What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while.

2012-02-02T10:56:00.000-08:00

"Everything is small and sad-making. I wish I were dead."

Elvis Perkins, "While You Were Sleeping." Pink jeans. Vintage Nike high-tops.

"I don't want to be anywhere or do anything. I don't feel like moving my body to do things..."

Deirdre told Stephen she hadn't really had sex before, in the dark, after he turned out the lights like she asked. "I don't want that guy to count."

"I hate my face and my acne and I hate my stupid brain."

Deirdre went to a coke party with her townie friends. She called at 4 in the morning, asked Stephen to hold her in case she was going to die.

"My dad is a fucker and I don't even know why my parents are together."

She played him Beirut, "Postcards From Italy." They lay in bed. She played him Explosions In The Sky.

"I want to cut people's hair in a small town for two years maybe. Or like, preserve one piece of land up north that no one cares about. Save some animals' home."

Deirdre kept a copy of Nine Stories in her cash register at Capitol Market Foods and read between customers.

"As soon as a guy kisses me I don't know if I even care anymore, it's like it's all over and empty then."

They went jogging by Lake Mendota, found a block of wood covered with carpet. They joked about lying on it, their carpet island, and floating away.

"I laugh when I'm nervous. When I seem happy and smiling a lot it's cause I'm nervous."

Deirdre's dad drove her and Stephen to the farm in silence.

"I want the courage to be nothing, nobody. I want to cut myself off completely."

Deirdre's mom talked to her and Stephen, made lunch. Where was her brother? In his room, in the basement.

"I don't know what to tell you. We're not going to be together forever. There'll be other guys."

Deirdre and Stephen walked Ruddy in the snow behind the house.

They sat at the kitchen table, Dad watched the game.

Stephen slept in the guest room.

"I used to walk Ruddy in the woods for hours. Just disappear in there for a while. I miss him a lot."

Dad drove Deirdre and Stephen back to Madison. Stopped at a bar, each drank a beer, watched the game. Dad, "Goodbye," and left.

"I got really attached to my therapist. He was this nice man, he wore brown ties."

She took the smallest room in the apartment, a nook in the corner off the living room, behind a curtain. She lay tummy down on her pale yellow comforter with the window open a crack to hear the rain.

"I don't feel pretty and I don't want you to say I'm pretty, just don't look at my face please."

Seu Jorge singing "Rebel Rebel." Her hair clips. Shiny purple backpack.

"I like those gray pants. And your shoes."

Deirdre called him Fritz, and he called her Winston.

"Have you seen Crumb?... Oh, it's good."

"I like to sit in my closet and listen to Moon Pix. In the dark."

Deirdre joined the sailing club at the Union. She was nervous to go out when it was windy. She told Stephen they'd go together, but they never did. Deirdre went out by herself in the wind on Lake Mendota.

"I do feel sad about this whole deal. Sometimes I think about you and I'm OK. Sometimes I think about you and cry. I want very badly to still be your friend. Cléo from 5 to 7 might be my favorite movie ever. Thank you for giving it to me.

I feel like you are gone, lost somewhere in the world, and if I talk to you I'll want it back like it was. So I will just keep writing this email.

I keep thinking of these embarrassing songs like Mariah Carey 'We Belong Together' and the words infiltrate my brain.

I don't know if this email makes any sense, or if you will respond. There's no reason to, I suppose.

I have to go to work now but I feel better just from typing this out, so we'll leave it there. I'll probably write you again later.

Deirdre"

Sam Pink Video Interview

2012-01-07T08:46:00.000-08:00

This was at the Holiday Club in Chicago, November 30th.

Originally posted at HTMLGIANT. A commenter said, "I've never heard two non-15 year old girls say 'like' more between words." Feels like a compliment.

If you haven't checked out Sam Pink's books, or his Formspring advice column, I highly recommend both.

Rulfo

2011-11-27T09:21:00.001-08:00

Red Lightbulbs published my poem, "I want to read that Juan Rulfo you love, The Burning Plain."

Juan Rulfo is the author of The Burning Plain and Other Stories as well as Pedro Páramo.

I went home to Milwaukee for Thanksgiving. Me and several of my family members caught a stomach flu. Saturday night I puked a lot. I've been feeling kind of weak and shitty since then. I said to my mom, "Now my body state is analogous to my mental/emotional state."

I am typing at my dad's desk. He has a framed drawing of Jesus laughing.

Keep feeling like I need to "get my ass in gear." Not sure what I mean exactly, but I need to "get my ass in gear."

I was explaining to my mom why I like this one comedian and I said it was not primarily because of his humor--although I appreciate that--but because he seemed present, in the moment, when interacting with people.

I am going to miss Steve Roggenbuck when he leaves Chicago.

Steve said recently that tickets to London are surprisingly cheap. I would like to visit all my UK friends. I was in London for a week once and had a great time. I drank cider and went to night clubs. I witnessed a clubwide singalong to "Wonderwall," which was played, conspicuously, in the midst of an otherwise all-rap-and-pop DJ mix.

I've been reading Nausea and I don't think I like the prose style or Sartre's editing decisions. There are a lot of to-me uninteresting details included, such as overheard conversations and seemingly unessential historical information, and the prose style seems neither pleasingly "clean" nor pleasingly "voice-y," i.e. a strong narrator voice. I think it could have been either of the aforementioned with revision.

I have already started reading another book, Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami. I like the prose style a lot so far, as well as the shaping of chapters. There's a lot of dialogue, a lot of subtle character insight, and the prose is spare in a way I like. I feel like Murakami has designed everything carefully, and I'm excited to keep reading.

I am going to do a video interview with Sam Pink this week. I feel positive about this week. Love to you all.

The Doors

2011-11-17T21:16:00.000-08:00

That photo is of Clarice Lispector. I have moved the paragraphs about her to near the end of this blog post.

Steve Roggenbuck and I are going to start emailing daily writing to each other (him a poem, me prose stuff). This way we can help each other stay productive.

Friday was "Beer Friday" at work. The theme this week was German beer. I tried a Belgium white expecting to not like it and did not like it. Some people invited me to go with them to a bar. I like when people invite me to things, especially if I would want to go to a place with those people.

I bought a round of shots. I did karaoke: "99 Problems" Jay-Z. I felt very white during my performance. A black woman, I think the hostess, touched my arm as I walked by and complimented my performance.

I am going to try to buy my family Christmas presents this year. I am less broke this year. I like when I think of a nice present to give someone. So far I have thought of one present to give, but it is not for a family member.

Saturday during the day I felt as if I were rotting inside. I think it was on account of having little on the stomach and drinking a lot of coffee and also various disappointments and sadnesses and general confusion and angst and a lack of certain things and general shittiness. I went to a "Friendsgiving" dinner and drank a lot of wine. Later I went to a place and then another place and then went home.

I finished reading The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector. I liked it a lot. It's very philosophical. This woman goes into her maid's room and closes a door on a cockroach and then sort of meditates on the cockroach as a symbol/metaphor for various things.

Here is some from it:

"If my life is transformed into it-itself, what I now call sensibility will not exist--it will be called indifference. But I am still unable to learn that way of being. It is as if hundreds of thousands of years from now we finally won't be what we feel and think anymore: we shall have something that more closely resembles an 'attitude' than an idea. We shall be living matter manifesting itself directly, unmindful of words, going beyond always-grotesque thinking.

And I won't travel 'from thought to thought' but from attitude to attitude. We shall be inhuman--as humanity's greatest conquest. To be is to be beyond the human. To be a human being doesn't do it, to be a human has been a constraint. The unknown awaits us, but I sense that that unknown is a totalization and will be the true humanization we long for. Am I speaking of death? no, of life. It isn't a state of felicity, it is a state of contact."

It is about 170 pages of that sort of thing. I thought some of the best bits were toward the end and so I concluded satisfied and feeling positive about the book overall.

I recommend her. I have also read Near to the Wild Heart and The Hour of the Star. Both of those have more characterization and action than The Passion.

Today I purchased The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley at Myopic, along with Almost Transparent Blue by Ryū Murakami.

I started The Doors of Perception. It is about Aldous Huxley taking mescaline; he describes the effects it has on his consciousness and understanding.

Here is a part:

"That which, in the language of religion, is called 'this world' is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. The various 'other worlds,' with which human beings erratically make contact are so many elements in the totality of the awareness belonging to Mind at Large. Most people, most of the time, know only what comes through the reducing valve and is consecrated as genuinely real by the local language. Certain persons, however, seem to be born with a kind of by-pass that circumvents the reducing valve. In others temporary by-passes may be acquired either spontaneously, or as the result of deliberate 'spiritual exercises,' or through hypnosis, or by means of drugs. Through these permanent or temporary by-passes there flows, not indeed the perception 'of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe' (for the by-pass does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large) but something more than, and above all something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality."

a blog about what i listen to at work

2011-11-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

hello!

this blog has a theme. the theme is: songs i listen to at work.

my job is to do data entry on a computer all day. thankfully my office is pretty laidback and my co-workers are all around my age + enjoy haveing fun, talkeing, laugheing, and generally liveing life to fullest.

what i do to pass the time is listen to interviews with actors or writers and listen to music on youtube. below are some songs i like to listen to, with commentary:

R. Kelly, "Screamer"

the beginning of this song reminds me of "sexual eruption" aka "sensual seduction" by snoop dogg (remember that one?). synths slowly wash over the listener like a dang wave on the sand, then the beat comes in. r (can i call him r?) has turned on a fun audio effect so his voice sounds kewl.

this song is about how r kelly is fucking a girl in his room during a party, and she is screaming a lot (hence, "shorty is a screamer") and thus potentially "letting the cat out of the bag" re they are fucking in his room during the party. the lyrics also mention that the girl is turned on by the fact that there are people on the other side of the door, so basically she wants them to hear. i have worked this song into my "addictive r kelly songs" rotation, which also includes "text me," "sex weed," and "hair braider." this song ends with someone wailing his/her ass off on guitar.

ASAP Rocky, "Bass"

I heard this song last week and have been playing it a lot at work and walking to and from work. I don't know, it just has an awesome beat, basically. The producer is Clams Casino, who also did the "Im God" beat for Lil B. i like atmospheric beats with cool samples that also knock.

I've watched some interviews and things with ASAP Rocky and downloaded his mixtape. So far I haven't heard any other songs by him that i like as much as "Bass." He seems interesting, though. i guess he's into high fashion and wearing rick owens and shit. that's cool. another interesting thing is he lives in harlem but his sound is heavily influenced by rap from other regions, like houston screwed-style shit, for example.

The-Dream, "Ghetto"

i am a big fan of The-Dream. his latest album has a lot of ballads and emoshunal songs on it, but this is like the banger.

sometimes i'm in the mood for some catchy-ass indie rock:

Islands, "Tender Torture"

yall remember the Unicorns?

my favorite lyric in this is "kicked open a coconut / could've shared it with anyone / but i wanted to share it with you."

of Montreal, "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants"

i am an of Montreal fan. this is off their Skeletal Lamping album, which i thought was underrated, at least by pitchfork.

i like the lyrics in this. "You only like him 'cause he's sexually appealing / But his psychic's prediction has him hanging from a ceiling fan / In eight months."

Kevin Barnes's main influences seem to be The Beatles and Prince. i like that.

Below is a final song that is kewl and has a kewl video. kewl~!

League, "How Do I Know"

blogstep

2011-11-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

hello

this is another blog post.

blog revival.

i am drinking wine.

maggie "margaux" lee has joined the movement by doing a blog.

who will be next? frankly, i don't know.

steve is playing birdman ft. a bunch of people in the next room. i hear jeezy currently.

tomorrow is our ustream. are you attending

i am currently reading the passion according to g.h. by clarice lispector. i like it. it is very philosophical. a woman enters her maid's quarters and partially squashes a cockroach and the cockroach becomes symbolic to her of many things. i like it so far.

i am watching a cat this weekend, steve's cat, bc he is going out of town. i think i will get it mad high on cat nip.

also this weekend is EAR EATER ft. sam pink, megan boyle, jordan castro, mallory whitten, miles ross. i suggest you tune in or attend if you live in chicago.

what else can i blog about.

steve claims we are going to make popcorn soon. i hope so.

we are now enjoying popcorn and listening to a dubstep remix of the theme from "requiem for a dream." sweet

now we're listening to justin bieber rapping over the "otis" beat. hehe

this is a blog, ttyl, <3

"Whatever" (Return of teh Blog)

2011-11-01T16:02:00.000-07:00

hey everybody

as Ben Brooks and DJ Berndt have pointed out, and as other ppl have said, where have all the blogs gone away?

my blog hasn't been updated in something like a month.
here it is then

An Update.

i am now living with my good friend, Steve Roggenbuck. You may know him from the popular web blog tumblr Live My Lief.com. In our new life together Steve and i plan to bake vegan gluten-free pumpkin muffins, host small dinner parties, and raise a small family of 12.

hopefully Steve and i can help each other avoid crippling depression during these upcoming winter months.

if you would like to read Ms. Ani Smith's unedited thoughts re Steve and i's e-book, I LOVE MUSIC, you can do that here. i recently saw Vicki Tingle and Laurens Verdonkschot read from the e-book in a Ustream from Brighton and it made me blush and feel very happy to see them laugh and enjoy it. <3

Steve and i are going to be doing a Ustream this Thursday at 8 CST. if you tune in, you will surely see carousing, lolligagging, and tomfoolery the lieks of which [something something something]

there is also an Ear Eater reading/ustream this Saturday in Chicago/the internet. it will feature Cassandra Troyan (hostess/performance artiste); Sam Pink (sex symbol/author); Megan Boyle (writer, former Chicago resident, current Baltimore resident, via Skype); Jordan Castro (writer/penis-ripper, Ohioan); Mallory Whitten (artist, writer, also in from Ohio); and Miles Ross (funny person, writer, via Skype). i am attending. If you are in Chicago, the address is 5513 S. Cornell Ave. Apt. #2.

something i have tried recently (yesterday) is drinking a bottle of wine on a monday night. it dramatically improved my outlook and caused me by bottle's end to wander in an appreciative-of-all-things-under-the-son-and-moon daze from the dining table to the entrance to Steve's room where indeed Steve was at his computer and i said to him, likely interrupting a flurry of pokes, a Flarf harvest, and two Fbook chat convos: "Steve, you know what, I love everyone, Steve. To be quite honest Steve, everyone is beautiful." that is not a direct quote, hardly does justice. this after only a day prior saying to Steve, before bed, when already tucked in under my sheets like a little boy waiting for his bedtime story: "Steve.... [face of mock wimpering frowniness, truly silly and strange-sounding voice affectation] Steve... is it...can you tell me...is it going to be oKAAyyy...really though like...just like...are things going to fucking work Ooouuuuut or WHAAAtt...(?!?)" not a direct quote, and he affected the look of a solemn, kindly dingbat and said that "Well yes...of course bb...it's going to be fucking okay okay" not a direct quote.

i have a Formspring if you want to ask me questions.

recently i read a book i enjoyed, Whatever by Michel Houellebecq.

Houellebecq is this controversial French guy and Whatever is his first novel. it made me laugh a lot and feel less lonely. his humor is kind of in poor taste at times and he might be offensive to some ppl, but he made me laugh. to me it was like a meaner, more crass Woody Allen-type feel. very bleak philosophy, lots of complaining and cynicism. it's about this man who works in an office and his co-worker is ugly and can't attract any women and the narrator cracks sardonic jokes about everyone in the office and everyone he meets and decides by the end of the book that he is very fucked and everything is fucked and it is especially fucked if you're ugly but it is fucked even if you are not so ugly.

in conclusion, i am going to try to blog more.

E-Books / Pop Serial 3

2011-09-24T11:50:00.001-07:00

Hi Everybody.

Last week Friday, the 16th, Pangur Ban Party published my debut solo e-book, Ganga Loners, and Steve Roggenbuck and I released a collaborative e-book, I LOVE MUSIC.

Thank you to DJ Berndt for publishing Ganga.

Last Friday into Saturday morning, Steve and I did a Ustream. Steve did 12 continuous hours and I joined him later in the night.

Pop Serial #3 is forthcoming and I have begun receiving contributions. Featured authors/artists will include Tao Lin, Luna Miguel, Blaise Larmee, John Campbell, Sam Pink, Megan Boyle, Steve Roggenbuck, Timothy Willis Sanders, Ana C., Richard Chiem, Cameron Pierce, Andrew James Weatherhead, Michael Inscoe, Poncho Peligroso, Cassandra Troyan, Shaun Gannon, Madison Langston, Zachary Whalen, Cassandra Nguyen, and more.

Also since I last blogged, HOUSEFIRE included a story by me in its print anthology of short fiction, Nouns of Assemblage, as well as published a story by me entitled "A Rag of Colts" at its site.

And Zachary Whalen published a poem by me called "Life is a dehydrated gazelle slowly expiring in bed" at his new literary site, shallow.

Next I will write a novel or work on a collection of short stories.

How is everyone feeling? I have a Formspring if you want to ask me a question.

Last Saturday I had dinner at this quirky lil natural foods restaurant they recently opened in Wicker Park with my old buddies Peter and Mike and Nick and I felt a feeling of gratitude for living in Chicago, my friends, and everything I have in life.

Last night I took a ride on the Navy Pier ferris wheel with Steve and we ran down the street and went to Dominick's. He made a lovely video out of it.

i went to see Ana in Tijuana

2011-08-16T07:03:00.000-07:00

We formed a band, Screamo Rap. We made a video:

We listened to music.

Blaise Barnes E-Books

2011-07-30T12:15:00.000-07:00

Last night I met Blaise Larmee. He's going to do the cover for Pop Serial #3 (coming this fall) and contribute a comic. I like Blaise's work a lot.

I am planning to release three e-books before my birthday, September 17th. One will be a solo e-book of short prose for Pangur Ban Party.

The second e-book will be a collaborative one with Steve Roggenbuck called I LOVE MUSIC. Excerpts from I LOVE MUSIC can be read at unsure if i will allow my beard to grow for much longer, New Wave Vomit, Let People Poems, and All Write Then (you can vote for our All Write Then poem to be included in a print anthology--it only has 6 votes presently, despite it being, objectively, incredible and groundbreaking).

The third e-book will be a collaborative one with Ana C.

All three e-books will reportedly make you feel more excited about being alive and really jazzed about talking to your friends and getting your freak on.

To help inspire myself to reshape the literary imagination as we now know it as I delve into the hidden recesses of my inner being, I've been rereading some of my favorite short stories. For example, "A Night Among the Horses" by Djuna Barnes, which you can read here. My stories or whatever they are will not be like "A Night Among the Horses," but I like how it opens and other things about it.

Djuna seems like she was a cool person. There's an anecdote that she lived across the street from E.E. Cummings in her later years, and she was a recluse, and Cummings would call to her across the street, "Are you still alive, Djuna?" There's another anecdote that Carson McCullers, author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (great title), was a huge Djuna Barnes fan and camped out on Djuna's doorstep wanting to meet her, and finally Djuna called down, "Whoever is ringing this bell, please go the hell away." My final Djuna Barnes anecdote is that her most famous novel, Nightwood, was based on her relationship with Thelma Wood, and she was regarded as an important lesbian writer, but she said in later years, "I am not a lesbian, I just loved Thelma."

Prize-Winning

2011-07-09T17:22:00.001-07:00

At HTMLGIANT, I was included on the list "Top Ten Indie-Lit Dicks We'd Rather See Than Jordan Castro's," as selected by M. Kitchell, Casey Hannan, and Tim Jones-Yelvington (with support from xTx). Little Rock's finest, Michael Inscoe, is also on the list.

Also at HTMLGIANT, a discussion of "concrete emo" or "Muumuu [House]-style" writing by Kitchell originally included "some of [my] short fiction" as an example of same (before Kitchell changed his mind), and the "polemic" referenced my magazine, Pop Serial, with its title, "POP."

In the comments section of the post, I engaged extensively with various commenters re "honesty" vs. "intellectualism" and other things.

Pictures for Sad Tweens

2011-07-09T13:51:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday I went to a Greyson Chance concert in Grant Park with John Campbell, Steve Roggenbuck, Brett Gallagher, and Rachel Hyman. Our plan was to Ustream live from the concert and to interview some of Greyson Chance's tween fans. [Greyson Chance is a 13-year-old famous for his talent-show cover of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi," which went viral on YouTube and launched his career.]

I started a Ustream on my iPhone once John arrived, and we walked toward Grant Park. We didn't know what stage Greyson Chance was performing at but figured we would follow the tweens to its location.

There were a lot of people in Grant Park. I said several times that I was looking for "human memes and tweens." I spotted a rotund adult male with a sparkly top hat and purple and green ballon animals wrapped around his legs and arms giving out balloons to children but failed to document his existence on Ustream. Steve noted a large number of people enthusiastically consuming corn on the cob and suggested I document this phenomenon.

We heard high-pitched screaming emanating from behind some bleachers to our left and assumed it was Greyson Chance's fans. There was a security check on the way in and a sign said no audio or visual equipment so I put my iPhone in my pocket without stopping the Ustream.

We seemed to be the oldest non-parent people at the concert. There were screaming, arms-waving, sign-brandishing tweens and teens and, further back from the stage, parent-looking adults.

A fresh-faced twentysomething singer who we learned was Shane Harper (via several signs in the crowd) was opening for Greyson Chance. To me he sounded like Jason Mraz but shittier and, indeed, he closed with a Jason Mraz cover.

Numerous attempts to get closer to the stage in order to get a clearer visual of the performance were unsuccessful due to repeated instructions from sweaty, vaguely exasperated event staff members to "move back and find a seat."

We were determined to find and interview a tween. After several field expeditions produced meager, disappointing interviews ("You here to see Greyson Chance?" "No, Shane Harper."), John suggested that we approach three disgruntled-seeming tweens sitting far back from the stage who were holding their heads in hands while frowning and staring into the middle distance. The consensus was that it would seem less creepy if Rachel participated in the interviewing process, adding a non-threatening female presence. I said that Steve and I interviewing a tween girl together might be perceived as "double-teaming" or "cornering," comments which I vaguely regretted immediately due to their unseemliness. John said that Rachel could maybe pass for a tween (she's ~21). Rachel and I were chosen for the mission and dispatched. We approached the disgruntled tweens and achieved what was for me the most awkward interview yet. I recall shifting from one leg to the other while looking past their disinterested, idly weirded out faces at the bald spot on a nearby seated parent's head as unfamiliarly strong feelings of sheepishness stimulated rapid blood flow to my cheeks.

After Shane Harper's set ended, while we waited for Greyson Chance to perform, employees of Radio Disney took the stage to blast various Disney-affiliated pop singles while performing choreographed dance numbers and exhorting the crowd to "give it up" and at one point to say "Bieber" whenever the employees said "Justin." There was one male Radio Disney employee onstage. He was very vocal and danced enthusiastically despite looking out of shape and possessing "man titties."

We noticed a teenaged(?) bro in a muscles shirt with a beach towel around his neck and a sign that read "free hugs." We moved closer to interact with "the free hugs guy," and he warmly hugged Steve with no discernible hesitation or self-consciousness.

In between sets, John told us he had to dogsit for a friend, shook our hands, said goodbye, and departed.

Steve had brought along a stack of small pieces of paper each reading either "I'm rob schneider" or "I'm eminem's wife" in Helvetica font. These were tweets from his @biebercrazie4u Justin Bieber fan Twitter, but there was no other text on the pieces of paper to explain the messages. Steve began handing them out to tweens and adults, saying, "This is free." The tweens consistently took the piece of paper, walked away, looked at the piece of paper, and then looked back at us while laughing and/or looking bemused. One girl walked back to Steve and said, "Can I have one for my friend?" One group of girls read their pieces of paper and then used them as makeshift fans. Steve gave a copy of "I'm eminem's wife" to a man in army fatigues and boots and he read it, paused, looked at Steve, and said, "You can be my wife" in a suggestive and vaguely eerie tone.

A band came onstage and rocked out in a technically proficient but generic fashion for about five minutes, and then Greyson Chance strolled onstage in a remarkably chill-ass manner. He proceeded to belt the fuck out of several of his songs while pacing the stage and gesticulating at his screaming, bouncing, flailing fans, all while somehow maintaining an aura of cool and nonchalance. He sat at the piano to perform a ballad. Steve, Brett, and I said things about him being a good singer and expressed our disbelief at his utter chillness. My iPhone ran out of battery. We decided to leave so we could watch the upcoming British Ustream at Steve's apartment.

Dennis Cooper

2011-07-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

Dennis Cooper—who William S. Burroughs called "a born writer"—has said nice things about me and Pop Serial at his blog in response to me commenting on an earlier post re Julio Cortázar:

"Stephen Tully Dierks, Greetings, salutations, and thanks for being here, Stephen. Can I tell you while you’re in eyeshot how much I like Pop Serial and the writing of yours that I’ve read — ‘Serious European Art Film’ rules, for instance — and, belatedly, that HTMLG post you did on Steve Roggenbuck, for instance? Let me … Everyone, we were visited over the weekend by the very fine writer and editor Stephen Tully Dierks. I recommend you check out his writerly goods — find some links to prose, poetry, and articles/posts by him here— and his really terrific art/lit online magazine Pop Serial, whose newest issue has lots of really good stuff by really top notch scribes like Heather Christie, Tao Lin, Ryan Manning, Richard Chiem, Ben Brooks, and on and on. Riches galore, and don’t hesitate. Thanks again. Be here anytime please."

Thank you very much to Dennis for his kind words.

Selected Work

2011-06-28T12:45:00.001-07:00

I am in the process of writing an ebook for Pangur Ban Party (sup Deej) and other projects are forthcoming, such as the collaborative ebook I LOVE MUSIC with Steve Roggenbuck (excerpts can be seen here, here, and here). Below, I have selected some of my favorites of my writing so far, and they can also be accessed via the sidebar to the right. The full list of things I've published can be found at the "Work" page, also linked above.

Prose

"Serious European Art Film" Everyday Genius

"ALL CAPS NO PUNCTUATION" Housefire

"What the Fuck Does 'In Real Life' Mean If You Live In Front of Your Computer?" unsure if i will allow my beard to grow for much longer

"Four Stories" Metazen

"The Death Section"

Poems

[Poem from I LOVE MUSIC] (w/ Steve Roggenbuck) unsure if i will allow my beard to grow for much longer

"I fell asleep during Winter's Bone" Let People Poems

"This Pretentious Twaddle Sure Sets A New Standard For Sentence-Driven Fiction" Negative Suck

[Five poems] New Wave Vomit

"I'm not sure what we were ever doing" The Scrambler

Pieces

[Review of I Don't Respect Female Expression by Frank Hinton] HTMLGIANT

"The Poetry of Steve Roggenbuck" HTMLGIANT

[Review of Richard Yates by Tao Lin] Southeast Review

[Review of Orange Juice by Timothy Willis Sanders] HTMLGIANT

no photos plz

2011-06-28T11:36:00.000-07:00

Ana C. and I at the Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing, June 16th, 2011.

Music: Shabazz Palaces, "Are You...Were You...Can You? (Felt)"

NYLON / Fashion

2011-06-24T11:06:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone.

NYLON covered Pop Serial on its blog. They said, "this limited edition literary and art magazine is our new favorite go-to for poems, images, and stories from well-known and new artists alike." Thank you to Mallory Rice for being interested in my magazine.

I like NYLON. I like glossy magazines with nice layout and photographs. I like fashion. I like when I see a girl and I like what she's wearing. I try to dress cool but I don't know.

i'm an old man

2011-06-21T09:17:00.000-07:00

Pop Serial 2 is now online. The web design is by Steve Roggenbuck.

The web version includes 4 poems not in the print version: "hoarders" by Shannon Peil and 3 by Audun Mortensen: "billy crystal meth," "die hard," and "suddenly susan laugh track."

Banango, a new literary blog run by Justin Carter and Rachel Hyman, has started a review series reviewing the magazine's writing piece by piece.

There has also been coverage at HTMLGIANT, We Who Are About To Die, and Impose.

I'm glad more people can read the magazine now. There have been ~1,230 unique visitors so far.

***

Ana C. visited Chicago last week. It was great to finally meet her IRL.

We co-hosted the first-ever New Wave Vomit/Pop Serial reading at Innertown Pub last Thursday. M. Kitchell, Andrew James Weatherhead, Leif Haven, Brett Gallagher, Steve, Ana, and I all read.

Some very #rare video footage from before and during the reading can be viewed at my Ustream.

I'm glad my friends exist.

***

I saw the movie Beginners starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, and Mélanie Laurent and almost cried several times.

***

Steve Roggenbuck and I are planning a collaborative ebook called I LOVE MUSIC.

Michael Inscoe published one of the poems from it at unsure if i will allow my beard to grow for much longer.

At HTMLGIANT, Christopher Higgs posted a link to the poem, saying we had initiated a new poetic movement he called Bromanticism.

In the comments, MFBomb said, "I'm honesty baffled that someone other than a 15 year old emo kid would write and publish this." Frank Hinton said, "doesn't seem like it's dealing with reason or logic but instead love, so. love isn't really ambitious because ambition always seeks an end and love doesn't seek anything but itself."

Another excerpt appeared earlier this year at Let People Poems.

There will likely be more published excerpts before the ebook is published.

***

A story by me entitled "A Smack of Jellyfish" will appear in the forthcoming Housefire print anthology Nouns of Assemblage. The title was given to me by the editor, Riley Michael Parker.

***

Google Talk has funny emoticons.

A Pretty Freakin Long Post with My Thoughts on All of the Contributors to Pop Serial #2

2011-06-13T12:30:00.000-07:00

Pop Serial #2 will be online in its entirety this Thursday, June 16th via a new website by Steve Roggenbuck.

Below are the contributors in order of their appearance in the magazine with some information/thoughts about each person:

Eliza Weber
Eliza is a student at NYU, I believe. Andrew James Weatherhead and David Fishkind recommended her poetry to me. I picked my favorites of the poems I saw by her ("Flickering candelabra") and, having already finalized most of the order of the magazine, decided to put the poem before the table of contents, sort of in the manner of a frontispiece.

Aidan Koch
I don't remember how I found Aidan's site originally, but I immediately liked her drawing style and how she approached comics, in maybe a more impressionistic style, sometimes with very little text and an above-average emphasis on the visual. Morgan Myers, in his review of the print magazine, singled out her "Windswept" for praise and I'm glad, as I like it a lot.

Aidan lives in Washington and her book The Whale was published by Gaze Books, which is run by Blaise Larmee. I hope to have work by Blaise in Pop Serial #3.

Miles Ross
The first thing I read by Miles was "Rum and Coke," a long, understated short story concerning a relationship. Miles contributed a story I like called "Lake Placid" to Pop Serial #1, and in #2 there is his story "Cuba Light." I intentionally chose this story to open the magazine (Eliza's poem is like a prologue or something, to me).

Ana C.
Ana is one of my best friends, one of my favorite poets, and one of the main reasons I'm glad I ever got involved with the online literary scene. I love her and her work. She is the first person to ever publish me, at New Wave Vomit. 3 poems and 3 drawings by her appear in Pop Serial #2. If you haven't checked out make-believe love-making, This is Controversial, or her ebook with Richard Chiem, oh no everything is wet now, I recommend all 3.

Frank Hinton
I don't remember how I first came across Frank. I remember I read an interview with her and noted the mystery of her identity, her interest in Zen, and the striking photograph of her. My interest in her work has grown and grown as time goes on. She has been very supportive of me and others, and I like her combination of ambition and sense of humor. She has published me twice at Metazen, which I appreciate. She seems to be a leader in our little online lit community. I'm excited about some Frank-related things on the horizon. My very positive review of her chapbook, I Don't Respect Female Expression, can be read at HTMLGIANT.

Erik Stinson
I think I came across Erik's poetry via Brandon Scott Gorrell, but I don't remember the specifics. I asked him if he wanted to contribute to the "Ohio Special" insert in Ohio editions of Pop Serial #1 and he said yes. Poems by him are in Pop Serial #2. He seems very funny to me.

Ryan Manning
Ryan is an enigma. He is known for creating and quickly deleting many blogs and for a period before I was in the scene when he would regularly comment "the Asian [celebrity or author's name]" on people's blogs. I somehow came across his photography and liked it a lot. I'm happy a photograph by him is in this issue. I think the photo is no longer on his Flickr account. I have also enjoyed some poems by Ryan at Let People Poems and elsewhere.

Steve Roggenbuck
I think I came across Steve's blog via him posting something related to Tao Lin. My reaction to his blog and poems was something like "this guy could be another person for the magazine." I emailed him about that, and he told me he was moving to Chicago. We met up by Wrigley Field and went for a walk and talked and talked, went to Myopic Books I believe, and got food at Pick Me Up Cafe. I love and admire and respect Steve, and now count him among my very best friends. I feel like we look at writing in similar ways and value and don't value a lot of the same things. I feel happier and calmer and more alive when I am around him. I don't know what my presence in his life does for him, but I know he inspires me in his actions and in his thinking and his way of being in the world. I am very proud of how hard he has been working and what he is trying to achieve. I hope I know him 'til one of us is dead.

I wrote an overview of Steve's work that was published by HTMLGIANT.

Tao Lin
Tao is my favorite living literary artist. I find him very inspiring, and he influences me a lot. I have obsessively followed his activities for over a year now. He has been kind and supportive toward me, for which I am grateful. I met him once last year, which I wrote about here. I think of Tao as like the "flagship artist" for Pop Serial. A piece by him called "we will drink our coffee and complete our novels and lay in sunlight and sit in darkness" appears in this issue.

Mrinalini Kannan
I found Mrinalini's art via Shivani Gakhar, an artist who contributed to the first issue. I like her use of color and I feel like her art makes me feel some kind of personality.

Heather Christle
Heather is very talented, in my opinion. I don't know her as a person, but her work makes me think "poetry," "smart," "emotional." She recently had a poem in The New Yorker.

Brandon Scott Gorrell
I came in contact with Brandon due to Shitstorm Alberto, which "launched" me into the online literary world and led to the creation of Pop Serial the magazine (I had previously named a music blog Pop Serial). I like Brandon's poetry book a lot, during my nervous breakdown i want to have a biographer present. Brandon has been nice to me and invited me to contribute to Thought Catalog, which I did for a few posts. An excerpt of his novel My Hair Will Defeat You appears in this issue.

Lyra Hill
I met Lyra at the first EAR EATER reading, I believe. She seemed nice and so I checked out her blog and liked her art. 2 notebook pages by her are in the issue, as is a drawing which I deliberately picked to accompany Sam Pink's pieces.

Cassandra Troyan
Cassandra is my friend and a talented poet and (performance) artist. She also runs the EAR EATER reading series. She has been very nice to me and she lives in Chicago, so we've hung out IRL. I think she submitted out of the blue a little after her brother Cody did and I was like, "they're both good, I'll just have 2 family members in the magazine, that's kind of funny" and then I put on "Family Affair."

Leif Haven
I've known Leif since freshman year of college at University of Wisconsin at Madison, when we were in the same dorm. I hung out with his group for a while and then we drifted apart, although I still was in contact and asked him to contribute to this music magazine I edited. So now we're both in Chicago and actually hang out sometimes again, which is great, and I included poems by him in both issues of Pop Serial. M. Kitchell recently published Leif's first book, Translator's Note, via Solar Luxuriance.

Michael Inscoe
Michael is a very friendly, talented dude. I think he contacted me unsolicited and I checked out his blog and thought he seemed like a good fit for the magazine. He has since met me in Chicago with Meggie Green and other friends and we've gotten friendlier and friendlier via online talking and stuff. He and his friend, Phillip Rex Huddleston, make good videos, in my opinion, and I want to see more of them in the future.

Brandi Wells
Brandi is a talented writer, in my opinion. I don't remember where I first read her, but I checked out a bunch of stories on her blog's sidebar and was impressed. She seems friendly and nice.

Elizabeth Arnold
Elizabeth contacted me, I think, and I was impressed by her art. She seems very energetic and passionate and devoted to her art. I think she will be productive and successful.

Matthew Savoca
I don't remember how I came across Matthew, but I think I solicited him. He contributed a story and poem to this issue. He said he hasn't published as much of his prose as his poetry, so I'm glad this story is in the issue. I told him it felt archetypal to me--it "definitively" captures a certain type of experience--in the way "The Depressed Person" by David Foster Wallace feels archetypal to me.

Megan Boyle
I think maybe Tao suggested I look at Megan's work. I solicited her, and she contributed a very fine story called "Little Rock," which has also been published by Muumuu House. Since then she's gotten married to Tao and published a lot of pieces at Thought Catalog that I like a lot, and she has a book coming out this fall through Muumuu House. She seems very smart and nice to me. I have never met her, but I think it would be wonderful to do so.

Ben Brooks
Ben is a very friendly, talented, and sexually attractive young man living in England. He is very young and has several books out already and I want to swap lives with him. He has been kind to me, and I enjoy gchatting with him on occasion. I am glad he wants to be involved with Pop Serial. I hope his latest, Grow Up, sells a bunch of copies and that he tours America and it's made into a film.

Brett Gallagher
I met Brett because he wrote a very kind blog post about issue 1. We started corresponding, and since he lived nearby in Wheaton, IL, he eventually came to visit me in Chicago. He has since become a good friend to me and to Steve, and now he is my roommate in Logan Square. He has been very supportive of me and very nice to me. I hope he continues to write and explore his aesthetic. I think his work is striking and very sensitive to language.

Noah Cicero
Noah is a passionate and productive author and has influenced a lot of people, including Ben. He contributed an epic poem to this issue and I put it in the middle of the magazine as like a centerpiece. The title is "It is Okay to Feel Catastrophic." Noah has been very supportive of some of my friends, like Ana and Steve, and I am grateful that he is aware of and generous towards the next wave of writers.

Brittany Wallace
Brittany is a talented poet and has been friendly to me, although we haven't communicated in quite a while. I like her personality, such as I sense it in her poems. I intentionally placed her poems after Noah's in the magazine, as some sort of I don't know, not as a response really, but...something.

Jordan Castro and Mallory Whitten
Jordan is a productive young bro and he seems determined to have a literary and music and maybe even film career. I don't doubt he'll have all 3. He is in both issues of the magazine. He came to Chicago for the first Pop Serial reading with Mallory Whitten and he was very nice to me. I think I saw his name in the comments section of Shitstorm Alberto and checked out his blog. My original idea for the cover of Pop Serial #2 was a Tiger Beat-style cover featuring Jordan, as like a joke given Jordan's at-that-time newly launched LOOKBOOK "modeling" gimmick. Mallory ended up taking a more moody, existential photo of Jordan that I like a lot, so I used it. Mallory seems very nice and has gotten very productive since the first issue, getting into writing and producing lots of visual art. She seems talented. She has also kissed Lil B on the neck, which is impressive to me.

Audun Mortensen
Audun seems very funny to me, and is possibly the most ironic and/or post-ironic person in the scene, which would be an impressive distinction. His work seems to often feature recontextualization, the use of new and surprising contexts and combinations to create humor and defamiliarization. He contributed 3 poems and 2 jpgs for the print edition of #2, and he has sent me 3 new poems that he requested I put in the online edition.

Andrew James Weatherhead
Andrew is a nice, talented, and funny guy. He contributed a story called "Bret Easton Ellis' First Novel," which Muumuu House also published. I like his poetry and I like seeing him read live. I've met him a couple of times, and he will be reading this Thursday at the first-ever New Wave Vomit/Pop Serial reading.

Kendra Grant Malone
I don't remember how I came across Kendra's work, but she is one of my favorite poets. Her poems are very emotional and striking to me. I'm glad she has contributed to both issues, and I'm excited for her upcoming collaborative poetry book with Matthew Savoca, Morocco. I reviewed Kendra's poetry book, Everything is Quiet, here.

David Fishkind
David is a NYU student and author. I don't remember how I came across his writing. I think through Tao. He seems ambitious. I'll be interested to see what he does next.

Rebecca Olson
Rebecca, or Becky as I know her, went to school with me at Wisconsin. She is a talented poet and a cool, fun person. We had some nice talks when we were both in a Virginia Woolf seminar.

Prathna Lor
I first encountered Lor's work via his bearcreekfeed ebook. His writing seems elusive in a way that kind of tickles my brain or something. I used to think he was intentionally mysterious via there didn't seem to be any photos of him or any information, but I have since seen a photo of him on Facebook, I believe. I reviewed his book, Ventriloquism.

Carrie Lorig
Carrie is a very nice person and a talented poet. I vaguely knew her in college through mutual friends and have properly met her more recently at the Pop Serial reading in December. She has been very supportive and friendly and I hope she stays productive and inspired.

Feng Sun Chen
Feng, or Mary as she's known by friends, is a very talented poet and nice person. She submitted to me unsolicited, I believe, and I think I included some superlatives when I wrote her back. Her works seems forceful to me and has more memorable lines than a lot of other poetry I read. I am very happy that she has multiple books coming out. As an added bonus, she's great to hang with IRL.

Philip Tseng
I think I encountered Philip's work through my friend--and Pop Serial #1 cover artist--Julia Sonmi Heglund. I think he is talented and I thought his "AlphaDeath" series was funny, so I included it in this issue.

Tracy Brannstrom
I found Tracy's funny, striking MS Paint drawings through Tao. I think her "MS Paint Shower Sex" drawing is very memorable and sweet, so I included it in this issue.

Richard Chiem
Richard, or Ricky as I call him, is my friend and a very talented writer. He has been super supportive and nice to me. I think he has a distinctive, memorable prose style. I hope he gets very famous and popular or at least continues to write beautiful things.

Cody Troyan
Cody is Cassandra's younger brother and a very talented and smart writer, in my opinion. He submitted to me unsolicited and I was impressed. I have been consistently impressed with his writing and intelligence.

Shannon Peil
Shannon is a talented poet and seems like a nice guy. I fucked up and forgot to include his poem "hoarders" in the print edition of this issue. I have sent it to Steve, the designer of the web edition, and I hope it appears this time or I will be embarrassed again.

Ben Rosamond
Ben is a bro who lives in New Zealand. He submitted a number of things to me, and I chose a poem that I found touching and a story I found intriguing in part for its honesty about the anxiety of influence. Ben contributes to the group blog antipobros.

Sam Pink
I heard of Sam through HTMLGIANT. I read his stuff, and initially I thought it was sort of consistently negative in a way I wasn't sure if I liked. I read more of his stuff and I realized I hadn't been "getting" it, that there were many different moods and emotions in Sam's work. Now I consider him one of my favorite living writers. I have hung out with him a few times IRL and he is hilarious and very nice. His spirit, as I interpret it through his writing, his way of being in the world, is very moving to me.

I reviewed his novel, Person, at HTMLGIANT.

Daniel Bailey
I found out about Daniel through HTMLGIANT. I was impressed with some of the poems from his book, The Drunk Sonnets. I solicited him and he eventually sent me a poem, "tonight, i mean." I found it very impressive and moving and placed it at the end of the magazine because I didn't know what could follow it.

Sara Drake
Sara is a visual artist and a friend through Cassandra Troyan. She also hosts the EAR EATER reading series. I checked out her blog after meeting her and was impressed. I thought a piece by her fit with Daniel's poem, so I put it on the same page in the print edition.

Van Jazmin
Van is another visual artist I found through Julia Sonmi Heglund. Van's work is sometimes psychedelic and often striking. I picked the piece "sleep" to close the magazine visually. The images and the text in the piece felt right.

Pop Serial #2 is coming to the internet this Thursday, June 16th, via a new website by Steve Roggenbuck. I hope you like it.

With us in the studio today, the London Bach Choir. Now, the latest on Omar De Col:

2011-05-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

Omar De Col has been spotted at Dunster Beach. Reports are coming in he is wearing extremely tight, hot pink swim trunks. Sources claim he is “double-fisting” and appears to be “completely arseholed.” Eyewitnesses have noted increased staggering in his locomotion and increased levels of speech slurring and eye gleamage. Omar De Col’s increased eye-gleam quotient has caused him to seem even more charming than usual, the most charmingest amount of charm ever contained in a living male or female, an international record says the Daily Mail. Three rotund semi-nude ex-priests sunbathing on an adjacent towel have collectively unhinged their mandibles.

It appears Omar De Col has dropped something. The sun is very bright, potentially blinding. We’re certain he has dropped something, but what exactly it is, we can’t yet confirm. More news forthcoming.

We can now report it is an iPhone 3GS. Omar De Col is flailing around looking forward it in a manner reminiscent of Snuffleupagus with his long trunk.

Sources now tell us Omar De Col has regained possession of his iPhone 3GS, which was dropped. He appears to be grinning uncontrollably. He is now sauntering down the beach in defiance of his diminished locomotive skills.

Omar De Col appears to have halted and appears to be conferring with an elderly gentleman. The elderly gentleman is wearing grey slacks and rather ragged-looking shoes. He is also shirtless and appears to be quite inebriated as well.

We have dispatched our junior reporter Lacy Maxwell to the scene, and she is now reporting live via satellite.

“Hi, James Farnon. Yes, Omar De Col has attempted to engage the drunk, shirtless, homeless (we can now confirm homeless) elderly gentleman in conversation.”

What did he say to the man?

“Omar De Col said, ‘What time is it, mate?’”

And what did the man say?

“He said, simply, ‘Dead.’”

I see. And what did Omar De Col say back?

"He flopped to the ground. It was rather surprising. Flopped right over. Then he rolled in the sand a bit, popped back up and started singing a song.”

What song was it?

“I hadn’t heard it before, but it sounded very familiar.”

I see.

“Then Omar De Col started spinning around slowly, prancing a bit and spinning slowly and saying these words. He said, ‘What you have to do is just think really hard. So hard that your eyes squint and your brow is furrowed. About one little part of sunlight.’”

I see.

“Yes. Then he appeared to pass out. And now he’s sat over there under an umbrella having a smoke.”

Well. Thank you for your reportage, Lacy Maxwell. Looking forward to having you in the back of the studio. Now once again, the London Bach Choir.

"wtf is this? words? can't be bothered with this" - Crispin Best

2011-05-09T18:08:00.001-07:00

<3 u Crispin mate.

Does seem like why would you blog. Does anyone blog?

Wut iz

a blog.

Brb pizza is ready.

***

If you didn't see these already, I posted visual poems at All Write Then: "Notes" (involves Ezra Pound); "Trance Remix" (involves Steve Roggenbuck, screenshot collage poem); "Perish the thought" (involves a nude balding old man).

At Let People Poems, I posted a poem called "I fell asleep during Winter's Bone."

***

I read some books recently, they are:

Best Behavior by Noah Cicero

I enjoyed this book, some parts more than others. Some parts made me laugh. All parts I could imagine in Cicero's voice having heard it on YouTube.

Chapters 5 and 6 seemed like standouts to me.

In Chapter 5, Cicero depicts the funniness and bleakness of a place where the protagonist worked as a dishwasher for a year. I like the part about mopping floors:

"It never bothered me to mop floors though. I kind of liked it. I would look down at the floor before I started and say to myself, 'Wow, what a dirty floor.' Then I would mop it with industrial strength de-greaser and bleach. Then spray it off with a hose so it would look beautiful."

In Chapter 6, the protagonist and his girlfriend go to a Youngstown bar to hang out. I like the descriptions of the characters and the dialogue. I like how at the end of the chapter, at closing time, everyone is crying.

As I said, there are many funny moments in the book. There is a particularly entertaining sequence about the protagonist and his writer friends attending a fancy New York literary event that I first read at Muumuu House's website a while ago.

There is also a description of Noah's experience taking part in a NYLON photoshoot for Muumuu House with Tao Lin, Zachary German, and Brandon Scott Gorrell. It was interesting to me to read an account of the experience and how these people may have acted during that period. I was particularly interested in Zachary's apparent fictional stand-in, John Walters.

Some excerpts featuring John Walters:

1.) "John Walters finished a fried chicken leg and yelled, 'MY FUCKING LEFT NUT IS A RECTANGLE!'

A middle-aged Puerto Rican walked by and John Walters yelled at him, 'I'M FUCKING PROTESTANT, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! I'VE A FINGER AND AN ASSHOLE, DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY HAVE IN COMMON. I WALK DOGS AND MAKE MORE THAN THE PRESIDENT!'"

2.) "John Walters said to Hu Chin and I, 'I'm taking meaninglessness to new levels. You don't know meaninglessness. I'm going to get enlightened in the art of meaningless behavior. I will be the Buddha of meaninglessness.' Then he screamed, 'I WILL FUCK THE GODS OF TIMES SQUARE WHILE I WALK THEIR DOGS!'"

I was also interested in the portrayal of the protagonist's relationship with Petra, a girl he knows online and then sleeps with while in New York, although it depressed me.

Sometimes it seemed the author was generalizing or stereotyping when describing characters, explaining their motives/defining "who they are" sociopolitically-speaking.

I enjoyed many parts of this book and would like to read more things by Cicero. I like his sense of humor and attempt at honesty/compassion/no bullshit.

I Don't Respect Female Expression by Frank Hinton

My review is forthcoming.

Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

I like this book a lot.

I really dig Burroughs's prose style. I like his short paragraphs and how exciting many of his sentences feel. The excess excised.

I like the idea that he assembled, with Kerouac and Ginsberg's help, an order and form for the book out of a large body of text. I like how the sections, or routines as he calls them, do not proceed linearly and have great variety one from the other. I like how the book ends with a preface.

***

I bought Camera by Jean-Philippe Toussaint today. I am looking forward to reading it. I've been wanting to read him for a while.

Here is an interview with Toussaint on Bookworm. He has described what he writes as the infinitesimal novel.

***

I'm going to start a Formspring sometime I think.

Want to write a story called "I Am Not My Thoughts."

I am moving into an apartment with Brett Gallagher at the end of the month.

I am meeting Timothy Willis Sanders at the end of the month.

Are.

Hot.

"Details are all there are." - Maezumi

2011-04-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

Deirdre / her mom / house / downhill street / Frederick Avenue.

Porch / cracked wood / rocking chair / Deirdre painted purple rockets / black stars.

Kitchen / red table / vase / wild zinnias / plastic chili peppers dangling / back wall / winding staircase.

Basement called The Passion Pit. Made out / “Date with the Night” / Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Deirdre’s mom / shorthaired woman / pointy teeth. Leinie’s Honey Weiss / watching Six Feet Under.

Deirdre’s dad / started new family / didn’t see them anymore / Deirdre’s mom came out / lesbian.

Deirdre’s mom invited him / Deirdre’s high school graduation / he didn’t come. Daniel sat beside Deirdre’s mom / watched her cry / she said “Don’t tell her I cried.”

Visiting / break from college / four months before break-up. Deirdre’s mom asked Daniel / why / still with her daughter. “You seem like an interesting guy. Deirdre’s insipid.”

Met / John’s house / August 16 / 2003.

First time hanging out / Deirdre’s mom saw Daniel looking / plastic skeleton in the closet. “That’s where we put her last boyfriend.”

Second time hanging out / Daniel kissed Deirdre / Benny & Joon.

Third time hanging out / preparing / say goodbye. Daniel / decided / say “I love you.”

“I love you.”

Deirdre stuttered / her face flushed / blood / shifted her weight / bright green Chuck Taylors. She avoided Daniel’s eyes. Deirdre stopped shifting her weight / looked / the eyes / said “I think I love you too.”

Daniel thought / the word “think.”

Coffee / Prose

2011-04-17T23:08:00.000-07:00

Rather than write, I'd like to talk with you over coffee.

I associate coffee with pleasure.

I'd like to be a nice small paperback you read on a warm bench in August.

*********

PROSE STYLES THAT I LIKE

J.D. Salinger

I admire two things, primarily, about Salinger's prose: its understated gestures and its incorporation of spoken verbal styles. A third thing would be its precise images (add to that an effective, enhancing use of adjectives and verbs). A fourth would be its economy, its lack of waste, its exactitude.

The following short paragraph, from "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," consists primarily of action and illuminating detail, aided by some of those aforementioned effective, enhancing adjectives and verbs:

"The young man put on his robe, closed the lapels tight, and jammed his towel into his pocket. He picked up the slimy wet, cumbersome float and put it under his arm. He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel."

To isolate and repeat that last sentence, I love it:

"He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel."

I could go on and on about Salinger and why I like his prose and his fictionalizing, his characters, his dialogue, his sly set-ups and small quiet moments, but instead I'll just point at another type of prose he does, rambling, flamboyant but to me constantly engaging, a voice speaking to the reader (this voice, this time--in Seymour: An Introduction, which if you haven't read, I suggest it--the voice of an "ecstatically happy" writer):

"In this entre-nous spirit, then, old confidant, before we join the others, the grounded everywhere, including, I'm sure, the middle-aged hot-rodders who insist on zooming us to the moon, the Dharma Bums, the makers of cigarette filters for thinking men, the Beat and the Sloppy and the Petulant, the chosen cultists, all the lofty experts who know so well what we should or shouldn't do with our poor little sex organs, all the bearded, proud, unlettered young men and unskilled guitarists and Zen-killers and incorporated aesthetic Teddy boys who look down their thoroughly unenlightened noses at this splendid planet where (please don't shut me up) Kilroy, Christ, and Shakespeare all stopped--before we join these others, I privately say to you, old friend (unto you, really, I'm afraid), please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming parentheses: (((())))."

Samuel Beckett

As I've said before, Beckett has the ability to make me want to underline his sentences. His prose seems beautiful, spare, and wry. His lines are sometimes compact and have the feel of one-liners ("Against the charitable gesture there is no defence, that I know of.") or mottoes ("Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong.") The previous lines were from Molloy, one of my favorites.

Beckett also has this impressive ability of writing beautiful sentences that don't seem to be trying too hard. When I say trying too hard I think of prose where the author seems to be saying "here now, a beautiful sentence, the rich cavalcade of images soar and woo you, ah the fine poetry of this verbal confection, ah choppy kewl prose of the avant-garde, ah pageantry of English, ah incorrigible vocabulary of the effete aesthete, ah to see in this age a effervescence of words, you dear, benevolent sister, have witnessed it." Instead something like this, from Watt (which, by the way, is a fucking hilarious book and another of my favorites by Beckett):

"To be together again, after so long, who love the sunny wind, the windy sun, in the sun, in the wind, that is perhaps something, perhaps something."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Though most famous for his poetry, Rilke wrote a novel I love called The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. It is another of those what you could call Sad-Ass Bro Gets His Rumination On in Depressing City Novels. This a wonderful genre of novel, in my humble opinion, and includes such books as Hunger by Knut Hamsun, Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys, and Person by Sam Pink.

Rilke's sentences are often short. The longer ones seem to have this great rhythm to them, they swing nicely and speak precisely. They feel good to me.

"Here he stands up from his meditations and walks to his window; his high-ceilinged room is too close to him; he would like to see stars, if that is possible. He has no illusions about himself. He knows that this emotion fills him because among the young girls of the neighborhood there is one who matters to him. He has wishes (not for himself, no, but for her); for her sake he understands, during a passing hour of the night, the exigency of love. He promises himself not to tell her anything about it. It seems to him that the most he can do is to be alone and wakeful and for her sake to think how right that poetess had been: when she knew that sexual union means nothing but increased solitude; when she broke through the temporal aim of sex and reached its infinite purpose. When in the darkness of embracing she delved not for fulfillment but for greater longing."

Another thing I love about his prose in this book is that it includes sentences that make philosophical statements, and it doesn't suck ass when he does this, which is a danger with philosophical statements in novels, I have found. His sentences have passion.

Check this humdinger (keep in mind, this shit dropped in 1910):

"Is it possible that we know nothing about young girls, who are nevertheless living? Is it possible that we say 'women,' 'children,' 'boys,' not suspecting (despite all our culture, not suspecting) that these words have long since had no plural, but only countless singulars?

Yes, it is possible."

Virginia Woolf

I took a course on just Woolf in college and loved it. My favorites of the books I read by her are Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and The Waves. I think The Waves is my number one favorite. It consists primarily of alternating, interplaying monologues by a group of characters who grow up together in the book. The monologues comment on and imagine their collective and individual lives. To me it enacts most memorably the subjectivity, the personal emotion that is there within all of Virginia's beautiful lines.

"Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. The wave breaks. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room."

Clarice Lispector

Clarice is an amazingly brilliant writer, in my opinion. I imagine she was one hell of a person.

From The Hour of the Star:

"She mused in silence and the thought came to her: since I am, the solution is to be. The cockerel I mentioned earlier heralded yet another day. It sang of weariness. Speaking of poultry, the girl sometimes ate a hard-boiled egg in a snack-bar. Her aunt had always insisted that eggs were bad for the liver. That being so, she obediently became ill and suffered pains on the left side opposite the liver. For the girl was most impressionable. She believed in everything that existed and in everything non-existent as well. But she didn't know how to embellish reality. For her, reality was too enormous to grasp. Besides, the word reality meant nothing to her. Nor to me, dear God."

The Death Section

2011-04-15T06:07:00.000-07:00

Because I don’t think we have been morbid enough yet, I would like to write some more about death, specifically the many horrendous and/or bizarre methods of achieving death, to wit:

Standing in the way of an axe. And then getting fed to a wood chipper.

Self-inflicted gunshot to the temple.

Death by hemlock, as punishment for “corrupting the youth.”

Found wearing someone else’s clothing, lying dead on the streets of Baltimore after spending the previous night with “the jimjams,” or “jazz hands,” or “the staggers and jags,” or “the horrors,” that is, suffering from wicked wicked alcohol withdrawal, muttering the name “Reynolds” over and over again for some reason, then collapsing on the street, mumbling “Lord help my poor soul” before expiring.

From starvation, in a Viennese sanatorium, while suffering from “suicide headaches” and tuberculosis.

From pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess, after being confined to a cork-lined bedroom for 3 years.

In Bangkok, at the age of 53, electrocution by poorly grounded electric fan, while stepping out of the bathtub.

Hanging by a rope in a closet in Bangkok, following “accidental autoerotic asphyxiation.”

Accidentally slipping off a boat and drowning after “seven or eight” glasses of wine.

From peritonitis, on an ocean liner bound for Brazil, after swallowing a toothpick at a cocktail party.

Bleeding to death from a nosebleed on wedding night.

From pneumonia, while experimenting with freezing a chicken by stuffing it with snow.

Via smashing head on board while attempting a three-and-a-half reverse somersault in the tuck position at the World University Games.

From tuberculosis, while sipping champagne, with these last words: “I’m dying. It’s a long time since I drank champagne.”

“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”

“Moose…Indian…”

“Good-bye…why am I hemorrhaging?”

“Is it the Fourth?”

“Is it not meningitis?”

“Am I dying or is this my birthday?”

“Codeine…bourbon.”

“How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?”

“I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.”

“Ah, that tastes nice. Thank you.”

“I am still alive!”

“Ay Jesus.”

“I am not the least afraid to die.”

“I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring.”

“Does nobody understand?”

Via jumping into the thousand-foot crater of a volcano on the island of Oshima.

Via disembowelment and decapitation as a protest of the Westernization of Japan.

Via sticking head in oven with gas on.

Some claim barbiturates, others claim via wrapping a plastic bag around head, following allegations of plagiarism and suffering from an irregular heartbeat; suicide note reads: “I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity.”

Burned to death at the stake, coals raked back to expose the body, then burned twice more, following sexual molestation while being held in prison, all this due to “heresy.”

Found dead in backseat of white Renault parked for 10 days on a quiet Paris street; overdose of barbiturates and alcohol, suicide note reading: “Forgive me. I can no longer live with my nerves”; this following a FBI-planted, fabricated newspaper item claiming pregnancy out-of-wedlock, planted by Hoover as revenge for voicing support for the NAACP and the Black Panthers, which allegedly led to premature labor and a stillborn child; also following a previous failed suicide attempt via jumping in front of a Metro train.

Bullet to the jaw while standing on the second-floor balcony of a motel in Memphis.

With the words, “Let’s cool it, brothers,” followed by 16 bullets.

A bullet in the back, a bullet in the head, while riding in a limousine in Texas.

Shot 3 times in a crowded kitchen at a hotel, with a .22-caliber revolver.

4 bullets to the back outside the Dakota, by a man clutching a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.

4 bullets, in a drive-by on the Vegas Strip.

4 bullets to the chest, while stopped at a red light in San Francisco.

Death by bullets and grenades, while walking unarmed with 8 brothers in South Vietnam.

Death by self-immolation, in protest.

Death by gas chamber.

Via a jump into the Gulf of Mexico, exclaiming, “Goodbye, everybody!” after having been beaten for sexual advances on a fellow male crew member.

Via an internal hemorrhage caused by cirrhosis, due to a lifetime of heavy drinking.

Via propofol, lorazepam, and midazolam, at the age of 50.

Via complications from cosmetic surgery.

From AIDS, at the age of 42.

From congestive heart failure resulting from complications of pneumonia, after the words “I’m going away tonight” and 3 long, quiet breaths.

From natural causes, at the age of 91, after having lived in seclusion for 57 years.

Death by hanging from a patio roof rafter, after years of suffering from severe depression, after suffering a relapse and undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, to no avail.

[…]

You know I listened to that song, “Human After All,” on the bus today.

Those life-affirming “robots.”

Human beings in costume, faces hidden. Standing on a pyramid. Crowds of thousands.

In order to establish a connection.

To create a memorable moment in time.

For no other reason.

In the summertime.

In Grant Park, Chicago.

I have been there, to Grant Park, for Lollapalooza.

I am writing now; spring is approaching.

I am writing outside at a café in Paris, with croissant and café au lait. I am writing at a hookah bar on the island of Marmara, the sea Propontis bathing me in soft wet breezes. I am writing at a table by my window over the street, my apartment in Lakeview. I am writing lying down in what were once cornfields on my grandpa’s farm in Rockford. The air is crisp and cool; the sun is shining.

The Poetry of Steve Roggenbuck

2011-03-20T14:16:00.001-07:00

Hey people, if you didn't see it already, HTMLGIANT posted a piece by me called "The Poetry of Steve Roggenbuck." Thank you to Blake Butler for publishing it.

In the piece, I discuss Steve's two poetry collections, i am like october when i am dead and DOWNLOAD HELVETICA FOR FREE.COM, both self-published in book form and for free online, as well as Steve's Internet Poetry project, his videos, and his Facebook and Twitter activities, amongst other things. Also included is a 4-part video interview of me asking the poet some questions.

Response in the comments section has been mixed. Susie Anderson commented "yay boiz," and Elaine Sun praised my Brita filter analogy (from one of the videos), while someone posting under the name ":(" commented, "this is where beauty goes to die," and "letters journal" commented, "I don't think these are good poems," and added that they seem "sub-A Softer World to me." The negative comments, particularly those that expressed vitriol and little else, were referenced in M. Kitchell's post "On Criticism," published the following day. Kitchell, who was a vocal defender against shit-talkers in the comments section of my post, wrote something in the comments section of his post that I'd like to quote below:

"I think it's pretty easy to hate something without writing a scathing review of it. My concern is that I'm going to die some day, and whenever I think about how much time I've spent hating things I get remarkably pissed at the fact that that time would have been better spent either thinking about things that bring me pleasure or finding new things that are awesome."

"Traumahawk" by Mike Bushnell

2011-03-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

Mike Bushnell has been in the internet literary scene for a while, much longer than I, and Traumahawk is his first print book. The story of his history in the scene can be found here. He has had several pseudonyms, but Mike Bushnell is his name.

Traumahawk is a very emotional poetry collection that seems to be inspired by a painful breakup or perhaps by a strained on-again/off-again relationship. The poems are minimal and direct and earnest. The collection opens with a trauma of sorts, an image of a man barely escaping a wrecked car. It also introduces a narrator whose casual vernacular ("'aw heck' I say / 'it was nothing kid / it was nothing'") reminds me of how Bushnell sometimes speaks. With this metaphorical rendering of trauma in place, the collection proceeds with poems addressing the woman he loves and poems that describe his life without her.

Some of my favorite poems in the book, like "It Builds Our Barn," describe overwhelming happiness. "Telling You Makes Me Cry" describes the feeling of finally saying something to someone that you've been thinking for a long time.

Some of my other favorite poems portray loneliness. "Are You Imaginary" is a beautiful poem about loving someone from far away, from a safe distance. Bushnell writes:

my eyes are the eyes

that beg you

to affect my life

like a pinch

or a face slap

In "Reallyreally," the narrator's mind is made up, he wants to ask this woman to marry him:

goodgoddamm

I don't like food I'm not tired

the house ain't clean but I ain't cleaning

I wish I could ask you to marry me

The book is largely concerned with the narrator's relationship to this woman, but there are poems that reflect on the poetry-making itself and on people outside this intense relation of two. In "Once I Was A Terribleterrible," Bushnell writes, "I am the person that these things must happen to / so that people who can connect may sustain / and have something / to talk about." This struck me as an interesting take on emotionally vulnerable poetry. I like the phrase "people who can connect."

My favorite poem in the book is undoubtedly "Watching Baseball on Mute." Poncho Peligroso, 2011 poet laureate, was visiting when I was first reading the book, and this was the first poem that I read aloud to him (the first of several). It describes a lonely man watching a baseball game on mute and seeing a woman talking on her phone in the stands and feeling like he recognizes her. He thinks about getting up to hug the TV. This is how it ends:

because I watched someone connect

with someone else in the background

and that is just sad

who am I kidding

I kneel next to it

and embrace machine

Here is a video of lovely Ana C. reading one of the poems from the book, "Call Me a Convert Because I Really Do Believe In Love":

Swag the Dog

2011-03-09T16:56:00.000-08:00

James Swagney

Mick Swagger

Swagnum P.I.

Hi everybody

I haven't blogged here in a while. Life feels so empty now that the 2011 poet laureate isn't there when I come home at night...

Above you can see my homemade New Wave Vomit shirt. If you write New Wave Vomit on a white t-shirt, take a photo of it, and send it to Ana C., she will feature it on her new hype site, New Wave Vomit Swag. Kewl...

You can see Steve Roggenbuck, Brett Gallagher, and I reading poems and being goofy-ass bros on Ustream this past Sunday here. Features red wine, nuzzling, tongue, tweets, poems, shoutouts, and other things. Thank you to everyone who tuned in. We're hoping some of you will do your own Ustream broadcasts in the future.

***

I want to read more. Feel like I should work on my real life more, maybe... Feel like I actually live on the internet and not in the world.

***

Adam Robinson published my story "Serious European Art Film" at Everyday Genius. I am happy about that. I wrote the piece to read at the first edition of Cassandra Troyan's reading series, EAR EATER, on September 17th of last year, my 25th birthday. Tao Lin was there, and he was nice and took a video of me reading:

It's taken a while for that piece to be published. The nice thing is, I looked at it again, once it was accepted, recently, and made some changes, and Adam suggested some things, and I like the final version. Hurray

Negative Suck published a poem by me called "This Pretentious Twaddle Sure Sets A New Standard for Sentence-Driven Fiction." I'm not sure what to say about it.

Housefire published a piece by me. My title for it is "ALL CAPS NO PUNCTUATION," but it was written after being given a title or prompt by the editor, Riley Michael Parker, so it's published under that title, "We Are the First, We Are the Last."

***

My hair is getting long...

I've got two ebook projects to work on. One is a solo ebook for DJ Berndt's ebook series, Pangur Ban Party. That would be my first-ever collection or long-form thing. My goal is for it to be like an album you like to play a lot, and you have certain favorite songs but you can also sometimes play it all the way through if you're in the mood.

The second ebook project is called I LOVE MUSIC, and that will be a collaborative ebook with Steve Roggenbuck, which I think will use material from our mountains of emails to each other. Should be sillie + sweet...

***

I mailed out some more copies of Pop Serial #2 today. If you are owed a copy and haven't gotten one yet, here's why: I received copies at the end of December, just as I started a new job. I started the new job with no savings. I had no money left over from Kickstarter or anything else for mailing. So I've been mailing them in batches, a little at a time, as much as I can given my finances. My finances are improving, slowly, and I will get the magazines to you as fast as I can. I apologize for not communicating better about this, and I thank everyone for their patience and support. My email is stephen.dierks@gmail.com

M. Kitchell is designing an online home for the issue, which I'm happy about, both because I like his site design and because that way a lot more people can check out the magazine.

I plan to continue Pop Serial, both the blog and the magazine. I'm not sure yet what the next edition of the magazine will be like.

***

Do yall have any comments, questions, or suggestions for me? How is yalls lives?

Poncho Week

2011-02-21T04:35:00.001-08:00

The 2011 poet laureate, Poncho Peligroso, visited Steve Roggenbuck, Brett Gallagher, and I in Chicago, and stayed at my place for a week. The first weekend we went to see Never Say Never 3D and to a sweet Columbia Poetry MFAs party. Poncho demonstrated his awe-inspiring yoyo skills and got covered in hearts. Steve got high on pixie sticks and was carried on a chair, crowd-surfed, and did the wheelbarrow. Steve's Google bomb meme, designed to make Poncho the #1 Google result for 2011 poet laureate, was covered on HTMLGIANT (hi, Mike Kitchell!) and a photo from the party was used. Poncho is now the #1 result on Google for 2011 poet laureate. Sunday night, a racy, life-affirming Ustream live broadcast went down at Steve's apartment. Poncho's Statcounter had orgasms all week long. Poncho and I ate together, tweeted together, and had a great time. The following weekend, the lovely ladies of phiLOLZophy.com came to visit, and their Tumblr friend Meredith joined us, and we had an epic, drunken, sexy time. Poncho is gone now, and I miss him, I miss everybody.

hula hoops forever

2011-02-08T18:43:00.001-08:00

My friend, Michael Inscoe, has published "What the Fuck Does 'In Real Life' Mean If You Live In Front of Your Computer?" at his literary site, unsure if i will allow my beard to grow for much longer. Thank you, Michael. Includes the line "'What I mean is, you'd look good in baggy pants and a crop top, or something'" and the line "life is so stupid and exciting, yes."

My friend Steve Roggenbuck's forthcoming book/website, DOWNLOAD HELVETICA FOR FREE.COM, now has an official cover, by Osy Chung of Hong Kong.

Steve has also started a new tumblr called INTERNET POETRY and has released a doctrine explaining the thoughts and intentions behind the tumblr, which will publish submissions of internet poetry presented/created/distributed via guerilla tactics.

I just started reading Quartet by Jean Rhys. I have a shortage of books I really want to read on my bookshelf. I have read a lot of the books I picked up at used bookstores over the years, and I'd like to have new books/new authors to read.

I want to read The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.

I want to read A Certain Lucas by Julio Cortázar.

I want to read more Bolaño.

I wish there were more authors I knew I wanted to read.

The more I think about the book(s) I want to write, the more I am unsure what I want to read, what I like to read.

I know I like when books make me laugh. I reread the opening to The Catcher in the Rye the other day, and I laughed the hardest I've ever laughed while reading it, at nearly every line.

I know I like in Beckett how the lines are striking and beautiful but also sad and alone and brusque and gallows.

I read this story by Frank Hinton recently that inspired me, "The First Time."

I want to read and write things that fill me up and excite me about knowing people and being alive, that make small mysterious gestures.

lets get 2gether b4 we get much older

2011-02-05T09:17:00.000-08:00

Jessica Kirsch photographed Steve Roggenbuck and I by Lake Michigan for Steve's pre-release remix of DOWNLOAD HELVETICA FOR FREE.COM. As you can see, I hung from a tree branch with my legs spread wide while doing the Michael Jordan tongue as Steve held his poem. You can vote for your favorite "Steve's poem in real life" photo here.

I lost my goddamn motherfucking iPhone and am an idiot.

I love you

I've been working on some things.

I have an idea for my novel. I think it will be about a long-distance romance between two people who've never met IRL and then there will be a subplot/second strand re a relationship IRL. I think it will have 9 parts maybe. I'd like it to have 9 titles unofficially and 1 official title. Clarice Lispector, Tao Lin, J.D. Salinger. I don't know

I was feeling very calm and radiant before I lost my fucking iPhone (not looking for sympathy at all, just kinda miffed re loss of iPhone).

As Steve says, via Zen master Ummon, when he was sick, and someone asked him how he was, he said, "Sun-faced Buddha and moon-faced Buddha."

P.S. Poncho Peligroso is coming to Chicago next weekend and is sleeping at my house. Looks like I'll be not-sleeping/smiling a lot. Please feel free to suggest activities for Poncho, Steve, Brett Gallagher*, and I to engage in during Poncho's visit.

*Edited, bros

Interview Brett Gallagher

2011-01-24T04:45:00.000-08:00

I interviewed my friend, Brett Gallagher, on the occasion of his soon-coming ebook, Loop Loop Endogenous Nightscape, a collaboration with the artist Elizabeth Arnold, published by Paul Cunningham's Radioactive Moat. The book is language-rich and unique, and I thought I'd rather talk with Brett about it than review it. Brett and I met after he wrote about Pop Serial #1. He has since become my friend and contributed a piece called "Apropos of Nothing" to Pop Serial #2. Brett lives in Wheaton, IL and has visited numerous times to bro down with Steve Roggenbuck and I. Like Finnegans Dada, like lone room floorboard coffee dream, words of Loop Loop mystify gone settle in.

When/how/why did this become a book? When/how/why did this become a collaboration?

loop loop endogenous nightscape in time book share others thots of mind collaborative venture once come across elizabeth arnold's art like make scratch head say what are this work of abyssal graves sleeplessness shuttle astrolabe magnificant mesopelagic fluorescent epifauna of organic mindgrowth

What was your process like? How do you work with/think of words/language?

i hollow wind sing sung way thru creep of mind shadowplay against wall awake late hours reading notetaking spinal elongation of artist brush in dusty creak crack books local library produce spin of cpu north i and i affixed this face glance thru thots percolate stare at wall repeat until rest find i's and i asleep

words aral sea i say words excavator from seafoam of

Do you think of what you're doing as painting with words, as Steve Roggenbuck put it?

yes loop loop endogenous nightscape no inherent meaning pieces drawn from viewing mostly surreal and dada art journal immediate unconscious conscious thots allow space time distance permeate when time feel right hold desert in hand adorned cloak drowned shadow sit down think type word after before above other word until reach textual collage get across felt moment timespace

understand some pull meaning read different level okay fine hi hello thanks real statement wavecrash rush openhead gust blow thru nope shed yr second skin become less than imposter in unlit lightblack sky

What has your relationship with Paul Cunningham been like? Do yall text or gchat sometimes?

paul follow blog some point future email gchat paul enjoy gertrude stein quote from tender buttons we begin talk more often soon publish piece slab literary magazine which paul managing editor gchat each time we see other online now present

What have you been reading lately? Do you think it or other work has inspired your work?

during time thots creationing read much dada and surrealist literature awake hourcreep spent dissassembler mind w. prints other artistic mind automatic notetake journal beside soon fill observations core samples wordassociations later use inspire directioning channel thru which loop loop endogenous nightscape became

art more so literature inspirationing work of late sit think scan eye over page mindcreeps set in braincortex begin spinning type type thots secure mind moment previous

What's your sign? What do you look for in a girl?

intellect challenge me think not blind accept composure feel good about life talk other understands transience of earthpassing delight pass time together in spite certain stopwhir finality

Who or what excites you in the contemporary literary world?

who undoubtedly blake butler ben marcus lisa jarnot sam pink lyn hejinian

Boxers or briefs or boxer briefs?

boxers

What would you like to do next, writing-wise?

larger scale continue where with loop loop endogenous nightscape begin stitch certain coherency reflect deep deeper descent early modern art cubism futurism dada surrealism w. writing imagery those mayakovsky kharms kazimir malevich suprematist canvas soundscape erik satie create island stratovolcano wordtext built dreamscape nocturne night lit succession

Do you believe in love? What do you dream of at night?

sure i have repeated dreams where i ascend staircase in middle of house pitchblack rightside of street look around find self room small occult black magick books stack high dusty pentagram shine side case scan look look dim confuse exit walk out begin downstairs miss step fall murdered cloaked individuals terror what is this awake

thank you very much for the interview and your time, stephen.

Updatin

2011-01-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

Hey Yall,

Some quick news:

I read a piece called "What the Fuck Does 'In Real Life' Mean If You Live In Front of Your Computer?" at QUICKIES! reading series at Innertown Pub on 1.11.11. Video courtesy of my good friend, Steve Roggenbuck. Thank you to Lindsay Hunter and Mary Hamilton for having me. The text version of the piece is forthcoming at Michael Inscoe's literary site, unsure if i will allow my beard to grow for much longer.

Ana C. published five poems by me at New Wave Vomit.

Luna Miguel, a poet and translator living in Madrid, translated one of those poems, "longing is a word," into Spanish.

Many of my friends have ebooks or print books coming out. 2kdouble1 continues to seem exciting.

Steve and I have discussed doing a collaborative project called I LOVE MUSIC.

Ana and I have discussed doing some kind of collaborative project.

Print copies of Pop Serial #2 are slowly making their way out into the world.

M. Kitchell will be designing a website to house the magazine online.

Pop Serial #3 will likely happen in the future. I know of at least 4 people I'd like to add to the existing/ongoing roster.

Hung out at Cassandra Troyan and Sara Drake's last night for EAR EATER #3. Saw some nice readings/performances. Met Natalie Shapero. Leif Haven is back from France. Steve and I took the bus home together and determined that it was "fuckin cold out."

Some of my favorite short prose writers

2011-01-09T11:23:00.000-08:00

Some of my favorite short prose writers are Julio Cortázar, J.D. Salinger, Lydia Davis, Djuna Barnes, and Samuel Beckett.

Cortázar seems like an inimitable master of the short story to me. He has an interesting imagination, his language is idiosyncratic, and he often creates spring-loaded stories that "burst" in certain parts and surprise me. Some of my favorites are "A Yellow Flower," which was the inspiration for "Son of Sky-god"; "Continuity of Parks," which is a good example of the spring-loaded ending; "Blow-Up," the inspiration for the movie of the same name; "Bestiary"; "End of the Game."

Cortázar also wrote the novel Hopscotch, which is one of my all-time favorites, and he wrote the hard-to-classify book Cronopios and Famas, which I also enjoyed a lot. Cortázar is one of my favorite writers, overall, and is one of a number of Spanish-language authors that I have gotten into in the last couple years, along with Roberto Bolaño, Clarice Lispector, and Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.

J.D. Salinger wrote some short stories that I like a lot. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" is one of those short stories that seem perfect to me, which is interesting, because perfection seems impossible, and yet I honestly don't know what could be added to, removed from, or changed about the story to make it feel better. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" also seems spring-loaded and well-formed as Cortázar's stories are, in a way analogous to a finely composed pop song with nice verses, a very memorable chorus, and a sweet bridge. Sometimes I feel unsure how I feel re well-formed short stories, not Salinger's and Cortázar's, but other people's, because I have read plenty of well-formed short stories that don't make me feel anything, because they seem more concerned with being well-formed than with whatever emotions or thoughts/kernels might inspire a writer to write something, which is what I am "about"/like as a writer, I feel--I have an emotion or a kernel of a thought from somewhere, life or other art--and then I write, shape, rewrite some thing. However, I aspire sometimes to write a well-formed short story that feels personal and/or moving/interesting in the manner of some of Salinger's and Cortázar's stories, or at least to "improve" re the shape, form, and effect(s) of my stories/prose pieces.

Getting back to "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," it feels like a koan, in addition to being a well-done short story, which I like because I am interested in Zen.

I also like "For Esmé--with Love and Squalor" and "Teddy" by Salinger. But my favorite things by him are The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, and Seymour: An Introduction. I love J.D. Salinger. He is probably my favorite author and one of my biggest inspirations, along with James Joyce and Tao Lin, which is a weird trio of inspirations, I'd say. I wrote about J.D. Salinger for The Fanzine, and some associate editor published it while the main editor was attending the birth of his child, and then it was pulled, because it was too [something] and was not supposed to be published, but there was miscommunication between the editors, all of which I completely understood, but it's cached here somehow. Anyways...

I finally read Lydia Davis' Break It Down, and I loved it, especially "Story" (interesting; nice); "Break It Down" (idk, I like it); "The Letter" (bleak, nice); "Extracts from a Life" (love this one, Zen,sweet, moving); "Mothers" (said "damn" to myself after reading this one); "Two Sisters" (sweet fable); "The Mother" (brutal, extremely bleak); "Once a Very Stupid Man" (sweet); "Five Signs of Disturbance" (sweet). I look forward to reading more Lydia Davis.

Djuna Barnes wrote Spillway and Other Stories and I am a fan of it. I loaned it to Mary Chen, so I don't have it in front of me right now, but it is strange and menacing and sweet, in my opinion.

I read The Complete Short Prose (1929-1989) by Samuel Beckett and liked it a lot. Beckett is also a big inspiration for me. Before reading Beckett, I thought I might not like him or that I'd appreciate him but be bored. Turns out he is very funny, he writes beautiful sentences, and I feel absorbed while reading him no matter how much he rubs my face in shit. One of the standout qualities re Beckett for me is his ability to write memorable-seeming lines. He seems to really excel at writing lines that I feel the urge to underline. My Beckett books are underlined all to hell. My favorites from the short prose include "First Love" (funny, impressive, moving, bleak); "Texts for Nothing" (a little difficult to read but sweet, bleak); "All Strange Away" (sweet, another one in that The Unnameable/How It Is, etc. stream-of-words Beckett style that has been copied many times and never equaled, imho); "Ping" (bleak, intense); the "Fizzles" (interesting, "poetic," bleak); "Stirrings Still" (moving).

I highly recommend Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable, Watt, How It Is, and The Complete Short Prose by Beckett. If you have only read his plays, I feel like you are missing out big time.

OK, that'll be all for now. Thank you for reading. Some other stories I dig: "Good People" by David Foster Wallace, story 34 from AM/PM by Amelia Gray, "Airplane: Or, How He Talked to Himself As If Reciting Poetry" by Haruki Murakami, "Inner Compulsion" by Thomas Bernhard, "Gusev" by Anton Chekhov, "The Dead" by James Joyce, "No Matter How Many Times I Read Your Confession, There's One Thing I Just Don't Understand: Why Didn't You Kill the Woman?" by Ryu Murakami, and "A Historical Breakfast" by Russell Edson.

Son of Sky-god

2011-01-01T15:59:00.000-08:00

We are mortal, I know it sounds like a joke. I know because I found the one exception. I found him on a city bus, or he found me. His name was Julio. We spoke different languages but could understand each other perfectly. He had lived for more than 10,000 years. I didn’t believe at first, but then he showed me his diaries. They took up his whole house, the diaries. He wrote at least one new entry every day. He didn’t know the word “diary,” though. He called them “aspects of my spirit.” That seemed fanciful, but I didn’t say anything. “What do you write with?” I asked. He showed me his stylus. It was made from charcoal, he said. “Do you have a wife?” I asked. He smiled but didn’t answer. He pointed at the window. Inside, he said. I nodded. He made me lunch and watched me eat. We walked through his garden behind the house. There was a well in the center of the garden. There was a small pool of water gathered at the bottom of the well. Julio took my hand and pressed the charcoal stylus into my palm. Kill me, he said. Please kill me.

2kdouble1

2011-01-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, everyone!

I had a great year last year, mostly.

Defended Brandon Scott Gorrell's defense of Tao Lin on HTMLGIANT. Became embroiled in a historic shitstorm of notable proportions. Ceaselessly, and some say, robotically, rebuffed the advances of haters and haterettes. Began communicating with Brandon, Tao, and then others.

Started doing Pop Serial. Met many wonderful literary-ish and/or artsy people, including Roxane Gay, Rebekah Silverman, Tadd Adcox, Laura Szumowski, Amanda Marbais, Ian McCarty, Fred Sasaki, Steve Roggenbuck, Jessica Kirsch, Brett Gallagher, Cassandra Troyan, Sara Drake, James Payne, Lyra Hill, Dolly Lemke, Aris Bordeaux, Kelly Forsythe, Mary Chen, Sam Pink, Jordan Castro, Mallory Whitten, Andrew James Weatherhead, Lindsay Hunter, Mary Hamilton, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Robyn Pennacchia, Brandon Will, Jac Jemc, Andy Farkas, Kathleen Rooney, David Welch, Zach Dodson, Patrick Somerville, Elizabeth Arnold, Jacob Knabb, Jaimie Eubanks, Mike Kitchell, and Blake Butler.

Met Tao Lin, who is very nice and a big inspiration for me. Emailed with him, interviewed him, hung out with him, felt very happy seeing him in real life.

Hung out with Rebekah Silverman, Tadd Adcox, and Laura Szumowski, and met all their nice friends. Touched Brandon Will's hair.

Chilled with Landon Manucci and handed a copy of Pop Serial to Dave Eggers. Hung out with Steve Roggenbuck and Jessica Kirsch a lot. Felt and feel love, inspiration, and kinship from/toward Steve. Broed down numerous times with Brett Gallagher. Met and became fast friends with Cassandra Troyan.

Got my drank on with Reggie "OKCupid" Scruggs, Bob Marshall, Nick "Archie Powell" Junkunc, Mike "Muscles" Ewing, Adam "Melby" Melberth, Ryan and Laura Lynch, Emily Sorlie, and the incomparable force of nature/sex machine known as RJ "Rage" Schillaci. Met up with Kelsey Zigmund a bunch of times to drink and mope.

Visited Minneapolis. Saw my old roomie, Danell Norby. Met Jaimie Eubanks for a drink. Met Louisa Podlich and experienced my first photoshoot.

Hung out with Leif Haven again, and Sara Peck, and others from Columbia. Enjoyed hanging with Kelly Forsythe and teasing her about [things]. Re-met Carrie Lorig. Attempted and sometimes failed to meet Lindsay Teague at readings so she/I would know someone else there. Chilled with Michael Inscoe, Phillip Rex Huddleston, and friends when they were visiting Chicago.

Was the inspiration for a new hot drink/blackout aid called the Tully Bomb, created by Megan Boyle, which was sweeping the nation until The Man outlawed Four Loko/fun. "Overdid it" at a relevant house party with messy results. Was nursed back to health by wonderful friends Cassandra, Sara, and Sam, I think?

Worked for two weeks at American Apparel. Met some very nice people there... Got a job at Groupon. Experienced extreme relief re [getting a job at Groupon, decrease in financial worries and associated angst, to some degree, possibly].

Became good friends with people online, particularly the lovely Ana C. and Richard Chiem. Feel like I "must" meet them in real life. Have often pictured "frolicking" around a city with Ana, pointing at things, laughing, whispering things, and having a lot of fun.

Published two issues of Pop Serial.

Blogged a shit-ton in support of my friends.

Hosted the first-ever Pop Serial reading at Cafe Ballou. Felt very happy while watching everyone read. Had a great time hanging out with Jordan, Mallory, Andrew, Sam, Carrie, Mary, Cassandra, Brett, and Steve. Talked for a long while with Mary about [many things].

Got published for the first time, in New Wave Vomit, thanks to Ana C.

Got published by Metazen, thanks to Frank Hinton.

Got published by The Scrambler, thanks to Jeremy Spencer.

Got published by Thought Catalog, thanks to Brandon Scott Gorrell.

Published some things at HTMLGIANT, thanks to Blake Butler, and some reviews.

Didn't get published by anyone else. Hehe...

Read in public for the first time.

Was called "a hack" by Lily Hoang on HTMLGIANT; received strong support/refutation of this sentiment, courtesy of numerous people. Received an apology from Lily Hoang. No hard feelings. Just seemed memorable.

Left a bunch of crazy-ass, passionate, jocular, and/or inane comments on various lit blogs.

Felt, for the first time in my life, like being an author was possible and not just a dream.

Felt I had met kindred spirits, after what seems like a long wait, something I had wanted so much for so long whether I had realized it or not.

Felt a little bit closer to feeling like I am doing the things I know how to do and want to do.

Felt love for other people and for myself.

In 2kdouble1, I hope to chill more, write a novel, and investigate the popular musical subgenre black metal.

Story & Readings

2010-12-13T10:12:00.001-08:00

Metazen, which is edited by Frank Hinton, has published a story by me called "Upon Awaking." It features a lengthy description of a conversation in bed on Valentine's Day, 2009. Frank described the description as a paralytic thought helix.

I will also be in Metazen's Christmas Charity E-Book, along with Ana C., Jordan Castro, and others. If you donate money now, you will receive the e-book on Christmas Day. All proceeds benefit an orphanage in Cambodia.

I've been busier lately, so I haven't updated this in a while. Not sure if I want to keep posting book reviews here or not.

I will be reading with Sam Pink and two others at The Whistler in Chicago on Sunday, December 19th at 6 P.M. as part of the Orange Alert Reading Series, curated by Jason Behrends.

I will be hosting the first-ever Pop Serial reading at Cafe Ballou in Chicago on December 21st at 7 P.M. 939 N. Western Ave. Many friends will be in attendance and reading: the aforementioned Sam Pink and Jordan Castro, as well as Cassandra Troyan, Carrie Lorig, Feng Sun Chen, Leif Haven, Brett Gallagher, Andrew James Weatherhead, and Steve Roggenbuck. I will be telling jokes, shooting the shit, and talking about the readers and my feelings. I would love it if you came.

Greta Gerwig cried onscreen and it seemed real

2010-11-29T20:01:00.001-08:00

I like faces close up
and words that
come slow

Showers
and sunlight
and wet eyes feel good

Why has it been so long since I
played my trumpet?

May I blast a high note in your room?

Brautigan, Readings

2010-11-28T16:01:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody. It is almost December.

I read The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 by Richard Brautigan. I enjoyed it. It's about this guy who works and lives in a library, and he meets this woman, Vida, they have sex, she gets pregnant, and then they go to Tijuana so she can get an abortion. Like the other Brautigan books I've read, it has a fun tone and is written in a casual, sometimes conversational style.

I enjoyed the premise of him working and sleeping in a library, and I liked the fantasy of a woman coming into the library, a flirtation, and then them having sex in the library. Seems like the "An Historical Romance 1966" subtitle plus the events of the book could be interpreted as a winking reference to the "free love" movement that was happening at that time (the book was published in 1971). Also seems funny to set an historical romance 5 years in the past.

As is true of everything I've read by Brautigan so far, the premise and the feel of his work only partially explain the appeal of the books for me. There's also this unsettling element at work, that's barely there on the page.

Here is a part I liked:

"We were both tired, but not as nervous as we could have been facing the prospects of the day, because we had gone into a gentle form of shock that makes it easier to do one little thing after another, fragile step by fragile step, until you've done the big difficult thing waiting at the end, no matter what it is.

I think we have the power to transform our lives into brand-new instantaneous rituals that we calmly act out when something hard comes up that we must do.

We become like theaters."

I'm reading with Sam Pink and two others at the Orange Alert Reading Series at The Whistler on December 19th.

I've also arranged a big Pop Serial reading at Innertown Pub on December 21st. Jordan Castro will be in town, because he also has a group reading at Quimby's, and it looks like many other contributors from the Midwest area will also be in Chicago. I'll have more details later.

"Orange Juice"

2010-11-19T12:51:00.001-08:00

HTMLGIANT was nice enough to post my review of Orange Juice and Other Stories by Timothy Willis Sanders. I liked it. I also enjoy Timothy's blog.

If you live in Chicago, tonight I will be at Cassandra Troyan and Sara Drake's apartment for EAR EATER. 8 P.M., 1622 S. Allport St., Apt. 1. Leif Haven, James Tadd Adcox, Kendra Grant Malone, Sam Pink, and Ana C. will be reading. It's gonna be fun.

"apocalyptic free verse about dongs"

2010-11-17T08:46:00.000-08:00

I received a PDF of Poncho Peligroso's full-length poetry book manuscript, "The Romantic," from Poncho. The cover he designed features an image of Poncho exhibiting a serious facial expression while holding up a red Converse high-top.

I liked "The Romantic." It is ~90 pages of poetry, split up by the months of the year, which appear sporadically in large font on the page, sometimes crossed out. This graphic representation of the passing of time reminded me a little of the screen titles in the film (500) Days of Summer. While the passing of months is not presented non-chronologically, as in that film, "The Romantic" does open, unconventionally, with an epilogue, or rather, 2 epilogues.

"epilogue, part 1" expresses a desire to remain in a beautiful but necessarily impermanent moment in life with someone, while "epilogue, part 2" expresses a more rational yet still romantic (in my opinion) desire to be with someone and love him or her for as long as is reasonable/possible. With these 2 epilogues, Poncho expresses some of the duality upon which the rest of the poems build and which they complicate---namely, the poet's desire for transcendent love in a transient existence, and the struggles inherent to someone who has an overwhelmingly rational mind.

"fuck you i write what i want"

These poems exhibit a lot of what I perceive (via the internet) to be aspects of Poncho's personality: a light-hearted sarcasm, a fixation on sex, an endearing (to me) earnestness. An example of the first thing would be the lines "eventually, the oregon trail / developed into portland / whose bright idea was that." An example of the second would be the statement, now immortalized in a computer wallpaper designed by Steve Roggenbuck, "i want to do nothing but have unprotected sex with you forever." An example of the third thing would be the lines "i miss my dead cat from six years ago / i'm crying now."

Other poems indicate Poncho's sense of humor, such as "natural born salesmen," wherein the protagonist convinces a bunch of friends to crowd into his dorm room to watch "brazilian shit porn"---screaming, vomiting, and mass exodus ensue. My other favorite funny poem is "who doesn't love tibetan eagles," which contains the lines "if you don't love tibetan eagles you hate freedom / is what i'm saying here." Other poems demonstrate Poncho's self-consciousness about his privileged status as a white, middle-class male, as in the poem "why am i writing all this goddamn poetry." I felt like the poems had as much variety in tone and personality as the poet seems to, and that made me happy.

I like when poems or other creative works seem to embody the artist's personality, whether the work is autobiographical or symbolic, funny or sad (or both). Increasingly, I think this is something I value in nearly all of my favorite artists, for example: J.D. Salinger, Woody Allen, James Joyce, Jean-Luc Godard, Virginia Woolf, Federico Fellini, Pablo Picasso, Kanye West, Tao Lin, Andy Warhol, John Lennon, et al.

I think one of the reasons these artists are so popular is because their personality is so strong in their art, and thus the work "implants" an idea of the artist-as-person in the reader/viewer's mind and "lives" there in the imagination. In my experience, imagining an artist as a person either while "taking in" their work or afterwards can cause me to experience a fresher awareness of myself, my surroundings, or, abstractly, my life. In this way, the barrier between art and life becomes blurred and porous, which is exciting. Life as art, art as life, to me, is a fulfillment of life's already existing capacity for ecstatic joy, for creative, natural release. Which is an abstract way of saying, art can be exciting to me, and when it is, I am also more excited about life, and that feels great, and makes me think life is sweeter than I previously felt it was.

This quality in my favorite writing could be described as "superliterary," which I would define as "beyond literary," extra-dimensional, a deepening, to me a positive thing, not negative (as a certain very confident writer deemed it elsewhere).

Got a little sidetracked, yall.

Getting back to Poncho's manuscript, Poncho's style reminds me a little of Tao Lin's at times, although I didn't feel like he was "aping" Tao very much at all, and the verbal expression of his self-consciousness and mental processing, as well as his Brief Interviews-like presentation of male sexuality, reminds me a little of David Foster Wallace. Also, interestingly, literally just after I thought the words "Lydia Davis," the poem I was reading referenced "cremains," and that word is the basis for a Lydia Davis piece.

"hey pretty girl / i like you"

"The Romantic" feels like a whole work, by which I mean I felt satisfied at the end of it, like I had spent some time in another person's head, and he had tried to show me many of his thoughts and feelings, including the painful ones and the ones that are hard to express.

Sup

2010-11-16T03:50:00.001-08:00

Hi, people. After a lot of soul-searching and a hot shower, I have decided to resume blogging here. Just kidding, but seriously, you guys, the Kickstarter for Pop Serial #2 was a success. Thanks to all you wonderfuls, we raised $1000 (something like $900 after Amazon gets their cut via you have to have an Amazon business account for Kickstarter). The layout is done, although I am inserting some last-minute edits and revisions. I will announce an official release date for Pop Serial #2 as soon as I have one. I want to do everything I can to make the magazine turn out the way I want it to. Thank you for your support and patience.

While I was not blogging here, Thought Catalog published a few more pieces by me re stand-up comedy, R&B music, and MS Paint/minimalist art, respectively. Seems like I will be writing for Thought Catalog indefinitely.

I suggest supporting and/or contributing to the Metazen Christmas Charity E-Book.

I plan on writing more book reviews and things soon.

Also, psyched for Friday, bros. Cassandra Troyan and Sara Drake, my new friends as well as Pop Serial contributors, will be throwing down via EAR EATER reading series edition 2. The reading starts at 8. The address is 1622 S. Allport St., Apt. 1. (I live in Chicago, yall, btw, if you didn't know).

The readers at this event will be Ana C. and Kendra Grant Malone via Skype and Sam Pink, Leif Haven, and James Tadd Adcox in the flesh. Art by Sara, Lyra Hill, and Elizabeth Arnold will be displayed. Steve Roggenbuck and I will be there, probably laughing a lot and occasionally touching each other. I plan on doing a couple Tully Bombs. I hear there's a dance party somewhere in Pilsen that night, too, and I love dance parties. I hope they play some of that new Robyn hotness.

Kickstarter

2010-10-23T09:22:00.001-07:00

Hey people,

I have started a Kickstarter to raise money for issue 2 of Pop Serial. It will function as a pre-order. Only 100 copies are currently available for non-contributors (contributors get a free copy), so the first 100 people to give $10 or more will be guaranteed a copy. There are prizes available for those who donate more than $10, such as free books from Tao Lin or Jordan Castro, art prints by Elizabeth Arnold, and more.

Coverage of this event is here: The Rumpus, HTMLGIANT, PANK, The Well-Read Wife, Chicago Now

The line-up is stacked:

Tao Lin, Noah Cicero, Heather Christle, Sam Pink, Daniel Bailey, Brandon Scott Gorrell, Kendra Grant Malone, Matthew Savoca, Ben Brooks, Brandi Wells, Prathna Lor, Audun Mortensen, Frank Hinton, Miles Ross, Megan Boyle, Michael Inscoe, Jordan Castro, Ana C., Cassandra Troyan, Cody Troyan, Brittany Wallace, Feng Sun Chen, Carrie Lorig, Rebecca Olson, David Fishkind, Andrew James Weatherhead, Erik Stinson, Richard Chiem, Shannon Peil, Brett Gallagher, Ben Rosamond, Leif Haven, and Steve Roggenbuck

Art by Aidan Koch, Mallory Whitten, Sara Drake, Lyra Hill, Ryan Manning, Philip Tseng, Van Jazmin, Elizabeth Arnold, Tracy Brannstrom, Mrinalini Kannan

I appreciate your interest and support, everybody.

Poetry

2010-10-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

The new issue of The Scrambler e-zine has been posted. Includes 2 poems by me, "Catcher" and "I'm not sure what we were ever doing," as well as 2 poems by my friend, Cassandra Troyan.

Rhetoric, Logic, Utopian Ideals

2010-10-15T09:59:00.000-07:00

Thought Catalog has published a piece by me, titled "Rutgers University Professor Calls For 'Controlled Extinction' of Meat-Eating Animals."

Interview with Tao Lin

2010-10-12T21:22:00.001-07:00

HTMLGIANT has posted part 1 of my interview with Tao Lin.

And here's part 2.

What is Nobrow?

2010-10-08T05:04:00.001-07:00

Thought Catalog has published a piece by me, titled "What is Nobrow? Is it Different From Postbrow?" Includes references to Pop Art, Brandon Scott Gorrell, and Waka Flocka Flame.

"Four Stories" at Metazen

2010-10-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

Metazen has published "Four Stories" by me. Metazen is edited by Frank Hinton.

"Four Stories" inspired a post at HTMLGIANT by Lily Hoang in which she claimed that my piece was a "plagiarism" of Joshua Cohen's piece published earlier this year at Everyday Genius. Hoang also called me "a hack," for which she later apologized.

"The Condemned" by Noah Cicero

2010-10-01T10:17:00.001-07:00

I liked this book. It is Noah Cicero's second novel, published in 2006. It is composed of seven parts. The protagonist/narrator varies, but the setting is almost always Youngstown, Ohio. Tao Lin gave me a spare copy he had.

The novel felt essayistic to me, in that the different narrative strands seemed linked to a clearly stated thesis. The form of the book seemed to be determined by themes and ideas as opposed to being plot- or character-based. There was also a sense of freedom in the book. The shifts between sections and sometimes within sections were sometimes made without concern for whether or not it "made sense" or would "read smoothly." I liked that, partly because it kept me engaged and sometimes surprised me a little.

The thesis of the book, as I understand it, is that society and the individual are fucked, and people are particularly fucked because they have been self- and otherwise deluded and have been repressed in their sexuality. The book seems to say that if people would be honest with themselves and with other people, honest about what they do (be it fix cars, teach classes, give lapdances (several characters are strippers)) and what they want, they would be marginally happier or at least not full of shit.

There is a particular emphasis on sex and sexuality in the book. Cicero writes repeatedly that sex, particularly uninhibited and "honest" sex (honest in the sense that one sees sex as "simply" a healthy, pleasurable activity as opposed to a dramatized institution), is a rare and wonderful good in the world. There are many scenes of sex, some of it consciously "depraved" and seemingly cathartic. Many of the characters are open to homosexual attractions and sex. There is a defense if not an affirmation of prostitution and stripping. I felt that the depictions of "depraved" or violent sex were effective in that they felt "realer" or more thought/image-provoking to me than many other sex scenes I have read in books.

In the final part of the novel, "Civilization," Cicero ranges even more freely than previous parts, imagining a visit from the President to Youngstown, followed by a mass murder of its citizens by the U.S. military; providing amusing commentary on an abbreviated history of civilization; beginning another section by saying "Let's get personal," before presumedly speaking directly as author, removing even more filter from the writing voice; scenes of a man and a woman eating in a diner and of the narrator alone and suicidal and despairing; hilarious parodies of church slogans; the narrator offering some last words.

The paragraphs are a sentence or two each, sentagraphs. The style is clipped. Direct. Showing and telling at once. Exaggerated. Specific. Narrative and non-narrative. Blows and blows to the body then collapsing on the floor.

"I sat down on the floor and looked at her.

She was crying.

Then she stood up and lied down on the floor.

Her face had a look of serenity and peace.

It was weird.

She sat like that for ten minutes.

Not talking.

Just lying there still and relaxed.

She eventually came out of it."

"Everything is Quiet" by Kendra Grant Malone

2010-09-23T14:33:00.001-07:00

I liked this book a lot, as I expected. Kendra Grant Malone is one of my favorite contemporary poets. These poems are about a woman living in New York City, drinking wine, crying, having sex, talking to her boyfriend, feeling angry, pitying herself, chasing pigeons, reflecting on her family members, her disabled brother---so many things.

The poem "Sylvia Plath At Sixteen" made me cry on a bus.

"I Never Believed In God" seems like a perfect poem, if such a thing exists.

"Little Girls Are Women Somehow In Some Way."

I don't know what to say. There's a lot of human emotion in this book.

"there is really no way / for me to explain how / really very pretty and / totally enthralling you are"

"i understand you / better when / you speak your / language rather / than mine"

"i'm not sure / how many more years / i can go on with this / being the only / the only / apparently the only / the only / the only one who loves / my dear brother"

"i chase things / that no one views / as precious / so that i am not looked upon / as a monster / (although i am)"

"all i can think of / is that i want you all / to be quiet / very quiet / quiet as death / so i can think about / myself / without your cries / and wails and fits / of interpretation"

"Ventriloquism" by Prathna Lor

2010-09-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

My review of Ventriloquism by Prathna Lor is at Smalldoggies Magazine.

"Frowns Need Friends Too" by Sam Pink

2010-09-22T07:45:00.001-07:00

This book impressed me a lot. I liked it very much. It is 150 or so pages of Sam Pink's poems, written between 2007 and 2009. This book was very satisfying to me. By the end of it, I had spent a lot of time with this person, this narrator of all these poems, and I liked him, liked the blunt and the beautiful things he said, felt as if he had made me feel better about being alive even as he had reminded me how shitty things can be. And I felt like he had tried to be a poet but only his kind of poet, as he defined it, as he could do it, and I don't see any other way to be even remotely satisfied with my work than to be my own kind of writer.

The poems seem taken mostly from real life experiences and thoughts and emotions, with some use of fantastical or obviously fictional elements. I repeatedly found myself surprised by a line mid-poem, felt like the poem was "blowing my mind." Many of the poems seemed metaphysical, which I really liked. There seemed to be an awareness of nothingness as well as of everything being related.

When I first read some of Sam Pink's work online, I immediately appreciated it, but I think I kept telling myself things like, "He's really talented and funny, but why is he so negative all the time? Isn't it 'easier'/'a cop out' to be negative all the time?" Having read this book, I feel like I had an ignorant idea of what Sam's poems were doing. I also think the moments of direct tenderness in his work (which I may have initially missed or hadn't yet encountered) are all the more moving because of the negative-sounding things that surround them. The thought that this book kept giving me was that condemning one's body and oneself and other people can be some sort of paradoxical renewal of mind and body, given the knowledge that time and the human body and everything is limited and wasting away. By making bodies more tangible and rotten, by violence in word or thought, by giving oneself a concussion of the heart, one can feel alive again.

I loved many lines in this book, but here are some:

"But yes, jump off a building onto a smaller building and do that until you are on the ground then dig a hole and act like you don't want to ever see anyone again."

"I am horny to be a dead bird smashed in a drinking fountain at the park."

"Everyone is exactly the same. Everyone is describing the same thing. I am part of the thing being described."

"Little kids and animals like me."

"...I was very cold lying on the banks of a small pond in the middle of the woods alone, talking to a bald dandelion."

"I need to find someone who will buy walkie talkies with me, and then go out into public and walk side by side saying, 'fuck you, over' back and forth."

"There is a point at which the frequency and nature of your communications come close to actually forming a relationship and it is that point I have searched out with scientific care."

Tao / 25 / Reading

2010-09-19T09:01:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of fun this week. On Tuesday, I went to Quickie's, which is a really fun reading series. It is run by Mary Hamilton and Lindsay Hunter, who are both very nice. In honor of the recent release of Lindsay's book, Daddy's, all the readers did a version or send-up of Lindsay's trademark southern reading voice and imaginatively sexual stories.

On Wednesday, Brett Gallagher came to town again to stay with me. Tao Lin was in town, and we had plans to see both of his readings. Tao had told me when he was arriving. He was going to get some sleep at a hotel after having slept very little the last couple of days.

Brett and I killed time doing various things and then headed over to Wicker Park. We debated whether or not we wanted to get dinner beforehand or not. We decided to head over to Quimby's because the reading was starting soon. We saw Sam Pink. Brett and I said hi to him and talked with him a little bit. Steve Roggenbuck and Leif Haven showed up together. They have classes together at Columbia. I am happy they know each other. We talked and then Tao showed up. He came over and said hi and then he went to get ready for the reading. People laughed at what Tao read, which was the opening of Richard Yates (one man who was standing behind some bookshelves to the side of where people were seated for the reading was "doubled over" "uncontrollably laughing" and sort of "averting"/"swinging away" his face whenever a new "fit" of laughter would begin). I enjoyed the reading. Afterwards there were some questions. My favorite was when a guy asked a long, involved question re Tao being a vegan and how that impacts his writing or what he thinks about it and then Tao said "I'm not a vegan" and everyone laughed. People brought up books to be signed and Roggenbuck had Tao sign his copy of Dante's Inferno.

After the reading, Leif left, and Brett, Steve, and I were joined by Cassandra Troyan and then by this "sex journalist" who had recently interviewed Tao. She said we were getting dinner with Tao. We went to a Chinese place nearby and had dinner. I was glad she was there because she seemed confident and talked about interviewing "johns" and "cougars" and attending orgies. She liked to do "claw hands" and hiss at us. She did it several times in Tao's direction. At one point she got up and walked over to some couches away from our booth and laid out on a couch. She stayed there for a while, occasionally looking over and hissing at us.

After dinner, we said goodbye to the sex journalist and Cassandra, and Tao, Steve, Brett, and I went to a nearby coffee place called The Wormhole. We hung out there for a while joking around and Tao did some internet things. Tao went back to his hotel.

Thursday, Brett and I went to Tao's reading at the Book Cellar. The sex journalist was there and Steve Roggenbuck came again too. There was less laughter at the second reading. Andrew James Weatherhead's parents were there and I introduced myself and talked to them. Afterwards, a guy who had been asking questions/making statements in the Q&A re Richard Yates the person came up to Tao and talked with him for a while. He seemed to have become inebriated during the reading and talked for a long time in a loud voice. At one point he suggested that Tao "make a plaster cast of Barack Obama and sell it on Ebay." After the reading, Tao, Steve, Brett, the sex journalist, and I got Indian food. We said goodbye to the sex journalist at the train.

Tao didn't have a hotel for the second night, so I offered to let him stay at my place. We took the train back to Southport, and then we hung out at my place for a while. I had told Tao that my roommates were going to a Dave Matthews Band concert, and he looked up YouTube videos of Carter Beauford demonstrating various drumming techniques. At some point conversation shifted to death metal and hardcore music, maybe because Steve used to play drums in a death metal band called Scopata di Morte. Brett and Steve discussed what was the "heaviest" song they had ever heard. Tao said repeatedly that he would like to hear "the heaviest song ever made." We looked at death metal videos on YouTube. Tao shot a video of my bedroom to show Jordan Castro and Mallory Whitten. We went up to the deck on my roof and sat for a while talking and trying to load a video of Scopata di Morte playing at Demonfest in 2005. The Internet was slow on the roof and wouldn't load to the part Steve had told us about where he did an impromptu cowbell solo. Eventually Steve left, I went to sleep, and Brett and Tao slept in the living room. In the morning, Brett left to catch a train back to Wheaton. Tao took a shower and then left to work on things by himself. He left me a spare copy of Noah Cicero's novel, The Condemned, for me and Brett and Steve to share. He said he would see me at the reading that night at Cassandra Troyan's apartment.

I edited my piece, "Serious European Art Film," that afternoon, and then met up with Steve and his girlfriend, Jessica, to go to Cassandra's place. It was my birthday. I was/am 25. It was the first time I had done a reading. There was a house party-type atmosphere at Cassandra's place. I was happy to meet Cassandra's friends and happy that people were there (I had already remarked to several people that I was happy to have met Cassandra). I had found out that afternoon that my friend, James Tadd Adcox, who edits Artifice magazine with Rebekah Silverman, coincidentally lives in the apartment directly above Cassandra's. So he came to the reading with Laura Szumowksi, which I was very happy about. Tao arrived, and he had bought me strawberry beer and a pair of organic socks. I felt comfortable and happy being around Tao and talking to him. I especially liked talking to him one on one, pointing at things and talking in soft voices. I was surprised how comfortable I felt after only a small amount of time.

People read: Richard Wehrenberg Jr. via Skype (very charming guy/nice "presence"/reading voice); Colin Winnette (funny/likable); Steve read his visual poems and everyone laughed a lot, it was great (video here, courtesy of Tao); Rebecca Cooling-Mallard read a piece that was accompanied by some nice-looking/intriguing images projected on a screen (interesting juxtaposition between the words and images); I read my piece (video here courtesy of Tao); Cody Troyan read via Skype (he seemed confident/I liked his "demeanor"; I felt an immediate "urge" to come up to the laptop screen after he read and "shoot the shit" with him); finally, Cassandra, who read poems as well as did a performance art thing where she walked out the front door with a megaphone and had someone on the street read one of her poems as we looked through the windows (Steve and I picked up the two laptops with Richard and Cody's heads in them and carried them to the window so they could see too) (there was a loud street festival going on right outside). I liked Cassandra's performance, and also what she did after that, which was stand silently and stare at the audience while "Whatever You Like" by T.I. played.

I enjoyed the reading a lot. I was excited to meet everyone. Tao was leaving to catch his 6 A.M. plane to Michigan. I had said goodbye inside, but when I walked out the front door a few minutes later, Tao was still there, about to walk away with Steve and Jessica. I said something and then they started walking down the block and we waved at each other and I stood on the stoop.

I crashed on Cassandra's fold-out couch. People came back to the apartment from the bars at 5 A.M. and blasted some music, including "Birthday Sex" by Jeremih. I woke up at 8:30, folded up the couch, and left.

"Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs" by Ellen Kennedy

2010-09-08T12:04:00.001-07:00

I liked this book. It contains 3 stories and 20 poems. It was the first publication by Muumuu House and is now in its second edition. Steve Roggenbuck loaned me his copy.

The poems and stories seem to describe the events and emotions in a person's life during and after a significant relationship. The protagonist and other characters are sometimes given the names of famous people, including Woody Allen, Norm Macdonald, and Ned Vizzini, who, amusingly, is most famous for a novel called Be More Chill. The characters seem to be sad and lonely and occasionally very happy. There also seem to be a lot of poems that suggest how depressing it can be to feel alienated from your peers or family in addition to the depressing aspects of existing at all.

In the context of unadorned, declarative sentences and very realistic events and directly expressed emotions, the aspects of the book that seemed more imagined than personally experienced stood out to me. One example is how the first story, "Eoody Mobby," opens, with a smoothie vender accidentally running over and killing a sleeping homeless woman with his cart. There are also a number of poems that use various animals to convey ideas and feelings, as in "Manatees," where a catalogue of different animals in different locations doing different things culminates in the image of "a lost manatee orbiting the earth [...] not feeling safe or relaxed but rather feeling a profound sense of loneliness and desperation with a complete loss of hope in ever finding a meaning in existence." Also intriguing to me was how apparently female characters were sometimes given the names of male celebrities, as in the first story, where the name Woody Allen is given to a character who appears to be a stand-in for the poet.

Many poets are praised for the way they use form or play with language or express their politics or try to reshape experience. I can appreciate those things. But what I like most of all in poetry, in a poet, is a way of seeing and feeling that makes me shiver and well up. I read the title poem, "Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs," a simple informative declaration that the poet is going to send a package to someone with their name on it and send it, and then an "okay?", and I felt a surge of emotion. I like not knowing quite why.

"Rest your face on the other side of my neck

Close your eyes

Wait for sleep"

"Paterson" by William Carlos Williams

2010-09-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

I liked this book. I enjoyed a much greater percentage of it than I did of Volume I of his Collected Poems. It had a lot of interesting ideas about poetry and a lot of memorable lines and sections.

Paterson is a city in New Jersey near where William Carlos Williams lived. He seems to have made an effort in this book to evoke both the history of a place, an American city, and the life of an individual, the poet, himself. This seems effective to me as a framing/guiding device for the book, although I tend to be most interested in the individual, in people.

Paterson is composed of five books, the fifth of which Carlos Williams added late in life, after people assumed the series of Paterson books was over. He apparently also made some effort, despite his failing health, to begin a sixth book, but only fragments from that are included at the end of the book. This extended project, added to until death, reminds me of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which had, finally, a "deathbed edition."

I don't know of a concise way to summarize the techniques and subjects covered in this book, which contains, alongside poems, prose, letters from other poets, and newspaper clippings. So I will include some of my favorite lines from the various volumes and say, in closing, that this book seems like a very impressive achievement, the result of many years of thinking and feeling.

BOOK ONE (1946)

"Say it! No ideas but in things."

"Which is to say, though it be poorly / said, there is a first wife / and a first beauty, complex, ovate--- / the woody sepals standing back under / the stress to hold it there, innate / a flower within a flower whose history / (within the mind) crouching / among the ferny rocks, laughs at the names / by which they think to trap it. Escapes! / Never by running but by lying still---"

BOOK TWO (1948)

"Only my writing (when I write) is myself: only that is the real me in any essential way. Not because I bring to literature and to life two indifferent sets of values, as you do. No, I don't do that; and I feel that when anyone does do it, literature is turned into just so much intellectual excrement fit for the same stinking hole as any other kind."

BOOK THREE (1949)

"The province of the poem is the world / When the sun rises, it rises in the poem / and when it sets darkness comes down / and the poem is dark"

"The place sweats of staleness and of rot / a back-house stench . a / library stench / It is summer! stinking summer / Escape from it---but not by running / away. Not by 'composition.' Embrace the / foulness / ---the being taut, balanced between / eternities"

BOOK FOUR (1951)

"---while he was still in the hotel business, a tall and rather beautiful woman came to his desk one day to ask if there were any interesting books to be had on the premises. He, being interested in literature, as she knew, replied that his own apartment was full of them and that, though he couldn't leave at the moment --- Here's my key, go up and help yourself.

She thanked him and went off. He forgot all about her.

After lunch he too went to his rooms not remembering until he was at the door that he had no key. But the door was unlatched and as he entered, a girl was lying naked on the bed. It startled him a little. So much so that all he could do was to remove his own clothes and lie beside her. Quite comfortable, he soon fell into a heavy sleep. She also must have slept.

They wakened later, simultaneously, much refreshed."

BOOK FIVE (1958)

"It is the imagination

which cannot be fathomed.

It is through this hole

we escape . ."

"AM/PM" by Amelia Gray

2010-09-03T15:26:00.001-07:00

I liked this book. I was paging through it at a bookstore and found myself really enjoying it, and laughing, and saying "damn" when I'd get to the end of a story, so I bought it. The book contains 120 micro-stories or short shorts, whatever you want to call them, stories of less than a page. Nearly every story is, in my opinion, remarkably smart, very carefully made, very precise in its prose, often funny. The stories seemed emotional and philosophical, sad and joyful and wise. The book's been out for a while, so I'm probably the last person to discover this.

The stories vary widely, but a common thread seems to be an existential outlook on life manifested in either everyday events or creatively imagined scenarios. Some characters and scenarios recur throughout the collection. One of my favorite recurring scenarios involves two friends apparently trapped in a box, talking in the dark. Most characters are identified only by their names, but I felt Gray achieved an impressive depth and subtlety of characterization via the characters' actions, words, and thoughts. The stories seemed very exactingly written, and interested in emotions as much as ideas. They seemed like jokes, like aphorisms, like life.

It reminded me a little of Barthelme, if he were more personal, less flamboyantly erudite. It seems to be in the tradition of Russell Edson and Lydia Davis, fellow writers of concise wowers. This book impressed me a lot.

"Just because you made it warm doesn't make it yours: A lesson for felines.

Feline Posits: What if one makes it warm for a long time?

A Response: I will still put it on the towel rack, because it is still a towel.

Feline Posits: What if one conveys pride of ownership via claws?

A Response: Nothing is truly owned, supporting nothing is truly yours.

[...] Feline Posits: What is to become of us, then, and our loneliness?

A Response: Be blessed with the temporary nature of the towel, and of your body."

"Pan" by Knut Hamsun

2010-09-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

I liked this book. It is subtitled "From the Papers of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn," and Thomas is the narrator throughout the book until an addendum of sorts, or an unusual additional section at the end, which is purportedly a document written by someone who knew Glahn. The main narrative line or plot involves Thomas' relationship with a woman named Edvarda. I loved the parts with Edvarda. She seemed like an interesting and unpredictable character. They live in a rural part of Norway, and Thomas spends a lot of time alone, often walking through the woods or down roads alone until he runs into other people. There are a lot of interesting descriptions of nature, and the book felt calming and meditative to me in certain sections.

The prose seemed concise and poetic. I liked how the form, the shape, of the chapters and paragraphs seemed creative and intuitive. I also liked how the narrator switched freely between the past tense and the present tense, as if reliving or heightening the sensation of moments that occurred in the past. What was perhaps most intriguing to me about the book was the juxtaposition of the natural imagery and romantic-seeming moments with a very subtle feeling of uncertainty and menace. The section at the end, narrated by someone else, complicates the preceding narrative and casts doubt on the nature of Thomas Glahn. I definitely want to read more books by Hamsun.

"At this moment someone came quickly toward us, everyone saw her, it was Edvarda. She comes straight up to me, says a few words and falls on my neck---she clasps her arms around my neck and kisses me on the lips again and again. She says something each time, but I can't hear what it is. I couldn't understand the whole thing, my heart had stopped, I just noticed the burning look in her eyes. When she let go of me, her little bosom rose and fell. There she stood, lingering, with her dusky face and neck, tall and slim, with flashing eyes, completely reckless; everyone was staring at her. For the second time I was thrilled by her dark eyebrows, which rose in a high curve on her forehead.

But good God, the girl had kissed me in front of everybody!

'What is it, Miss Edvarda?' I asked, and I hear my blood throbbing, hear it as it were from my throat, it prevents me from speaking clearly.

'Oh, nothing,' she answers. 'I just felt like it. It doesn't matter.'"

"Trout Fishing in America," "The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster," and "In Watermelon Sugar" by Richard Brautigan

2010-08-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

I bought this book that collects together two novels and one poem collection by Richard Brautigan. I liked it. The first thing I liked was the cover of Trout Fishing in America (I liked the covers of the other two books as well, which are reproduced inside). I have thought in the past that it would be cool if authors put photos of themselves or something from their real life on the covers of their books. Trout Fishing in America's cover has a photo of Brautigan with a woman in front of a statue of Benjamin Franklin.

I found Trout Fishing in America consistently amusing. Occasionally the humor felt silly in an unfunny way, but mostly it was witty and made me think the writing was deceptively casual. The style often seems simple or conversational, but the turns in logic and the way he ends paragraphs or startled me with a sentence or mysteriously closed out his often very short chapters was very interesting and satisfying to me. Also intriguing to me was the way Brautigan uses Trout Fishing in America as an all-purpose proper noun and theme. There's a character named Trout Fishing in America Shorty, and something to do with trout fishing is included in nearly every chapter. The repetition and the creative use of the phrase and concept suggested to me a novel-long building of an abstract notion through concrete people and things. The chapters are as creative and linguistically precise as a great collection of poems, and the recurrent notion of fishing, of an American pastime as fluid metaphor, seemed effective to me.

All three of these books are creative and feel lived-in, made me think Brautigan lived a fun life, but that is especially true of the poetry collection, The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. These poems are very short and very charming, in my opinion. The book and many of the poems are dedicated to a "Miss Marcia Pacaud of Montreal, Canada." I like that. There are sexual poems, poems about sadness that didn't make me feel sad, joyful musical poems, poems with real-life people as protagonists (there's a series of poems with Baudelaire doing various things that I liked a lot). I really enjoyed this book a lot. Brautigan seems like he'd be fun to hang out with.

I liked In Watermelon Sugar as well, but it seemed slightly more belabored than the others. Rather than flitting from poem to poem or coming at a theme from fresh angles every page or so, this book seems to have something closer to a "proper novelistic form" with a story and more explicitly developed themes. It seemed very creative and charming to me, like the others, but I thought it a dragged a bit, despite its short chapters, and hammered home its points a bit more. In this book there are several recurrent words used as themes---this time it's watermelon sugar, iDEATH, and inBOIL. A group of characters hang in and around a place called iDEATH, and many of their household items and clothes are made from watermelon sugar. There's a backstory about tigers and a falling out with a character called inBOIL. The falling out seems to be over one's attitude toward iDEATH, or perhaps simply death. I enjoyed the story, but I like Brautigan best when he is free to wander wherever his whim, because his mind seems as sharp as it is funny as it is joyful even in sadness.

"listening to The Mamas and The Papas

THEY'RE GREAT

singing a song about breaking

somebody's heart and digging it!

I think I'll get up

and dance around the room.

Here I go!"

"The Voice Imitator" by Thomas Bernhard

2010-08-18T17:22:00.001-07:00

I liked this book. It made me laugh a lot. There are 104 stories in it, each no more than a page long, some as short as a sentence or two. They are anecdotes drawn from newspaper reports, stories people told Bernhard, and his own experience. Each is like a fable or a joke. I actually laughed my ass off on a regular basis while reading this book. I highly recommend it. I read the Kenneth J. Northcott translation.

Thomas Bernhard had an incurable lung disease, tuberculosis, throughout most of his life. Perhaps relatedly, this book is consistently morbid and its humor is very dark. But no matter how brutal the satire in these stories, or how misanthropic, I never felt alienated from the author. I felt like he was encouraging me to laugh at how ridiculous everything can be, from politics to academia to the idiosyncrasies of people's behavior, and above all, the randomness of life and death.

Many of the stories had titles that seemed deadpan or like sarcastic commentaries on the text of the story. For example, a story called "Inner Compulsion" is about these firemen who pull away the safety blanket and run away at the exact moment a suicidal man, who has been threatening for hours to jump to his death, actually jumps to his death; the firemen defend themselves in court by saying they acted "out of a sudden inner compulsion." This is also an example of another thing Bernhard does often in the book, which is to italicize certain phrases, presumably for sarcastic emphasis. He also uses the phrase "in the nature of things" very often, which I interpreted as being sarcastically formal as well as an implied philosophical commentary---this is how things are, horrible shit happens constantly and one's best intentions are oftentimes for naught. Also, everyone dies, sooner or later.

"In June of last year, a Tyrolean was arraigned on a charge of murdering a schoolchild from Imst and was sentenced to life imprisonment. [...] The Tyrolean had murdered the schoolchild from Imst with a so-called mason's mallet."

"The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I (1909-1939)"

2010-08-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, I bought every William Carlos Williams book they had at some store. I have been slowly reading through this first volume of "The Collected Poems" since then, reading most of it while living in Lakeview in 2009-10. Today I finished it. The book contains 6 previously published long works/collections plus the uncollected poems from each time period, all presented chronologically.

My favorites sections of the book were "Spring and All" and "The Descent of Winter," both of which mix prose with poetry, and both of which present Williams' philosophical ideas re poetry and art in general. If I had to summarize Williams' position, I'd say he believes that art relies upon the imagination, and that by renewing language one can recreate the world, as opposed to merely describing the world.

I tended to like his later works more than this earlier ones. Many of my favorite individual poems were love poems. I felt dissatisfied or bored re many of his "nature imagery" poems, although there were exceptions, such as "Birds and Flowers" ("Nothing is lost! [...] Though the eye turns inward, the mind / has spread its embrace---in / a wind that / roughs the stiff petals--- / More! the particular flower is / blossoming..."). There were long stretches in the book where I didn't care for any of the poems.

I am interested in reading more of his later work at some point. Paterson and a book containing Pictures from Brueghel, The Desert Music, and Journey to Love are on my bookshelf.

"Good Christ what is

a poet---if any

exists?

a man

whose words will

bite

their way

home---being actual

having the form

of motion"

"Bed" by Tao Lin

2010-08-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

I liked this book. I had previously read all of Tao's books except for this one and his first poetry collection, you are a little bit happier than i am (still have yet to read that one). Bed has a much different prose style than a lot of Tao's writing, especially his more recent writing. There are long sentences in Bed with many clauses; there are---to allow for lists or multiple embedded clauses---semicolons; and he includes a lot of similes and metaphors.

The nine stories in Bed seem to feature mostly sad characters, many of whom are going through periods in their lives when they are unsure of the future/what they are doing/what they will ever do. I liked some stories more than others, but all of the stories impressed me in terms of conventional notions of execution in the short story form (careful and often creative word choice, interesting characters, presentation and development of themes), and I liked how the stories seemed to present the characters' emotions in a forthright way.

My favorite stories in the collection, which I really loved, were "Love is a Thing on Sale for More Money Than There Exists," "Three-Day Cruise," "Love is the Indifferent God of the Religion in which Universe is Church," and "Sasquatch." The first is the story of a relationship, and I was very interested to find that elements of Richard Yates, Tao's most recent book, can be found in this, the first story in his first book. The arguments the couples have, re timeliness, consideration, weight gain, as well as the notion of lying in a relationship, are present in both works.

"Three-Day Cruise" is a story about a family. I really liked the characterization of the family members, and I thought it had a very effective opening and ending. This story has all of the elements I love in Tao's work: a strangeness, a diversity of tone, philosophical ideas, and parts that made me feel emotional.

"Love is the Indifferent God of the Religion in which Universe is Church" is the kind of story I will have to read several more times to feel like I better understand it. It is about two brothers, the older brother's girlfriend, and a mysterious little girl named Michelle who go to the same Japanese restaurant three times in 48 hours. I feel like I could write a long essay on just this story. It has very interesting and curious characters; there are a lot of metaphors and philosophical ideas in it; the ending is ambiguous.

"Sasquatch," the last story, is possibly my single favorite (it's either that or "Three-Day Cruise"), and for me it was a very satisfying end to the collection. It is about a girl who works at Denny's, her emotions, and her relationship with her father. It is very beautiful, I feel.

"Though she'd begun to get a little fat that winter, it was in February, around when her father found a toy poodle (sitting there, in the side yard, watchful and expectant as a person), and adopted it, that a weightlessness entered into Chelsea's blood---an inside ventilation, like a bacteria of ghosts---and it was sometime in the fall, before her 23rd birthday, that her heart, her small and weary core, neglected now for years, vanished a little, from the center out, took on the strange and hollowed heaviness of a weakly inflated balloon."

"The Fermata" by Nicholson Baker

2010-08-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

I liked this book. I was interested in reading Nicholson Baker because of Zachary German's positive reviews of his books. The narrator in The Fermata is a man who can stop time at will and can then interact with the frozen people/things however he wants for as long as he wants. He has many names for this phenomenon, among them the Fold and the Fermata, which refers to the held note in musical notation. Mostly he uses the Fold to satisfy his sexual curiosity by taking women's clothes off. Sometimes he tries to seduce women, using the Fold as an unusual advantage. Some chapters in the book are the texts of erotica that he writes in hopes that one woman or any woman will read it and become aroused.

I like the idea of the Fermata. I like that Baker identifies it as coming from within the narrator and then does not explain or justify its existence any further. Baker's writing caused me to think about how one's desires for intimacy or freedom might manifest as sexual thoughts. Baker's prose style seemed carefully controlled but also conversational, which was appealing to me, and I enjoyed the narrator's personality.

The books with first-person narration that I have loved (The Catcher in the Rye, Beckett's trilogy, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, et al.) were particularly enjoyable for me because I felt drawn into the voice of the book and through that drawn into the character or perhaps the author. It feels like an interesting new friend is telling me a long story.

"But sometimes when I'm recording detailed notes as I remove a woman's clothes ('left bra strap fallen' or 'panties inside out and worked partway into asscrack') so that I will be sure to replace everything perfectly, just as it was, I feel a gurgle of Arlette's joyful who-gives-a-fuckness working in me, and I want to strip the entire city of Boston and mound all the clothes together in the middle of Washington Square and dance on top of them screaming, 'We're totally fucking naked, we're totally fucking naked!'---or failing that (since sudden widespread big-city nudity could lead to rapes and other unforeseen turbulence), I might want to strip everyone in an idyllic small town like Northampton and see how they would adjust to it."

"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun

2010-08-05T08:39:00.000-07:00

I liked this book a lot. I read it because I know it is one of Tao Lin's favorite books, or that it was a "seminal read" for him, and also because I knew it was supposed to have paved the way for a lot of the big Modernist writers. Also, I idly paged through it at Half-Price Books when I was back in Milwaukee with my friend Bill, and I liked the prose. I read the Robert Bly translation.

What's striking to me about this book is that the subject matter, the situation of the first-person narrator, is very depressing, and yet the narrator seems joyful in a way, or playful. The book is about a struggling writer walking around Christiania, Norway starving. He seems kind of self-denying or self-destructive, depending on your viewpoint, because he turns down food a few times and gives away money that he receives. As the book goes on, he starts to have outbursts and to act strangely. It becomes increasingly possible that he might starve to death or go crazy. Yet there is always something matter-of-fact about the prose; the narrator, and by extension the author, never adds melodrama or extraneous commentary or moralizing to the actions and thoughts of the narrator. I liked that.

There is also a romantic interlude, if you like, or a part with a woman he meets, and I won't ruin it. I mention it because I like when there's some kind of romantic something to a book, not necessarily romantic in a conventional way, I like it when the narrator feels something for someone else in a book, especially if it feels natural and uncontrived or innocent or cute in a way. Like, for example, in Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie, the protagonist longs for this married woman ("the one who got way") the whole book, and that really kept me intrigued and wondering what would happen with them, especially because his thoughts about her were presented in a very realistic way, in my opinion (I also highly recommend Chilly Scenes of Winter---it's very funny and not nearly as depressing as Hunger).

I think I will keep these reviews, if one can call them that, short, for the most part, so here I end: the book puts you inside someone's head during a desperate time, but the narrator and the prose are not desperate, they are appealingly, plainly alive.

"All at once I snapped my fingers a couple of times and laughed. Hellfire and damnation! I suddenly imagined I had discovered a new word! I sat up in bed, and said: It is not in the language, I have discovered it---Kuboaa. It has letters just like a real word, by sweet Jesus, man, you have discovered a word!...Kuboaa...of tremendous linguistic significance.

The word stood out clearly in front of me in the dark."