World of Poetry, edited by poetry editor Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris; and one on literature from the Muslim World, edited by Resa Aslan (author of No God but God) and Samantha Schnee. We're planning a fifth anniversary gala for Fall 2008 and we continue work on our education initiative, which entails providing more materials for teaching WWB in the classroom. [I need a nap just thinking about it all.]
In the meantime, we'll continue our monthly themed issues at www.wordswithoutborders.org, including literature from the Lusophone World, Women Writing in India, Lebanese Voices, another installment of our ever popular Graphics issue, and, if we can pull it together, my personal favorite, the first annual WWB humor issue.
Journalist Michael Finkel got his second chance in the July 2007 issue of National Geographic Magazine, where he contributes a lengthy cover story on malaria. Finkel, you may recall, was the New York Times Magazine contract writer who got busted in 2002 for committing a variety of transgressions in his feature story, "Is Youssouf Malé a Slave?" which chronicled the life and work conditions of a young laborer on an Ivory Coast cocoa plantation.
Michael Finkel also wrote the fascinating True Story about the aftermath of that New York Times Magazine article. Slate, however, asks if Finkel should be shunned forever, never to be published again. Jack Shafer doesn't actually suggest tar and feathers, but he comes close.
Spiegel has an interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
David Orr writes about controversies with the translation of Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems, 1956-1998 for the New York Times.
So if translation is always a matter of approximating, does it matter that Herbert’s “Collected Poems” has its weaknesses? Well, yes: after death, a translated poet may, as Auden said, become his admirers, but only after he’s become a poet in English who’s interesting enough to attract admirers in the first place.
Salon has an excerpt from Julia Alvarez's new book Once Upon a Quinceanera: Coming of Age in the USA.
July 27, 2007
Some days I really miss Texas. I miss Taco Cabana at 3 am, incredibly kick ass Texas women, getting frost bite at the Paramount Theater while watching Alec Guinness movies, sitting on a particular poet's front lawn drinking Lone Star... Then I remember what it was like having Rick Perry as my governor.
State Board of Education member Don McLeroy of Bryan was named chairman of the panel by Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday, giving a boost to the social conservative bloc on the board...
[I]n 2003, Dr. McLeroy was one of four board members who voted against proposed high school biology textbooks because he felt their coverage of evolution was "too dogmatic" and did not include possible flaws in Charles Darwin's theory of how life on Earth evolved from lower forms.
(Link from Seed.)
I would definitely read this proposed book by Eddie Campbell:
One day I intend to write a book about things left in bars. During the short spell I worked in one in Blackpool, while I was polishing glasses on a Sunday morning, an attractive girl came in and mumbled something with her hand half over her mouth. I cocked my ear. She mumbled again. She had lost her false teeth the previous night and was retracing her steps.
Neil Gaiman is interviewed at Time.
"My biggest problem with Harry Potter is that I went to an English public school and hated it," he says. (By "public school," the English mean what Americans mean by private school.) "I would have rather lived under the stairs." When he was 17, Gaiman wrote his own novel about English schools. "At the end, all the dead teachers came back to life--there was sort of this plague of zombies ripping the thing apart--and our decapitated hero had his eyes pecked out by the school peacock. That for me was trying to write a version of my own public school experience that was nicer and more fun."
The Chicago Tribune has a book blog now. There might be a reason it's nearly impossible to find on the website, hidden way down low on their blog index.
A little book in France is causing a stir: Corinne Maier's No Kid: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children. And by "stir" I mean "annoying reviews written by women who feel they have to defend their decision to have children or point out how Maier is scarring her own children with the book." (And a few men.) She's also the author of Bonjour Laziness, a guide to working as little as possible. I think I like her.
July 26, 2007
George Murray at Bookninja has the right of it: The White Stripes tour is the best thing going, "like watching some crazy shaman of cool simultaneously channel the spirits of Chuck Berry, Johnny Lee Hooker, Sid Vicious, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain. And they were all fighting for control of his body at once." Last night, the four-song encore (including a ridiculously great version of "Ball and a Biscuit") alone would have been worth the price of admission. Go see the show. (Although I will say that the MSG show sounds like it was even better. My kid was crushed this morning to hear that the Stripes skipped "Little Ghost.")
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If I tell you that there's such a thing as "poetry therapy," even a National Association for Poetry Therapy (which welcomes all interested parties, "whether you are a writer, poet, therapist, educator/teacher, or life explorer"), would you be surprised if the therapist in this story about poetry therapy in Texas turns out to be "working to become a Jungian analyst"? Of course you wouldn't:
"Poetry has a bad reputation in our society," [James Brandenburg] says. "People think it's so complex that they can't possibly understand it. But once you get them involved in the process and get them to tap into those energies, they open up."
(Via Choriamb.) Meanwhile, in South Africa, they're fighting addiction through poems, and in Kerala officials are importing poets to reform their prisoners.
Closer to home, Alabama's going to kill a poet today. (Update @ 11pm: Has killed him. The Alabama governor's statement is a model of logic: There's no new evidence, because the defense hasn't been allowed to perform DNA tests on the new evidence.) You can read Darrell B. Grayson's "Rite of Passage here, and find out information about how to contact the Alabama governor's office.
In spite of insight, when you’re the hue of coalThe shadowy gallows function in real time
Under the influence of
evolving standards of decency.
One of Grayson's chapbooks, Holman's House, is online here. The Birmingham News writeup is here.
The Book of Hopes and Dreams "is a charity anthology of poetry, which will raise funds for Spirit Aid's operations in the Baglan Province on North East Afghanistan, providing mobile clinics, doctors, nurses and medical supplies for the region, where there has been virtually no medical facilities for the past quarter of a century." The book, which is "generally unfashionably positive in outlook," features poems by: Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Moniza Alvi, Alan Brownjohn, David Constantine, Cyril Dabydeen, Carol Anne Duffy, Ian Duhig, Ruth Fainlight, Vicki Feaver, Elaine Feinstein, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Ades Fishman, Magi Gibson, Alasdair Gray, Tony Harrison, John Heath-Stubbs, Michael Horovitz, Mimi Khalvati, Tom Leonard, Robert Mezey, Edwin Morgan, Lawrence Sail, Penelope Shuttle, Jon Stallworthy & Anne Stevenson. You can order it here, or find out more information at Dee Rimbaud's website.
In May, Studio 360 interviews Michael Salamon's suggested astronomical revisions for Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learned Astronomer" (Free, but in icky RealAudio format).
The Mathematical Poetry blog has a collection of Theirry Brunet's mathematical poems.
Ron Silliman: "Poets getting all exercised about the demise of review sections is a little like poets getting all hot & bothered about the collapse of independent bookstores that carry almost no poetry & keep it hidden in the far back corner somewhere."
LibriVox has brought out "Short Poetry Collection 038," 20 short public-domain poems (mostly, but not exclusively, modernist--e.g., Pound, Joyce, Lawrence; mostly men) read aloud by volunteers.
Allen, Lindsay. Lindsay, Allen. (Via Boing Boing.)
Have you taken your Poetic License Exam? If you fail, you might consult "On Non-Rhyming Poetry."
Parents are upset with the grammar mistakes in Junie B. Jones's children's books.
“My dad doesn’t like the grammar,” said the Bartells’s youngest, Mollie, 9. “And I guess that’s important, because maybe when you grow up and you’re at work and you say, ‘I runned,’ people will get annoyed at you.”
It's the Rise and Fall of the Prefrontal Lobotomy! (I spent a week wanting to hit Jack El-Hai over the head with his own book The Lobotomist, which was oddly sympathetic to the monster who popularized the ice pick lobotomy in the US. The jerk was shoving medical instruments into the eye sockets of young women. "Jerk" doesn't quite cover it.)
I've been reading Rosemary Mahoney's Down the Nile while mostly happy that the trip I'm preparing for is not a boat ride down the Nile. (And by "preparing" I mostly mean stacking books in prioritized piles as I try to decide how long it might take me to read The Anatomy of Melancholy and really if I can justify taking any other books along with me at all. Do they let you take books on planes to the UK again yet?) Mostly I'm responding to it the same way I respond to articles in Outside Magazine: God, I'm glad someone else did that so I can just read about it. You can read an excerpt of it online.
New York Magazine's Comics Page has a 16-page excerpt of Osamu Tezuka's Apollo Song.
Salon profiles the magazine The Art of Eating and interviews its editor, Ed Behr.
Well, there seems to be a real desire for a product that doesn't have ads, that risks saying things from time to time, and is clearly is not in anybody's pocket. A reader not long ago wrote to me saying: "You are the guy who had the courage to say all coffee in North America is over-roasted," and I probably did say something nearly like that.
July 25, 2007
The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at Ralph Ellison's leagcy and the Arnold Rampersad biography. (Read the Bookslut interview with Rampersad here.)
The staffs of the Chicago Reader and its sister Washington City Paper just found out the papers have been sold to a southern chain, Creative Loafing Inc., which publishes alternative weeklies in Atlanta, Tampa, Sarasota, and Charlotte.
The Paper Cuts blog has Clive James's poem "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered."
July 24, 2007
The Bay Area Reporter finds an unexpected link between two very different memoirs -- 8 by Amy Fusselman and David M. Gross's Fast Company.
Fusselman and Cross attend the same motorcycle safety school near Kennedy Airport in Queens, in preparation for a motorcycle license. The course is the same: a three-hour classroom lecture; then a day and a half of practice riding bikes in a parking lot.
Fusselman is reading at tonight's Bookslut Reading Series, along with Michele Morano and Michael McColly.
The Guardian digests Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Harry Potter took off his Invisibility Cloak as he entered the Dursleys' house in Privet Drive. He was back where it had all started six books previously. It had seemed much more fun in the beginning. No Muggles queuing up at midnight; no Winnebagos on the film set; just him, Ron and Hermione and a box of magic tricks. Now, he felt a little jaded. Still, he thought, if I can keep it together for another 600 pages, I'll be off the hook. Free to pursue a different acting career.
Boys get how to create codes and tie knots, and girls get how to throw a fucking picnic? If someone could go to the printing plant and put the contents of the boy book into the girl book, I promise to bail you out of jail if you get caught.
Gerard Donovan has a new-ish book coming out this fall -- Sunless. It's a reworking of his book Doctor Salt, which was never released in the US. (I picked up Doctor Salt on a trip to Ireland, and it was my introduction to Donovan's work. I'm very curious to see what exactly he did.) Here he's at the Book Depository talking about last year's novel Julius Winsome, which I was desperately in love with, despite the horrendous cover art.
I don’t have a moral compass aside from the basic agreements regarding normal behavior I hold with other humans, but, as I’ve said elsewhere, I don’t quite trust fiction that showcases characters who in the end demonstrate what good people they are. Where is the border between grief and revenge? And who stops at that border, and who continues beyond? Julius Winsome continues, using increasingly archaic English as the violence continues. I envy him that, I envy his ability to pursue, I envy his complete preparation to bring violence ruthlessly to those who have practiced it themselves.
July 23, 2007
Bookslut's Indie Heartthrob Interview Series
A weekly interview series where someone involved in the small press (be it writer, editor, slush slave, etc.) is thrown into the spotlight, grilled over the state of the independents and sundry other items, and quickly made to return from whence they came after having graced us all with their presence.
This week: Kyle Hague
Kyle is a writer for Page 23, a webzine dedicated to identifying and promoting edgy and unusual fiction. Aside from book picks, Page 23 is also responsible for author interviews, much like the ones we do here at Bookslut (check out their most recent conversation with Lydia Millet). The group spawned out of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ.
Explain the philosophy behind Page 23. How did the organization come about and why?
About two years ago at Changing Hands Bookstore, we got together a group of younger booksellers (20-somethings) to respond to an NEA study called "Reading at Risk." It points out a drastic decline in readership—especially among the 20 and 30-something age groups. Out of this discussion, Page 23 was born. Our mission was to make books more enticing to this demographic.
That was two years ago and a lot has changed. Our mission and tactics have matured: instead of focusing on promoting books to a certain age group, we see ourselves more as a reference for readers who are not interested in the bestseller lists and the big book clubs--and we get to throw some pretty great events.
It's pretty blatant at this point that the indies are in somewhat of a bind. How has Page 23 been supporting them in regards to the bookselling community?
Indies have a lot of elbow room that the big box stores don't, and we're pretty good at taking advantage of it. We can design events and run promotions specially suited for our community. There's no one in another state telling us what we can and can't do. So if Page 23 wants to have Chuck Klosterman read and sign at a bar, we just have to decide who's got the best drink specials.
At Changing Hands, we've been working hard on promoting Page 23 and trying to create a niche for hard-to-please readers like us. We see no reason why other stores shouldn't benefit from our endeavors. This fall, we plan to have our picks on display at select indie stores nationwide. With more booksellers involved, it will be easier to reflect an eclectic readership. We can't wait to have recommendations and event ideas coming in from other booksellers. After all, we can only read and brainstorm so much on our own.
Page 23 operates via Myspace. Is there a more proper web presence on the horizon?
Knock Myspace all you want, but it's been working out great for us. It's an easy community to tap into and everyone's got a profile—whether they want to admit it or not. Our readers are ones that quite often don't know about websites like Bookslut and the book blog scene. These are the readers we need to reach. We also wouldn't have half of our author and publisher relationships without it—their excitement and cooperation has really kept us going.
We like running the Myspace profile because it's quick and not too aggressive for people we believe to be very sensitive to marketing. Sometimes I go a website and leave feeling like I've been branded along with the content. At Page 23, we're just some booksellers and you're our friend and we'd love for you to look at some reviews and interviews we've done. We're pretty comfortable with our web presence right now but who knows what the future will hold.
Your recent picks have ranged from Lydia Millet to Haruki Murakami to Elaine Dundy. What do you look for when making a Page 23 pick?
There's no real parameters set for a Page 23 pick. We pick the books that we like and appeal to us. Sometimes they're quirky and odd—sometimes not. We love supporting the small presses, but we're definitely not going to ignore the big guys. We'll even put a bestseller on list if we think it's something that shouldn't be missed—The Road might be an Oprah book but it's definitely a Page 23 book as well. The basic idea is that Page 23 picks are great books for readers who tend to shy away from the mainstream or feel left out and we don't want them to miss anything.
Speaking of book picks, what is your current favorite book, and why?
That's a hard one. I got on the Lydia Millet bandwagon a little late and am still in awe of Oh Pure and Radiant Heart. I must have looked like a crazy person to anyone who saw me reading it, laughing and crying with a strange book in my hands. The Little Girl And the Cigarette by Benoit Duteurtre is also a current favorite—a man sentenced to death after being caught smoking in a municipal bathroom. I'm a sucker for any writer that can make such absurdity seem possible.
AL Kennedy's short story "Wasps" in the New Yorker is available online.
Paul Hornschemeier (Mother Come Home, Three Paradoxes) is profiled at the Chicago Tribune.
"Honestly, I remember having an argument with my mother when I was 10 or 11," he recalls with a laugh. "My exact line was, 'I don't care if I'm eating Cheez Whiz on the streets of San Francisco living in a gutter, I am going to draw comics!' "
Hey, did you know that sometimes book groups have trouble deciding on what books to read? And that sometimes people don't agree on whether a book is good or not? Thanks to the AJC, you sure do now.
July 21, 2007
While you were standing in line for Harry Potter last night, we were getting our asses thrown out of Printers Ball by the cops. Poetry is dangerous again, man.
July 20, 2007
I'm skipping the Harry Potter link of the day, as I just don't have the strength. (I'm going to go ahead and blame yesterday's fainting episode on the two articles on Harry Potter I had to read yesterday, and not the incredibly lame "needle fear.") Odds and ends:
If you're in Chicago, you should consider coming to tonight's Printers Ball.
Elizabeth Merrick's Secret Agent series is on a two week hiatus, and will return in August.
Jana Martin, who read at our last Bookslut Reading Series, has the nicest things to say about our event.
Karen Abbott talks to Nerve about Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul.
[The prostitutes] had to be able to talk with their clients about literature, about Balzac. They'd recite poetry. There was a library filled with classics, and Minna made sure her girls were well versed in current events so they could hold their own with the men who came through. One of the Everleigh Club's clients once said to the sisters, "Why are you teaching your girls poetry? That's educating the wrong end of a whore."
The Telegraph has the audio of Seamus Heaney discussing his friendship with Ted Hughes. (Scroll down to "Audio interviews.")
One of Germany's best-selling children's authors is embroiled in an extraordinary transatlantic row about nudity after a US publisher refused to accept one of her books because it contained naive sketches of an art gallery with works depicting naked bodies.
Rotraut Susanne Berner's illustrated "Wimmel" books about the everyday lives of adults and children have won international acclaim and are best-sellers in 13 countries from Japan to the Faroe Islands.
Link from Comics Reporter, where they reproduce the offensive image.
Jim Wooten remembers David Halberstam at Columbia Journalism Review.
Biota.org presents Douglas Adam's 1998 speech at Digital Biota 2 in Cambridge, called "Is There an Artificial God?"
Now imagine an early man surveying his surroundings at the end of a happy day's tool making. He looks around and he sees a world which pleases him mightily: behind him are mountains with caves in - mountains are great because you can go and hide in the caves and you are out of the rain and the bears can't get you; in front of him there's the forest - it's got nuts and berries and delicious food; there's a stream going by, which is full of water - water's delicious to drink, you can float your boats in it and do all sorts of stuff with it; here's cousin Ug and he's caught a mammoth - mammoth's are great, you can eat them, you can wear their coats, you can use their bones to create weapons to catch other mammoths. I mean this is a great world, it's fantastic. But our early man has a moment to reflect and he thinks to himself, 'well, this is an interesting world that I find myself in' and then he asks himself a very treacherous question, a question which is totally meaningless and fallacious, but only comes about because of the nature of the sort of person he is, the sort of person he has evolved into and the sort of person who has thrived because he thinks this particular way. Man the maker looks at his world and says 'So who made this then?'
Me and My Big Mouth interviews Ray Robinson, author of the fantastic Electricity. (Also, I'm completely in love with the cover. It was a joy to read in public. That reminds me: we're still looking for someone to work on a project about cover art, although it's not the Judging a Book feature. E-mail me for more information.)
July 19, 2007
Adam Engel writes a prose poem using StumbleUpon, proposing to create a "'collage narrative' of our culture," as if spoken in one voice, the "general discourse of our 'society' . . . reflecting our obsessions with money, technology, violence." It sounds like this:
Throughout 2005 and 2006, a large underground debate raged regarding the future of the Internet. Do not feign respect for technical incompetence. We are not claiming to be experts on anything, we are merely doing what we can to gather knowledge and share the acquired information with the public.We are conducting a survey about your usage of media. It describes the laws of motion for atomic particles and describes the spin of electrons that had previously been predicted.
Engel's method is, as he admits, somewhat subjective, and deliberately choosing sentences to emphasize the idea of a single voice is a contentious view of how language and ideology intersect. An alternative approach to search-engine generated poetry and its capacity to ventriloquize a culture is that proposed by Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler-Henry's apostrophe engine, which amplifies a poem by feeding its words into Google, and then mining the results for "you are" utterances. (Oddly, a subset of the results is available as a book, apostrophe, which I've reviewed elsewhere.)
In a slightly different register, scary toy clown has an excellent search engine poem: very scary clowns that are alive / old spooky abandoned army bases / toy give birth. I think I saw that movie when I was little.
Though at the end of the post he starts talking about Harry Potter, before that Geof Huth also offers a splendid reading of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," by Edward Picot: This is often my problem with digital poetry based on pre-existing texts: these works are trapped by their source materials, forced to find their imaginings within them, but also usually trapped into thinking of digital poetry as textual poetry, lineated poetry, poetry that expects words to move along in sentences towards a point.
Apologies for the slightly meta-post, but if Sarah Crown thinks that prose fiction is both "leavening" and "the meat," then I think I'll pass on dinner at her house.
Lisa Alvarado interviews Rich Villar of the louderARTS Project: I really hate what spoken word has become. The term is used with increasing abandon to sell out poetry to the highest bidder. It has become a world of back-slapping sycophants jockeying for what little money is out there on the college circuit. Of particular concern to me is the phenomenon of the spoken word pimp . . .
The One-Minute Book Review has Philip Larkin denouncing poetry readings.
Nancy Breen finds poetry being judged at the Warren County (Ohio) fair. She's not sure about it: who judged the creative writing? The same person who judged the mosaic picture frames and nature dioramas made out of twigs and mud?
Crag Hill thinks New Directions has still got it. I don't think it's possible to have gotten through a degree in English or comp lit in the 1980s and 1990s without accumulating a handful of ND titles. Hill reminisces about the ability to trust their editors even if you'd never heard of the author. For myself, that was an important asset growing up outside anything like a major cultural center--I think my first two were Nightwood and Labyrinths. After that, I was game for anything they'd sell.
Lisa Moore talks about sperm with Thomas Rogers; Angus McLaren about impotence's history with me.
Mmm . . . sweet, sweet Harry Potter poetry.
There are a few problems with those Rumi poems you were thinking of having read at your wedding.
One of the featured speakers in Ann Arbor this fall will be Coleman Barks, an American poet who is largely responsible for Rumi’s American popularity as well as his reputation as an erotic soul-healer. Born in Tennessee, Barks freely admits to not knowing Persian (scholars call his best-selling works from the translations of others “re-Englishings”). While his poems are far more elegant and accessible than any previous English renditions, they tend to turn holy scenes into moments of sexual passion. Sometimes he takes out references to God and replaces them with “love.” As he explained in the introduction to his 2001 collection of poems, The Soul of Rumi, “I avoid God-words, not altogether, but wherever I can, because they seem to take away the freshness of experience and put it inside a specific system.”
Andrew O'Hagan explains the genesis of his fantastic novel Be Near Me.
Be Near Me really came alive when I went to the scene of a mob demonstration in the north of England. There were people outside a priest's house - placards, cameras, ice-creams - and looking up at one of the bedrooms I saw the net curtain twitch. There is a human being up there, I thought. And suddenly I knew this story was about a very human struggle - a struggle of individuals and communities in various guises - and I knew, too, that the book was asking for everything I had.
Harry Potter is hurting the children.
Through no fault of Rowling's, Potter mania nonetheless trains children and adults to expect the roar of the coliseum, a mass-media experience that no other novel can possibly provide.
Don't get your hopes up, kid! Life is just a series of boring disappointments and obligations. Reading should hurt, little one, or it's not doing you any good.
Oh god this crap is making me cranky.
It is the voice of Adnan Oktar of Turkey, who, under the name Harun Yahya, has produced numerous books, videos and DVDs on science and faith, in particular what he calls the “deceit” inherent in the theory of evolution. One of his books, “Atlas of Creation,” is turning up, unsolicited, in mailboxes of scientists around the country and members of Congress, and at science museums in places like Queens and Bemidji, Minn.
Charles Taylor responds to Harold Bloom's cricisms of Harry Potter. That was, what, six or seven years ago or so now? Taylor's arguments are just as narrow minded as Bloom's: if you don't think that Harry Potter is good for the world, there is something wrong with you.
He goes on to say that the literary world is insular and elitist (yes, actually) and that no wonder people don't read when it's books like Cormac McCarthy's that get good reviews. Umm, dude? That was an Oprah book. It was huge.
And that, my friends, was the not very well thought out Harry Potter editorial link of the day!
July 18, 2007
Bookslut is looking to expand its columnist division, so if you have an idea, please e-mail us. Also, we're looking for someone interested in book cover design for a specific project. (No, we're not getting rid of the lovely and hilarious Heather Smith, it's something else.)
Words Without Borders debuts their "The Russians Are Coming" issue.
Sarah Crown had to read nothing but poetry for a while as she judged the Forward prize.
If poetry is the haute cuisine of literature (the soufflés, the profiteroles), fiction is the meat. And I soon discovered that woman - at least, this woman - cannot live on soufflés alone.
Roy Foster defends some of Yeats's more mystical dabblings through his life:
Yeats would combine this with a belief in a shared universal mind, accessed through psychic communication, ghosts and dreams: collecting folklore with his greatest friend, Augusta Gregory, he felt "again and again that we had got down as it were to some fibrous darkness, into some matrix out of which everything had come". He was equally immersed in the arcane mysteries of the society he joined in 1893, the Order of the Golden Dawn, where initiation involved a rite of death and resurrection. Psychic research, séances, and above all his wife's automatic-writing experiments from 1917 took up an immense amount of his attention for much of his life.
I got into a fight with a science writer once over whether William James's fascination with and experimentation in the supernatural made him an unworthy hero. But he hadn't read Deborah Blum's fantastic book on that very subject, Ghost Hunters, so I still feel like I won that argument.
More on the shrinking number of book pages in newspapers, this time at NPR's Morning Edition. I have earned my full cultural credentials! How exciting. (So has Maud. Congratulations.)
July 17, 2007
"It is time to make a stand against Harry Potter."
Oh yes, that hasn't been done before. I should have scheduled my vacation for the Harry Potter month.
“Hey, look, that kid is reading ‘Howl,’ by Allen Ginsberg.”
“Wow. He must be some kind of rebel genius.”
“I’m impressed by the fact that he isn’t trying to call attention to himself.”
“Yeah, he’s just sitting silently in the corner, flipping the pages and nodding, with total comprehension.”
“It’s amazing. He’s so absorbed in his book that he isn’t even aware that a party is going on around him, with dancing and fun.”
“Why aren’t any girls going over and talking to him?”
“I guess they’re probably a little intimidated by his brilliance.”
“Well, who wouldn’t be?”
“I’m sure the girls will talk to him soon.”
“It’s only a matter of time.”
Douglas Wolk, who writes about both comics and music, combines the love for his Largehearted Boy's Book Notes contribution for Reading Comics.
I could probably only read books about women having breakdowns for the rest of the year (if I read slowly). The latest I've come across is Electricity by Ray Robinson about a woman who developed epilepsy as a child when her mother threw her down the stairs. I'm wondering if this trend isn't coming out of the chick lit backlash; perhaps writers were as desperate as readers like me to see a female character be portrayed as a whole person. Robinson is interviewed at his UK publisher's site:
Of course any male ‘empathy’ in literature is still seen as spurious. Male writing: you think laddish, tough, stark, humorous, a tad misogynistic. Maybe Electricity will be seen as voyeuristic? How dare this Northern oik appropriate genuine female emotions and trick us into being moved by Lily’s plight? It all comes down to the illusion of authenticity. Lily is authentic because she’s real to me and her experiences are peppered with genuine female experiences – I’ve stolen the codes and gestures of the feminine voice, if you like. But don’t forget, most of it comes from inside my head. Does this devalue its merit, or enhance it? This war between the public and the private – the public’s perception and my intention. I say rubbish: all art is illusion, and if when you’re reading Electricity you hear a woman’s voice, if you hear Lily’s voice and are moved by her story, then I’ve achieved my goal.
Dorothy Parker was celebrated for both caustic wit and brevity. But her work has now become embroiled in a caustic yet far from brief court case that returns to trial in Manhattan today.
The case pits Stuart Y. Silverstein, a Los Angeles lawyer who researched and assembled 122 previously uncollected poems and verses in the book “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker,” against Penguin Putnam, which published “Dorothy Parker, Complete Poems,” and used Mr. Silverstein’s book as a source for the last chapter without giving him any credit or paying him any royalties.
July 16, 2007
Bookslut's Indie Heartthrob Interview Series
A weekly interview series where someone involved in the small press (be it writer, editor, slush slave, etc.) is thrown into the spotlight, grilled over the state of the independents and sundry other items, and quickly made to return from whence they came after having graced us all with their presence.
This week: Amanda Stern
Amanda Stern runs the Happy Ending Series, a reading and music series in which all participants must take a "risk" on stage. In other words, they must do something that they have never done before in front of an audience.
The Happy Ending Series is perhaps one of the better outlets in NYC for writers off the small press to expose themselves (metaphorically, and yes, sometimes physically). What was your motivation in creating the series?
During the summer of 2003, I was preparing for my first novel, The Long Haul, to come out. In an effort to do something original, I asked my friend Oliver if I could read at his bar, Happy Ending. The bar, at that time, had no ties or connections to the literary world, and I thought I would stand out if I booked myself in places that weren't known for readings. Oliver, instead of offering me a night to read, asked if I wanted to run my own series. I thought about it and decided that I did. And so, that summer, while preparing for my first book to come out, I created the series. I added the risk requirement later on, after I returned from my book tour. I realized while I was traveling that, for me, reading my own work in front of an audience was really nerve-wracking, whereas improvising in front of an audience was not. So I began to do things before I read, like auctioning off items my stalker had sent me, that would make the audience laugh and that calmed me down. When I came back, I enforced the risk-taking aspect of the series in order for my readers to panic about that without realizing they were no longer freaking out about their reading. I then added a mandate for the musicians. The risks worked and have become the hook of the events.
What was your favorite author risk and why?
I honestly don't have a favorite. There have been so many things people have done that I've enjoyed, been surprised by, gasped at. I've appreciated and am so grateful that the readers put in as much effort as they do to come up with something memorable, something that is a real reflection of who they are as people rather than as writers.
I can say that the type of risks that work the best are the ones that don't take themselves too seriously and/or include the audience. For instance Rattawut Lapcharoensap taught everyone a Thai cheer through call and response, Peter Rock had the audience stand up and move toward the bar while he stood on it and took his first ever stage dive. Alison Bechdel passed around smelling salts, Merrill Feitell auctioned off half completed paint-by-number sets, Elizabeth Crane brought the audience clothes and accessories she has worn un-ironically in the past, Rene Steinke, who had just had a child and didn't have any extra-curricular time, brought in her laundry to fold, and Marty McConnell invited her lover and her husband onstage and then made out with them both. Oh - Sean Wilsey skateboarded, Joshua Ferris put on his ipod and then sang along to a song whose words he couldn't remember with a voice so bad I felt better about mine. I could go on and on. Really, everyone has done such amazing things. Ben Greenman dropped his cell-phone in a glass of water. The first time he read he read aloud all of his pin-code numbers. Darin Strauss karate chopped a wooden board in half. See? It's endless. Everyone's brought something really fun to the stage. It's immensely enjoyable to watch. Lydia Davis played the synthesizer and had a volunteer come on stage and sing along. Turns out the volunteer was a professional Opera singer. Okay, I'll stop now. There is a list of risks on my website that people can go look at to see what everyone has done (the list is incomplete, but is rapidly being filled).
What advice can you give to someone who wants to start up a reading series of their own?
Don't copy other people's formats. Don't approach a venue or a bar that houses another reading series. Unless they have a book coming out and are promoting, don't steal ideas for authors and musicians from other people's line-ups. At least not in the same season. Try and do something that's fresh and original, that incorporates your own personality. If the person starting the series is also hosting, they set the tone for the series and they need to figure out what that tone will be and then do everything in their power to enforce it. Otherwise, have fun and be willing to deal with hecklers.
The season has just ended with a bang (Bechdel, One Ring Zero, Jean Thompson and Eliza Griswold). Any idea what we can expect come September 12?
I am awaiting word from two authors, but I can confirm that the author, Will Allison will be reading and the musician Dan Bern will be playing. Also on tap for the upcoming season: Roy Kesey, Benjamin Percy, Min Jin Lee, a night with A Public Space, Therapy Night (most likely curated by Andrew Solomon), Design Night with Keri Smith and others. There are some fun and surprising things in the works, so you'll have to stay tuned. You can go to my website to keep posted.
Thomas Bartlett writes about the dispute over Derrida's archives at University of California Irvine that lead to the university suing Derrida's widow and children.
My guess is that because it's summer, everyone is just recycling material and figuring no one will notice. Here we go again on graphic novels:
I used to think that graphic novels were for geeks: written by geeks and read by geeks.
Peggy Orenstein, author of the memoir Waiting for Daisy, discusses issues of genetic and identity coherence that come about with assisted fertility.
Chris Mooney discusses his new book Storm World at Salon.
It was a time of national tragedy and crisis, and a lot of people were shocked at these incredible images they were seeing. In that context, there were some very incautious statements about the idea that Katrina might have been caused by global warming.
You can't say that scientifically. It gives a misimpression about how all of this works, because of a simple error of statistical reasoning. Global warming might explain a trend, but it can't explain an individual event, like Katrina.
Is someone keeping a running tally of which newspapers are running the same Harry Potter does not turn children into readers story they all ran the last time one of these damn things came out? If so, be sure to mark off the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
July 13, 2007
Secret Agent Elizabeth Visits the Dark Side: Writers Tell All
Where do the words come from? Secret Agent Elizabeth investigates dirty little secrets, 7th grade enemies, and the creative trickery writers use to get through the day. A weekly interview feature by Elizabeth Merrick, whose NYC writing and creativity workshops use intuition and the occasional dance party to fine tune all sorts of creative trickery & get her students art into the world fast enough to balance out the Republicans' bad juju.
THIS WEEK: Lisa Selin Davis
Lisa Selin Davis is the author of the novel Belly and a freelance writer in New York. She’s written about environmental, urban planning and real estate issues -- and lots of other topics -- for publications such as The New York Times, Interior Design, This Old House, Salon.com, Metropolis, House & Garden and Robb Report. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
What is it, really, that made you become a writer after all?
I have a theory that most people are writers (or maybe most people do anything they do) to get approval. When I ask students why they want to write, they invariably mention a good grade or a favorable remark from a teacher long ago, and it’s my contention that they spend the rest of their lives chasing after that approval. Okay. That’s not fair. That’s my story. Mrs. Jan Somethingorother gave me an A-plus in 10th grade when I wrote “in the style” of J.D. Salinger. I employed the literary device of digression. It’s almost 20 years later and I still haven’t gotten back on topic. I also remember staying home alone as a young kid and feeling very frightened. Some grown-up suggested I write down what I was feeling and it worked -- I didn’t feel afraid anymore. Funny that now so much anxiety is attached to writing. I guess that’s what happens when you turn an avocation into a vocation.
Inquiring minds want to know: what are your daily writing habits (and vices)?
I wish I could say my habits are, well, habits. When I was writing Belly, I wrote three pages a day, long before everyone else in the house I lived in woke up. When I’d gotten a draft done, I wrote from 9 to 12 every day and then went off to earn money. Sometimes I use a word limit -- 1,000, usually, in the draft stage. Other times I have a time limit, when I get to editing. But somehow the daily two or three hours shrinks until I stop working and have to force myself back to it.
What appalling tricks do you use to get yourself to be productive, and are there any you have discarded?
I’m a big believer in routine. Unfortunately, I have none. When I had a regular part time job, back in the good old '90s, I wrote every morning before work. I allowed myself to waste money on $4 coffees in exchange for staying seated in the chair and typing. It’s not very appalling. I find desperation still is the greatest motivator.
What is the most mortifying, worst thing you've ever written and what led you down that path to ruin?
I wrote a truly horrific article for the local paper about some kind of edgy comedy show -- the piece used the word “alternative” four times in the first sentence. Yikes. And I was paid $40 for it. It will be on the Internet forever.
Do you have any rituals you use in an emergency or if you're blocked?
I am a binge eater. It’s true. My teacher in grad school says the key to the writing is to stay in the chair. Resist the urge to leave the computer or the paper. When your timer goes off after 20 minutes, stay in the chair. When you’re ready to go, that’s when the good stuff comes out. It’s a ritual of self-torture in a way. He told us that if you’re really committed, you can spill a bag of Cheetos and let them lie there on the carpet for days. I had to get up when he told that story, so powerful was the urge to clean, even though no Cheetos had actually been spilled.
It was better when I smoked cigarettes. That really rooted me to the computer. Now it’s decaf coffee (there’s an admission for you) and a walk around the block.
How do you feel about writing sex scenes, and how do you handle it?
I haven’t written a lot of them, and when I do, they’re awful. I mean, they’re not badly written, but I tend to write about impotent men and awkward sex, so they’re terribly uncomfortable, which I love. Now I’m trying to write about someone who’s having great sex, and that, I’m afraid, is really, really hard. I think it’s hardest to write love and sex when they’re going well. It actually might be harder in literature than real life, if you can believe it.
What books do you secretly love?
The Good Earth, Out of Africa, Winesburg, Ohio and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. You’ll see a pattern. I have always loved books that were tremendously rooted in place -- the built environments and physical landscapes are characters. Also, while my favorite writer is officially Alice Munro, I must admit a die-hard love for Anne Tyler. I’m not sure why she hasn’t been considered high literature. I think she’s masterful at character and plot, and I love her beloved Baltimore. I’m also a real sucker for certain kinds of macho writers -- Phillip Roth, Richard Ford. Guess those don’t need to be secrets.
And what books do you secretly hate?
Not willing to go on the record for fear of alienating anyone. The first seven pages of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood book, which my book club of long ago chose, put me in a very bad mood, and I didn’t continue.
What is the most terrifying task for you -- whether it be a certain kind of scene, character, or subject matter?
This is the hardest thing for me: sitting quietly with myself. If I could be silent and stay focused, if I could be comfortable being uncomfortable, I would get so much more done. Honestly, staying seated and concentrating is pure torture for me. It really helps for me to know that I have an out -- an appointment at noon, or something, so that the discomfort is assured to be temporary.
Is there some element of your work that you particularly enjoy and that readers or critics seem not to notice so much?
I felt really proud that I’d successfully entered the heart and mind of a 59-year old Catholic man when I was a young female Jewish atheist. I could still use some props for that.
What project has been the biggest struggle for you so far in your career, and how did you resolve your difficulties?
I spent four years working on a second novel, one with an incredibly complicated plot -- or maybe not enough of a plot -- and three wonderful characters. Eventually, I decided to put it in a drawer and start a new project. This one has a tidy plot but I’m not in love with the people, and the characters have some overlap with my own life, which makes me very uncomfortable. I’d much rather write about people with whom I have little in common. I was at first really upset about putting the second book away, then relieved. Now I’m confused. What helps is believing that this is all part of the process of becoming a writer. On the other hand, diligence is probably more important sometimes than inspiration. I am occasionally short of both.
Describe the arch-nemesis of your youth. How has this person appeared in your writing?
I honestly think I’ve been my own arch-nemesis. I’m a master of self-sabotage, often very uncomfortable with my own feelings, and the people I write about have that in common with me: unable to act in accordance with the way they feel.
What unpleasant truth do you routinely conceal from young, fresh writers eager to make their mark?
One thing that helped me write my first book was that I knew nothing about the publishing industry. I didn’t consider how sell-able the manuscript was as I was writing it. When my teacher read it and said, “let’s send this out for a reading,” I had no idea I was agent-hunting. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to protect young writers from the harsh reality of the industry, but to reorient them back toward their work, to focus on creating the best piece of writing and not toward publishing, seems like a good idea.
And, finally, if there is one thing you could change about your writing life or career, what would it be?
I wish I could get up at dawn every day and spend the first few hours working on my own writing, before turning my attention to journalism. But I really like my sleep.
The comic book character Tintin was at the centre of a race row last night after Britain's equality watchdog accused one of the books of making black people "look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles".
The Commission for Racial Equality claimed Tintin In The Congo depicted "hideous racial prejudice" and that it should be removed from sale.
Alex Vilenkin provides the soundtrack to his book Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes at Largehearted Boy's Book Notes feature.
The L Magazine has a new short story by Ned Vizzini, "Mom."
Nick Bertozzi, author of The Salon, is interviewed at Wizard.
I’m not somebody that goes to the thesaurus and goes, “What’s a more fancy way of saying this character went to the bathroom? Oh, he micturated.” In fact, I try to do the opposite. I try to make sure that the characters speak as they would have spoken in real life and not in this kind of…not in an unreal way of communicating, in which everybody’s got the perfect riposte. [Pause] Talk about pretentious—I just said “riposte.”
July 12, 2007
The new issue of Mad Hatters' Review (via dumbfoundry) has 4 sections of a new poem by the splendid Stephanie Strickland, called "Huracan's Harp." Part of it is a trippy reflection on writing, code, and creation myths:
until recently considered not writing
not reading the readme
when all else fails the assailed grid goes down data congeals. . .
positively 3-d
until recently considered not writing (khipu)(quipu)
(ascii)(C)>][*.mez][ says, "Sue, 4 1nce I managed 2 sit back & ab.sorb rather than prattle on:)"
There's more where that came from. Strickland asks: "Writing in quipu is a credible form of digital simulation: the idea of writing itself as more than, as a different kind of memory technology, inflected by moment-—what kind of writing is that? More MOO, more Wiki, more Second Life, more bloggish social network? More Sun Ra?"
(Those creeped out by birds may/may not want to avoid Angela Szczepaniak's poem entitled "bird vomit".)
What David Yezzi says about MFA programs in poetry (via choriamb)--that, because the students who succeed tend to be the ones who write like their professors, they are thus best suited to teach at places *exactly* like the ones they attended--may well be a problem of graduate training in general, not just poetry.
Tim Seibles reads on YouTube: "What Bugs Bunny Said to Red Riding Hood"; "Looking"; "What You Really Want"; "Commercial Break--Road Runner, Uneasy"; and others.
Apparently great art really can arise from private turmoil . . .
Finally, at the risk of sounding obsessive, Sterling E. Lanier died on June 28, which has been widely noted in the sf/fantasy communities, but which I've not seen on more general sites. His Hiero books were staples of my early adolescence, and still hold up well.
July 11, 2007
John Crace has his review of the final Harry Potter book ready and waiting, even though they're not handing out advance copies to critics.
The book will start with Harry making his way back to Hogwart's for his final year and his scar will be hurting. Ginny and Ron will be flirting a bit, while Harry tries to take himself seriously by almost swearing. There will be loads more unedited, not very interesting back story that should have been cut and there will be a 'terrifically, exciting denouement that I can't reveal as I don't want to spoil the plot in which two much-loved characters die'.
This week's Guardian Digested Read: Life Class by Pat Barker.
Elinor to Paul. I am still committed to finding my voice as an artist and a woman, but I believe losing my virginity to you will help. So I will come to France.
It's not so much that I'm scared of birds -- unlike, say, some people -- it's just that I find them uncommonly creepy. There was the parrot my friend birdsat for a few months who would laugh when something funny was on television, without the cues of a laugh track or anyone else in the room laughing. There was the parrot in Drawing the Line who, when dropped off at the vet for a lung infection treatment, cried to its owner, "What did I do wrong? I'm sorry, please come back." Then there are the tool using crows, who I'm pretty sure are just biding their time until they take over completely. (Although when they do, I'm pretty sure I might be spared, if my Chicago Bird Collision Monitor and Rescue Project volunteer friend vouches for me.)
In the Company of Crows and Ravens is not really helping me with my suspicion of birds like I thought it would. They are way too intelligent and crafty for us to feel secure around them. Crows can do math, apparently. They have funerals for their dead. Did I mention they use tools now? You can listen to John M. Marzluff, one of the book's authors, discuss crow culture at WAMU.
July 10, 2007
Ron Regé, Jr. illustrates Kenneth Patchen's poem “The Snow is Deep on the Ground” for the Poetry Foundation's "The Poem as Comic Strip" feature. (Seriously guys, you need to work on that title.)
Think about it: If Anna Karenina had been written by Leah Tolstoy, or The Scarlet Letter by Nancy Hawthorne, or Madame Bovary by Greta Flaubert, or A Doll's House by Henrietta Ibsen, or The Glass Menagerie by (a female) Tennessee Williams, would they have been hailed as universal? Suppose Shakespeare had really been The Dark Lady some people supposed. I bet most of her plays and all of her sonnets would have been dismissed as some Elizabethan version of ye olde "chick lit," only to be resurrected centuries later by stubborn feminist scholars.
The above was actually written by Gloria Steinem. I'm confused. Did she need some money and Alternet offered to pay her by the word? Not only is the argument about 15 years old, it's ridiculous. (Yes, Gloria, because books written about women by women -- Jane Eyre, The Age of Innocence, The Bell Jar -- have never been considered classics.)
So not only has the only women's magazine that at least pretends it wants you to eat a hamburger every once and a while (as long as you don't look at any of the models in the fashion spreads) shut down, but one of our respected feminists is turning out lazy nonsense. I knew this week was going to give me a headache.
"The grotesque prudishness and archness with which garlic is treated ... has led to the superstition that rubbing the bowl with it before putting the salad in gives sufficient flavor. It rather depends on whether you are going to eat the bowl or the salad."
Salon recommends Elizabeth David's Summer Cooking.
Conde Nast Publications pulled the plug on Jane magazine today, ending a nearly two-year struggle to make the title work even after founder Jane Pratt departed -- and left it in none too good condition.
I am strangely sad about this.
Sean B. Carroll, author of Endless Forms Most Beautiful and The Making of the Fittest, explains the field of evolutionary developmental biology in this New York Times video.
Jana Martin, author of Russian Lover and Other Stories, is profiled at Time Out Chicago. She'll be reading tonight with Peter Ho Davies (The Welsh Girl) and Aaron Belz (The Bird Hoverer) at the Bookslut Reading Series.
“I think of them as girls on the lam,” she says. “Damaged implies a type of psychological state to me. But these are girls in desperate situations. Certainly they’re in dire straits that they haven’t quite figured out how to fix. But they’re trying to fix it.”
On Sunday I discovered a new champagne hangover remedy: blackberry caramels and Winsor McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. It's an absolutely beautiful book, on par with Sunday Press's edition of Little Nemo in Slumberland from a while back. The website has a few excerpts in the form of PDFs online. And YouTube has many Gertie the Dinosaur cartoons that McCay put together.
Also, the Telegraph calls Krazy Kat creator George Herriman equal to Cervantes. Perhaps those comics would be better for a whiskey sour hangover.
July 09, 2007
Bookslut's Indie Heartthrob Interview Series
This week marks the inaugural week of Bookslut's Indie Heartthrob Interview Series, where each week somebody from the small press (be it writer, editor, slush slave, etc.) is put in the spotlight, grilled over the state of the small press, and quickly returns from whence they came after having graced us all with their presence.
This week: Richard Nash
Richard Nash is the editor-in-chief at Soft Skull Press. With the company having recently been acquired by Shoemaker & Hoard, many have been worried that Soft Skull will no longer function as a small press. With upcoming titles by Lydia Millet, Dorothea Dieckmann and Wayne Koestenbaum, Richard settles our fears and explains the situation at hand.
You aren't the first editor-in-chief at Soft Skull. When and how did you first get involved with the publisher?
I used to be a theater director (Downtown, "avant-garde," Richard Foreman acolyte) and Sander Hicks, the founder of Soft Skull, saw one of my productions and liked it, so he gave me his plays, and I started to direct them. At the time (1997-2000), for a day job/health insurance, I worked at Oxford University Press, doing permissions, electronic rights and foreign rights. I started to help my theatre collaborator out with his other gig, the Soft Skull thing, and just got in deeper and deeper and deeper. By early 2002 I realized indie publishing was far more culturally relevant than theater...
With the acquisition by Winton Shoemaker, there are worries that an independent publisher like this will "sell out," for lack of a better expression. Yet you've also said that Soft Skull will remain fiercely independent as an imprint.
Everyone involved in this new operation wants the imprint to do its thing. Basically, when Charlie Winton acquired Counterpoint, he knew he needed to have a New York presence. By far the easiest thing to do would have been to just hire one of the many excellent executive editors there are available in and around NYC. The amount of hassle involved in acquiring Soft Skull (and oh boy was it an enormous amount of hassle, and Charlie and I both knew it would be) was such that he would never have undertaken it if it weren't the case that he really, really wanted to keep the Soft Skull-ness.
How will Soft Skull work ideologically in conjunction with Counterpoint? [i.e. does one imprint have a different ideology than the other, what kinds of books will be reserved for which?]
Well I think a few things will be going on, all of which, collectively, should mean good things. One is that my colleague, Jack Shoemaker, who is VP of the overall operation, and Editorial Director of Counterpoint, is totally committed to socially aware, formally innovative literature -- for decades he has edited Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder (both of whom are investors in the overall operation) and has also worked for many years with David Markson (did you see that great NYTBR review on Sunday?) and Donald Barthelme. So there's plenty of ideological, aesthetic sympathy here to begin with. For the most part, Soft Skull will do trade paper original and Counterpoint hardcover (though Markson is Trade paper original and the Tintin book will be hardcover). I think it's something we'll figure out as we go along, largely on the basis of: what's best for the book? Lydia Millet's next book will be in Counterpoint, in part because it's particularly ecological in its subject matter, and we think that it'll look awfully good nestled in with Berry and Snyder....
Translation seems to be the new frontier with you guys, especially more recently with works by Mabanckou and Dieckmann. What can we expect in the future (and how does Transition Books fit into the scheme of things)?
We've two more coming down the turnpike very soon! Vibrator by Mari Akasaka in late September and The City in Crimson Cloak by Asli Erdogan in early October. One thing we're trying to do is [publish] more women writers (it was pointed out by someone that the vast majority of books in last month's Reading the World were by guys...) and so three of the four translations this year are by women. Asli, incidentally, was on the same list of 50 writers for the new millennium that Alain Mabanckou (and Colson Whitehead, Zadie Smith, Colum McCann, Chang Rae-Lee etc.) were all on...
Another thing we're trying to achieve is for the books themselves to have a strong global quality -- Guantanamo is by a German writer writing about Pakistan and Cuba; Vibrator is a Japanese road trip novel, a very American genre; and The City in Crimson Cloak is by a Turkish writer (a former nuclear physicist who worked at CERN in Geneva!), writing a novel set in Rio di Janeiro... In regards Transition, yup, we're planning on acquiring more books by Alain Mabanckou if we can, and we're looking for more writers. We have a few in mind, but nothing under contract as yet -- for six months, things were a but up in the air, as you know.
Postmodern Barney takes a look at creepy romance comics. "Remember kids, implied incest is WRONG!" (Link from Journalista.)
Alex Good of Good Reports takes on the state of book criticism in Canada.
The essay that follows is not going to provide another prescription for the proper role of a book reviewer, a list of critical dos and don’ts. There are more than enough of those out there already to pick and choose from. Nor is it going to be yet another lamentation about the state of the art. What would be the point? Even the briefest review of the usual grounds of complaint reveals contradictions impossible to resolve. Some people complain about shrinking book review space, others (like Amis and Atlas) about there being too much. Some say reviewers – Canadian reviewers in particular – are too polite; others charge that they are too nasty. And so it goes.
Of course there are a lot of things to gripe about. I don’t want to be mistaken as saying that this is Canada’s Golden Age of book reviewing. I, too, dislike it. Or at least most of it. But there are reasons why things are this way.
Oh goodie, it's my two least favorite "women's writers" having a conversation: Katie Roiphe and Rebecca Traister. I never really thought Roiphe was the antichrist, just an empty headed attention seeker. The best part of the piece, which I'm guessing is supposed to re-establish Roiphe as a legitimate figure in the feminist scene (god help us all), is when they ask Jennifer Baumgardner what she thinks:
"She is definitely guilty of 'Well, I don't have this problem' thinking," said the writer Baumgardner. "She seemed to have no understanding that not everyone was her, and she may have been very unique in being so resilient or so lucky that she was never raped."
Baumgardner has a very similar problem, the "Well, it happened to me so it must be universal" thinking. (See: Manifesta and Look Both Ways.) I'm going to spend the week depressed about what is being deemed feminist writing these days, I can tell already.
July 06, 2007
Secret Agent Elizabeth Visits the Dark Side: Writers Tell All
Where do the words come from? Secret Agent Elizabeth investigates dirty little secrets, 7th grade enemies, and the creative trickery writers use to get through the day. A weekly interview feature by Elizabeth Merrick, whose NYC writing and creativity workshops use intuition and the occasional dance party to fine tune all sorts of creative trickery & get her students art into the world fast enough to balance out the Republicans' bad juju.
THIS WEEK: Peter Ho Davies
Peter Ho Davies is the author of the novel The Welsh Girl and the story collections The Ugliest House in the World and Equal Love. His work has appeared in Harpers, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, and Granta, and been anthologized in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Award and Best American Short Stories. Born in Britain to Welsh and Chinese parents, Davies now makes his home in Ann Arbor, where he teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. Davies will be appearing at the Bookslut Reading Series on July 10.
What appalling tricks do you use to get yourself to be productive, and are there any you have discarded?
I sometimes try to lower my expectations with the mantra “it only has to be okay, it only has to be okay” in the hope that if my inner critic passes it as okay, it’s probably pretty decent.
One discarded trick is that I used to reward a good writing morning with a bacon sandwich for lunch. But then my wife pointed out that I’d also started to console myself after a bad writing morning with bacon, too. And then my doctor showed me my cholesterol numbers.
What is it, really, that made you become a writer after all?
At 18, after writing nothing but bad sci-fi throughhout my teens, I wrote a story about my grandmother’s dementia -- one of those quantum leap pieces that change you as a writer. It went on to be the first story I published, albeit three years later, but even before then the story had begun to reshape my life, turning me from physics (my first degree) towards writing.
Inquiring minds want to know: what are your daily writing habits (and vices)?
Actually, it feels like my vice, my sin at least, is that I don’t have a daily writing habit. I’ve had them in the past, but life is no respecter of such habits in my experience. The trap I fell into was that if my habits were disturbed I tended to call the day a wash, and consequently lost many, many days. Now I just try to write regularly, even if only briefly. Nap-time (my three year-old’s, not mine) is typically the golden hour of the day.
What is the most mortifying, worst thing you've ever written and what led you down that path to ruin?
Most of us start by writing what we read, and the same is true for me except that when I began writing in my teens, I wrote what I read and even more so what I watched -- science fiction. That included a BBC show called Blake’s Seven, a freedom-fighters in space adventure with sets and effects on a par with the old Doctor Who shows, which I once wrote a spec episode treatment for. Mortification came not in the usual form of a rejection letter, but with the final episode of that season, in which pretty much the entire cast were killed off (as was the show) along with my hopes. To his credit the story editor, Chris Boucher, took the trouble to write me back a letter of surpassing kindness.
Do you have any rituals you use in an emergency or if you're blocked?
I just try to remind myself that writing is supposed to be fun, or at least more fun than feeling guilty about not writing. That’s really the tipping point when I’m blocked -- not writing becomes even more painful than writing.
How do you feel about writing sex scenes, and how do you handle it?
The two great failings in sex scenes (as in sex, I suppose) are boredom and laughter. On the page, at least (though only there, I guess) brevity seems a good way to avoid these problems.
What books do you secretly love?
Secretly seems to imply books one wouldn’t own up to loving normally, so how about:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance
Lady Chatterly’s Lover (I actually first read an expurgated edition, which I still prefer, see my answer to the sex scene question above)
And what books do you secretly hate?
Books I wouldn’t normally confess to hating: Tristram Shandy, Pale Fire, The Sound and the Fury. Actually, there are lots of “classics” I hate -- probably as a result of feeling I’ve had to read them. Still, I’m a firm believer, that great books divide opinion, that a book can’t be loved by one reader if it doesn’t risk being hated by another, so my hatred of such books might (in a small way) only confirm their greatness. What I really hate, perhaps is the way canonization sometimes seems to place a book beyond the reach of the individiual reader’s opinion -- a disservice to the reader, but also the book.
What is the most terrifying task for you -- whether it be a certain kind of scene, character, or subject matter?
Starting anything new (though, of course, it’s marginally less terrifying than not having started anything new).
Is there some element of your work that you particularly enjoy and that readers or critics seem not to notice so much?
It’s hard to generalize about all my work, but with The Welsh Girl I was interested in the ways the material resonated (for me at least) with contemporary war-time issues, and that felt like something published reviews didn’t always pick up on. On the other hand, readers, (as opposed to critics), at least the ones who’ve written to me, seem very attuned to this aspect.
What project has been the biggest struggle for you so far in your career, and how did you resolve your difficulties?
The Welsh Girl. It’s for the reader to judge if I did resolve the difficulties. For my part I felt like I mostly outlasted them over the seven years of writing.
Describe the arch-nemesis of your youth. How has this person appeared in your writing?
I’m not sure about a single arch-nemesis, but the collective nemeses of my youth were all the various girls I longed for in school who didn’t return that longing (to be fair most of them were probably unaware of it, and those who were might have known I was a Blake’s Seven fan). Composites of these girls crop up in several of my stories, most flagrantly in one called “Small World.”
What unpleasant truth do you routinely conceal from young, fresh writers eager to make their mark?
I used to shy away from debunking MFA students’ expectations of rapid publication, which most inevitably hope for by or around graduation. Typically, in fact, they’re doing well if a first book comes out five or so years after graduation. I’d have been dismayed to hear that as a student which is why I used to hold off saying it to my own classes. Of late I’ve begun to speak much more frankly to students about this, reminding them of Flaubert’s line that "talent is long patience," though of course for even the most talented young writers (especially the most talented) patience is the only writing skill they tend to lack.
And, finally, if there is one thing you could change about your writing life or career, what would it be?
I’d want my wife’s novel, which is just going out to publishers, to be bought tomorrow.
July 05, 2007
I have been fairly impatient with Ron Silliman's distinction between the "School of Quietude" (SoQ) and post-avant poets. (The distinction's explained at some length here; there have been many interesting responses.) In part this is doubtless generational: I have vivid memories of writing papers on L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets as an undergrad, without any particular sense that they were somehow outside the sphere of "real poetry." But it also probably matters that I'm not a poet, just someone who reads and cares about poetry. I can be happy reviewing a variety of poets, but there's no sense in which my work is going to be