Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Homemade World, Charles Olson, Donald Barthelme, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Guy Davenport, Hugh Kenner, James Joyce, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Louis Zukofsky, Marianne Moore, Marjorie Perloff, Michael Silverblatt, Samuel Beckett, The Pound Era, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, William F. Buckley, William Faulkner, William H. Gass on June 12, 2013 | 7 Comments »
Wouldn’t it take an outsider to aptly critique the American scene, the American people, the American culture? Hugh Kenner, a Canadian, did this at the end of a section devoted to Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams in his book A Homemade World: The American Modernist Writers. A book dedicated to Guy Davenport. A book on Donald Barthelme’s syllabus.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged AC/DC, animated gifs, Back to the Future, Big Brother, Big Other, Byron the Bulb, Caravaggio, Cardassians, christmas, Continental Philosophy, David Bowie, David Warner, Donald Barthelme, Gravity's Rainbow, Jean-Luc Picard, John Madera, Nick Lowe, Nirvana, Saint Paul, Star Trek, The Borg, The Flash, The Goonies, Thomas Pynchon, Tiny Toons, Twitter, werewolves on October 23, 2012 | 5 Comments »
What’s happening in this image?
The leftmost light bulb is exploding.
Why would it do that?
Perhaps it wanted to? It’s the suicidal counterpart to Gravity’s Rainbow‘s Byron?
No.
Well then it simply overheated?
No. Please note that it hasn’t blinked out.
True, true.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Human Document, Adam Parrish, Alberti Moretti, Austin Kleon, Beat Hotel, Brion Gysin, collage, Cubism, cut-up technique, décollage, Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn, Donald Barthelme, Donald Sutherland, Fluxus, found poetry, Francois Dufrêne, Geek System, Georges Braque, haikuization, Jacques de la Villeglé, Jen Bervin, John A. Walker, Léo Malet, Lillte Murders, Magic: The Gathering, Marshall McLuhan, Mimmo Rotella, MoCA, Nets (2004), Newspaper Blackout, Nouveau Réalisme, NPR Morning Edition, Oulipo, Pablo Picasso, PBS NewsHour, Raymond Hains, Raymond Queneau, Surrealism, The New Yorker, Tom Phillips, Ugly Duckling Presse, W.H. Mallock, Wall Street Journal, Warren F. Motte, William Burroughs, Wolf Vostell on May 10, 2011 | 15 Comments »
A friend recently alerted me to a post at Geek System (“Found Poetry in Magic: The Gathering Cards”): a fellow named Adam Parrish made some short poems by blacking out selected text on Magic cards:
Art by Adam Parrish (2011).
You can find more of Parrish’s poems here. He says of them, “[s]ome of these turned out well, some not so well,” but he’s being overly modest: most of the pieces are pretty witty, especially given the limited amounts of text he had to work with.
But what most caught my attention was the following claim in the Geek System post:
Adam Parrish, inspired by Austin Kleon’s famous newspaper blackout poems, partially blacked out Magic: The Gathering cards to create mini-poems.
Inspired by Austin Kleon? Who’s Austin Kleon? And don’t they mean, “inspired by Tom Phillips’s A Humument“?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Bad Man, Boston University, Donald Barthelme, George Mills, George Starbuck, Gordon Lish, John Barth, novellas, Paris Review, Searches & Seizures, Stanley Elkin, The Living End, William Gass, writing workshop on April 25, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Stanley Elkin proved remarkably supportive and generous with me, c. 1977 in Boston. He’d come to town as a visiting writer at Boston U., just another of the amazing lineup (Barth, Barthelme [Donald], Cheever [alcoholic, alas], more…) brought in by George Starbuck while he was running the writing program. I was a recent graduate and still spending a lot of time in the department, while freelancing as a teacher and writer in town. I’d read a couple of his novellas, stuff that later wound up in Searches & Seizures and The Living End, and I’d started A Bad Man after seeing Gass recommend it in one of his essays, then had it snitched off my seat by a stranger on the MBTA.
The photo used elsewhere on Big Other is the figure I recall. Elkin and I met at a department function
and, drink in hand, he proved a delightful sourpuss, for instance regarding his friend Bill Gass. ”Listen,” he groused, “I’ve written better novels than Bill ever will.” This with obvious fondness! And energy, too — this was before Elkin’s MS put him in a walker. I don’t even recall seeing him with a cane. (more…)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alison Kelly, Amber Sparks, Aphex Twin, Birkensnake, Brian Conn, Brigid Brophy, Built to Spill, Charlotte Brontë, Darby, Diane Williams, Donald Barthelme, flash fiction, Gerrit Dou, Hugh Cornwell, Lydia Davis, Mark E. Smith, Mary Shelley, Mike Meginnis, NOON, Owl City, Rembrandt, Roberto Bolaño, Ronald Firbank, Talking Heads, Television, The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, The Fall, The Postal Service, The Stranglers, Tim Jones-Yelvington on December 4, 2010 | 7 Comments »
Owl City: I steal, therefore...
I’ve been thinking about comments that darby and Mike Meginnis made on Amber’s recent post “I Don’t Like Crap Games.” In response, darby wrote:
[...] im saying dont think/worry about what editors want. dont worry about “what they like.” read what you like and write what you like. dont study a journal just to try to get published by them. first, you should love what you write. then you should love what you read. then think about maybe this fits here maybe.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with Darby’s thinking on this. When editors ask me to figure out what they like I don’t think very much of them. That’s their job. My job is to make what I like. Sure, it’s possible to take that attitude too far, but editors who want fewer submissions can limit their window for slush or etc. I want everyone to submit to Uncanny Valley who wants to so I can choose the best possible, coolest work. I don’t want them worrying in particular about what I want. And I never worry too much about what they want.
I agree with Darby and Mike (and I admire Mike’s editorial stance); I’ve said things like this myself: writers should write whatever they want to write, and damn everyone else’s eyes.
But today I want to try thinking past that thought. Why do I want to write what I want to write? And is it really entirely my decision?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged A Clockwork Orange, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Amy Hempel, Andy Kubert, Ann Beattie, apple pie, Bernard Herrmann, Bill Sienkiewicz, Brazil, Carole Maso, Charles Shultz, Chris Claremont, Citizen Kane, Dan Green, David Bowie, Donald Barthelme, Douglas Adams, fine art vs. craft, Frank Miller, Franz Kline, Fresh Air, Henry Darger, Ira Glass, Joy Williams, Kathy Acker, Kurt Vonnegut, Lloyd Alexander, Marc Silvestri, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, Michael Nyman, Nadia Boulanger, Nintendo Power, NPR, Orson Welles, Peter David, Peter Greenaway, Philip Glass, Prospero's Books, Raymond Carver, Ronald Sukenick, Sacha Vierney, Samuel Beckett, Shakespeare, Stanley Kubrick, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Terry Gilliam, The Empire Strikes Back, The Legend of Zelda, The Lord of the Rings, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Wolverine, X-Men on December 1, 2010 | 17 Comments »
Leonardo #1, page 17 (1987) (detail; First Publishing reprint). Art by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird.
1.
My father, who once trained as a baker, taught me when I was a kid how to bake an apple pie. I don’t know where he got the original recipe from; I highly doubt that he invented it. Certainly he didn’t invent the idea of baking pies. And he didn’t invent the idea of baking an apple pie.
He was very clear about certain instructions:
Since then, I’ve baked several apple pies, and over time I’ve modified the recipe slightly, but it’s essentially the same (and I never violate his prime instructions).
When I make a new apple pie, I’m not doing anything new.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Donald Barthelme, James Robison, Wallace Stevens on November 17, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged City Life, Donald Barthelme, Scott Garson on May 15, 2010 | 3 Comments »
“Patterns of silver light and so forth.”
—”City Life,” Donald Barthelme, from City Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brian Kiteley, Donald Barthelme, Terminus on April 27, 2010 | 5 Comments »
From Donald Barthelme’s story “Terminus”:
“Naked, she twists in his arms to listen to a sound outside the door, a scratching, she freezes, listening; he’s startled by the beauty of her tense back, the raised shoulders, tilted head, there’s nothing, she turns to look at him, what does she see?”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Edgar Allen Poe, Donald Barthelme, Batman, Tim Burton, Edward Gorey, J.D. Salinger, Conrad Veidt, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Gwynplaine, The Man Who Laughs, Victor Hugo, The Joker, Roland West, The Bat, The Bat Whispers, The Old Dark House, Vincent Price, Edward Scissorhands, The Addams Family, Roger Corman, The Masque of the Red Death, German Expressionism, L'Homme qui rit, Mark Twain, Ray Russell, Sardonicus, William Castle, Mr. Sardonicus, James Whale, House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, The Laughing Man on February 19, 2010 | 14 Comments »
This will be something of a long and meandering trip, only to wind up back where we started. But I can promise that along the way we’ll encounter secrets hidden behind locked doors, as well as deeds that will form the fabric of nightmares.
Shall we?
This is Conrad Veidt:
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Arthur Rimbaud, Donald Barthelme, Frank Sullivan, From Baudelaire to Surrealism, Gustave Courbet, Harold Rosenberg, Henry James, Hiding Man, Honoré Daumier, James Thurber, Location, Marcel Raymond, Mr. Arbuthnot, S.J. Perelman, Shya Scanlon, St. Martin's Press, The New Yorker, Thomas Hess, Tracy Daugherty on December 18, 2009 | 24 Comments »
MY FOUR FAVORITE NEW BOOKS OF 2009, CONT’D
#3.
Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme by Tracy Daugherty (St. Martin’s Press, 2009)
