I’ve said before in this space and I’ll say it again: the single most important element of literature to me is language. Plot is circular: everything that happens has happened will happen; there’s nothing new under the sun, etc. Invention only goes so far. Character has been somewhat set ever since Shakespeare invented it. (Cue [...]
Archive for December, 2011
Tell it Slant: Vendler on Dickinson
Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
2011, the Best of
Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I’m keeping it simple this year. Especially on the music front. I kept delaying this post, because it would literally take me hours to craft a full list of all the music I loved. Instead I am going simple. Top threes (or fours in one case). Enjoy. Novels: Once Upon a River by Bonnie [...]
A Magnum for Schneider
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Anthony Valentine, Callan, Edward Woodward, James Mitchell, Russell Hunter on December 31, 2011 | 6 Comments »
In the mid-1960s, ITV in Britain produced a series of one-off dramas under the title ‘Armchair Theatre’. It was originally intended, I think, as commercial television’s answer to the BBC’s critically-acclaimed ‘Play For Today’. There were times when the series came close to this ambition, but more and more it was a handy catch-all location [...]
A Year of Reading
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Ben Lerner, Brian Oliu, Cormac McCarthy, Erik Anderson, Francis Levy, How to Write a Sentence, Judge Wapner, Leaving the Atocha Station, LeVar Burton, Logorrhea, Pro Wrestling, Reading Rainbow, Seven Days in Rio, So You Know It's Me, Stanley Elkin, Suttree, The Magic Kingdom, The Poetics of Trespass on December 31, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I read 203 books in 2011, or, on average, a little more than one book every two days. You would think I would be burnt out, and I am a little, but, as trials go, it was strictly Judge Wapner presiding. Small stuff. (I don’t want you to think I’ve got a big head or [...]
Newfound Footage from Stephen Elliott’s Shining Postscript and the Politics of Reading “Adrien Brody”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Adrien Brody, Bake Butler, Frank Hinton, Hate, haters, Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Jimmy Chen, Kate Zambreno, Kathy Acker, Madison Langston, new narrative, Peter Sotos, Rob Horning, Roxane Gay, satanic cats, Stephen Elliott, Steve Roggenbuck, submissive men, Tao Lin, The Rumpus, xTx on December 31, 2011 | 3 Comments »
“It never ceases to startle me that a brilliant thinker can be such a bad writer. It challenges some of my preconceptions about language and thought.”—Rob Horning, “Exhaustion of generic raw material” Frank Hinton would be the first to tell you that I adore Steve Roggenbuck. Not only did his star rise as fast as [...]
I Shot the Moon, Calamari Press, 39 / 41, Derek White’s MARSUPIAL
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Calamari Press, Derek White, J. A. Tyler, Marsupial, Our Mother for the Time Being, Poste Restante on December 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Click through to read the full review of Derek White’s MARSUPIAL, the thirty-ninth in this full-press review of Calamari books.
In Memorium – Carol Novack
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Caketrain, carol novack, Eric Beeny, Giraffes in on December 30, 2011 | 2 Comments »
1948-2011 Thank you for giving so much Carol. We miss you.
Insecto-Pornography
Posted in Uncategorized on December 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Almost like visceral Déjà vu
Posted in Uncategorized on December 28, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Almost like visceral Déjà vu Normally Special by xTx Published by Tiny Hardcore Press 2011 First Edition, 94 pages xTx Normally Special is an embodied experimentation with the edges of places, ideas, scenarios and relations. Here, figures both do and don’t understand. Do and don’t understand each other, themselves, their lives and [...]
Putting the Parts Together
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amber Reeves, David Lodge, H.G. Wells, Henry James, Jane Wells, Moura Budberg, Rebecca West, Rosamund Bland on December 27, 2011 | 3 Comments »
There are several ways to read the title of David Lodge’s novel about H.G. Wells, A Man of Parts. Lodge himself directs us to two readings in an epithet taken from Collins English Dictionary: Parts PLURAL NOUN 1. Personal abilities or talents: a man of many parts. 2. short for private parts. Both of these [...]
Merry Waitresses
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged The Waitresses on December 25, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Marie Calloway, My Lover (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Just Love Tao Lin)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acne, Adrien Brody, Amy Fischer, Blake Butler, commodity, failure, fetishes, Fox News, Harper Perennial, HTMLGiant, Jimmy Chen, JonBenet Ramsey, Kate Zambreno, Marie Calloway, Muumuu House, New York Observer, New York Times, nothing, pornography, Roxane Gay, Tao Lin, Ted Nugent, Thought Catalog, Vintage, your butt on December 25, 2011 | 9 Comments »
I recently wrote an article about failure. The text received moderate attention. I was glad about that. I like attention. I also like pornography. I watch porn almost every night. I’m not joking. When I am involved with someone sexually, I watch porn less. I have certain fetishes. For one, I love acne. When I [...]
Dalkey Archive Press
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Champaign, Dalkey Archive Press, Jeremy M. Davies, John O'Brien, Mecca, realtor-walkthrough video on December 23, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Until I make my pilgrimage to Champaign, this realtor-walkthrough video of Dalkey Archive’s warehouse (squired by founder John O’Brien, no less!) will have to do: Icouldn’tgetthisvideotoembednomatterwhatIdidsopleaseclickheretoseethevideoit’sworthitIpromise With some insight into the workings and history of Dalkey from O’Brien and Jeremy Davies.
Some Reflections on The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry (2011)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Helen Vendler, multiculturalism, Rita Dove, The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry on December 23, 2011 | 11 Comments »
Rita Dove’s new Penguin anthology has made Amazon’s “Best Books of 2011″ list; while the “bestness” of the book is dubious to say the least, the Dove anthology is surely part of the “best” or at least most notable literary controversies of 2011. The controversy began with Helen Vendler’s scathing review of the anthology in the [...]
I Shot the Moon, Calamari Press, 35-38 / 41, 3RD BED [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 3rd Bed, Ander Monson, Brian Evenson, Calamari Press, Christian TeBordo, Christine Hume, Derek White, Diane Williams, Gary Amdahl, Heidi Lynn Staples, J. A. Tyler, John Dermot Woods, Jose Hernandez, Kenneth James Calhoun, Kim Parko, Luis Buñuel, Nina Shope, Pedro Ponce, Peter Tunstall, Rachel B. Glaser, Tara Wray, Vincent Standley on December 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Click through to read the full (super-mega) review of 3RD BED [7, 8, 10, &11]
Best of 2011, Part 3
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Big Other, Dawn Raffel, John Madera, Joseph Riippi, Lance Olsen, Penina Roth, Ravi Mangla on December 19, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Euphorbia Rhizophora: A Harvested Ginger Rhizome I love reading lists, especially lists from smart people who are paying attention and have insightful things to say. Hence, these lists from Ravi Mangla, Lance Olsen, Dawn Raffel, Joseph Riippi, and Penina Roth. With all these choices of amazing things to check out and revisit, 2012 is looking very [...]
Mortality and Flatulence: a Conversation with Luca Dipierro
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged animation, art, book trailers, comics, Das Ding, Dawn Raffel, drawing, German Illustration, Gustave Doré, Luca Dipierro, mortality, Rabelais on December 17, 2011 | 5 Comments »
I first saw Luca Dipierro’s work in an animation he’d made for a book of short stories by Dawn Raffel. It was a stop motion video based on a story in which a young woman and her father try to find their car in a parking lot one night in winter. The wind off the lake is [...]
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