You Fight Like Anne Rice!

Wislawa Szymborska Has Died

2012-02-02T03:01:00.001-05:00

As a fiction writer, I have always been afraid of poetry. Poetry was and is murky territory of seemingly unfinished sentences, symbolic metaphor, concentrated emotion and thought: I didn't "get it."

One of the first poets to steal my heart was Wislawa Szymborska, who died Wednesday of lung cancer at the age of 88. I read it at work, and I thought my heart dropped in disbelief.

To confess: I found a book of hers by accident because the name was interesting. Wislawa Szymborska? Actually: VEES-mah-vah shim-BOR-ska. I remember stumbling upon it, but not buying it, yet coming to it time and again at the bookstore (no one ever bought it like no one reads poetry), I read the poems, eventually reading the book and coming back to my favorite ones.

I couldn't understand why exactly I liked the poem. I have no idea what makes a poem "good."

But thing about Szymborska was that her language was simple, yet was not condescending--in fact far from it. Her works looked at existential questions with a firm grasp of humanism. Far from being melancholy or worse incomprehendable, it was accessible, playful, yet expanded the mind in its celebration of humanity.

Her poems were quirky and belied its own seriousness and her love of human nature, however complex that concept could be (and this she recognized).

In one poem, in which the narrator speaks to a secluded Yeti creature, she writes ("Notes from a Nonexistent Himalayan Expedition"):

Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.

It's nearly childish, simplistic, yet it was a celebration of the humaness, the world we created: though it can be bad at times, we are good people capable of forgiveness, hope, and art. As the poem continues:

Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there.
Yeti, not every sentence there
means death.

We've inherited hope —
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.

Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.

The celebration of life was not always totally optimistic and cool. In "Consolation" she explored the importance of beauty (even imagined) in a world that is often cruel:

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its diminutions.

Yet, in her work, however humanity behaves, whatever befalls us, it was clear that she was in love with and focused on "Here," where human nature is a thing of beauty:

I don’t know about other places,
but here on Earth there’s quite a lot of everything.
Here chairs are made and sadness,
scissors, violins, tenderness, transistors,
water dams, jokes, teacups.

Maybe somewhere else there is more of everything,
only for some reason there are no paintings there,
cathode-ray tubes, dumplings, tissues for tears.
There are plenty of places here with surroundings.
Some you can particularly get to like,
name them your own way
and protect them from evil.

Maybe somewhere else there are similar places,
But no one considers them beautiful.

Maybe like nowhere else, or in few other places,
here you have your own body trunk,
and with it the tools needed,
to add your children to those of others.
Besides that your hands, legs, and the amazed head.

Ignorance here is hard at work,
constantly measuring, comparing, counting,
drawing conclusions and finding square roots.

I know, I know what you’re thinking.
Nothing is permanent here,
for since ever forever in the power of the elements.
But notice—the elements get easily tired
and sometimes they have to take a long rest
before the next time.

And I know what else you’re thinking.
Wars, wars, wars.
But even between them there happen to be breaks.
Attention—people are evil.
At ease—people are good.
At attention we produce wastelands.
At ease by the sweat of our brows we build houses
and quickly live in them.

Life on earth turns out quite cheap.
For dreams for instance you don’t pay a penny.
For illusions—only when they’re lost.
For owning a body—only with the body.

And as if this was not enough,
you spin without a ticket in the carousel of the planets,
and along with it, dodging the fare, in the blizzard of galaxies,
through eras so astounding,
that nothing here on Earth can even twitch on time.

For take a good look:
the table stands where it stood,
on the table the paper, exactly as placed,
through the window ajar just a waft of the air,
and in the walls no terrifying cracks,
through which you could be blown out to nowhere.

This is why I love poetry.

PS I eventually did buy that book.

AWP Has Sold Out

2012-01-26T00:00:00.001-05:00

Not that it matters to me personally. Ain't going. Have never went to a conference as an attendee. Would love to go, but high expenses, etc.

From their website:

AWP is pleased to announce that the number of registered attendees for the 2012 AWP Annual Conference & Bookfair in Chicago has already reached over 9,300 participants! We are stunned and jubilant for this all-time record high for attendance.

At this time, we are announcing that AWP will not hold on-site registration in Chicago. Because of the enormous amount of interest in attending this year’s conference in Chicago, we have decided to close all further attendee registration to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for those who have already registered.

Last-Chance Registration Sale Online!

AWP will hold a “Last-Chance Registration Sale” starting on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at noon EST. Registrations will be sold first-come, first-serve for the first 200 registrants. No registrations will be accepted thereafter.

To take advantage of this offer, you must register through our AWP StoreFront system online at: http://store.awpwriter.org/c-15-conference-bookfair-registration.aspx

No registrations will be accepted by fax or by postal mail. No telephone orders please.

AWP is one of the biggest writing events, with panels and lectures on reading and writing, giving any MFAer (the target of the conference) who has the money or time to brush elbows with famous writers. Alexander Chee says you don't even really need to register, just hang out at the bars:

If you are going (and have paid for the most part), check out these queerful events:

"Indigenous Editing/Publishing: Journals, Anthologies, and Presses" Panel

https://www.facebook.com/events/235625133178522

Thursday, March 1, 2012

3pm-4:15pm

Panelists:

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, ku'ualoha ho'omanawanui, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, Janet McAdams, & Brandy Nālani McDougall

Indigenous publishing plays a vital role in sovereignty and decolonization movements. Queer and womanist editors of Indigenous Pacific, Native North American, and Indigenous Latin American descent will discuss the production and maintenance of Native journals, anthologies, and presses. Collaboratively producing Native texts, the panel will discuss how they negotiate economic, logistical, and institutional challenges, while keeping center issues of culture, politics, aesthetics, and diversity.

Representing over a decade of international Indigenous editorial experience, the panelists are founding leaders of presses and publications in the Pacific, Europe, and the Américas. Independent and university-affiliated editors and publishers working under various deadlines and economic constraints and across multiple languages and time zones, they have produced over thirty Native books and journal issues and published hundreds of Indigenous authors from around the world.

"Ancestors: A Queer Writers of Color Reading"

sponsored by the Lambda Literary Foundation

https://www.facebook.com/events/168568046576890

Thursday, March 1, 2012

7pm-10pm

OluSeyi OluToyin Adebanjo, Nancy Agabian, Ryka Aoki, Tamiko Beyer, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Ching-In Chen, Matthew R. K. Haynes-Kekahuna, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, David Keali'i, Emil Keliane, Janet McAdams, Deborah A. Miranda, Claudia Narváez-Meza, vaimoana litia makakaufaki niumeitolu, Emma Pérez, Jai Arun Ravine, Charles Rice-González, Trish Salah, James Thomas Stevens, D. Antwan Stewart, Max Wolf Valerio, & Jennifer Lisa Vest.

"Ancestors: A Queer Writers of Color Reading" is a literary reading featuring same-gender-loving, multiple-gender-loving, and transgender poets, non/fiction writers, filmmakers, and performance artists of Indigenous Pacific, Native North American, Arab/Middle Eastern, Asian, Latina/o, and African descent.

"Queer Poets of Color on Craft: The Art of Decolonization" Panel

https://www.facebook.com/events/328290033877703

Saturday, March 3, 2012

9am-10:15am

Panelists:

Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, Samiya Bashir, Deborah A. Miranda, Ching-In Chen, & Tamiko Beyer

There is power in craft. Poets use craft to create possibility, ways of seeing, hearing, and moving the world, re-envisioning it. Queer poets of color use multiple techniques to shape language on the page and stage, the way words flicker across glowing screens and beat against the drums of our ears. From the generation and arrangement of text, to shifts in narrativity and delivery, and the use of multiple registers and media, this panel explores the decolonial power of skillful wor(l)d-weaving.

Too often writers of color are reduced to narrative. There needs to be greater focus on our artistry and poetic craft's ability to imagine a past, reconceptualize a present, and shape a future. Bringing together poets of African, Arab, Asian, Latina/o, and Native North American descent, this panel delves into intrapoetics and interpoetics, the transfiguring of individual poems and traditions, and interplay between them--queerly decolonizing both texts and communities, and the world they inhabit.

If I were going, these would be what I would go to.

Is Nancy Pearl, Beloved Librarian, A Traitor to Literature?

2012-01-25T01:12:00.003-05:00

Maaaaaybe.

The famous librarian, known for her advocacy for libraries and indie booksellers, along with her book series Book Lust, announced earlier this month that she had teamed up with Amazon to reprint older titles. Called "Nancy Pearl's Rediscoveries Series," it will feature previously out-of-print favorites from the librarian. Already, Amazon is selling “A Gay and Melancholy Sound” by Merle Miller and “After Life” by Rhian Ellis.

While the book lover's motivations are put into question (surely she wanted a wider audience for these old, old books!, and perhaps there was some greed in the question), indie booksellers are crying foul. Says a Seattle Times article:

"The reaction from the brick-and-mortar bookshops — which have struggled first against competition from the big-box chains, and then the price-cutting Amazon — was immediate.

By Friday, some 50 store managers and owners had emailed Thom Chambliss, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association in Eugene, Ore.

That’s a sizable number, considering the group has 160 to 165 total members.

“Consternation,” is how Chambliss describes the content of the emails."

MobyLives collects some more juicy backlash:

“By aligning herself with Amazon, she’s turning her back on independents. Amazon is absolutely antithetical to independent bookselling, and, to many of us, truth, justice and the American way....[Pearl is] a greedy betrayer of the small, sometimes-struggling, bookshops that so supported her.” - J.B. Dickey, owner of the Seattle Mystery Bookshop.

“I kind of feel disappointed that Nancy’s choice will have a sense of betrayal with a lot of librarians and independent booksellers across the country, not just Seattle.” - Vladimir Verano of Third Place Books

Nancy Pearl has noted the pushback:

"There's been pushback that I've gone over to the dark side and allied myself with these people who are destroying the book business as we know it."

What's next for Amazon and Nancy Pearl?

(and oh yeah! this is the 200th post on this blog!)

OMG OMG OMG BUY ME BUY ME BUY ME!!!!

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

Amazon Invades Virginia, Booksellers Say "Hell to the No"

2012-01-19T00:25:00.000-05:00

Amazon has had it with California. And Texas. And New York. And Indiana.

After the states passed laws forcing Amazon to pay their taxes, the giant is setting up operations in Virginia. With already one operations center in Northern Virginia, the company announced it plans to open two more: one in Chesterfield and Dinwiddie.

Yet Virginians ain't having it. While the economy is still rough around the edges, and as local governments are scrabbling for money--taxing online businesses (with physical locations within the state) is a solution to invigorate local economies.

"Researchers at the University of Tennessee projected in 2009 that state and local governments nationwide would lose about $11.4 billion in revenue from uncollected taxes from online sales by 2012. The study estimated Virginia's lost revenue in 2012 would be $207 million. Those estimates are for all online sales for which taxes are not collected, not just Amazon sales."

By not paying taxes, Amazon takes business from local communities, yet does not support such communities.

The same article also pointed out that "[i]n 2010, Virginia residents and businesses voluntarily paid $44.5 million in taxes on their tax returns for purchases they made — often online or from a catalog — but were not charged a sales tax for, according to the Virginia Department of Taxation."

Furthermore, the Virginia Alliance for Main Street Fairness recently released data showing that 59% of Virginians believe online business such as Amazon should be required to pay taxes.

With such backing from the citizens, the group will push legislation.

And of course local booksellers agree.

"A Norfolk Pilot report says bookseller Sarah Pishko, owner of Prince Books in Norfolk, filed a complaint with the state’s Department of Taxation over the situation, and has gained the support of at least one state legislator, Del. Paula Miller. Says Pishko, “I think people need to be aware that states are losing a lot of money that they should have.”

In a Lynchburg News & Advance report, another bookseller, Kelly Justice, owner of the Fountain Bookshop in Richmond, says, “I wish that our local governments were as accommodating to small, locally owned businesses as they were to large, behemoth corporations.”

Perhaps soon Viriginia will join California, Texas, New York, and Indiana, and it might be a good point on which other booksellers and trade association can lobby and garner support from their members and customers to make Jeff Bezos angry.

Stick stickers on your windows in such legislation, inform your customer, (de)occupy Amazon!

WILFs: Yolo Akili (and a Video Too!)

2012-01-13T00:52:00.000-05:00

Love this poem/mini-documentary!

Also, Yolo Akili:

Things I Learned From DIY Publishing

2012-01-04T00:26:00.001-05:00

I don't want to call it self-publishing. Partly because of the connations behind it: badly written, badly edited works with bad covers and bad design. Mainly, just plain. But also, because it isn't self-publishing exactly.

Johnny Murdoc quotes Chuck Wending to explain his brand of "self-publishing"--call it micro-pub.

As a sidenote, I like that term. “Micro-pub.” Better than indie, which carries its own debate. Better than self-published, which is a term that sounds about as dismissive and masturbatory as a term can get. (“I just ‘self-published’ my seed into this Kleenex!”) Ahh, but micro-pub! One man publishing. Like micro-brew.

Yeah. I like it.

I will hereby refer to myself as a “micro-pub.”

At least until I forget I came up with that term, which is in about — *checks watch* — ten minutes.

Micro-pub is good, but I think DIY publishing is better.

I like the term "DIY Publishing." It goes back to my leftist/anarchist/punk-ish/poor kid/immigrant's kid roots. Self-publishing sounds, yes, masturbatory. Micro-pub sounds like it's talking about quantity.

But DIY publishing explains it all: doing it yourself. I wanted to call it a "grassroots book" since it was developed all at the grassroots level: the project was the idea of one writer, no one was (successfully) solicitated, everything was done on a minimal budget (everything related to the project is hosted either on Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr), and if money was involved, it was my own (one person even offer to buy me a mouse after learning I was doing all the editing and designing on a netbook without mouse!)

It's a benefit project that I hope will help somebody (and isn't that what all writers want?). But for me it was also an experimental project on two levels: can I edit/make a book? And--can I make a book outside of the book industrial complex to benefit a larger goal? (you know someone's radical when they use the phrase "industrial complex")

Whatever you call, I have a book I (blank)-published and I learned some stuff.

1. You should have deadlines.

Admittedly, this book has taken as long as any other book to get out there. Calls for submissions started Oct 2010, ended Feb. 2011, and is being released Jan. 2012--about a year from the the time everything was due. The problem is it could've probably been done quicker (but there were problems, which I tried to avoid, then tried to do, then tried to learn from [see #2]). Furthermore, if I had strict deadlines, I could've had more time for publicity. I have (only) a month to do all the publicity I can, though I am hopeful that I can get post-release date publicity.

2. You should know how to use Photoshop and In-Design. You should know principles of design.

You should know the difference between sans-serif and serif. You should know where page numbers will end up. Spacing and font. That your .doc file will not be your final product.

I still have no real idea what I did (lots of experimentation and notes I've placed somewhere). The entire process was more difficult since I did not have Photoshop or In-Design (again, little money was spent on the project, not because I'm cheap, but because I think having a roof over my head is quite important). Indeed, I designed a book using GIMP and OpenOffice (if anyone asks, it's because I didn't want to support the design software industrial complex). Certainly not the best options, but I'm still satisfied with the end product.

Two sources really helped me:

Book Design and Production by Pete Masterson (though a bit dated)
Joel Friedlander's blog: http://www.thebookdesigner.com/

3. Publicity is hard.

I was never good at self-publicity. Again, it's masturbatory. While masturbation is fine and healthy, doing it in public is bad form. But as a DIY editor, this is absolutely necessary. Also, it is hard. If getting Facebook fans is hard, think about the sales. Therefore, there's no shame in self publicity. For example:

4. It will be the most rewarding terrible experience you will ever have.

I stayed up many nights either editing, designing, nearly crying that this won't be right, celebrating, then return to crying about the possibility of low book sales, etc. It's really rewarding--to see something you put time into come to completion and know that it will be in people's hands. But it is stressful.

5. You can never get enough self-publicity.

One more time:

Highlight of My Night!

2011-12-24T23:07:00.002-05:00

Books To Look Forward To In 2012

2011-12-15T12:00:00.010-05:00

While everyone is looking back at 2011 (and of course they always pick the wrong books!), I'm looking forward to 2012 with many presses ready to have next year's titles printed. Here are some of the things I'm looking forward to.

FICTION:

Fires of Our Choosing by Eugene Cross (1/2012) - Eugene Cross is hot. I've been Facebook stalking him and following his work. I first encountered his stuff in American Short Fiction, and then he was in Hobart and Narrative. Apparently, he has a short story collection coming out, which should be promising with blurbs from Dan Chaon and Charles Baxter.

Shut Up/Look Pretty by Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale, Amber Sparks (2/2012) - I don't know many of the writers in this chapbook collection, but Amber Sparks is worth the price of the book itself. Sparks has been published in PANK (I was in the same issue!), Wigleaf, Smokelong, and whole bunch of other major indie magazines. Her work can be categorized as magical realism that is quirky a la Aimee Bender, but more dream like and playful. Her voice is truly her own. Buy it for the sake of Amber Sparks!

The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice (2/2012) - Anne Rice, fuck duh! It's her return to speculative fiction, after all those Jesus-fail novels. But instead of vampires, we have werewolves! We all knew Anne Rice was a Taylor Lautner fan!

The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan (3/2012) - I thought Aimee Phan was dead. After her criticially acclaimed We Should Never Meet a collection, which dealt with the lives of those evacuated during the fall of Saigon, no one (or at least myself) never from heard from her again. That was 2005. Her new book deals with the Vietnamese diaspora again, but this time her characters return to their homeland. Despite the weak title (sounds like an Asian version of a Jane Austen remake [this is an untapped market!]), it should surely be worth the wait!

Basement of Wolves by Daniel Allen Cox (4/2012) - D.A.C. NEVER disappoints. His newest will be about dreams, Hollywood, and identity crisis.

The Fifth Lash by Anis Shivani (early 2012) - I never read any fiction from Anis Shivani. After reading his critique of the workshop last year (Against the Workshop), it's interesting to see the critic at work as an artist in his second collection, of which I know very little about, but nevertheless want to read.

This is a Dance Movie! by Tim Jones-Yelvington (maybe 2012, maybe 2013): Tim Jones-Yelvington is like a gay Lydia Davis. But more than that, he is the Lady Gaga (when she was good) of literature. His stories are concise and short, yet his use of language is always surprising. Also, he makes Youtube videos:

***

NONFICTION:

Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World by Anne Fausto-Sterling (4/2012) - Fausto-Sterling's Sexing the Body was probably one of the most influential books I read while in college. Building off Focault, she argued that the idea of sex and science are not static, but in fact contingent upon time and place. This volume promises to explore the ideas of sex and gender futhur using biochemistry and neurobiology to examine the ethical and moral side of sex and gender. Its sounds like heavy reading, but Fausto-Sterling writes clearly and with humor.

Two Spirits, One Heart by Marsha Aizumi and Aiden Takeo Aizumi (4/2012) - Marsha Aizumi is an aspiring person. I first met her during a roundtable discussion about AAPI queer youth. I told her I wished more mothers could be like her. A mother of a transgender child (here, her co-author), this book traces their journey from confusion into acceptance. It the first book (that I know of) that explores this issues from the AAPI side. Should be a wonderful read, something along the lines of Hilda Raz and Aaron Raz Link's What Becomes You (another great duet memoir).

128 Beats Per Minute by Thomas Wesley Pentz (4/2012) - Itzzzz Diplo! A pictorial book, it documents his travels and observations and development as a musician. This is why you should pick it up (not sure how many words are in it, though):

A Queer and Pleasant Danger by Kate Bornstein (5/2012) - Kate Bornstein is my hero! A gender anarchist, activist, and theorist (and all around inspiring person), her previous books explored gender constructs. In this one, a memoir, she explores coming of age in a Jewish tradition, leaving it for Scientology, then leaving that to become a woman. A must-have in any collection!

Faithest by Chris Stedman (11/2012) - Chris Stedman is a community organizer who is making waves. Mainly, he's an atheist (humanist to be technical) doing interfaith work. His work has been published in the Washington Post and Huffington Post. His debut book is a memoir is subtitled "How One Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious," and explores (most probably) his coming out as queer, as atheist, and as an atheist doing interfaith work. Knowing his work, Stedman weaves a picture in which diversity is celebrated as a strength. What's different about Stedman's book that it's less of an atheist book about how the religious is wrong (Dawkins, for example), and more of a personal memoir, more of a type of vision.

OTHER

Resilience edited by Eric Nguyen - So I have a book I edited (designed, self-published) coming out. (I'm horrible at self promotion! Bear with me!). Money from it will go to The Make It Safe Project. Buy it through Lulu starting January 24. More info at betterbookproject.blogspot.com.

Book Review: Junction X

2011-12-12T09:00:00.001-05:00

Junction X
by Erastes
9781937692063

Erastes perhaps might be on a point of crossing over. Known for her gay romances, her newest, Junction X blurs the lines. Is it romance or is general fiction? Indeed, the book is under Lammy consideration not for "Gay Romance," but for the more general "Gay Fiction," a spot usually reserved for titles that do not adhere to genre rules.

And here, Erastes does break her own rules. Instead of her historical settings circa 1800s, the setting in Junction X is England in the 1960s. There are trains, London is a bustling metropolis, suburbia is sprawling, hiding the everyday lives of its inhabitants in a cloak of manufactured sameness. The book is about such conformity and the lives that people live under it. "How much do we know about other people?" the main character ponders, "The more I thought about it, the more confused I felt and the more I realised I knew nothing of what really went on behind other people's closed doors."

On the outside, Ed Johnson is like any other person in his neighborhood: a business man with a beautiful wife and two kids. His wife kisses him goodbye at the door every morning, his children are taken care of by a nanny, they have parties now and then inviting everyone in their neighborhood. It's nearly a perfect life. But underneath it, the relationship between Ed and his wife is icy; Valerie is cold while Ed is distant; there is no intimacy, they sleep back to back. Not knowing better, Ed easily accepts this. It's a rather simple life until he meets his next door neighbor Phil who shows him other options one drunken night during a family vacation. Their sexual trysts brings an awakening in Ed, something that both inspires and frightens him. Their emotionally abusive relationship ends abruptly when Phil moves for a promotion. Eventually, a new family moves in next door--a nice couple with a teenage son. It's with the teenage son that the story begins to move, lines get blurred, tragedies occur, veils are lifted, and lives are changed.

Erastes builds up the story with scenes of pure ecstasy, intermingled with identity crisis pangs leading to the inevitable downfall. It's the type of book you imagine the narrator telling you in a whisper, full of secrets: "The more I lie, I discovered, the easier it becomes." In that way, Junction X is an intimate story that touches on taboos because it's shared between the narrator and the reader.

But it's a Lolita-esque novel that lacks the complexity of Nabokov. That doesn't mean it lacks tenderness and eroticism: "There was no gentleness in that kiss; we were rocks, crashing against each other." Nor does it shy away from exploring the complex issues of love and lust. Can one choose who to love? Can one love too much? It's a claustophobic study of obsession and the lengths we go to hide our secrets.

Where Erastes falters is perhaps the vestiges of the M/M genre--conventions that might work there, but fail in more general fiction. The love explored is often idealistic. The only two characters that are focused upon are the lovers, leaving secondary plots completely absent. The prose at times can be clumsy, relying on cliches.

"This isn't really a story of my sexual conquest," say the narrator, yet it reads like it nearly. Here everyone has hard cocks with a strong emphasis in orgasmic sex and tightening pants and erections. (It could have been more explicit of course, and erotic sex scenes are not necessarily bad things). Additionally, while the book does try to steer far from the pulp M/M novels--by the end, it falls into the easily recognized tragedy of early gay novels (if you know what this means, you know how this ends).

Nevertheless, Erastes is a skillful writer. Her dialogue flows naturally, her plot moves briskly, and overall her story has its heart-wrenching moments of despair and beauty. While Erastes might not win the Man Booker any time soon for this jump into more general fiction, she knows how to keep her audience interested.

I Might Know Famous People

2011-12-11T14:33:00.000-05:00

(take note of Sharon Needles...)

Katy Perry Inspired by Jack Kerouac

2011-12-08T00:25:00.000-05:00

I'm not a fan of Katy Perry. Her songs her ~~a bit on the~~ homophobic ~~side~~ ("I Kissed A Girl" substitutes lesbian sexuality with a type of male gazed experimental bisexuality, "Ur So Gay" was full of stereotypes). But I found this interesting: her Grammy nominated song was reportedly inspired by Kerouac (though it took five people to work on the song). Video below (around 1:18):

She says:

"I got it from a really great book called "On the Road." And he wrote a paragraph in that book called 'I want to be around people who are buzzing and fizzing and full of life and they never say a common place thing and they shoot into the sky like fireworks and make everyone go Awww" and that's me paraphrasing of course."

From the book:

“[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'”

Close enough, right?

Occupy Amazon?

2011-12-07T00:06:00.000-05:00

Amazon is not good: not for booksellers, businesses, community.

Recently, The Daily Show highlighted the company's efforts to avoid taxes:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Gawker also points to the corporation's holiday plan: paying customers to not buy from their local stores (though Melville House points out that this is indication that Amazon does need local stores)

Apparently concerned that it's not already doing enough to undermine local physical retailers across the country, Amazon.com announced it will pay customers $5 to go into a local store, scan an item, walk out, and buy the same item on Amazon. Please don't do this cheap, sad thing.
To get the $5 discount, you're supposed to use Amazon's "Price Check" iPhone and Android app to scan in the bar code of an item and then indicate what price the item is being sold at. This gives Amazon valuable intelligence on how various retailers are pricing various items. "We scour online and in-store advertisements from other retailers, every day, year-round," an Amazon director said on All Things D. But now Amazon won't have to work so hard in the future, since hordes of consumers will (theoretically) sell out the merchants who pump sales taxes into their localities with sales taxes, all to save a measly five bones.

As the #OWS protests continue, can independent use the momentum to fight back against Amazon? Occupy Amazon?

The idea is not as far-fetch. Michael Moore was approached about it as far back as October. The proposal? If booksellers "sold his new book, Here Comes Trouble (Grand Central), at their cost (bringing the consumer price closer to the discount Amazon can offer), would the celebrity pro-indie author not sell his books on Amazon?"

Moore didn't answer but agree that things needed to be done. He mentioned, for example, that Lady Gaga's new book was printed in a unionized factory: "How old is this woman?...And she was smarter than me? I have so much hope with these kids that we raised."

While "Occupy Amazon" might be a misnomer (we surely don't want readers to occupy Amazon, instead of their local bookstore), the trick here is to get books out of Amazon, into indie bookstores, into readers' hands.

When asked if Melville House would pull its titles from Amazon, editor Dennis Johnson said: "Zing! Nah, as far as I'm concerned anyone can sell our books. It's our only chance to enlighten people like you!"

On the one hand, Amazon is a great way to get the word out about your books. Yet, Amazon kills businesses and local community and does everything to do so.

Can #OWSers offer advice/guidance to revive local book economies?

If You Don't Support Queer Arts, Honey Badger Won't

2011-11-30T08:25:00.001-05:00

Apparently it's art grant season in DC, and the awardees have been announced. Like last year, the DC Center (DC's LGBT Center) and it's arts program did not receive any funding. Not too surprising--this year was more competitive: the number of categories reduced from 16 to 9 and for the first time, the District Commision on the Arts and Humanities "opened its Grants-in-Aid program to organizations that also receive federal aid through the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs grant program."

The entire list of awardees can be found online here.

Looking at the list of 228 awardees, it's clear that literary arts are not quite the priority. On the one hand, theater is. And theater is literature right? The usual suspects are here as well: Corocran Gallery, the Smithsonian. Of the 228, 22 are literature related. Of those 22, only 2 are for queer projects. These two are individual grants, which while great, doesn't really help a community, doesn't help queer literature--our stories, our words--flourish.

What did the DCCAH spend money on?

$5,000 for Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, which plans to host a series of “multidisciplinary arts experiences which examine and celebrate THE SIMPSONS and its impact on American pop-culture psyche”—this in conjunction with Anne Washburn’s dystopian Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play. Excelllent.

$7,335 for Mayor Vince Gray’s favorite recreational activity. The National Hand Dance Association will use its grant to sponsor youth and senior workshops in wards 7 and 8.

$8,000, or $349 adjusted for 1913 dollars, to the group Dandies and Quaintrelles, for its “Seersucker Social and Moonlight Rides.” Will taxpayers be happy footing the bill for poppycock like licorice bootlaces, penny whistles, paisley bowties, and mustache wax? Balderdash!

$40,000 to renovate the lobby of the Howard Theatre, the historic Florida Ave. NW venue that is set to reopen next April.

While all of this is important, as a writer--a queer writer--I feel a bit...bamboozled(?)

Queer writers have always been marginalized. As a subculture, we have always had other means of supporting ourselves.

For example, Lambda Literary (which happens to be having a grant challenge right now and they're really really close!). While I don't think one organization can do everything--one organization can't possibly do everything, and Lambda Literary is no exception (and they've been of course been known to ruffle some feathers).

Yet Lambda Literary has done many great things:

The Lambda Literary Awards, since 1989 the most prestigious literary prize in the LGBT community.
The Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, established in 2007, the first of its kind ever offered to LGBT writers: a one-week intensive immersion in fiction, nonfiction, genre fiction, or poetry and an unparalleled opportunity to learn from our very best writers and publishing industry professionals.
The Lambda Literary Review at LambdaLiterary.org, the web’s premier destination for LGBT book reviews, author interviews, opinion, book news and literary resources, with a new, sleeker look with enhanced navigation launching this week!
LGBT Authors in Schools pilot program, in collaboration with the Gay/Straight Educators Alliance, is pairing our community’s authors with English classrooms in high school and college to bring our rich literary traditions to our youth!

As a national organization, it doesn't target too many local activities (Lambda Literary helped sponsor DC's very first LGBT Book Fair this year.), but it's something (what local queer literature organizations do you know of?). Without such organizations, queer writing--again, our stories, our voice, our history, our culture--can easily be put on the backburners.

So, consider donating to Lambda Literary...and/or your local queer literary organization!

Book Review: Sing You Home

2011-11-28T09:00:00.010-05:00

Sing You Home
by Jodi Picoult
(9781439102732)

Jodi Picoult is the queen of domestica--domestic fiction. Her stories are of wives (mainly) and families (generally) with problems mixed with a controversial issue to to turn people on each other. Lawyers are always somewhere involved.

In the case of her latest novel, Sing You Home, the housewife is named Zoe, the controversial issue is "the gays," and yes, there is a court case, and yes the two sides are somehow related--in this case, they're former lovers.

For nearly a decade, Zoe and Max Baxter have been trying to conceive children. After failing the natural way as well as in-vitro procedures (which ends in a miscarriage), the two decide to divorce and live their own lives. Zoe immerses herself in her professions as a music therapist, Max regresses into his alcohol addiction. Zoe finds a case at a high school and falls in love with a female guidance counselor. Max gets into a car crash and becomes a born again Christian. It is once they've settled on their newly paved paths that problems begin. Always a family woman, Zoe returns to her clinic to in hopes of using frozen embryos (a product of her last marriage) to start a new family with her newly found wife while her ex-husband objects--it's part of him too.

As the story develops we not only see ex-lover battling ex-lover, but also the church battling state, conservatives battling liberals.

Picoult loves to investigate the controversies and the issues of our time and has even compared herself to Dickens. She uses her work to as a debate, to see both sides, though the sides are rarely fully explored. Indeed, Picoult has an agenda in this particular book. When asked if she could choose one message for readers of this book, she writes: "That gay people are not some nameless, faceless group....I hope that one day we will look back and feel embarrassed by how long it took to change the system." A loving mother of a gay son, Picoult has every right to write this book, and her heart is in the right place.

Yet, as a novel of morality it eventually borders on the didactic. Picoult does not shy away from telling us gay parents are no different from straight parents, that studies show that same-sex parents are often quite good for the character of children. As one character rattles off:

"...[T]here are certain bonuses tha come with being raised by two mommies or two daddies: compassion, for one. Plus, girls play and dress in ways that break gender stereotypes, and boys tend to be more affectionate, more nurturing, and less promiscuous. And probably because they've dealt with questions all their lives, kids raised by gay parents are better at adjusting in general."

The novel is sprinkled with little tidbits like this from both sides. Yet try as she might, the novel cannot easily be balanced. As a progressive, to give the anti-gay argument any credit would give their agenda a grain of plausibility, and despite developing even likable characters on the conservative-side of the argument (Max's sister in law Liddy is a perfect example), everyone nearly becomes a caricature--from the preacher who is hell-bent on destroying the lesbians to the lawyer he hires who talks as smooth as a Bible salesman, who wears flashy suits and carries a bible with him for appearance.

Furthermore, Picoult's argument in the novel is dependent on the normalizing of gayness, instead of queering it. "I'm not a softball coach or a bike chick," says Vanessa, Zoe's wife, to prove that's she's normal. By saying so, Picoult breaks stereotypes, yet at the same time opens another argument: should gays be accepted because they are the same, or because they are different. Unlikely, Picoult's picture of a queer person is middle class, most likely white, and nonthreatening, not the anarchist trans-girl at #OWS, not the flamboyant gay guy. In that sense, Picoult is quite conservative, her book does nothing for queers.

Yet Picoult has a large following, is a New York Times best-selling author (despite NYTimes not being friendly to her), and thus her work sheds light on issues like this to all those housewives who pick up her book. In that sense, Sing You Home is a necessary book--however weak it might be: its clumsy prose, its lack of subtext (nearly everything is spelled out for the reader: gay = good, religion might be bad), its lazy use of differing fonts to tell readers who's speaking (a hallmark of Picoult's book), overnight toss-and-turns of the plot that are nearly unbelievable, and long and daunting, nearly endless court scenes. All this does not balance out moments of beauty where Picoult's words truly shine: "All the stars fall out of the sky and rain on the roof of my car. It feels like a sword between my ribs, the loss of these children..." says Zoe. Picoult could be devastating, but beautiful, yet these parts are too far in between and are likely to get lost.

Picoult focuses on issues too much and forgets that all we ever needed was the beauty of language to help us create change.

WILFs: Natty Soltesz

2011-11-15T00:49:00.000-05:00

There's something about Natty Soltesz...

Also his book, Backwoods, is out today and you should get it. A while back he made Kickstarter project to help fund the illustrations included in the book. The result is, "an illustrated books like Alice in Wonderland, only you know, not for kids. At all."

Can't wait to get my hands on a copy!

Ocean Vuong's Saigon America

2011-11-14T09:04:00.000-05:00

Check out poet Ocean Vuong's photo essay series on Vietnamese American life! And where do you start when you talk about the Vietnamese American experience? In the nail salon of course! From Ocean:

For the past two years I have been taking photos of various scenes in Vietnamese American life and I thought I'd share them with you on my blog. This specific series is titled " Happy Nails", a selection of shots taken at a nail salon. As you might already know, the nail salon is the unofficial hub of all Vietnamese culture in America. I remember when I was younger, my family would go on road trips, and being illiterate and not able to speak English, we always looked for nail salons whenever we were lost. The little shops, often garishly decorated with charmingly simply names like "Top Nails", "Paris Nails" and "#1 Beauty Nails", are the life line of Vietnamese life in America, often in more ways than one.

If you feel compelled to, please feel free to share this essay with others, on your blogs, tumblrs, facebook, etc... It would mean a lot to me and I appreciate it very much.
I will add to this series as more photos accumulate.

love and light,
-Ocean

Check it out on his website!

WILFs: Diplo?

2011-11-08T00:00:00.001-05:00

Diplo has a book coming out next year: 128 Beats Per Minute.

So, can I categorize him as a WILF now?

When in NOLA...

2011-11-07T09:27:00.000-05:00

I went to New Orleans for a business trip. This the furthest south I have ever been. It was supposed to hot, but Louisiana autumn is 59 degrees. I have Vietnamese (tropical) blood, despite living in DC/MD all my life. 59 is cold.

Mainly, the trip was business. But of course I had a few hours of free time here and there. And of course I hunted down the bookstores.

New Orleans surprisingly (not sure why it's surprising) has many bookstores. Mostly (I think all of them) used bookstores. Which of course isn't bad.

My first stop was Crescent City Books. In the French Quarter, it's a two floor bookstore selling mostly used, some new books. The guy up front was hipster-ish with glasses and a beard (I think). When I walked in he didn't look up. There were handwritten paper signs pointing to poetry, regional authors, history. Upstairs it's fiction and philosophy and gay books (books that are attracted to books of the same gender). Crescent City Book has a cat problem. A cat wanders around aimlessly: it saunters, licks itself, finds a place to rest. You would barely notice it, except it's long when it's stretched out. Otherwise, it doesn't look at you while you're browsing. I have a hypothesis that the cat here is in control, the owner of this place. I left with a JCO book I've been searching for for a long time: Because It Is Bitter, Because It Is In My Heart. The guy said he liked my shirt. I laughed and said thanks!

To get to Dauphine Street Books, you have to go further into the French Quarter. The streets are smaller and you past mainly quiet bars and restuarant and people drinking beer from plastic cups or else bottles wrapped in paper bags. It's easy to miss, but it's the bookstore with book stacks in front of it. It also has a used book smell to it: "like grass, with a tang of acidity and a hint of vanilla." The place is quiet, nearly silent except for the two workers talking among themselves (and when they have something secret to say, they whisper and pretend that you don't know they're whispering. The place is a book hoarder's dream.

It's impossible to look at everything, but it's beautiful, though I was told I was knocking things all over the place and the bookseller on duty gave me mean looks. He said that he was working on getting the place organized. I said I liked it, it's lots of books. He said, No, he didn't have any law books. I said, LOTS of books. He said, yes lots of books. He kicked me out.

The farthest I went into the French Quarter was to Faubourg Marigny Art & Books. To get to it, you need to walk several blocks, pass Jackson Square, past bars, and places that smell like beers and crabs. There were voodoo shops and loud music: house and metal and hip hop and jazz and blues. Of course, Faubourg Marigny, like all the other bookstores, were messy. Piles of yellowing books, along with some new books. You wouldn't really know the place was gay if it weren't for the paintings of naked men and a small section of specifically gay books.

At the end of my trip, I didn't buy too many books (two JCO, one Nicola Griffith, none New Orleans related, but all I've been searching for quite a long time!), but not for the lack of supply.

Between the public drunkeness--CVS sells mini-wine bottles, there are cocktails to go--and loud music that you can hear from the 37th floor, even when you have a flight out at 7 and need to be up by 5, NOLA ain't that bad for a bibliophile.

Book Review: Leche

2011-11-01T10:00:00.000-04:00

Leche
by R. Zamora Linmark
9781566892544

What does identity mean in a globalized world? Specifically, what is one to make of diasporic identity, when one is between two cultures? Can one say that one belongs to a culture, if one has been away for so long?

R. Zamora Linmarck explores these questions in his latest novel, Leche. A semi-sequel to his first novel/story collection, Rolling the R's, Linmark takes one of his characters and extrapolate their story into the future. In this case, it's Vicente de los Reyes (Vince), and the future is 1991.

Out of a bad relationship, Vince finds himself in a pageant for Filipinos, hosted of course by his new ex (a rice queen who gets turned on watching The Last Emperor). Coming in second-place he wins a trip to the Philipines (whereas the winner gets a tour of Manila towns throughout the US), where he is haunted both literally and figuratively by his past life, when he left as a 10 year old. What he finds is not exactly as he remembers.

The present-day Philipines is a hodgepodge of illogic. Cars almost make it a policy to try to scare pedestrians, there are regularly scheduled black outs (that never happen on schedule!), mass wakes in the streets slowing down traffic. As Vince describes to his brother: "In one word: vulgar. No, tacky. No, tasteless. No, cheap. No, queer," or simply, "Third World Technicolor Manila." Vince's Manila is colorful yet frightening; fanciful yet foreign. Indeed it's a cultural shock for Vince who never really feels at home during his visit despite having so many memories of the place. (And it's memory that makes culture, right?) His newly found friends--Pinoywood eccentrics ranging from the president's own daughter to a melodrama cult director and the occasional cute tour guide, even tell him he is not and cannot be Filipino and thus would never understand their culture:

"Kris: Do you identify more as Asian American or Fil-Am?
Vince: Neither.
Kris: Then what?
Vince: Filipino.
Kris: Cannot be."

What follows is a rollicking identity crisis disguised as a comedy, glued together in the form of postcards, TV sow transcripts, history lessons, mythology, and dreams. The hodgepodge structure is fitting for the story as Vince navigates the strange land to find his identity: is he/can he be Filipino and American? Does it matter how he sees himself if no else sees him as such?

It is nearly a typical story of an immigrant returning to his homeland as a stranger, but Linmarck takes a step further and contextualizes the situation. The novel is saturated in history and myths--so much so that the story, which takes over the span of no more than a week--is elongated. Thus, Vince's story is tied to Filipino stories. And despite being ostracized as not being Filipino, Vince does in fact fits rightly into the story of Pinoyhood, its creation legends and its developing histories. "When Filipinos travel, they bring everything they've ever owned, including their dreams, memories, and disappointments."

With dreams, memories, and disappointment Vince does travel. Along with cultural intrigues Leche is also the deeply personal story of a broken family caught in both the waves historical changes and personal ambitions. It's a story of regrets and unfinished business--under the veneer of post colonial and race theory and the comedy of cultures, this is parlty a sad story of being lost and lonely, of not belonging.

Touching on the bigger pictures as well as the quieter personal stories, Linmark's Leche is a read that is complex as it is funny, skillfully written in a way that looks entirely effortless. It quite unlike anything written this year.

Does Anyone Notice All of Kristin Hannah's Covers Are Beginning to Look The Same?

2011-10-31T23:24:00.000-04:00

'Cause I have...

Just saying...

What Are Writers in #OccupyWallSt?

2011-10-19T10:00:00.000-04:00

I was unfriended by a writer today. I think it's because of my generally positivie review of Anis Shivani's. He was a proponent of MFAs. Shivani is not. I am not sure but open to questioning.

But then again maybe he was cleaning up his friends list, didn't like my radical leftist posts, or that I listen to Britney Spears on Spotify (but who doesn't!)

Yet, returning to my review of Shivani, I did ask: what is the purpose of the writer? What role does the writer function in society? In social change? And of course, how does writing as a part of the academy fit into this. (I paraphrased myself).

Perhaps in the #Occupy Movement we can see some answers.

Launched last week, the list is growing with big names and little names, fiction and nonfiction and poetry:

Dorothy Allison
Steve Almond
Russell Banks
Ann Beattie
Matt Bell
Charles Bock
Helen Boyd
Judith (fucking) Butler
Michael Cunningham
Deborah Eisenberg
Ursula Le Guin
(actually this list has gotten longer than I thought, so just go aheed and read it yourself)

What this highlights is that writers can be political, despite some who argue that art is simply for art sake. In Burn This Book from 2010 edited by Toni Morrison, the writers argue that writing is necessary because it shows reflection of reality (not reality itself), it also instructs, and art itself is a form of protest. Yet as a writer I feel that being political in art is bad manners. Don't be Ayn Rand they say, not because her theories were lousy, but because it makes for bad fiction. Rarely do writers actually go all Ayn Rand on their audience, but without it: how political can we get with our art? For example, how are Ann Beattie's short stories a political protest? (We also have to question if writers working now can produce anything for the political issues at the moment, since it does take awhile to write a story and then have it published).

I think poetry as partly a performance art (or taken as such) can very easily be identified as political (can be a political act). And indeed with the #Occupy movement, the poets are on it!

Poets@OccupyWallStreet is a movement of poets who have performed their poetry to show their outrage:

"A designated Poetry Corner has been established in the Liberty Plaza area, which protesters have been occupying since September 17th. Through the Poetry@OccupyWallStreet Facebook page, poets around the country can post poems or comments in dialogue with the movement. All poems will be read on-site and added to the community library, and one will be featured tonight at the General Assembly meeting."

Apparently there's also a People's Library and an anthology:

You know it's getting serious when writers are getting in on it.

Video: Anne Rice's Return to Spec Fic

2011-10-17T23:38:00.002-04:00

Book Review: Against the Workshop

2011-10-17T09:00:00.003-04:00

Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies

by Anis Shivani

9781933896724

For thelife of it, America can't win the Nobel Prize of Literature. The last American was Toni Morrison and that was in 1993. Since then, mostly Europeans have won the award, and mostly British. Despite, being extremely Eurocentric, perhaps Horace Engdal of the Swedish Academy had a point when he said "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. The ignorance is restraining." (Of course, he also later said that Europe was the literary epicenter of the universe).

Fact is, no major US writer has made a splash on the worldwide literary circuit and to see why we must see what makes US lit so different. As many have argued before (because apparently US lit has been in decline for quite awhile, it's almost a rite of passage to complain about US lit), we have a weak culture, the MFA has killed it, capitalism has made us complacent whereas art needs to be angry and political. Yet Anis Shivani's Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies is perhaps one of the first to put all of these loose strands together, synthesizing a theory of American literary un-greatness.

Collected here are Shivani's essays over the last couple of years, which when taken together argues that American literature's decline is inevitable within the system in which it operates. Simply said, after WWII, there was no other way.

Pos-war America saw a rise in MFA programs, the institutionalization of art. Partially, this was due to the economy. With an increasing capitalist system, artists retreated for their own safety under the guise of no one wants art--they want Disney, Coca-Cola, and war against commies. They found that safety in universities. Shivani cites a rise in the "academic" writer--those who are in some way tied to writing programs (either been to a program, taught at a program; under this argument Toni Morrison was a workshop writer). Before the war, the writer was not expected to be part of the academy. Now, it's hard to find any who aren't. The wild, rebellious writer/artist, has been tamed, domesticated.

This, in turn, created a complacent literary culture, the type that never challenged the status quo. Gone are politically charged writing. Here to stay are domestic fictions and narcisstic, inward turning works that focused on craft. Small, miniature fiction, he calls them. Gone, he argues, is writing that attempts to connect (ironically, this despite so many works over the years that is all about connecting especially in the digital world).

American fiction is too competent. He blames this on the rules of fiction writing as instituted by MFA programs--write what you know, show don't tell, find your voice, all of which, he agrues are quite useless, empty terms. Furthermore, the careers the MFA industrial complex prescribe to young writers (be nice, humble, struggle through teaching instead actually struggling through low classdom), which is part of the culture of the MFA program--has made for--boring writers with nothing significant to say except that you should really consider an MFA.

As Shivani sees it, the MFA has turned into itself, making an insider's culture with rituals and rites of passages that the common reader can't hope understand. The American writer has become unrelatable. America is losing readers at the fault of the writer. This has political implications: "Just as our government has become sclerotic to the last degree, doesn't and can't crespond to real needs, so is writing completley immeresed in its own internal compulsion." Where are we to turn if writers are not writing anything worth while? Not calling people to question society?

Shivani misses the vagabond artist. The one who travelled and did readings of his unpublished poems (compared to writers today who read on book tours, which he argues is a wholly an American practice). One who incites passion in its audience, instead of today's writing who's sole responsibility is to illuminate common human emotion (he goes in depth about the fetishization of victimhood).

While he verges on generalizations of an entire field of literature (what about small presses? Small presses can be highly political as well as a venue for high quality, ground breaking literature--Blake Butler (until he got the Harper Collins book deal, but it's probably still very good], Matt Bell [who went off on Shivani on Facebook], Tara Hardy [amazing poet who mixes her personal experiences of incest with larger issues of social justice], Andrea Gibson [my lesbian crush]), occasionally contradicts himself (how is the MFA a guild system away from capitalism when it is using Fordist models of product, for example), never consider the point of view of those who might think literature as simply just art, and picks on Jhumpa Lahiri and multiculturalism as a gimmick of literature (this coming from a man of color though he does have a point about working class writing by people of color), Shivani's work here is important because it asks questions that must be answered of writing: what is the writer to society? What purpose does literature serve? Must a writer struggle for his/her art? Do white upper-class people have anything worthwhile to write? What is genius? Are we lacking genius? Is the taming of the artist bad for our culture?

Even for those who disagree, Shivani's book is exciting and undoubtedly an important contribution to how we think of literature, and how writers write. Shivani's book is provoking, it taunts, it attacks: but he does it because he cares deeply: "There is no replacement for the use of print to tell a convincing story," he writes, debunking the idea that writers must compete with new media. Writing is powerful, he argues, we're stunting it's power.

His advice to writers?:

"Steal, cheat, borrow, lie, move to rural Vermont and live in a shack and grow you own food, do anything but sell your soul to the academy."

That's plan B.

Book Review: The Name of the Nearest River

2011-10-03T21:29:00.000-04:00

The Name of the Nearest River
by Alex Taylor
9781932511802

Naturalism has always been a part of Southern Literature. Even while writers explore Southern people, their heroism, flaws, and humanity, the South has always been about place and nature. This is especially true for Alex Taylor gritty debut collection, The Name of Nearest River.

The title of the collection itself calls forth a familiarity with the land (how else does one know the name of the nearest river?), something most of his characters have living lives on the edge: unseen and dirty--both figurtively and literally.

In the first story--the title story--this is brought to the spotlight immediately. A man falls into a river while fishing. Two gamblers leave their game to find the body and deliever retribution in the wilderness, away from society. What they do is an animalistic type of revenge, something expected of savages.

Yes Taylor's characters are savages. These are far from the gentry in say, Gone With The Wind. Here we have thieves, killers, cheaters, lustful men, runaway grooms.

Yet Taylor strays away from caricutures despite the tall tale toned story here and there ("Equator Joe's Famous Nuclear Meltdown Chili" about a rivalry between a hobo and a theatre owner, for example). Taylor such tones are used more for voice, perhaps to even subvert his own characterizations, the loneliness of his characters, yet their own resilience, not to mention charming quirkiness--from the grandmother who pours sugar into a gas tank to stop her son from taking her ailing husband to the hosiptal to the groom to punches his bride after she laughs at his flower. These are memorable characters, yet they are instantly recognizable for their desires for better longed-for lives, and the failure reach it, though none of these characters are failures, just broken: "We've got a way down here of attracting all the heartbroken in the world," says one character, and there is plenty heart in this collection--not only broken ones, but troubled ones, lost ones, and also young ones who have yet to see the fire of the world that would eventually burn them or the people who would lock them up.

Taylor draws influences from another Southern writer--easily comparable to Flannery O'Connor. But in him, you can also see Joyce Carol Oates (the sinister, creeping violence that is everywhere), and Raymond Carver (quiet characters living quiet lives)--however oxymoronic that may seem at first. Yet this is what makes Taylor's voice and stories his own.

The collection concludes with the previously unpublished "Winter in the Blood." It follows a daughter and father duo as they are encounter two could-be killers in a snow storm. The story is the highest example of Taylor's fiction: there's a control in language, a violence that threatens tear everything apart, and characters strong enough to survive and tell the tale, even if they're not quite sure what there is to tell.

Taylor's debut is undoubtedly a powerful, refreshing voice in short fiction--expertly executed with a both a variety and unity sometimes lost in collections.

(On a different note, I didn't know this was avaliable at Walmart)

Amazon's Fire

2011-09-28T22:18:00.000-04:00

In Apple-like style, Jeff Bezos introduces the I-Pad-like Kindle Fire, their new addition to the Kindle Family, a tablet reader.

It works nearly like an I-pad only cheaper. The big announcement from Amazon seem to be that it's like the I-Pad, but cheaper. Sticking to its guns, Amazon will take down the competition with cutting prices. Experts, however, don't see Amazon taking down Apple anytime soon, instead its victims are retailers. The Kindle Fire, like the I-pad is connected to the online store. But whereas Apple only has Itunes, Amazon has an entire store of books, music, furniture, and sex toys based on your favorite cartoon characters.

To make this point, when you purchase the Fire, you also get Amazon Prime (two-day shipping) for free for two months.

"What’s more, it seems that tablet owners are more inclined to click the buy button than those on personal computers. It’s just so easy, and right from the comfort of your couch–or in your car outside Best Buy or Barnes & Noble."

In addition to being a challenge to book retailers, this is undoubtedly a challenge to literary culture. Yes, you can buy ebooks, but Amazon clearly wants you to look at other stuff as well. Reading takes concentration. This ain't helping.

This isn't either:

Book Review: I Knew You'd Be Lovely

2011-09-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

I Knew You'd Be Lovely
by Alethea Black
9780307886033

I'm a nonreligious person, but I usually don't have much trouble reading the works of those who are in that way inclined. (I have yet to try Amish fiction). Mary Gordon comes to mind. Her work captures the lives of Catholic Americans in conflict with reality and their ideals. Her characters and stories are sad, tragic: the conflicts are not resolved and we as readers feel their uneasiness. The characters are less tools, more realistic reflections of our own disappointments in trying to find answers.

It's only when they're used as tools for beliefs or philosophies that we feel an uneven uneasiness: we don't feel uncomfortable with them, we're just uncomfortable. Alethea Black quotes Samuel Goldwyn in her notes: "If you have a note, send a telegram." Black, a person whose faith is evidently quite important to her, even comments on her insecurity--the possibility of proselyzing, of crossing the "fine line between a character with a strong opinion and a story that has strong opinions..." And in her debut collection, I Knew You'd Be Lovely, perhaps these lines are crossed.

We have Kelly in "Proof of Love," who finds love in Jesus and hopes to find something like it in Nash, a damaged nonbeliever who is uncomfortable around her religious figurines. We have the sister in "Someday is Today," who annoints her sister's husband (also a nonbeliever) with holy water before he dies. The difference between the characters in an Alethea Black story and a Mary Gordon story are the reflection of humanity that they have. Whereas the people of Mary Gordon are imperfect and guilt ridden, Black characters are innocent and well meaning, though the result of their efforts are never exactly how'd they imagined it: "I guess I figured it wouldn't do any harm," says the sister in "Someday is Today." Her sister becomes infuriated at the act, but gets over it in a paragraph. The loose ends are tied up at the end. If anything, Black's stories are neat. Neat in the way that these "feel good" tales. The Christian proslzying is the least of the book's concerns.

Even outside the the realm of spiritual search, her characters are all good guys, well-intentioned people who are simply lost: Bradley in "That of Which We Cannot Speak" who seeks to find his voice, Felix in "The Thing Itself," searching for a new career, Hannah in the title story who seeks out the woman her husband may or may not be cheating with. These stories are about good girls trying to make it in a mostly good world (though sometimes they're given lousy luck).

Yet good girls rarely make history. The same is true in fiction: good girls rarely make good stories. These stories are neither memorable or heavy. Here is light reading exploring the lives of characters in existential crisises--if there is such a thing, Black perhaps captured it:

"'The point of life,' he said 'as I thought I'd taught you by now, is to try to suck as much pleasure out of each passing moment as you possibly can.' But Katie was convinced there had to be more to life than pleasure-sucking"

Her stories though are not without its beauty, depth, and humor, as the passage above shows. Her characters are erudite. Indeed, even out of the context of the religiousity, there is a spiritual/existential hunger in her characters and the wise conclusion that perhaps we can't ever reach spiritual calm, perhaps we don't even want it (as in "Double Blind"). Black is wise and a good craftsman. She has the keys to her characters thoughts and unlocks their quirkiness: from Jesus freaks to temporary mutes, from eccentric singer-songwriters to restless youth. Her voice is also wholly her own: something of a Lorrie Moore crossed with something of a Flannery O'Connor, yet something else.

Nonetheless, as a whole, Black's work is lacking. While much can be said of Black for trying to give the literary genre a optimistic spin--the literary world usually highlights only the stories that demeans the human condition--and her characters are lovable for their sense of humor and personality (one does close the book with a type of longing and regret), Black mimics the flaw logic of faith. Faith exist to tell you everything will be okay. The result in Black's work is not only an overbearing self-righteous philosophy, but also weak fiction with characters who never truly see their own flaws or narrators who can't even see this. Within flaws we find conflicts, explosions, stories. Her characters, her philosophy, only skim the surfaces of the issues at hand and as readers, I would think we want more: more doubt, more ambiguiety, more subtext, more honesty.

Black is at best a writer of quiet skill.

Forgive me, but I like my writers troubled.

Kay Ryan Is A Genius!

2011-09-21T22:48:00.000-04:00

Kay Ryan is $500,000 richer (over the next five years):

Genius!

Computers Can Write Better Than You!...Now What?

2011-09-15T10:00:00.001-04:00

The other day I was watched the documentary Transcendent Man. It was a bio-doc about futurist Ray Kurzweil who predicts that (in a nutshell) computers and robots will take over the universe and we are all doomed unless we become cyborgs (again, nutshell).

My question at the time was: but can a robot/computer ever write...say, War and Peace, Don Quixote, heck, can a computer write Angel and Demons?

This NYTimes article might point to: maybe.

The article explores Narrative Science, an venture that "transforms data into high-quality editorial content," says its website. Using text and number data sets and algorithms and A.I. it writes new stories.

Some news corporations have already jumped on board. The results?:

Wisconsin jumped out to an early lead and never looked back in a 51-17 win over UNLV on Thursday at Camp Randall Stadium.

The Badgers scored 20 points in the first quarter on a Russell Wilson touchdown pass, a Montee Ball touchdown run and a James White touchdown run.

Wisconsin’s offense dominated the Rebels’ defense. The Badgers racked up 499 total yards in the game including 258 yards passing and 251 yards on the ground.

Ball ran for 63 yards and three touchdowns for the Badgers. He also caught two passes for 67 yards and a touchdown.

Wilson completed 10-of-13 passes for 255 for Wisconsin. He threw two touchdowns and no interceptions.

Caleb Herring threw for 146 yards on 18-of-27 passing. Herring tossed two touchdowns and no interceptions.

UNLV had 292 total yards. In addition to Herring’s efforts through the air, the running game also contributed 146 yards for the Rebels.

Not too shabby, for a sports report. Mainly, it's been used for that. Also, financials. While there have been computer programs out that have been able to "write" articles, it was mainly fill-in the blanks. This one, however, is focused on composition.

Does this give writers, particularly creative writers a run for their money?

Me? I'm putting my money on Stephenie Meyer being a robot/vampire/werewolf/Mormom/moron superhybrid.

The article does end like this:

“In five years,” he says, “a computer program will win a Pulitzer Prize — and I’ll be damned if it’s not our technology.”

BlazeVox #Fail

2011-09-07T09:00:00.002-04:00

Small presses of course are rarely in tip-top financial shape. They're not big for many reasons, among them is niche publishing that bigger publishers can't and won't publish. Want gay lit? Go to, say, Lethe. Urban, street lit? You can go to Triple Crown Publications and have an unhappy black woman on the cover too!

Avant garde and experimental? BlazeVox has been a home for this for a while. It's reputable and publishes good shit.

So it was with surprise when Brett Ortler recieved a "half hearted" acceptance letter. In the email, editor, Geoffrey Gatza, congratulates Ortler on his work. But then makes the unusual request of a $250 donation to help print the book. The reason: bad economic times:

"Due to the recent economic upheaval, most of our funding sources collapsed. But this does not mean we plan to stop publishing.

In the spirit of cooperation, we are asking you to help fund the production of your book. We have done this for the past two years and it seems to be working out very positively. Over $2000 goes into the production of a book with BlazeVOX and we are hoping you will donate $250 to the press to help meet the costs of our budgeted year."

Paying for publication is not too unusual. Contests, on the one hand. Vanity presses on the other.

Everyone knows vanity press, or at least, Publish America, known to many in publishing as a scam for their poorly edited work, their willingness to publish crap, and asking writers to pay for their own books.

On the surface, BlazeVox's proposal is like that. You pay $250, they publish your book.

But what makes the situation unique is the culture of small presses--in particular the "indie press."

Indie press are radical. It's because they care about the art. It's not about money. It's about publishing the radical. Sometimes trying to fuck over capitalist systems. AK Press is a perfect example of a small press trying to stick with their values (in this case, anarchy). Gatza calls the proposal a "co-op," which writer Tim Jones-Yelvington thinks is quite the idea: "I think it is perfectly fine, is actually desirable, for small presses to create innovative alternative models, i.e., 'cooperative” publishing.'" It's in the spirit, he argues. It's also necessary. A capitalist system cannot support the indie industry. It doesn't turn profit, not usually. It must be creative.

But in the case of BlazeVox, the creativity got out of hand. That is, Gatza was being schemey. There was no transparency.

Seeing all these attacks, Gatza quickly tried to explain himself, then declared BlazaVox dead:

This was later rescinded, reiterating:

"But our art form is not about sales. If it were, we would start printing and selling the literally hundreds of Christian-themed manuscripts we receive each year which, for some reason, do sell. If we sold Christian-oriented poetry, we would be rolling in money. We do not choose to do this."

This leaves the question of: what's next for BlazeVox?: How will they continue funding their program?

Tim Jones-Yelvington writes:

"I have seen far too much bad management and fundraising practices justified by good ideology — organizations that in the name of rejecting the dominant norms of the “nonprofit industrial complex,” for instance, move forward with a complete lack of oversight mechanisms that ultimately just means the organizations are unsustainable, their workers are vulnerable or exploited, and their financial practices not accountable to the community they claim to support."

What options do small presses have when they're failing, yet do not want to compromise their ideologies?...when they obviously don't have resources? How can we reject a capitalist system when we live in one? What alternative models do we have for the successful distrubution of art?

What other options did BlazeVox have?

It's a question that many small presses have to answer. But now they have something to guide them: don't do what BlazeVox did. Really! The peeps at HTMLGiant will be all over your poetic ass!

Book Review: We the Animals

2011-09-04T20:27:00.001-04:00

We The Animals
by Justin Torres
(9780547576725)

It's about violence. It's about love. It's about the chaotic urgency of running away because you've done something wrong, but also about the quiet, silent, slow-motioned time of leaving your home for the last time.

Justin Torres' debut is about contradictions. The form itself is likely to raise eyebrows of readers: a novel? in under 130 pages? Can't be. Must not be too flushed out.

Yet Torres manages. A graduate of the Iowa Workshop and a writer whose life could never be described as boring (he's been a bookseller, farmhand, dogwalker among other positions), his minimalism is not too surprising. This, along with his writing habits:

"I kind of write sentence by sentence and I make sure that I have the exact right phrasing and structure and syntax within the sentence before moving to the next one," he says. "It takes forever. And I think that I just have a real attraction to precise, stripped-down, clear language."

It is with such precision and stripped down language that Torres wrote his book--an exploration of boyhood and family, with details inspired from his life as a biracial child in New York.

At the start of the novel, the narrator speaks for the family: "We."

"We wanted more....We wanted more volume, more riots....We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms."

It's a story about belonging, about tribehood. The characters are loose ends: teenage parents unsure of their lives and the boys they have who grow up to be like their parents. Yet it through the narrator's story that we see this fall apart.

It's when he turns seven or learns how to swim does he see himself as someone different, apart. He book explore that: growing up, growing out, which is indeliably marked by violence. The narrator's Ma goes on a fit when he turns seven:

"She ripped her face from mine and shoved me away from her, to the floor. She cussed me and Jesus, and the tears dropped, and I was seven."

In the scene, she accuses him of going on the same path as his brothers, yet it is eventually his individuality, his difference--his secret life--that breaks him, that is the tragedy, and breaks him apart.

Beyond the story, Torres's prose is frighteningly clear and iconic. Like Amy Hempel, his words, however few, echoes, and stays if not for truth, then for their sheer beauty. Torres, a practitioner of minimalism, fares quite well in both short and long form. While this particular story might be too short, too abrupt for some (it reads more like a long short story than a novel), it just proves that, indeed, we just do want more. Who wouldn't of Torres razor sharp, heart breaking sentences? Of his poetry in prose form?

Lambda Literary Announces New Award Guidelines

2011-08-29T22:41:00.001-04:00

The Lambda Literary Foundation has rescinded their sexual orientation requirements for the Lammys. According to the press release:

"For its first 20 years, the Lambda Literary Foundation accepted submissions for the Lambda Literary Awards based solely on a book’s LGBT subject matter. That policy changed in 2009 to restrict the awards to self-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer authors. After two years of implementing the LGBT-only policy, the queer book community remains sharply divided about limiting Lammy nominations to LGBT authors only.
In its review of the LGBT-only policy, the LLF Board of Trustees took into consideration LLF’s mission statement...and core provisions in its Bylaws. The Board also noted that the large majority of finalists and winners of the Lambda Literary Awards have been LGBT authors, but not all of them. There have also been a small number of outstanding books about LGBT lives written by our heterosexual allies.

In addition, the LLF Board solicited opinions from individuals in the LGBT book community, including publishers, authors, important donors, readers, and casual supporters. Those opinions represented both sides of the issue and were, in many cases, intensely held.

After careful consideration of all these factors, the Board crafted a new policy designed to honor excellence in writing about LGBT lives. The new policy has three components:

- LGBT authors will be recognized with three awards marking stages of a writer’s career: the Betty Berzon Debut Fiction Award (to one gay man and one lesbian), the Jim - Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize (to one male-identified and one female-identified author), and the Pioneer Award (to one male-identified and one female-identified individual or group)
- Awards for the remaining Lambda Literary Award categories will be based on literary merit and significant content relevant to LGBT lives. These awards will be open to all authors regardless of their sexual identity
- All book award judges will be self-identified LGBT

While many have applauded this inclusion, others are lamenting the policy as privileged, giving awards to monosexuals, while ignoring bisexuals and transgenders. In a letter to Co-Chair Dr. Judith Markowitz, Rose Fox points out:

In other words, non-monosexual debut authors need not apply, and genderqueer and intersex authors as well as those involved in different-sex collaborations are not welcome at any stage of their careers. How can you even think of calling this a new policy of inclusiveness?

I cannot fathom the decision-making process that led to the splitting of these awards along gendered lines, especially since you must be aware of the growing number of queer people who do not identify as gay, lesbian, male, or female. Why not simply state that each award will go to two people a year? Why take such specific and exclusionary steps?...Saying that only gays and lesbians, and only men and women, are eligible for recognition is really no different from saying that only queer authors are eligible for the awards in general, except that you have made the criteria even more restrictive. You will still need to contend with the deep moral problems that arise from demanding that authors out themselves–in a world that can still be extremely dangerous for overtly queer and trans people, especially people of color, people who don’t conform to gender norms, and people living in repressive and overtly anti-queer cultures–and subscribe to a particular set of definitions. I had hoped for better from the Lammys. I’m very, very disappointed.

All of this, of course, cannot be too surprising. Bs & Ts are routinely left out. Remember HRC? Part of the problem is visibility. Do you know someone bi or trans? Now, in the case of Lambda, do we know any bi or trans writers, who specifically explore the issues to pansexuality and gender? Admittedly, there are few. And part of the problem might be that publishers might not see these works as marketable.

Also, would having BT writers on the LLF Board of Trustee help? The current board, in addition to Markowitz, include David McConnell, Teresa DeCrescenzo, Scott Cranin, Katherine V. Forrest, Sue A. Greer, J. Michael Samuel, Carla Trujillo, and Don Weise, none of whom (to my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong), B or T.

How can the bi and trans community react to this? On the one hand, we are talking about writers and writers will continue doing what they do best, which is write and if they're good at it, write well. The best writers, are perhaps the most marketable ones will perhaps rise to the top. But there is always a chance of marginalization. For example, for every white trans author who might get recognized, there is always a chance that a magnificent trans writer of color will not get the press time they deserve.

The perils of identity!

In the end, Markowitz seem to almost own up to any flaws in the policy: it's all because of deadlines:

The Debut Fiction awards, like any other funded awards, cannot be changed without the full support of the funders. Those discussion are in process but LLF needed to release the guidelines before September 1 so that authors and publishers could begin making nominations.

In LLF's defense, bureaucracy kinda sucks.

Anyway, thanks to Rose Fox and Publisher's Weekly, I learned the acronym QUILTBAG.

Book Review: Dirty One

2011-08-29T09:00:00.001-04:00

Dirty One
by Michael Graves
(9780983285106)

Born in 1978, Michael Graves was a child of the 80s. If his collection were a song, it would be the punkish, bass heavy, plastic sounding "Kids in America," by Kim Wilde. The stories even take place in Plastic City, Lemonister, MA.

It's all here: Walkmans, cassette tapes, jelly bracelets, perms. On the one hand, this is expected from every author: to write what you know. On the other, Graves's work wades nears transgression and absurdism. Instead of dwelling on the banalities of everyday life, Graves characters are outrageous drug fueled, sex crazed, self-centered teenagers. Whereas everyone in the eighties (or writing of the eighties) focused on dirty realism or America's golden age of padded shoulders, Graves's world is refreshingly queer and odd and fun.

Here, the kids watch TV and quote songs. They cuss and have sex. And they're vain. Yet their vanity is their charm. The inability to see outside themselves is both farcial and tragic. His characters are perhaps thorough reflections of ourselves and our desires and our naivety. "Ya don't have to come out if ya don't want to," says one character, after kissing a boy and getting a cold. "but I gotta tell ya somethin'. I think...I know that we're sick. We're very sick. With AIDS."

The strongest story of the set is undoubtedly the title story. In "Dirty One" we're introduced to Noah, who has a crush on his friend Ben Erickson. What comes off at first as a tale of same-sex desire quickly escalates into something violent that leaves the narrator, if not scarred, then at least give him an understanding of the dirty world his mother can't escape and of which he must eventually become part. What is learned is that there is a whole another world outside of the self, and that that world isn't all its cracked up to be. Graves explores that line between childhood and adulthood, pinpoints the way we linger there without even noticing it.

He uses kids take use aspirin and ritalin like cocaine ("The Whole Galaxy") and explore sexuality through childhood playtoys ("Doing It"). THe conflcation and juxtaposition is sweet and bitter: it's a type of sinister that tells us that these are not just innocent gestures, but are in fact, ways of blinded navigation as his characters grow from being reckless youth to reckless near-adults.

At the same time, Graves's prose is highly controlled, influenced by the likes of Raymond Carver, with the quickness and quirkiness of Daniel Allen Cox. At times loud and funny, at times quiet and beautiful:

"It's so quiet out here," Seth says, "Kinda scary. Feels like we're the only ones awake. In Leominister. In Massachusetts. In this country. In this whole galaxy."

Graves's collection is about the extremes: drugs and sex, everywhere. Yet it's within this type of culture that his characters must navigate with their own loneliness into adulthood.

Anne Rice Is Just As Obsessed With Facebook As You Are

2011-08-24T22:04:00.001-04:00

Evidence:

With the amount of stuff she posts on Facebook, I really do wonder how much writing she does get done. (Apparently a lot):

A Film About Poetry By A Novelist

2011-08-20T22:04:00.000-04:00

I don't usually click on Facebook ads, but they asked me if I liked Asian movies and somehow I clicked it and I saw this trailer.

It's about a woman who is beginning to show signs of Alzheimer's and uses poetry to help her cope. Also, the director Lee Chang-dong is also apparently a novelist. It's coming out on DVD August 23rd. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry_(film)

Iowa is Still #1, Bitches!

2011-08-18T23:00:00.001-04:00

The yearly Poets and Writers MFA rankings are up! And of course all you need to know is Iowa is still number one. You could see the rankings for full residencies here and low residencies here. UMCP, where I got my BA, isn't on the list anymore. And I blame a certain MFA student who never answered my emails and clearly thought lowly of her students (I'm just saying!).

She was one (of many) reasons I never chose an MFA program. Students are too pretentious. So I stuck to just plain ol' reading and writing. Also, I got this book free the other day (not sure how long it'll stay, but take advantage of it if you can).

Yet it's all about time. I need time! The MFA gives you that, and that is why I'm seriously (serious this time) thinking about it.

So I'll apply to some on a whim this year along with some residencies. The residencies are quite nerve wrecking, everyone has MFAs (I am working on a portfolio and nearly puke every time I look at my work). But hey, they said they were looking for writers in the beginning of their careers, and I'm just starting.

Also, apparently MFA programs don't have to be so bad.

Chris Rice is Like a Gay Porn Star

2011-08-17T22:41:00.000-04:00

...because he has 2500 fans. From his newly opened up Tumblr site (which he made to post up excerpts of his next novel THE HEAVENS RISE<---I hope it isn't in all caps):

"The promise was this - when I reached 2,500 followers, I would publish an exclusive excerpt from my novel-in-progress, THE HEAVENS RISE.
I’m not sure why I set the bar so low. Maybe I should have said 15,000 followers; that would have put me in league with most of the political pundits who tweet their every opinion on, well, everything. As it is, the 3,000 to 4,000 follower club is populated mostly by gay porn stars, a group some literary critics are eager to lump me in with. But I digress."

He reveals more about his novel, which will have supernatural elements to it:

I’ve never written anything like THE HEAVENS RISE before. Sure, it’s dark and it’s suspenseful and there’s a major gay character and a whole bunch of straight characters and a whole lot of really scary - I hope - stuff happens. But on a variety of levels, this is exactly the type of book I said I’d never write. Not only is it supernatural, it’s also set in New Orleans, a city I swore I’d never return to after giving it such hell in my first novel, A DENSITY OF SOULS.

The son of Anne Rice (who recently said her next book will be a return to the supernatural) of course will experiment with speculative fiction.

It's only a matter of time now until someone comes up with FuckYeahChristopherRice...It's a much better name than Rice House...honestly.

How Much Do We Know About Glimmer Train?

2011-08-04T09:08:00.004-04:00

I confess...I've submitted to Glimmer Train 4 times. If I actually got accepted, would I still be here? Part of the lure of Glimmer Train is the big money it gives out: $500-$1000+. It's also critically praised, though we don't exactly know why.

Blake Butler over at HTMLGiant asked a bunch of writers about what they know of this literary magazine giant. Some interesting answers:

it’s run by two sisters
i used to submit there but don’t anymore
it pays a lot per story
i always see issues of it around student lounges, etc.
when i try to read it i usually get bored, but i remember one or two stories from issues over the years that i’ve enjoyed
most of the stories i remember involve families and identities, e.g. why i do i have to care for my indian father if i’m only half-indian
one time an old nudist in mt shasta city told me he was angry with Glimmer Train because he submitted a story to them that literally involved glimmering trains but they rejected it
every now and then someone i know will be one of the 25 finalists in one of the many contests they run and then everyone will congratulate them on facebook
i submitted my favorite story from LLF there (Snow You Know and Snow You Don’t), but they rejected it. American Short Fiction later published it. that was the last time i submitted to glimmer train.
- Mike Young

I’ve been rejected by Glimmer Train at least 4 times probably. I submitted to them in 2006 I think. They paid $500 per story I think. They had an elaborate contest thing, like 10 different contents. There was, like, a bracket for certain age groups and was as specific as like 500 to 1000 words then 1000 to 4000 words or something like that. I remember learning it was run by sisters and I feel like I read “their story” on the Glimmer Train website and it seemed written in the style of two brothers or a family starting their own farm to sell their own yogurt or something. I’ve probably bought 1 to 3 issues of Glimmer Train, from a Border’s or Barnes & Noble in Florida when I was 20 or 21 probably. I think I remember seeing in their issues that at some point almost like half the accepted submissions were by people with really Chinese names like Xu Liang or Xiu Leung or something. I viewed this as Chinese parents having forced their children to learn how to write a story that Glimmer Train will accept and their children, through hard work, succeeding and the editors of Glimmer Train feeling helpless. Feel like they have definitely published the most Chinese people percentage-wise for a literary magazine in America edited by Caucasians, I think. I have not looked at Glimmer Train’s website since perhaps 2007. I think from 2009 to a few weeks ago I forgot about it almost completely but then read about it in one of Blake’s tweets. Upon remembering Glimmer Train I also remembered, later, Crazy Horse and Epoch. Feel like I really wanted to be in Epoch. I’m not sure if it still exists. I think Crazy Horse paid $250 a story. Glimmer Train’s covers all use the same design I think. It’s like a black rectangle with a white-based center area and it seems Christmas-y I think. Glimmer Train seems interesting. I feel like there should’ve been some very long feature article in New York Times Magazine or something by now about Glimmer Train. I keep imagining being forced to read every issue of Glimmer Train. There’s probably more than 200 issues so maybe 4000 stories. I feel interested in someone “looking into” their notably “Chinese-heavy” issues. Not sure if I may have exaggerated the Chinese thing over time or if maybe actually one issue was specifically only for non-Americans or something. Just remember Night Train. I think Night Train rejected one of the stories in “Bed” with a short, personal note. I remember really wanting to be published by Three Penny Review for an amount of time.
- Tao Lin

Hi Blake,
I don’t know jack-shit about Glimmer Train.
Thank you.
- Mike Topp

To be honest, I've only read about 5 stories over two years from Glimmer Train. Despite some okay stories, most are average. Kids, this safe fiction. Something you can show your mom and MFA teacher. The writers do what they're taught to do, and there is no one published there who is significant (for example, Blake Butler). This is what you get when you have two sisters who look like the really want to be taken seriously by Oprah and a very special teacher from their MFA program.

This, however, doesn't stop me from working on a submission for them. It's a regular story that doesn't take a lot of risk in terms of prose styling.

I need money.

L.A. Bank Has Died

2011-08-04T00:31:00.000-04:00

Leslie Esdaile (LA Banks) has died after a battle of adrenal cancer. The death was announced on Banks's Facebook fanpage:

It is with profound sadness that I announce that Leslie Esdaile Banks, our Queen literary pen passed this morning. I will share details of funeral arrangements as soon as they become available.
Adrienne King
President
Leslie Esdaile Banks FanClub

I have never read her, but when I was a bookseller, she was perhaps one of the more popular authors, at least at the particular store I worked at (think 2009-10 vampire craze). But she was known for not only her urban fantasy--where she was of course one of the few successful black authors--but she also wrote romance, thrillers, nonfiction, and the occasional spin-off book (Soul Food and Scarface). This year, she also self-published what was supposed to be the first in a young adult series: the Neteru Academy.

Despite being a bestseller, Banks's family is still struggling with her medical bills, which perhaps highlight the financial problems any writer might have. Health insurance for writers? Forget about it! A fund has been set up to help her family.

Below, Banks talks about her work, the political and social themes of her work, and how speculative fiction is part of the African American experience:

WILFs: Justin Torres

2011-07-26T00:15:00.001-04:00

I have a mad crush on Justin Torres. It's been documented. I'm pretty sure it's the beard. Literacy always helps.

So: "Reverting to a Wild State" is out in the New Yorker. I rarely read mainstream pubs because they are always disappointing. But this is an exception.

And of course they'd use this pic for the story:

Book Review: The Mother Who Stayed

2011-07-25T23:13:00.000-04:00

The Mother Who Stayed
by Laura Furman
9781439194652

Laura Furman is best known for her work as the series editor for the O Henry Awards. Given to writers of short stories yearly, it is THE award to win if you're going to write short stories.

However, for someone who edits the best fiction out there, Furman is lacking. Perhaps an appropriate analogy would be letting Simon Cowell sing. You can judge, yes, but can you actually do what you're judging?

The book indeed has potential. Nine stories gathered here and presented in trios are supposed to act in conversation with on another. It is the way (or at least a way) a collection can work. Furman got the idea from music: "For me at least," she writes in an interview, included along with a reader's guide (you can tell what her marketing team was aiming for) "reading any type of fiction involves the same recognition, connection, and memory as when I listen to music." Like a concept album, each trio acts to inform each other piece to expand upon themes and motifs. It is, indeed, perhaps a way to put any short story collection together. But what was a great idea, falls flat for writer with a weak voice. Lily TUcks a blurb that is less of praise and more of an insult: "I kept thinking I was reading Alice Munro," she writes. BUt would be rather be like Alice Munro, or be the Laura Furman? Furman is obviously comfortable being a copy.

The first trio is perhaps the weakest of the three sets. Conncering Rachel Cantor, the three stories try to illuminate the (lack of a) relationship between Rachel and her mother Eva. Class consciousness is touched upon briefly, but not fully developed and likewise, the relationship is only touched upon slightly and on the surface. But the trio is scattered brain. Whereas one story concentrates on the isolation Rachel has with her family another explores her isolation from her mother, another the usual isolation of adolescent. Given the way the book is organized, there no logic of how these stories would inform each other, let alone inform the whole collection that concentrates on mother-daughter relationships. The strongest story in the set is "The Hospital Room", which display so fully that tension between mother and daughter:

"Rachel's mother was no longer her mother....Other kids had a mother waiting in the kitchen when school was over to hand out cookies and milk, and as, How was school today? The mothers who worked came in at the end of the day with briefcases and the Times folded up, and kicked off their high-heel shoes and called for their daughters."

It points to the expectations we have in our relationships, and the failures we have at not meeting them. This incongruity of expectations and reality is a running theme throughout the book--between Marian and her unclaimed daughter Dorothea, between Astrid and Sandra, Amber and Dinah. Yet the theme is never fully developed. Furman falls flat when trying to dig deeper (characters die halfway through the trios and their death and its meanings is not explored satisfactorily). Nothing is illuminated. Likewise, her characters are also not fully developed (besides Marian who borders on charicature, but is perhaps the most human of all the characters) and are at best lists of things they do and see (for example, read "The Blue Birds Come Today")

Overall, Furman lacks skill and is spot above the works of Rosemund Pilcher's domestic love stories. Her work does not shine light anything not already explored elsewhere in better fiction. Her prose verges on tedious with its lists of material details as if the telling of material details itself is enough to hold up a story.

This is the stuff of book clubs: her work concerns womanhood and aging, yet does not ever intend to reach out to any other audience and this is where Furman loses readers.

Borders Is Dead

2011-07-19T00:15:00.001-04:00

It's official: Borders is dead. The bookstore attempted to auction it all off, but...obviously that didn't work and plans for liquidation start on Friday. All Borders stores will close by October, leaving some 10,700 workers jobless.

This of course leaves questions about what the bookselling world will look like in the post-Borders industry.

According to Michigan's governor, this is a sign of not overall business, but of a crisis in publishing. Also, the Kobo is doing quite fine. Thus: can we say that the ebook is killing bookstores? Or is it just a bunch of dumb businessmen doing trying to do the work of bookselling? (Louis Borders was not a bookseller).

But also since Borders is gone, does this mean a better chance for independents to thrive? There's clearly more physical space now. Also, indie bookstore can do weird gimmicks like this.

And there is no shortage of skilled booksellers. There's 10,700 of them.

Romance Novels Give You Gonorrhea

2011-07-12T01:07:00.000-04:00

...or so says a study in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care written by Susan Qulliam, who concludes: "sometimes the kindest and wisest thing we can do for our clients is to encourage them to put down the books – and pick up reality."

According to the study, reading romance novels is linked to negative attitudes towards safe sex, unattainable expectations of sex, and an overall disconnect with reality:

"If readers start to believe the story that romantic fiction offers, then they store up trouble for themselves – and then they bring that trouble into our consulting rooms...When it comes to romantic fiction, the clue's in the name; the genre is fiction not fact, and while romance may be the wonderful foundation for a novel, it's not in itself a sufficiently strong foundation for running a lifelong relationship. But I do wonder how many of our clients truly realise that. Yes, they say that they can distinguish fact from fantasy, but when it comes to making life decisions, are they not much more tempted to let heart dictate simply because they are romance fans?"

I find the question of correlation between fiction and reality quite fascinating. For example, if I were to continue in sociology, I would have done a study along the lines of condom usage in MSM and the popularity of bareback porn. But unlike a carefully consider study, the information and assumptions here are flawed.

For one are the credentials of the psychologist in question: she's no scientist but rather "a broadcaster and agony aunt." And while she apparently advocates for positive sexuality, she is attacking books that depicts positive sexual health (argubly), and perhaps this goes as far as attacking women writers given that a majority of these are written by women. (Thus, is this Qulliam lady misogynist?)

Additionally, as Linda Holmes at NPR points out, the study is dated:

"I tracked down the "recent survey" myself, and I can confirm what's been going around Twitter, which is that it covers a total of 78 novels published between 1981 and 1996, selected by plucking books off the shelf at three Cleveland bookstores. None of the books are less than 15 years old, and some were published 30 years ago, before condoms and AIDS were receiving anywhere near the public attention they receive now. Presenting this as the current state of the romance genre as concerns condoms in light of current information about sexual health is more than a little problematic."

This along with poor sampling and a overgeneralized conclusions (condom usage depends on many things), makes this a bad study on the effects of literature.

If Qulliam is concerned about romance novels and sex, why not be concern with the rise of witchcraft and wizardry or straight girls falling for Robert Pattinson. One of these is very scary...

Minor Writer Rivalries

2011-07-07T22:43:00.000-04:00

Eat it, Tim!

Writing As Useless

2011-07-07T00:20:00.000-04:00

Several things got me thinking lately. Firstly, how much sleep deprivation can one take to become a writer.

Also, is it worth it? Is creative writing all in vain.

Over at Ocean Vuong's blog, he writes about the disconnect he feel between his life as a poet and his origins. Coming from a working class background, he writes, " I am ashamed and embarrassed of my art and my way of life....Some of the people in this neighborhood have never read a book in their life, some, like my mother, father, and aunts, are illiterate." Indeed, while the written word has given me so much comfort, is this comfort a shared commonality? Something on which humanity can and must thrive on?

Increasingly, no.

In the recent survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,

"Time spent reading for personal interest and playing games or using a computer for leisure varied greatly by age. Individuals age 75 and over averaged 1.1 hours of reading per weekend day and 18 minutes playing games or using a computer for leisure. Conversely, individuals ages 15 to 19 read for an average of 6 minutes per weekend day while spending 1.1 hours playing games or using a computer for leisure."

While there's not much to complain about the senior numbers (it could always be more). But the future here--those 15-19 year olds, only read for the length of say two songs...one or less if you're talking about those long club remixes with long introductions. (Of course, one is not suppose to project the data; people change).

Yet the fact that it might be replaced by games, echoes the prediction made by Philip Roth:

"The book can't compete with the screen. It couldn't compete [in the] beginning with the movie screen. It couldn't compete with the television screen, and it can't compete with the computer screen... Now we have all those screens, so against all those screens a book couldn't measure up."

This along with the recent revelation that Roth didn't read fiction anymore. (To be fair: Roth has always had a history of bullshit).

If writing is out of style, if no one is reading, would it be worth it anymore?

Vuong writes:

"So what I am doing here? I poet, I liar, artist and trickster with my myriad masks and tall tales. Do I return here to sing their broken dreams into the world and call it my own? Do I force myself to fabricate something beautiful from these ruins despite knowing the truth is never as romantic as poetry makes it?"

Writing, it seems, is unimportant for those who do not, and important for those who do. Which always the case for anything.

Undoubtedly, there will always be writers. But will there be enough readers?

Why I Haven't Been Writing Here As I Should Be

2011-06-27T23:05:00.000-04:00

That's why.

Video: Sassy Gay Friend & Henry the VIII

2011-06-15T00:00:00.002-04:00

He Is Not A Gay Girl!

2011-06-14T00:17:00.002-04:00

Nor is he in Damacus. Actually, he's an American in Scotland.

I never read the blog--Gay Girl in Damascus--but it was on the news on the way to work today where the headline was "A gay girl in damascus is a 40-year-old man in Scotland.

What started out as a man with writers block went out of hand and became the major hoax of this year!

Tom McMaster renamed the blog "A Hoax" this morning and offered his confession/apology/excuse. Turned out, he just wanted to be a writer:

"Ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted to write fiction but, when my first attempts met with universal rejection, I took a more serious look at my own work and I realized that I could not write conversation in a natural way nor could I convincingly write characters who weren’t me. I tried to get better and did various exercises (such as simply copying overheard conversations). Eventually, I would set up a number of profiles on dating sites with identities that were not my own as ways of interacting with real people in conversation but with a different personality than my own."

So what do you do when you have writers block. As a rule, when you add a character things are bound to happen. In this case, Amina Arraf. A half-American, half-Syrian blogger in Damascus. "Amina came alive," he says. She became a character.

On the one hand, McMaster did what writers would do: write it all out. The only problem was the sharing part. And the of course the lying.

It's nearly like the JT Leroy incident, only JT Leroy always claimed to be a fiction writer, whereas McMaster claimed to be reporting from the ground (both claimed their identities as therapy). Brian Spear's open letter on Jezebel (via The Rumpus) explains everything well: once you claim to be writing nonfiction, you enter into an agreement with the audience to be telling some sort of truth. While truth is always debatable, as a straight white guy, you can't really claim truth in staking identity as a Syrian lesbian (I don't think you could rightfully "queer" that unless, of course you agree that sexuality and gender are really fluid and that really we all came for Africa in the first place, so...we belong to all countires.

Spears also pointed out that such works harm. For example:

Daniel Nassar, the pseudonym of a gay campaigner in Damascus, told theGuardian none of his gay friends had met or heard of Amina, but they feared what the backlash to a fake blog could lead to.
"I changed my Twitter name (which was my real name) and picture (which was my real picture) after the news of Amina [emerged]," he said. "I wasn't afraid of what happened to Amina, as I felt she was fake … I was afraid of the aftermath of her silly lie and how would it affect the way police treat LGBT people here."

It is also full of assumptions about the lesbian Syrian experience: here is a white man writing as one, but can he ever really get it?

Despite what McMaster says, this is no gray area. Also, more reason to just stick with fiction, srsly. Also, if you're all for going with the trends, don't use a pseudonym.

Edward Albee is Fucking Right

2011-06-07T00:15:00.000-04:00

Edward Albee got in trouble at the Lammys for, well, not being gay enough. The short of it can be summarized in one line from his speech: "I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay."

By saying so, he seemingly rejects his gay identity for something else, saying that he rather not be a gay writer, but simply a writer. Not surprising actually seeing that none of his work can actually be categorized as "gay." Yet LGBT lit bloggers all over are having at it.

From PomoFreakShow, a blog by Sassafras Lowrey:

"The only part of the evening I truly found disappointing was the acceptance speech given by Edward Albee for his Pioneer award. He spent the majority of it talking about why writing from a queer experience was a lesser art form, how his “sexual proclivities” have nothing to do with his art, and how in most instances self-identified “gay” writers are less skilled than other authors. At the Lambda Literary Awards of all places it seemed particularly offensive, disheartening, and inappropriate."

Ironic from a blog that is supposedly Pomo (postmodern) and by a queer writer. Sassafras Lowrey looks more interested in LGBT writing speaking for and of LGBT people and sees Albee as an authority figure trying to erase the chalkboard.

Albee, however, is just proposing post- (meaning good) identity (meaning bad) politics. He states that it is in fact to simply be a "gay writer" because identity is not one, but many. "I belong to many minorities," he says, almost jokingly (he's male, white, educated). As a writer myself, I can't simply say "I am a gay writer." I am Asian. I am male. I am queer. Can one pick just one? Obviously a privileged white LGBT person can (cause everything else seems so default).

Albee also promoses writers do what they need to do and inhabit their characters. "A writer's responsible to able to become whoever one write about." In is partially performanitiviy (of course, coming from a playwright!), but indeed, writing is about empathy, about letting others try on new shoes. To do so, writers must also step out of their own shoes, of their own comfortable identity.

Surprising no one talked about Terrence McNally's introduction, which basically stated the same thing Albee said, only shorter:"I believe gay literature has reached a maturity, a sense of pride and comfort with itself that has allowed us to left our heads up from navels other than our own....We don't have to write as role models. We are free to write as individual and not as a minority with an agenda."

Yet what is at stake here, as Lowrey argues, is erasure. We need stories because what are we if we are not our stories? Perhaps later we can talk about assimilating, is the argument, but not now.

Autostraddle gives a great overview of both sides.

Yet I stick with my opinion: is gayness enough? Are gay writers to be stuck in ghetto of literary inferiority. This is problem for all minority groups in writing. For example, here and here.

Watch Albee's speech here:

Edward Albee @ 23rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards from Lambda Literary on Vimeo.

What Does Jill Abramson Mean?...Anything You Want Your Pretty Lil Face Wants It To Mean

2011-06-03T00:01:00.001-04:00

The New York Times announced yesterday that Jill Abramson will become the paper's first-ever female executive editor, replacing Bill Keller.

Not that anyone really know who these people are, one does have to wonder what does this mean to the NYT's book section. Do we remember Jennifer Weiner?:

We don't know if Abramson will have any effect on the book reviews, we can look at her history to see how she might change the NY Times (she states: " I don't think there will be that new and different a New York Times."...also, it won't solve V.S. Naipaul. Also: not that it matters.

Fun Facts About Jill Abramson:

- She studied History and Literature at Harvard, showing that even though you chose the wrong major, you can still make a name for yourself as the first someting-something to do something-something

- Abramson was seriously injured in a truck-pedestrian traffic accident at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 44th Street, a few blocks from The New York Times's Times Square headquarters. She was written up for being late to work.

- She married Henry Little Griggs III, a self-described writer, which is a peg above your MFA professor.

- After writing Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, she bonded intimately with Maureen Dowd.

- She aims to be the Anna Wintour for literate people.

- Abramson is a radical lefty, according to this one Tweeter:

SSM2011 - Review: "All The Imaginary People Are Better At Life"

2011-05-24T08:09:00.000-04:00

I first fell in love with Amber Sparks's writing because I was searching Google for "Amber Sparks having sex," but at was disappointed to find her site saying she was not a porn star. Actually, it was after reading "When the Weather Changes You," published in A Capella Zoo. Magical realism like most thing published in the magazine, it tells the story of a future world where the earth freezes and, on a deeper level, because there's always a deeper level--about the relationships we forge for our own selfish, self-serving desire. I rarely have a desire to contact writers, but Spark's work was nothing less than amazing. Also, she had a Facebook account which always makes becoming "friends" so much easier. We are now in that part of our friendship where we occasionally like each other's witty posts...

In an essay at the Big Other, Sparks discusses her influences:

I certainly learned to first love stories as a child. I loved fairy tales above and beyond everything else. Not the most saccharine tales, but the scarier, darker versions. My British relatives gave me a book of tales that included the original Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, the Snow Queen, Donkeyskin, and Bluebeard. Violent, grim, unsettling, wholly magical and unpredictable, these stories were terrific because you never knew what would happen next....But the stories that drove me to start writing my own were those of one Hans Christian Anderson....To be honest, it really wasn’t until just under ten years ago that I started to read lots and lots of short stories again....In the years that followed I started digging, discovering Jim Shepard and Isak Dineson and Borges and Calvino and Mo Yan and Su Tong and Karen Russell and a million billion others.

[there are lots of breaks, but I think I got my point across]

A mixture magical realism and seriousness compacted into the short story form (informed, of course, by the likes of Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, Tillie Olson), Spark's work is funny and sad, serious yet full of wonder.

Among one my favorite works of hers is "All Imaginary People Are Better At Life," first published in Corium Magazine.

The underlying premise is seeming ridiculous. Ruby, a young woman, has a imaginary friend:

"Caleb, her imaginary best friend, calls on the space wires from Chicago to complain about the weather. The best part about Caleb is that he has a direct line into her head so she doesn't incur any phone charges. Ruby has made Caleb an actor, big and blond and very gay,and she loves him more than anyone else in the world. He is not-people and she is not-people. They work well together. He is gay because sex is more exhausting than marathons."

Yet while ridiculous, the condition is essential to the story and the character: Ruby has wanderlust, her head always somewhere, she "can't stop driving , because if she stops she'll e somewhere. If she's somewhere, she'll be real."

To be real, to Ruby, would to ground herself in the "real world," with a disapointing boyfriend ("She hates Home , ever since the boyfriend more or less moved himself in."), existential questions with no answers ("She wonder sometimes if she properly exists anymore..."), and most of all, her need for maturity.

Thus, Sparks uses fantasy here to highlight the discord between Ruby's real world and her imagined one. Sparks strength is her use of humor and the fantastical to comment directly upon the condition of her character.

"Look, Caleb says. I’m imaginary but you’re a real person. Jesus, Ruby. You have to eat real food. You have to pay real rent. You’re not imaginary, dude. You’re just crazy, that’s all. You just really suck at being alive."

Read all of Spark's works...That is all.

Why We Hate The MFA and Why We Should Not Love It But Be Okay With It

2011-05-17T08:37:00.001-04:00

I am at a very important time in my life. The question is: to MFA or not to MFA?

On the one hand, it's what one does to become a writer (isn't it?). On the other hand, it's not the way to really become a writer (or is it?). When I was younger (you know you're old when you start saying this), the image I have of myself as a writer at this age was hitchhiking across the country while writing in a Moleskin made for lefthanders. I'd find myself in New York and Los Angeles and Iowa (I have only been to Los Angeles so far). I'd make witty chapbooks and trade them for fare. I'd have a time period where I'd live in the wilderness and fish with my lesbian lover named John.

Instead, I graduated early, had a stint selling homeopathic remedies, and now I wear button-ups and work a 9 to 5 job. I have become something I quite hated. I look in the mirror every morning and say "OMG! I'm a young professional," and I think about getting an anarchy tattoo on my arm as if to prove: see, I'm still radikal--with a fucking K!!!

To a certain extent I always hated the MFA because it represented just the opposite of that: it represented art institutionalized, art studied instead of felt and experienced, educational privilege based on class.

In fact, Anis Shivani in 2010 compared it to the medieval guild system: "They have their own religion, their annual banquet, their festival spirit.," and in a recent interview with author Mark McGurl in the Los Angeles Review of Books (a blog that tries to take itself seriously while on Tumblr), such ideas are further explored. In four questions, McGurl attempts to save the idea of the MFA as something necessary.

Yes, it is elitist, but "One want the people to have these pleasure not becuase writing short stories will magically lead to a more just world sometime in the future, but because these pleasures are instances of justices, a positive sharing of the [creative/cultural] wealth."

Yes, through crafting instruction we see mediocrity, but "[l]ogically, any large-scale human endeavor will be the sence of a certain amount of mediocrity."

Yes, it fucks with our "deep-seated feeling about the nature of creativity," that is--the fact that we really don't like school.

Indeed, McGurl makes good points on how there is nothing inherently wrong with the MFA program. In fact, he sees such growth as proof that at least some majority of Americans are interested in literature, compared to some critics who see the literary arts as some type of failing in the age of Hulu and Facebook and YouTube--there is no reason for blaming novelists "as though there was something they could or should have done to stop [Glee...because I've never seen The Wire, but I know Glee is pretty good] from being so unbelievably good." Indeed, the MFA program has brought us some amazing talent whose work is diverse and not cookie-cutter material: Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison among others who either been in or taught in writing programs.

Yet, my question is: is this still good enough? Especially, is this something worth investing in? Is it practical to go into this?--I remember reading an article about an MFA professor telling her students that they will learn absolutely nothing out of this, that they were wasting their money--all of you will be unemployed or something like it. Also, quite a number of writers have been successful even though they never attended writing school: is this to be accepted as a norm, or are these just special cases?

What I want to know, Mr. McGurl, is: how can I become famous?

SSM2011 - Review: "Breaking Free" by Farida Samerkhanova

2011-05-16T09:35:00.001-04:00

The Istanbul Literary Review is one of my favorite online magazines. It's a small simply designed website that started in 2005, that includes strong writing from around the world.

The latest January issue features writers from New Zealand, India, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, and Canada, where writer Farida Samerkhanova is based.

Her story, "Breaking Free" is a 900-word work of absurd minimalism akin to Tao Lin (but somehow not as a annoying, perhaps because she is Canadian). Through it, she is all at once ironic, sarcastic, tragic.

The story begins simply:

"My daughter keeps calling. She is drunk. She screams. She calls me a crook and says I make her life miserable. I turn off the phone. Jim is constantly beating her up. It is my fault.He broke her leg the other day. She led oto the police that she fell in her bedroom. He threatens to burn down my house if I dont pay off the debt immediately."

A hardcore minimalist, the narrator presents just the facts: what has happened and what is happening. It lacks inner thoughtfulness, which makes the story perhaps more believable despite the absurd: the bill collector ("I will never forget his name--A. Bailey."), her get-rich scheme, and Ellen Degeneres. It is deadpan comedy: "I suck," the narrator says. Then she kills herself. Or at least attempts to.

Spoiler: she does die, yet she also narrates her death as well as the physical afterness of it where everything is miraculously solved and it is the last minute tradgey: if only she waited just one more second! "[My] funeral is beautiful," she says, not noticing the irony of her own death: "Now that I am dead, they will not have to worry about getting their money back. On the other hand, if they had helped, I could still be alive."

It's an existential comedy in which existence is rather comedic. Life is absurd: events follow one another without linear reasoning, or else shit just happens. The title suggests "breaking free" of such a cycle. The narrator does so. Through her minimalist rambling (yes, quite possible), the narrator is detached from her own existence and pain and is instead concentrated on physicality (as if this the only thing that one can grasp): the math of what it takes to get out of her debt, the half-bottle of ketchup in her fridge, the ultimate heart pains that kills her. Samerkhanova does much to envy in 900 words.

SSM2011 - Review: "El Camino Education" by Matt Bell

2011-05-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

In the spirit of Short Story Month 2011, I review on an uneven schedule short stories of sorts. But mostly, it's in the spirit of Matt Bell's blog, where he's posting everyday for Short Story Month. I'm just a copy cat indebted to someone trying to keep my art form alive (not that I can actually prove I write short stories, but it's a dream). Matt Bell: you are hot for doing what you does...

To start, I begin with Matt Bell's recent story in Stoked, the new ezine from Stoked Press. The first issue, just recently published, includes the wonderful talents of Amber Sparks, Roxane Gay, and Mr. Bell. At a total of 29 pages, it's either poetry or flash fiction.

Bell's story ("El Camino Education) is just two pages, yet like the most well written flash: it is concise and cuts to the point.

We are given a scene in media-res as the car stops suddenly on the side of the road. The hitchhiker (narrator) can only guess of what would come next. By the end of the first paragraph, the driver is behind his car to uncover his trunk and the things hidden inside: "...boxes, boxes full of books and clothing, and yellowed pictures in fancy frames."

The objects at first means nothing. Indeed, excluding the man, the objects will never have any meaning. The driver never explains, but instead asks questions about the hitchhiker's love life, if he has a girlfriend, if he's ever been in love. All this while the car moves forward and everything falls from the trunk: "Glass broke, wood splintered. Things were lost. 'Don't you think that's dangerous?'" Bell's prose is not descriptive, yet it doesn't need to be. That's not the point.

The story fast forwards and imagines the narrator imagines himself in the driver's situation. While he understood the first time, it is only experience that makes him believe. The story comes full cirlce, and almost one can imagine it happening over and over again.

It's a well written story for what it is because of course there is so much more one would want to know. But part of the story's underlying reasoning is: "you'll understand." For example, nothing is quite said--no lesson uttered between the narrator and driver--yet it was understood. Bell's story acts like a nod between strangers who are accepting their humanness, and humanity here is repetition of possible mistakes (love), or universal experiences and feelings.

Also, Matt Bell taught me what a camino is. I had no idea what it was (gay guy here...) so I looked it up. It is this:

WILFs: Abdellah Taïa

2011-05-06T22:45:00.000-04:00

Abdellah Taia was recently interviewed by Dale Peck.

His 2009 book was Salvation Army.

What Paula Deen Does To Celebrate Short Story Month

2011-05-05T08:00:00.001-04:00

It's #ssm2011!!!

2011-05-04T00:16:00.001-04:00

It's Short Story Month! Again...

But this year it's nearly visible!

In a 2009 article, Larry Dark of The Story Prize said:

"For [National Short Story Month] to come about and have any impact, it will need to have a strong organization behind it, a real concerted and nationally coordinated effort, and buy-in from bookstores, schools, and libraries, not to mention authors and publishers."

While it doesn't have the support of something as big as The Academy of American Poets, it of course has Dan Wickett (and we all know that all you need to succeed is Dan Wickett). It is far from being something like National Poetry Month, but the blogosphere is a start.

Among the blogs celebrating SSM2011 is Wickett's very own Emerging Writers Network.

Also: Necessary Fiction, Fiction Writers Review, and Matt Bell.

You can also follow the discussion a la Twitter with #ssm2011.

Happy Short Story Month!

Book Review: Hint Fiction

2011-04-27T08:45:00.003-04:00

Hint Fiction
edited by Robert Swartwood
9780393338461

Flash fiction has always been an interest of mine. Arguably, it's a product of the culture. Right now, for instance, you probably have at least four other tabs opened (Email, Facebook, Youtube, Porn), and if you are bored within one-hundred words of this article, you'd move on to Three Guys and a Cup...Flash fiction has gain so much popularity because it's in demand in our fast-pace culture. It's a hot thing right now with web zines (no surprises) all over the web challenging writers to keep it under 100, or else 50 or maybe even 20. As a reader, it's light reading. But as a writer, it's that: challenging.

One my first published stories was on 50-to-1 which only publishes works of exactly 50 words. In all honesty, that took months to make (in my defense, all my works go through the same process of write, revise, wait a month, re-read, repeat), because flash and micro is about being precise. I like preciseness. It's about getting rid of everything you don't need, keeping what you do; it's about making fun of novels as superfulous, it's about challenging both you and the reader.

Robert Swartwood, editor of Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 or Fewer Words argues that too: "...the very best storytelling [is] the kind where the writer and the reader meet halfway, the writer only pianting fifty percent of the picture and forcing the reader to fill in the rest."

In a way, flash fiction makes reading interactive. It's popular not because of length, but also because of the puzzle element, of putting pieces together to get an implied whole. An example of this is probably the legendary (though not vertified) Hemingway story:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

From this, a reader can actually get a lot. In the scene we have baby shoes that are for sale; the shoes have never been worn. The "why" is implicated, but readers can guess: the baby died (or maybe the baby had really good fashion sense and didn't like the shoes Papa Hemmingway bought or maybe they never got the baby in first place, the story a sequel to "Hills Like White Elephants").

The Hemingway story is perhaps not the best example. (Shame on me for hating on Hemingway) There is only so much that can be made of the six words. Yet as Swartwood's Hint Fiction shows, such small stories can actually do quite a deal: it can invoke emotion, make you smile at irony, cock your head to one side as you re-read the one sentence story two or three more times.

Gathered Hint Fiction, a slim of volume of about 160 pages (none of which are actually filled) are 125 stories from writers from all stages of their careers (from legendary to bestsellerdom to underground), yet with such word limits, it's nearly an even field: all writers are limited to just 25 words to show their best. And some of the stories here are great.

Joyce Carol Oates, for example, offers her 4-word story "The Widow's First Year." Though one of the shortest, the four words (in context of the title) makes the tale punctuated. The tone is somehow bitter, yet it shows the narrator's own strength. Oates's work her is definetly one of the strongest, yet somehow the most simple. (It's shorter than her 6-word memoir: "Revenge is living well without you.")

Yet some of works here are not strengthened by such straight forwardness--a knife-like minimalism. Some stories magically unravel as in Madeline Mora-Summonte's "The Empty Nest":

"My wife curls toward me, a comma forcing a pauce. Her body is hers. Again. The eptiness settles between us. We listen to it breathe."

Like Oates's story, it's sharply cut prose. Yet, unlike Oates's work, it works on implication and the multiple meanings. The story's meaning is ambiguous, yet it works well because the ambiguiety is the feeling that is partly being portrayed. Indeed many of the stories are beautiful because the reader can create so much from it, or else see the complexity of the moment. Other great stories here include the works of Roxane Gay, Ha Jin, Jamie Felton, and Barry Napier (among so many more!)

The antholgy reads quick and are addictive, the pages just turning.

Yet--can one find satisfaction in reading such short works? Can such short works--less than 25 words each--be taken seriously? This is a question Swartwood proposes in his introduction and answers in the affirmative. But reading through the anthology so quickly--one can't help it!--where can one stop to savor the language? While minimalism is to be recognized for its sharp precison in language--are we missing the point by trying to cut everything so closely to the bone? If this is a future of literature, is it something to look forward to?

Undoubtedly, writers will forever be writing long tales, novels will never die. Swartwood's anthology is at once refreshing and troublesome. It's best to think about it as liminal space (think oulipo), where in writers experiment, only to go back to writing more serious, longer works.

Vote BULL!

2011-04-26T00:43:00.000-04:00

Before you read this: vote here!

I never like these corporate sponsored money contests in which you vote for your favorite ideas (always some good ones) in exchange for giving companies information about you. But I always get sucked in, because there's always something good.

An example is Docker's Wear The Pants Project. Dockers is giving $100K to the idea that gets the most votes. Among them is Jarrett Haley's BULL magazine. In his project description he writes:

"Major publishers say men don't read anymore. We say BULL. As the first and only magazine devoted to Men's Fiction, our plan is to expand the operation into an independent publishing house producing thoughtful, engaging books that will get men reading again. If you want books made for thinking men, and stories that respect the glory days yet have a mind for the modern age, vote BULL."

As of this writing, Haley is second to Ryland King who wants to do stuff with green stuff, which while important isn't as cool as BULL.

Roxane Gay gives us two good reasons to vote for BULL over at HTMLGiant:

-Your votes are a statement—that reading and writing matter, that journals and small presses are deserving of funding, that stories are important to people and their authors should be compensated.

-The money will go straight to writers. No one’s getting a salary out of this. All funds go towards expanding BULL as a journal and small press. This funding will go into the pocket of artists like you.

Need I say more? Also Jarrett Haley is kind of a WILF too. Ryland King is cute, but not a writer. Literacy is quite hot.

Admittedly, I can problematize this contest. For example, I'm not too fond of the title, it reflects stereotypes of manhood, but I think this is quite important for the literary community. It'll be more than any small literary press will ever have and is so much more important, as Haley says (video below) especially in a time when mainstream press have given up on literature.

Here's to the attempted masculization of literature via capitalism!

Vote for this! Everything ends 5/1! Vote everyday!

This Week In Video: Greg Mortenson Lies, Will Farrell as a Raymond Carver Character, Dance Wolfshammy Dance!

2011-04-22T08:09:00.008-04:00

1. Greg Mortenson is under attack for pulling a James Frey:

2. Will Farrell is staring in a Raymond Carver inspired film. Everything Must Go is based on "Why Don't You Dance?" Farrell wrote an introduction to Carver's story in the latest Zoetrope: All-Story. Buy, read it, and you can tell Farrell has never heard of Carver let alone read him.

3. Natalia Kills is nearly my new pop favorite artist, or at least a replacement for Lady Gaga, who has become too Christian. In Kills's latest song, part of the soundtrack for Red Riding Hood, Kills invokes Alice in Wonderland.

4. Does anyone know how to embed something from Tumblr? Anyway, go here (via Rob Wolfsham): http://www.wolfshammy.com/post/4712152816/troxum-working-on-a-new-album

5. And now for something completely irrelevant...

Eileen Myles to Poets: On May 1st, Do Something Perhaps (But Don't Write, Maybe!)

2011-04-20T23:40:00.000-04:00

Poet Eileen Myles has a proposal. "I'm not telling anyone what to do - I'm proposing something," she writes on the Facebook page of Poet's Strike, a semi-organized suggestion of an event. As described on the page:

"Why don't we all refuse to write or read poetry on May 1st and turn our energies towards political acts all over the country and you know why not the world. This idea was floated in the 60s maybe as a joke but today I'm thinking that rather than it being about who cares if we write or not we can use our resistance as an organizing tool.

Everyone can do it locally - I'm thinking we should NOT do things in poetry spaces (except maybe to plan and organize.) Though certainly art world spaces could be used, or any other space inside or out. I'm not thinking top down organizing at all. Pick your issue, your group of poets and we don't have to limit our groups to poets only, but poet organized.

The point is to get attention to your issue whether its about women's rights, tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts, environmental disasters and defunding, whatever you want to devote your energies to publicly or privately that day. Any takers?"

For me, I'm a poet on permanent strike. I don't write poetry anymore. I am the Hollywood B-movie actress who refuses. But Myles means something different. Simply, she's proposing that poets do something else besides write poetry. Mainly: try something new. Instead of writing poetry, save the world:

"We don't know how it will help. It might help us," she writes on the wall. "But it's not about creating change necessarily. It might be about thinking differently about who we are in groups. How we might interact with the world as another kind of group. A group of poets did this - washed windows, fed kids, gave away bottles of water while reminding people that fracking is destroying the water table. Who would we be if we did these things instead. It's a little like writing a score instead of writing a poem. My poem isn't the only thing I want to give to the world."

And here I am thinking that poetry could change the world. Poetry--specifically performed poetry--to me has always been closely aligned to seriously engaging people into thinking about specific issues. Think Andrea Gibson or Tara Hardy. Contemporary poets have for a while been associated with political activism. The socio-political has long been a subject. The Beatniks are an example. Today's queer poets another. (Yet there's a difference between being a writer with only political intent and a writer who happens to address politics; the difference is something really awful and something quite powerful)

It's a question that many have already asked. One poet writes, "I still don't understand the distinction between poetry and political action. Aside from, calling it one thing or another."

Is Eileen Myles's proposal undermining the power of poetry? Is Myles making a distinction between poetry and political activism in which activism is deemed more important, a higher agent of change perhaps? If so, what do her poems think about all this?

To Myles, it's a difference between a general action and a specific action:

"See I can think of all the way of a poem being construed as a political action but refusing to write poetry as a political action and doing something else instead is a specific action. So I'm not so much saying what is and what isn't...I'm proposing something. Poetry is a certain kind of energy and what if you spent it deliberately differently."

But I guess the final question is: will this be of any use? A poem--deliberately political or not--is a culture marker. Poets are makers of culture. As a written work, it is there to stimulate the mind of readers. As something read, it is doubly powerful. At the same time, by writing something down one is automatically given some type of power; for minorities of all types this is simply a must. This Myles has addressed. Yet political activism--volunteering, campaigning, etc--has its own measurable effects. Does switching the two for one day make any difference? If we were to do this for say a year--a year no poetry--what would this mean? Would we get more work done if poets (and writers) focused their attentions--most or all of it--on deliberately making the world a better place, and not, say worrying about a book contract or writing a better poem? How is shutting up and doing something a "resistance tool"? Is this a good excuse for poets with writers block not to write?

Either way, Myles is steadfast on this not being anything in the first place. It's an unstructured proposal that she invites poets to consider or not consider.

Vietnamese Lit...You Know, Without the War

2011-04-18T00:14:00.000-04:00

Somehow I don't have a lot of time to write for this blog, yet I find time to go to literary events (or literary like events, such as those where I bring a book to read while someone else speaks).

Last Thursday, The Hirshhorn Museum hosted Beyond the War: Vietnamese American Film and Literature Envision a New Homeland featuring Monique Truong, Truong Tran, Mark Tran, and moderated by Isabelle Pelaud. Part of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program, the goal of the event was to explore Vietnamese-American art 36 years after the Fall of Saigon.

As Isabelle Pelaud mentioned in her introduction, the Vietnamese American experience is framed by the Vietnam War and there has been abundant literature that are consequences of that war. Yet what about authors who do the unexpected: write of the Vietnamese American experience as something beyond a/the war. She pointed to the example of Monique Truong's debut novel The Book of Salt. She asked if anyone had read it, and two people raised their hands. I felt bad because I was not one of them (it's on my bookshelf somewhere, but I do not know where it is, which makes me sad). Truong's first novel explored the life of a Vietnamese cook who was transplanted to France to be Gertrude Stein's personal chef. Pelaud mentioned the social responses within publishing houses: "A Vietnamese cook can't have such complex thoughts," they commented. (And of course in a type of delicious poetic justice, the book became a bestseller, an award winner (it garnered a Lammy nomination, but lost to Christopher Bram), and Truong is a millionaire or close to it (note that a millionaire in the writing world isn't the same as a millionaire in the real world; think Canada...)

The conversation, among other things, talked about how Vietnamese literature has moved beyond the war (through presentation of the writers' works), and how moving beyond the war is an obstacle for Vietnamese writers stuck in the ghetto of the war story. To write as a minority, it seems, one doesn't really have full creative license, but instead must produce (by industry standards) something that is in demand: a recognizable otherness to separate it from the literature of white males (i.e. serious literature that says so much about the universal human condition, compared to the works of ethnic minorities which are nice, but no cigar).

Otherness, it seems, is something that is upheld in the publishing world through the stories it systematically approves to publish.

Yet as Truong Tran said, artists are artists because they do the unexpected. In his case: writing radical poetry and making art out of porn (lots of porn apparently, including a quilt!). Or in Mark Tran's case, making a movie that doesn't deal with the war, but instead generational gaps. Or in Monique Truong's case, where the war is a background story (as in Bitter in the Mouth), or not a story at all (as in [I guess I'm assuming] The Book of Salt).

All this anti-war talk begets the questions of: is the war of any importance anymore?

A young writer/audience member asked the question (with all due respect): don't you think the war is still important? Even if we're not directly affected by it, we are because of it.

The panel responded: yes. We must not forget the war. It's part of Vietnamese-American identity. It's part of our cultural consciousness.

I asked (the first time I ever asked a question at a reading/panel!), where did the authors see the future of Vietnamese Lit/Art if we're moving--as the title of the event says--beyond the war, as identity is perhaps "becoming more American," whatever that means?

Everyone agreed: it doesn't matter. Writers will do their writing: no matter the categories. Even if it is a question of assimilating, "When we look in the mirror, our identity is there; but most importantly, people remind us of who we are." That is to say, you can claim your identity and this is powerful, yet people will make your identity for you anyway (especially as a writer) because it is believed that as a writer of non-white ethnic origin, you must represent something and somebody. The word “token” comes to mind.

This, it seemed to me, was the thing to take away: that as writers one must hold on fast to the identity one wants to proclaim, especially in the face of social structures that is not conducive to art. Art is rebellion. Society is structured.

Which, of course, I could've gotten totally wrong, but the important part is that I got a book signed by Monique Truong (she personalized it!) and right now it is my most cherished signed book (and trust me, I get around).

When Closing Down A Bookstore, Make Sure To Have Some Fun

2011-04-13T22:28:00.001-04:00

Sure Borders is closing, but it doesn't mean the employees aren't having the last words. Pictures as examples:

(via http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/bitter-borders-compilation)

2011 AHA Conference Round-up

2011-04-11T23:34:00.000-04:00

Last week I was at the American Humanist Association's Annual Conference in Boston. I got off at the Kendall T-Stop and walked through M.I.T. The only thing I thought about while hauling my suitcase is that Junot Diaz works somewhere here. Also, my gaydar was kinda going crazy. Hipsterism is a close cousin to gayness but only sometimes.

Besides running around and getting very little sleep, the 4-day event was a great success. Which shows that if you donatd enough to a great organization (*hint, hint*), great things will happen. The superstars of atheism were all there. Richard Dawkins (honestly, I didn't really care), Margaret Downey (the "Martha Stewart" of Atheism, as a co-worker pointed out), Jay Wexler, and also Rebecca Goldstein.

Goldstein was presented with the Humanist of the Year Award. I said "Hi," and handed her an envelope of name tags and meal tickets. Goldstein said "Oh, okay." I was thinking "Ohmygod! Rebecca Goldstein just talked to me!" (The irony!). Her acceptance speech took 30 minutes. I only listened to say 15. The gist was that she has a mad crush on Spinoza. My table asks, "Who's Spinoza?" It wasn't a rhetorical question. Rebecca Goldstein thinks Spinoza was the bad boy her Jewish mother told her never to talk to. This is why, according to Goldstein, Spinoza is sexy.

Judith Norsigian was there too. She talked briefly about labor unions. She had a PowerPoint. She said that she was working on a version of Our Bodies Our Selves for transgender people, to be titled Our Bodies Our Transgender Selves to come out this fall (?).

Steve Wozniak received the Issac Asimov Science Award. He said he loved Issac Asimov as a kid. His speech went on for a while. I kept on thinking that Wozniak knows Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs's sister is Mona Simpson. In essence, it was like Mona Simpson was talking. Also, I didn't know he was on Dancing With the Stars. I imagined how Mona Simpson would fare on Dancing With The Stars.

After that, my coworkers and I went to a bar (my first straight bar!). Jennifer Bardi, the editor of The Humanist, bought me a drink. She is a colleague technically, but still...an editor bought me a drink! Other people did too. By the end of the night I had four drinks. My roommate and I hailed a taxi. Back at the room, I barfed in my mouth, but swallowed it because I didn't want the sleeping roommate to know I'm a lightweight. It was almost as rad as that time Nicola Griffith gave me a beer and we watched the sun set on Mulhullond Drive during last year's writer's retreat...

Remember, applications are due 4/15!!! Get to it! You could be as cool as me:

Screw Poetry Month--What About the Short Story?

2011-04-05T18:46:00.000-04:00

Once again, I bemoan the dying breed of the short story (this is never an old topic. Also, it's not really dying [as long as there are MFA programs]; what I mean by dying is that it is not that popular; that is, it is quite like the red-headed step-child).

In the recent Glimmer Train Bulletin, writer Matt Lapata writes about how we as writers might be able to save the short story.

The problem according to Lapata is TV and video games. These other forms of entertainment, he argues, is taking away valuable time from readers. Readers are turning to comic books, TV shows, and video games who have larger than life characters.

He writes:

When you say a generic MFA'er has memorable characters, could you imagine them on a T-shirt or see some drunk at a bar impersonating them? Are they going to get spin-offs? Are their plots gripping, really, or is someone babysitting a dog and pondering how that makes him feel about his wife and modern society?

To make blockbusters is the way for the short story can compete. And it's all about competition.

This compared to an argument from a guest on the Ploughshares blog (that I can't currently find, but I linked to it before) that says that the short story will survive, but only as a refined taste.

Lapata makes this claim too, comparing the short story to jazz:

I sometimes think about these stories the way I think about jazz. I appreciate them. I understand its history and the chops required to play it. But when I say I like a jazz song, I'm abbreviating. I like it as a jazz song. I actually like rock, for example. I can get that fuck-yeah feeling behind rock songs, play them in the car or for friends and all that. I rarely feel this way about a short story, but I have, so I can, and I'd like to do it a hell of a lot more.

But instead of accepting the fact that the short story might be uppity, something of an educated class, it seems like Lapata is arguing for an attempt to popularize the form.

On the one hand this is already done, especially in genre fiction

Erotica as we know it is mainly short stories. Sci-fi and fantasy (I sometimes feel it is isn't right to lump these together, but I guess that's another post) has a few great anthologies, not to mention speculative magazines such as Asimov's and SF&F. Mysteries and thrillers too have their short stories (such as Alfred Hitchcock Magazine and Ellery Queen). Romance are fewer, they're more likely to be novellas lumped into specially themed books.

Yet on the other hand, this is not enough. The big sellers are usually the novels. Again, because of the characters who stay in our head.

And can you blame them? Do you remember the name of the guy in Carver's "Cathedral"? Or the woman in Lorrie Moore's "How To Be The Other Woman?" (even though it's second person, she does have a name). Heck, most of Amy Hempel's works have nameless narrators (which is not to say nameless narrators are not memorable, for example Fight Club).

But coming from a short story writer, the question is: how much characterization can you put into so little space? And is it worth to replace characterization for say style and emotional resonance? Are emotional resonance, style, characterization mutually exclusive in the short story, especially if one's goal is to have the type of character who will be on a t-shirt?

Can the short story satisfy all of your needs? Must it satisfy all our needs?

Ponder that.

I'll be in Boston for the rest of the week for the American Humanist Association's annual conference. Rebecca Goldstein will be there (who Avis Shivani doesn't seem to fond of, but nonetheless...)

Introducing Hey Small Press!

2011-03-30T22:23:00.001-04:00

Of course small presses need all the help they can get, because of course they can't get into the New York Times. Headed by Don Antenen and Kate Hensley (both poets, one a librarian, the other a Harvard student), Hey Small Press! is a project with a mission: to get small press books into libraries, meaning perhaps that there will be no more books like these, but I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing.

From their “About Us” page:

We are Hey Small Press!, a non-profit project promoting independent publishers to public libraries all over the United States. Founded by current and former public library employees, we exist to encourage libraries to acquire small and independent press books. We love good books and want them on library shelves!

Our method is three-fold. One: we select and review ten new or upcoming titles per month. Two: we send our list to public librarians and encourage them to order the titles. Three: we also make available all our reviews to the public. Our goal is for readers across the country to walk into their public library every month with our list of small press books and encourage librarians to order them.

Our long term goals include regional book lists, poetry and non-fiction lists, and the organizing and promotion of live readings by small press writers in public libraries.

It looks like a great endeavor for two writers, better than say, starting your own literary magazine for two months…

Sign up for their newsletters so they can send you list you can use as a starting point for conversation with the local librarian!

(kudos to Adam Robinson @ HTMLGiant for reporting on this)

It's Official: The New York Times is Shitty

2011-03-30T00:45:00.000-04:00

The NYTimes is shitty. I have been of this opinion for a while. I completely lost faith last year when Antonya Nelson's latest novel was a pick of the year.

Yet it cannot be reiterrated enough.

In a recent post at Huffington Post, Anis Shivani--who already attacked MFA programs--attacks the NYTimes (of course with a book of criticism coming out in July, this was inevitable) . Instead of bemoaning the recent paywalls, he waves farewell, so long...good riddance to the Book Review. Arguably, the Times not only has bad taste, it's also bad for the state of literature due to it's existential limits. (Assumed in Shivani's argument is the profound criticism is necessary for good literature).

Mainly:

1) Its coverage is limited. ("An enormous range of innovative fiction and poetry issues forth from the nation's vibrant independent presses, yet the Times studiously ignores these books in favor of the few hyped-up books from the major commercial houses centered in New York.")

2) It has limited opinions ("...politically correct liberalism, without any foundation in class analysis or indeed any coherent ideological framework...")

3) It is full Incestous reviews (" Assigning well-known novelists to review the work of other well-known novelists--with obvious connections to each other, in the small, incestuous world of literary publishing--is problematic enough, but assigning writers within particular niches to those within the same niches is even worse.")

4) They're is not joy in reading. ("But the Times's reviews are groomed in the bureaucratic house style, slavish to the standard formula, which is stripped of any excitement in language.")

Overall, Shivani is attacking moderate mainstream media, that stalls the progress of literature and makes a disgrace of the art of literary criticism. Mainstream literature is about big presses (all two of them!), who have enough big money to pretend to make something anything. What of the small presses?, he asks. What about literature outside the mainstream? Punks, radicals, language experimentists? Or, in the case of Jennifer Weiner, where are the women? The Times has clearly been biased (obviously not the first time they have been criticized). It is flawed from the prospective of those who simply love literature, in particular of literary criticism.

"Reviewing escalates in durability and resonance by the degree to which it aspires to the condition of criticism--ideally, the reviewer is a critic who sees the review as serving essentially the same function as his more serious and extended forays; but the Times has utterly severed reviewing from criticism, perfecting a nonsensical prose form that serves no constituency well--not even publishers, who would be better served by more honest criticism."

He furthermore pins down the Times's review formula:

"The formula is this: Say a few harmless (often downright irrelevant) words about the writer, his previous books or his recent successes, say some meaningless things about what a book in the given genre means (reiterating the point of view of the reviewing committee at the Times), then launch into an extended précis of the plot or narrative, with the subtext that, now that the reviewer has adequately summarized the book, the reader need not tackle it at all, and end with a few bland comments about the posture of the review just concluded."

But what else can we expect from a publication that targets the middle class who is just one step above the housewives who listen to Oprah? Literature, on the one hand, is partly a project of capitalism: bookselling is ultimately a popularity contest. Literary criticism, on the other hand, has always been part of the ivory tower. (This is why you wrote papers in college).

At the end, Shivani argues that the paywall is another nail in the coffin (hate cliches, but right now I am quite tired, so I am just being lazy on purpose) of an already dead publication. The Times doesn't offer any important criticism. But is this what the general reader want--real literary criticism, or do they want the ability to say they read something that was mentioned in a major publicaiton? Is Shivani just preaching to the choir? Or is his vision of the possibilities of the internet something feasible, something important? Is criticism dead, or is it about to be reborn with the help of indie websites? Does criticism even matter anymore? (I've been trying to find a really good book of criticism, if anyone has suggestions...)

Either way if you want to learn how to write a review, Charles Baxter has some tips (clue: you're doing it all wrong).

Borders Bankruptcy Escape Plan: Fire Workers, Give These Wages to Bennnet LeBow...Can You Say 'Genius'?

2011-03-28T23:50:00.000-04:00

According to news reports, the recently troubled bookstore chain wants to pay million dollar bonuses to its executives.

According to a Yahoo article:

The company wants to give its CEO, financier Bennett LeBow, as much as $1.7 million. In addition, it wants to give $1.1 million to executive vice presidents, $371,000 to the vice president for human resources, $2.4 million in other bonuses and $1.2 million in payments to 25 of its directors and a few other executives.

This while Borders is cutting jobs, cutting stores.

I recently went to a closing Borders (L Street NW in DC, the one where the guy made fun of me for wanting to see their section). The store was nearly gone besides stacks of James Patterson, a rack of Hello Kitty books, among a limited selection. The shelves were nearly all empty. Everything was consolidated into the middle shelves so the top and bottoms were empty. There were many faceouts, along with neon colored paper with bold fonted: "Buy today, it might not be here tomorrow!" There were even signs to sell the furniture. "Get your bookself today before its gone!" (Wish I took pictures, but I feel odd taking advantage of misery. People did work here).

Meanwhile, people walk up and down the steps bemoaning the lost of this major bookstore. One guy I overheard came to this location since 1996, or something like that. Others were shopping. Women with toddlers held stacks of romance hardcovers and new-ish dopey thrillers. The signs read in read "50% Off!" Which shows that people will take advantage of bookselling whenever they can.

Heck, I did. I bought something I've been meaning to read, but will probably not, but will stay on my bookself for a very long time because I have a fear that one day I will have nothing to read. At the cash registers they took off the Borders price tag and marked out the barcode.

I felt bad for the people working there. In a few weeks, maybe days, they'll be out of a job. Bennet LeBow, however, can buy:

212765 mass markets
113,333 fiction trade paperback
60,714 fiction hardcover

You know, if he actually had any interest in books...

Anne Rice Is Selling Her House

2011-03-22T23:19:00.000-04:00

View the listing here: http://www.trulia.com/property/3009651165-70305-Thunderbird-Rd-Rancho-Mirage-CA-92270. For just over $2 million, you can pretend you're Anne Rice!

Angela Choi To Release Ebook

2011-03-22T22:57:00.001-04:00

Going along with the latest trend in publishing, Angela Choi (Hello Kitty Must Die) will be releasing her second novel Apologies Not Included via ebook. Written while she was waiting for her debut to sell in the US, Apologies was never good enough for Choi's agent. "I can't blame someone for not liking a book," she says. She goes on, "After all, it's all so subjective....But novels are funny things. To the world, they are just works. To the writer, at least to me, they are like children. It really doesn't matter if they come out off-kilter, a little funny-looking, ugly, mentally handicapped, deformed, or just plain look like something from outer space. It's my kid and I can't help but love it. Even though I know it's not quite right."

It was with the advice of Rachel Howzell Hall, however that she "kindled" her novel. While the work was rejected, Choi looks like she's doing the hardest yet best thing any writer can do: Let go. Choi is now work next novel, Jesus Will See You Now.

In the midst of the latest argument in publishing (ebook self publishing vs. traditional house publishing), it would be interesting to read the story (it'll be my first ebook purcharse!!!), and see how success she can be.

Hello Kitty Must Die didn't garner much attention, coming from a small house. But as a publisher now, Choi has more control over publicity her ebook might get, if any at all.

At best, this can be really good. A la Hocking (yes, I just said A La Hocking, deal with it!) , she could get rich. At worst, this novel might not really be ready (not just novel-wise, but formatting and all the technical stuff as well that can effect book reading), but it will be a minor blip in this very talented writer's career.

Synopsis below. Will keep posted on when it comes out.

Eighteen-year-old Abigail Lin is smart, talented, and utterly miserable. Her everyday life is scarred by a crippling and secret compulsion. But Abigail is not alone in her unhappiness among the best and brightest. Her classmates Sophia Santos and David Wendler have demons of their own. Sophia is lost halfway between wakefulness and sleep, while David wrestles with a food addiction and a lethal erotic obsession.

Except the handsome, privileged, and successful Ethan Lambert seems to have it all - until his behavior takes a bizarre and disturbing turn. Disillusioned and disappointed, these four students are drawn together just as their lives are about to spiral out of control. Will their friendship be enough to guide them through the turbulence of their college years? Or will they succumb to the pressures and neuroses that threaten their sanity and their very lives?

Book Review: Dare To Try Bisexuality

2011-03-21T01:27:00.000-04:00

Dare to Try Bisexuality
by Peter Des Esseintes
9780897935234

I was never really a reader of nonfiction. Especially how-to nonfiction. Perhaps this is because I come from the school of thought that sees everything as fiction: memory is based on perspective and open to intrepretation, so-called hard facts are always debatable, there is never just one way to do anything.

A degree in sociology and everything is like this.

Even issues like sex and sexuality is perfectly debatable and no truth can be claimed. (Read, for example Anne Fausto-Sterling, or Foucault, or Butler).

When I received this book in the mail, it was with skeptism. While the cover was cute--the entire series has the same type of illustration, playful pictures of people with wide-eyed expressions of curiousity--the title in itself asks readers to assume so many things. To command the reader to "Dare" to "try" a sexuality in itself assumes that bisexuality is not an identity but rather an action that one does.

Indeed, in many of the interviews, the subjects agree that it is something done. A man in one of the chapters, for example,claims he's not really bisexual, he's just attracted to dick. While this may be true for the individual, one has to ask if this is at all a good representation of bisexuality. Do the example present really represent anything worth observing at all? Does the explanations make any sense?While the idea of such fluidity teeters towards postmodern identities, Essenites falls into the usual traps of identity politics.

In his defense, the book is (to an extent) well researched for its length (just under 100 pages). He quickly summarizes Freud, Kraft-Ebbing, Kinsey. The book in itself encourages readers to explore sexuality as something positive and good for one's overall health. Yet it takes a complex issue of identity and doesn't explore it far enough.

The book is quite straight-laced (at least for a queer guy like myself) and set in quite a conservative framework.

Freud's theories are strong here, as the author ponders over what "causes" homosexuality and bisexuality ("Whether man or woman, your mother is your first love), or as he lays claims that women's bisexuality is especially interesting because it's natural (he doesn't go far enough to analyze patriarchy), while at the same, he says men are not necessarily bisexual, they are just hypersexual.

The overall effect is a mini-instruction manual that is ill-informed and not to be taken seriously. This in itself can be seen in the translation of the text, as it instructs on how to give a blowjob:

"...take it deeper and deeper and deeper. When the thing begins to grow too big for your virginial jaw, switch to an even, cruisng rhythmn that's a little faster."

how to find other bisexuals:

"Sometimes you find them in the woods. The woods are swarming with bisexuals."

among other general sex tips:

"Either way, a finger in the anus is always pleasant."

This is no Dr. Ruth. At best, this a great way to get stares on the metro.

(Thanks to Hunter House for providing me this book for review!)

This Week In Video: Anne Rice In Texas, Lisa See Movie Coming This Summer, Lady Macbeth Needs a Job

2011-03-18T00:19:00.000-04:00

1. Anne Rice visits her Texas high school.

2. Never read the book because I have an expectation that it's a lesbian novel, but will probably be disappointed that it's not...

3. "I pulled one of my wife's dresses off the hanger in her closet and pulled it down over the length of a floor lamp."

Us from Michael Kimball on Vimeo.

4. At the very least, it's named after a Walt Whitman poem...

5. Sassy Gay Friend Meets Lady MacBeth

6. Also, something totally unrelated...Jennifer Lopez is Officially A Lion (also, I have a crush on Jeffery Self)

Have a nice weekend!

Book Review: The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady

2011-03-15T11:09:00.000-04:00

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady
by Elizabeth Stuckey-French
9780385510646

There are not enough campy books. I'm a fan of pulp novels, the types with damsels in distress looking not so innocent for whatever the got themselves into (mainly murder and lesbianism). Most of time, these were more or less morality tales: bad actions gets punished, sex in excess if fun but really wrong. Contemporary novels that are inspired by pulp usual take this concept and parody it. Camp, according to Wikipedia (the most trusted source, of course) "is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value." Susan Sontag emphasized the key elements of camp as being artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess.

The question with Elizabeth Stuckey-French's novel is: is it camp?

The cover and trailer says so. With a green housewife on the front, the picture is classic iconography of the 1950s; but with a knife held behind her back, here's the irony. The plot in itself is twisted: a housewife (Marylou Ahearn) of the 1950s in contemporary America taking revenge on a wrong done to her. The premise is Charles Busch-like melodrama that is supposed to grab readers. Stuckey-French promises humor.

Indeed, her humor--as mixture of irony and straight-faced honesty--is her strength here. From the first sentence of the novel, readers get this: "By the time Marylou Ahearn finally moved into the little ranch house in Tallahassee, she'd spent countless hours trying to come up with the best way to kill Wilson Spriggs."

Stuckey-French wastes no time to throw the reader into this quirky and twisted world of radioactive experiments, dead babies, and broken families. The nuclear family of Ahern's target--Wilson Spriggs the grandfather, with his daughter's (a menopausal train wreck) family (the Witherspoons): her husband (a cheating professional test grader), and their children (two with Aspergers, one who has an overactive schedule)--becomes symbolic of how such ideals are foolish, that no such thing exists. Setting up the family, Stuckey-French, like Marylou, like other character trying to reclaim a past they never had, is bent to make them fall apart.

Perhaps a strength here is that we see it fall apart in so many directions. Each chapter is devoted to a member of the family and it is through their lens of vision that we see the things that they don't and it is through this omniscient ability of the reader that we see an evitable destruction of a nuclear family--any nuclear family--any family.

The ironic coupling of a model nuclear family and a family on destruction as presented here is not mutually exclusive. The Witherspoon are both. As Ava, the older daughter thinks, "Why did the good and the bad have to come together? It seem often, that they did." In the end the Witherspoon family, while falling apart is neither bad nor good. Each character has their fun quirks that make them likable--Ava's Elvis obsession, Vic's want to become a better father, Marylou's eventual inability to do the task she sets to do. The multiple point of view works well.

Yet as a novel, the strategy works against it too. As a whole work, the book acts like a puzzle. Something happens in one scene, we don't know the full story until the next chapter. Suspenseful in a way, but the bigger picture is lost. Readers are left with too many voices, too many perspectives. The unserious tone of the novel make the work seem less important, rendering strategy of the masterpiece of so many voices (because a masterpiece needs to span voices!) It leaves the work like a puzzle that is quite hard, but not impossible, yet one has to ask, why do so much work on such a fun novel?

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady is a fun novel. The writing is compared to Carl Hiaasen, and like Carl Hiaasen, Stuckey-French does try to discuss major issues: family, forgiveness, history. Yet, how much of this is lost in the jigsaw pieces, in a happy ending that borders on cliche and parody? Stuckey-French attempts to go beyond camp, but ultimately returns to the rules of the contemporary novel.

Also, what's the point of a radioactive lady is she has no powers?

E-Books Are So 3008, Printed Books Are So 2000-Late

2011-03-11T11:38:00.007-05:00

Did you know this week was Read an E-Book Week? Like you, I missed out on it too. From a look at the official RAEW website (because we all love acronyms), the only thing that has been updated is the date: March 6- 12, 2011. Yet the press releases are from 2009; the could have been from last year, or the year before.

But it's an effort. Ebooks are all the rage, of course. The NY Times has beginning counting them, and when the NY Times says it, it must be true, or at least important.

In an article in the Huffington Post, Mark Coker says a revolution is in store for publishing (he tries to line it up with the recent Middle East uprisings, but you know...FAIL): "The catalysts for the Egyptian revolution are remarkably similar to what's driving the author uprising against Big Publishing. By 'Big Publishing,' I'm referring to the old system in which the publisher serves as the author's judge, jury, gatekeeper and executioner." That uprising against Big Publishing is economic opportunity. But whereas the economic opportunity in the middle is about getting rid of dictators, Coker points to e-publishing. And, you do know epublishing is all the rage, right?

According to Coker, in two or three years from now, ebooks will account for more than 50% of the market. The smart retailers, he says, are those who are stepping up to the revolution. And the answer to Coker is clear: of course authors will want to self-publish ebooks because it gives them what publishing houses can't:

E-selfpublishing, he implies, means success.

Self-published authors, a.k.a "indie authors," now have the power to produce, publish, price and promote books that are as good or better than those put out by Big Publishing. Indie ebook authors earn royalties of 60-70% of the list price. Traditionally published authors earn 5-17%.

Indie author sensation Amanda Hocking, in her recent interview with USA Today, was quoted as saying, "I can't really say that I would have been more successful if I'd gone with a traditional publisher."

No doubt, much of Hocking's success is because she's an indie author. She writes great books her readers love. She prices her series-starters at only $.99 and the rest at $2.99. Great books plus low prices plus enthusiastic fans plus an author directly engaged with her fans equals viral readership. Few big publishers are prepared to play by these new rules while paying authors 60-70% of list price.

Every week we hear of self-published authors - previously rejected by Big Publishing - finding success with self-published ebooks. Brian Pratt, profiled...at HuffPost in December, is one such author. Ruth Ann Nordin is another. Nordin's An Inconvenient Marriage is the #3 best-selling romance title today in the Apple iBookstore's romance category, and #57 among all paid titles at Apple. At Kobo, she's #9 today.

Needless to say, Coker sounds like an infomercial. Coker, in fact, is the founder of the self-publishing e-book company Smashwords (no secret). Yet that aside, does Coker have a grain of truth? In a world where publishers are apparently not giving writers shit, is self-publishing ebooks a viable solution? When epublishing companies are everywhere, as well as print on demand services and the like, is this a good option?

In another article in Huffington, professor emeritus (CUNY) Bernard Starr says self-publishing is here to stay. (But is it even new?) Like Coker, he cites plenty of examples: Tanya Wright, Stokes McMillan, Walter and Marilyn Rabetz ...names you haven't heard before, and you probably won't, but the point Starr makes is that self-publishing is viable, an option that cannot be seen as the "pesky second-class stepchild [of traditional publishing] that they believe will always remain in that status."

Self-publishing is the future. It is the hovering space car we're all looking for. But, to quote a tweet from Amber Sparks..."Motherfuckers where's my hover board?" Self-publishing may be getting better, but is it the better option?

What is missing the argument is one very simple fact: writing is gosh darn hard. Honestly. There's the inspiration, the writing, the editing, the workshopping, the crying after the workshop (sometimes during the workshop), the month of depression and sudden career change ("Fuck being a writer, I want to be a tree!"). It doesn't necessarily go in this order either. And then there's the day job because no writer is actually a writer, they're booksellers, food runners, organic produce specialists, temporary administrative assistants. Add to this the pressurre of publishing and after publishing, selling, which comes with the territory in either route.

What the discussion is lacking are voices from the people in question about what they do, and the fact that either route on a very base level doesn't matter because you're still gonna have to sit in a room by yourself for a very long time to finish up that book.

Also, the discussion has to admit that sometimes it's just luck.

As self-publishing starlet Amanda Hocking writes on her blog in response to all the media attention:

As much as my name has been thrown about, I haven't seen J. L. Bryan's name mentioned. He's the author of a fantastic young adult paranormal romance called Jenny Pox. Like my books, his is priced at $.99 EDIT: It's $2.99 now. But it was $.99 earlier. Like me, he has several other titles out. Also, like me, he has paperback versions of his book available and he reaches out to book bloggers. In fact, he just did an intensive blog tour for the release of his latest book The Haunted E-book. I even included an excerpt of Jenny Pox at the end of my book Ascend, because I like his writing so much, and I want other people to read it.

With all of that said, Bryan sells less books than I do. I don't know how many exactly, because I haven't asked, but I can tell from his rankings that it's not as many.

What's my point in all of this? By all accounts, he has done the same things I did, even writing in the same genre and pricing the books low. And he's even a better writer than I am. So why am I selling more books than he is? I don't know.

That's the truth of it. Nobody knows what makes one book a bestseller. Publishers and agents like to pretend they do, but if they did, they would only publish best sellers, and they don't.

I guess what I'm saying is that just because I sell a million books self-publishing, it doesn't mean everybody will. In fact, more people will sell less than 100 copies of their books self-publishing than will sell 10,000 books. I don't mean that to be mean, and just because a book doesn't sell well doesn't mean it's a bad book. It's just the nature of the business.

Self-publishing and traditional publishing really aren't that different. One is easier to get into but harder to maintain. But neither come with guarantees. Some books will sell, some won't.

The publishing industry has to face this: they don't actually know what sells. Writers have to remember: writing is not easy.

How Tim Jones-Yelvington is Cool

2011-03-10T19:40:00.001-05:00

First read this.

Then look at these...

Buy them here.

'Nuff said.

David Burks: 'We are not trying to control your thinking, but...'

2011-03-08T08:07:00.000-05:00

The other day when I was at work, I found this work related e-zine. Called "The State of the Gay," it was put together by queer students at Harding University (a private Christian college), and aimed to give voice to experiences of gay and lesbian students at Harding, and perhaps a general overview of student experiences at Christian colleges.

Like any good zine, it's a nice mixture of graphics, narrative, hand written notes--in electronic form!

I think this is a case where electronic versions come in handy. There are over 80 tweets on this, and about 1000 Facebook likes, along with various press attention. It has reached many people.

However, the fact that it is electronic made it very easy to censor, as David Burks, president of Harding, did in a speech, calling the site offenseive and extreme:

It's nothing less than censorship. It is censorship.

And as The Friendly Atheist points out:

"The administration can do whatever it wants — block the site, expel students who don’t live up to their bigoted standards, preach that homosexuality is immoral, etc...."

Yet I think censorship is something schools should never do as places of learning. (Yet a Christian college is never a place of learning, it's a place where you are taught religion as fact, despite the fact that faith means to believe without fact, which is whole 'nother debate).

Yet leave it to the queers at HU Queer Press to put an anti-copyright notice on their zine:

We highly encourage you to do with this work whatever you want. Trash it. Burn it. Love it. Frame it. Reprint it. Distribute it!

By doing so, HU Queer Press shows that they are not afraid. This work, their stories, will undoubtedly be heard.

Kyle Minor Replies To Tao Lin's Reply on Kyle Minor's Reply to Jordan Castro

2011-03-08T00:34:00.000-05:00

As Kyle Minor pointed out in the comments of the last post, Tao Lin has replied to the Muumuu House post at HTMLGiant. It is quite interesting to read Lin talking about his writing, about writers talking about the purpose of their writing, about art in general.

Some comments from Tao Lin:

on hipster kind of caring:

"i feel like people mentioned in jordan’s post actually ‘care’ about those things much more than the average person, objectively, in that the ways in which they spend their money, i feel, concretely oppose those things more than the ways in which 99% of the population spend their money"

[my marginalia: but is spending money to support a system that is inherently flawed of any consequence?]

on the writer as someone who does care:

"if a person views a book as something a person has created then (if caring is measured by effort) the book, no matter its content, will always imply ‘caring’"

[my marginalia: in such the case, you're saying everything matter therefore, nothing actually matters, no?]

on morality in art:

"i think i would want to respond to this if you quoted specific sentences, i think being specific, by way of ‘training’ one’s mind to more accurately connect cause and effect (so that each individual is treated based on their actions, which if people did to a certain degree would eliminate ‘hate crimes,’ racism, name-calling, [any action that opposes something except those based on something someone has concretely done him or herself, like hurt someone else physically]), is ‘moral’ in that it reduces unfairness, pain, and suffering in the world, based on what i know, and in a way that i feel you would agree"

[my marginalia: reveals a very individualistic philosophy on Lin's part]

on his own writing:

"personally i view my writing, mostly, currently, as something resulting from the base ‘mysteriousness’ or confusion of existence (morals are something inside of that)"

"i don't want my writing to promote a point of view"

[my marginalia: does the writer have an obligation to have a 'point of view'? By writing does s/he have a point of view, even if s/he avoid it?]

Minor also brings home some nice points:

"Tao seems to be saying that whatever doesn’t rise from the concrete and specific is inherently untrustworthy. (Here he is in league with Chekhov, and with William Carlos Williams, who wrote: “No ideas but in things.”) This idea is itself an abstraction, and a useful one. I agree with Tao that abstract thought is inherently less trustworthy than concrete experience. I also agree that any given abstraction or ideology is at any moment a few steps away from atrocity. This is another abstraction that is worthy of our attention — a value judgment I’m not afraid to make in response to the abstraction."

[my marginalia: good point on materialism]

Also:

"I would argue that Tao’s good point that the deployment of abstractions may at any time be a few steps away from atrocity, does not mean that abstractions ought therefore be avoided."

[my marginalia: YES!]

Read the whole thing here. [without my marginalia]

And for background, read this and this.

It's all interesting, but leaves me wondering if writers should be talking about their writing. In literary theory, in at least one school of thought, isn't critical theory just based on the text itself, making anything the author has said to contextualize it (as Lin does here), futile? I'm wondering if an author's comment actually helps the reading of a text, and if it even matters.

I Hate You Muumuu House

2011-03-07T00:01:00.002-05:00

Last Friday, HTMLGiant published a guest post from Jordan Castro on more or less Muumuu House. While, not definitive (Jordan Castro keeps on saying that it is not), it's a good summary of what Blake Butler (that's what BB stands for, right?) calls "absurdist emo."

Among what defines the works of Jordan Castro (aka Tao Lin, Jr), Tao Lin (aka Tao Lin, Sr), Megan Boyle (Tao Lin as a girl), and Noah Cicero (Tao Lin as Noah Cicero), among others like them are:

a lack of rhetoric, or claiming that their work has "no rhetoric":

In “mainstream culture” and in all “subcultures” that I know of, there exists a large degree of rhetoric and external, abstract “purpose” that drives the “core” of [said cultures’] existence. In “mainstream culture” it is usually something like money, God, family, society, success or [something else]. In other cultures it is usually something like [form of government or lack thereof], anti-[something], pro-[something] or [something else].
This rhetoric and “purpose,” in my view, “stems from” the belief that there is an inherent, universal “right,” “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” and invariably contains paradoxes and contradictions that are not addressed and/or are justified in some way within [said culture]. Things are assumed and rules are applied.
I honestly feel that this is not the case with Muumuu House.

detachment:

Due to certain worldviews (or lack thereof) and [other things], our “emotional scope,” or range of emotions, while fundamentally similar to that of most people, I think, is significantly less extreme, “for the most part,” due to an almost constant state of detachment from external reality

Also,

depression
loneliness
alienation

Castro lays these out as unique attributes of the Muumuu House literary circle.

On Sunday (who blogs on Sunday?), Kyle Minor wrote a response:

Karen woke around 1:30 pm and saw no emails from Lettie. She made a Kombucha. She lay on her couch and stared at her iPad. She brushed her teeth and put on her muumuu and opened the OpenOffice.org Writer file of her catalog copy. She looked at her Tumblr. About an hour later it was raining. She uploaded jpegs to her Etsy store. She ate raw squares of tofu. She tried to break into Lettie’s Chase online banking account, but she could not guess the password. She stretched her calves. “Nice comment, Dad,” she mocked the Internet commenter deadgod on the website HTMLGiant.com later in the day. “bro,” she typed. “sweet,” she fingered. Then she slept and ate. Then she thought about her neighbor. Then she logged into her computer. 737 pseudonyms had commented on her comment to deadgod. Several of them said “street” or “legit.” She checked her Etsy store. Some people had bought the bracelets she had made out of paper and string. A car idled outside her window. She could hear the radio. It said: “700 people died this afternoon in Gaza, Afghanistan, New Zealand, and Egypt. Unemployment rates are down because people have been out of jobs too long to be counted as unemployed. Civil War will break out tomorrow in Libya and many people will die. 73 babies were slaughtered this morning in the Sudan. Haiti has allowed the two worst butchers of recent history back into the country in a time of great instability. In Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Jersey, the rights of working people are being systematically destroyed as part of a nationwide effort by two rich industrialist brothers who sit on the boards of major cancer research institutes while trying their best to keep formaldehyde from being labeled a carcinogen because they make over a billion dollars a year from its unrestricted manufacture.” Karen shrugged. Karen ate some cereal. She called Lettie and said let’s go walk on some railroad tracks. Later, Lettie said, “We should have sex.” Karen said, “Okay.” They kissed and moved around a lot. Later, Lettie said, “I feel confused.” “I feel okay, or something,” Karen said. They looked up at the sky. There were a normal amount of clouds. Karen looked at them with a neutral facial expression.

While literary circles are nothing new (think Bloomsbury Group and Violet Quill), and usually serve only to help promote the people in it as part of some self-proclaimed movement, what I find the most annoying about Muumuu House (and Castro's piece) is that they seem to have no foot hold in the context of their writing. Also, their writing really bland (have you read any of their stuff?).

In terms of Castro's outline, he's horribly wrong.

The "No rhetoric" point is nearly impossible and his use of the word "rhetoric" is the same way politicians who claim their opponent is all "rhetoric." Yet rhetoric is writing is impossible to ignore. Rhetoric, simply, is words and how we use words. By definition, as a writer, you cannot escape rhetoric.

By further claiming attributes such as depression, loneliness, and alienation as part of their work (as something perhaps unique to their work), Castro clearly negates his first argument that emo absurdism has no meaning (no rhetoric). Rather, by staking claim in these, he's clearly pointing to something that others have analyzed as part of their work. Many, for example, see the work of Tao Lin as commentary on the boredom of the internet generation (I'm paraphrasing, but have no doubt that people have said things to stuff to this affect). Even if a writer claims to have no meaning, s/he has meaning because once the work is given to readers, they have no control over meaning: meaning is not theirs to define, rather the readers'.

Additionally, by laying claim to these particular aspects of their writing, Castro falsely stake claims on such attributes as something unique all together for writers at Muumuu House. Yet this weekend I couldn't help but wanting to write "I am Edna Pontellier" (even though I didn't [long story short: had a huge fight with the boyfriend]). Would Kate Chopin belong to Muumuu House having written of depression and isolation? (Arguably, she's a step towards the so-called realism of Muumuu House, but I personally don't think she comes close, and that's a compliment for Chopin).

~~And as Minor points out in his satire post:~~ Muumuu House writers are a young generation of college educated pseudoliberals who don't care for much. Muumuu House writers are hipster who live in cities and are vegetarian because they think it's cool. They spend time on the internet because they are the internet generation. This has brought them acclaim because they reflect this. (I would cite examples from their work, but I've sold all their books to the used bookstore after reading them...) Yet, do they reflect all this that age cohort? Hipsterism, including the literature, has always been about style. By paying attention to them, many are missing the bigger picture.

Mainly, I don't like them because there's no joy in reading Muumuu House. They're an insult: socially as well as to literature in general.

What I mean is: I don't like you Muumuu House.

But it would interesting to see the works of these writers once they're older. Almost.

Why Haven't We Finished Our Novel?

2011-03-06T23:23:00.000-05:00

(via The Onion)

Books-A-Fuggton...

2011-03-01T08:53:00.002-05:00

Book Review: Give Me Your Heart

2011-02-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

Give Me Your Heart
by Joyce Carol Oates
9780547385464

Reading Joyce Carol Oates has never been easy. Specifically, reading Joyce Carol Oates short stories is never easy. Especially coming from an education that espoused minimalism. Carver, Hempel, among others use few words to convey their meaning. But unlike other short story writers, Oates shorter works come out longer. The recent collection Sourland for example, contains novella-length works. To me, the collection wasn't too appealing. Additionally, unlike minimalists, Oates looks like she gets carried away. Her work is filled with long winding inner contemplation, fragmented sentences, exclaimation points, and italics. Where a minimalism collection is bound to have the occasional flash piece, Oates doesn't write like that. Reading it, you get no breather. You are drowned in words. But whereas this has failed her in the past (Dear Husband, was a terrible collection), perhaps it works better in the genre form.

In her newest collection Give Me Your Heart, Oates collects 10 "tales of mystery and suspense," all of which were previously published. Of course, for Oates, a literary writer through and through, some of these were published in places like The Kenyon Review and Conjunctions, but Oates is well known contributor to places like Ellery Queen's Literary Magazine.

One of the stories published in Ellery Queen was "Split/Brain." The second story of the book, it looks at what happens to woman's life when she tries her best to be a good wife, yet it's all interrupted by not only by the intruder in the house, but by the self-conscious realization that she has always tried her best to the good wife. This becomes her unsuspected (yet what could have happened otherwise?) downfall. The shortest of the stories at some pages, consisting of only one paragraph, it is perhaps one of the highlights in a traditional Joyce Carol Oatesian way. Like much of her work, this story explores the quiet dangers of domestic life. And like some of her best works, ("Landfill" from Dear Husband, comes to mind, the only good story in that collection) it is a full throttle, yet claustophobic piece, carefully constructed on the sentence level to surprise.

Unlike her more "literary" work, her genre work works to make you think as well as surprise you. And surprise you she does.

In this collection that explores the quiet darkness of relatinonships, what's scary is not the physical danger (guns, knives, too high waterfalls), but of the feelings involved in relationships that cause such physical dangers to happen. From revenge ("Give Me Your Heart") to jealousy ("The First Husband," "The Spill"), Oates points out that indeed guns don't kill, but instead, people do: people and their feelings and the fact that people cannot every be untied from their emotional lives: that is the scary part.

"So often words were surprises, like nudges in the ribs or slaps against the back of the head," she writes. And as if to reflect this, each of theses stories are crafted in a way to throw you around and make you lose faith in human beings: of all the people doing bad in this book, of course you have no choice but see parts of yourself. "In Homo sapiens," she writes in the award winning "Smother," "the talent for deception is our strongest evolutionary advantage."

Yet through all the stories, the fact remains clear that Oates is hard to read, even in the genre writing mode. Her suspense is the suspense like that of Poe not, say, Stephen King. This is both a strength that makes her work so unique, yet at the same time, pushes people away.

In any case, it took me a month to read this book...FML.

Eddie Sarfaty Teaches at the Smart Center

2011-02-22T19:16:00.001-05:00

I had a crush on Eddie Sarfaty at the Lambda Retreat. Look at him--how can you not?:

He can write, he's funny, and I have a thing for beards. I didn't know why he was there--he has a book out with blurbs from the likes of Michael Cunningham and Edmund White--but I was glad he was there, giving me the opportunity to sit next to him and try not to hyperventilate while eating kosher vegetarian food, both because he was funny, and he made me feel like a high schooler again--giddy and hormonally frustrated.

Sarfaty will be teaching a 5-day workshop on the business of comedy at the Smart Center in Santa Fe. If you're in NM, you should definitely check it out. Eddie is smart, funny, cute, and probably one helluva a teacher. Details below:

#11103. Why Wisecracks are a Wise Move – The Serious Business of Comedy

Instructor: Eddie Sarfaty, May 23-27

Comedy is universal, the penchant for laughter a fundamental aspect of human nature. Though embedded in every language and culture, humor has been of particular importance in America’s pluralistic society -- and more recently, due to globalization, in the world. Because of the ability of jokes to quickly forge intimate bonds between people of different races, ethnicities, religions, genders, etc. -- and most importantly, between those who vehemently disagree with each other -- its effective use is invaluable in establishing and nurturing relationships of all kinds, enabling us to sympathize, inform, persuade, and caution in a nonthreatening manner.

Because stand-up comedy is the art form that most closely resembles real-life conversation -- it’s interactive, can be performed anywhere, and requires no more equipment than a human voice -- exploring the creative process of writing and delivering jokes can benefit us in every arena, personal or professional, including public speaking, sales, customer service, advertising, public relations, management, teaching, writing, debating, acting, socializing, parenting, dating, and even sex.

In this workshop, students:

- Identify potential sources of material -- written, visual, and situational - Study the work of a diverse group of groundbreaking comedians - Analyze the emotional components of humor - Learn to select effective emotional subtext and embed it into a joke. - Explore exercises to increase the quantity of ideas generated - Write for the listener, instead of the reader - Identify the universal in their individual experiences. - Make those experiences accessible to a wider - or specific - audience. - Develop a unique comic voice. - Improve timing, delivery, and presentation skills. - Hone their skills through instructor critique and audience response.

Ideal Workshop Candidates

Since improved comedic competency means improved relationships in so many areas, this course is recommended for everyone with the exception of Trappist monks, prisoners in solitary confinement, hermits, and the comatose. Aside from those seeking to more effectively wield their comic powers in their public or private lives, this course may prove particularly valuable to kooks, curmudgeons, eccentrics, smart-asses, class clowns, wise guys, loudmouths, neurotics, and know-it-alls.

The application and down payment of 30% ($225 + tax) for the workshop are due Monday, March 7th. The balance of $450 may be divided into two payments of $225 with the final payment due on April 9th, forty-five days prior to the start of the workshop.

For detailed information and registration through PayPal, visit the Center’s website, www.thesmartcentersantafe.com. Be sure to include the comedy class’s workshop number (#11103) when you register.

The Smart Center has negotiated a discounted rate at the Lodge at Santa Fe for all enrollees. Double occupancy suites are available for just $47.50 per person per evening (or $237.50 + tax for five evenings). To take advantage of the reduced rate, please contact the lodge directly at 505 992-5800 and be sure to let them know that you’re enrolled at the Smart Center.

Borders Files Bankruptcy

2011-02-16T21:15:00.001-05:00

It's official: Borders has filed for bankruptcy.

As its stated on their reorganization website:

In light of the ongoing impact of the difficult economy of the past few years, and the rapidly changing retailing environment for books and related products, it is essential that Borders restructure itself to reposition its business to be viable and successful over the long term.

What this mean is about 200 stores will be closing down, thousands of booksellers (and baristas) will be left unemployed across the country. In Austin, TX, all Borders will being closed (85 employees):

See the full list here.

While some see this as a major lost (there's less competition now, Amazon will win); others are a little more optimistic. Author Toby Barlow, for example, sees this as a perfect opportunity for independents. In a message to Borders employees (who he advises to open up new bookstores), he writes:

Yes, it's true that some forces are working against you, but when isn't that true in life? And yes, there are fewer independent bookstores out there, but you know why? Places like Borders put them out of business. So, Border's demise gives the indie a fighting chance, right? In fact, quite a few independent bookstores are doing pretty well. Word bookstore in Greenpoint, Book Court in Cobble Hill, and in our own rough and tumble downtown Detroit, Leopold's Books has been chugging along with an eclectic mix of quirky books, graphic novels, and offbeat magazines. There's a customer in there every time I stop by and they're always buying something.

And perhaps the best advice for would-be bookstore owners is to adapt, adapt, adapt! Everyone loves chocolate for example. Therefore sell chocolate books...or chocolate and books.

Also, they should learn not to make publishers mad. I mean, wouldn't you be mad if someone owed you $41,118,914.37? And that's just Penguin.

(On a side note, I'm kinda happy the one in DC [K Street NW] is closing. I was in there one time and asked a guy where the gay fiction section was. He laughed, but then stopped when he realized I was serious. I hope he will never find another job again)