Besides being totally charming, the above clip’s worth watching for its lesson in narrative economy. (I just showed my girlfriend Heaven Can Wait (1943), so Lubitsch and his storytelling mastery is much on my mind.)
Archive for July, 2011
Billy Wilder on “The Lubitsch Touch”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Billy Wilder, cinema, Ernst Lubitsch, narrative, The Lubitsch Touch on July 31, 2011 | 1 Comment »
I Talk to Kakutani
Posted in Uncategorized on July 31, 2011 | 7 Comments »
Part the last of my Kakutani demolition derby. I had a telephone conversation with Michiko Kakutani once. In 1990-something I was co-directing FC2 (Fiction Collective Two) with Ronald Sukenick. We’d just published a novel (Separate Hours, as I recall) by Jonathan Baumbach, one of the Fiction Collective’s founders back in 1974. So, I’m in our [...]
Big Other’s Birthday Tribute to William Gass
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Big Other, Birthday tribute, Daniel Green, John Madera, Luca Dipierro, Malcolm Sutton, Michael Leong, William Gass on July 30, 2011 | 23 Comments »
I would imagine that a certain amount of anxiety accompanies any attempt to write about William Gass and his work, a lifework where every sentence has been carefully tooled, poetically, no, lovingly rendered; where a distinct refusal to settle for a messy glibness, to trot around ideas like some propped up and thoroughly beaten and [...]
What Were You Doing in 1979? (part 7)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 1979, What Were You Doing in 1979? on July 28, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Jimmy Buffett released Volcano. John Cale released Sabotage/Live.
I Shot the Moon, Calamari Press, 21 / 41, 3RD BED [2]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 3rd Bed, Calamari Press, J. A. Tyler on July 28, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Click through to read the full review of 3RD BED [2], the twenty-first in this full-press review of Calamari books.
Guest Post: Scott Garson Reviews by Tiff Holland’s Betty Superman
Posted in Uncategorized on July 27, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Betty Superman by Tiff Holland 44 pp. Rose Metal Press. $12 (August, 2011). Since 2007, Rose Metal Press has been running its annual Short Short Chapbook Contest, and by this point I take them on faith. The books themselves, as objects, are always great—small wonders of production and design. And the writers have been worth [...]
ALL THIS BELONGS TO PLASTIC MAN
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Creamy & Delicious, Jack Cole, Plastic Man, Steve Katz on July 26, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Over the weekend I was visiting some friends, and one of them, Jeremy, reminded me of Steve Katz’s short story “Plastic Man.” Which is in his collection Creamy & Delicious (Random House, 1970), the book that “started the avant-snack movement,” as Katz once said, and which I read after graduating from college, and which had [...]
Travels with My Aunt: A Look at Satire and Outsiderness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Big Other, Graham Greene, Paula Bomer, Philip Roth, Satire, Travels with My Aunt on July 25, 2011 | 3 Comments »
I’m in the Dominican Republic, sitting on the porch of the cabin we’ve owned for six years now. We dream of the expatriate life, but there literally is no high school here and I have two teenage sons. I have no doubt that the next few years I have with them will pass quickly and [...]
Wallace Stevens: Poems Selected by John Burnside: A Word-Hoard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Word-Hoard, Big Other, John Madera, Wallace Stevens: Poems Selected by John Burnside on July 25, 2011 | 9 Comments »
I’m in the middle of meandering, moving from place to place, preparing to move to Providence, so it’s fitting that my reading would reflect this kind of movement: my reading has been full of interruptions and digressions, even more than usual. My browsing of great libraries, like the one belonging to my friends in Far [...]
E. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News: A Word-Hoard
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Word-Hoard, Big Other, E. Annie Proulx, Hart Crane, John Madera, The Shipping News on July 23, 2011 | 11 Comments »
Once I’d encountered the word “hive-spangled” (a hyphenated compound that I’d imagine Hart Crane would have enjoyed using if not inventing outright—later I would come to find other gems like “blind-wrapped” and “ice-scabbed”) in E. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News I knew I’d enjoy reading it. In fact, the book’s weaving of muscular bluntness with [...]
Lucian Freud, 1922-2011
Posted in Uncategorized on July 23, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Lucian Freud died Wednesday. I like his paintings because they’re beautiful in a strange way. I like this portrait he did of Queen Elizabeth II, at the Queen’s request. I like the dignity here, and also that there isn’t any flattery other than the flattery that comes from being painted by someone who is trying [...]
An Interview with Paul Maliszewski
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Airport Doughnut, Alban Fischer, Brian Mihok, Caitlin Horrocks, J. A. Tyler, Mike Topp, Molly Gaudry, Paul Kavanagh, Paul Maliszewski, Prayer for What They Said and What They Were Not Told, Scott Bradfield, TRNSFR Magazine, Varmint Armature on July 22, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Alban Fischer (of TRNSFR Magazine) sent me a copy of Paul Maliszewski’s Prayer for What They Said and What They Were Not Told (a new chapbook from TRNSR‘s book imprint Varmint Armature), and asked me to contribute to a group interview. It is here. Also participating were Scott Bradfield, Molly Gaudry, Caitlin Horrocks, Paul Kavanagh, [...]
Pledge and Help Patasola Press Continue to Do Great Things!
Posted in Uncategorized on July 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Patasola Press is a new indie press in Brooklyn, New York. They just published the wonderful “The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals” by Rae Bryant, are going to be publishing a Spanish-English poetry translation book by Mimi Ferebee and a collection by J.A. Tyler, as well as an anthology of female writers across the East [...]
Marilyn Monroe Comes to Chicago, 23 Skidoo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged American Gothic, Billy Wilder, Chicago, Cows on Parade, Curtis White, Daniel Burnham, Daniel Edwards, David Lynch, Diego Rivera, Edwin S. Porter, Flatiron Building, Forever Marilyn, Grant Wood, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, Jeff Koons, kitsch, Lee Lawrie, Man at the Crossroads, Marilyn Monroe, Pioneer Court, Rockefeller Center, Seward Johnson, The Seven Year Itch, Twenty-three Skidoo, What Happened on 23rd Street New York City on July 20, 2011 | 3 Comments »
So now there’s a giant statue of Marilyn Monroe standing by Tribune Tower, on Michigan Ave: Describing it, the Chicago Tribune writes: Marilyn Monroe, as a 26-foot-tall statue in her famous subway-grate stance from “The Seven Year Itch” pose [sic]. Dubbed Forever Marilyn, the sculpture by New Jersey-based artist Seward Johnson will live in Pioneer [...]
I Shot the Moon, Calamari Press, 20 / 39, Peter Markus’ THE SINGING FISH
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Calamari Press, J. A. Tyler, Peter Markus on July 20, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Click through to read the full review of Peter Markus’ THE SINGING FISH, the twentieth in this full-press review of Calamari books.
THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, A Duet: Part I
Posted in Uncategorized on July 19, 2011 | 12 Comments »
A dual post by contributors John Domini and Amber Sparks on The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. A younger John Barth. JOHN: Wanting to do more for Big Other summer reading, I reached out to Amber Sparks. She’d agreed to take on the next assignment, John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor. A tome of about 700 [...]
On a Poetics of Choice
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Choice, Kenneth Goldsmith, Milhouse Van Houten, Ron Silliman, The Chinese Notebook, The Simpsons on July 18, 2011 | 3 Comments »
I have never seen a theory of poetry that adequately included a sub-theory of choice. –Ron Silliman, from The Chinese Notebook * It’s not about inventing anything new; it’s about finding things that exist and reframing them and representing them as original texts. The choice of what you’re presenting is more interesting than the thing [...]
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Tim Jones-Yelvington
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Rachel Swirsky
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Edward Mullany
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Aya Karpinska
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Paul Kincaid
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davis schneiderman
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Amber Sparks
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Tim Horvath
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John Domini
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Elaine Castillo
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Curtis White
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Paula Bomer
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Andrew Taggart
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James Tadd Adcox
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Nick Francis Potter
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Brian Kubarycz
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Gabriel Blackwell
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Janey Smith
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Matty Byloos
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J/J Hastain
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Greg Hunter
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