Scott Garson’s Best of 2009

1. Best stick-in-your-head line from an ’09 fiction: “The sky was a fucked puzzle,” from Blake Butler’s EVER.
2. Best coinage: To squid (v.i. or v.t). My four-year old son, the baddest four-year old son in the world, made this one up. It means: to move one’s fingers softly over another’s skin…. As in, “No squidding!”
3. Best uncelebrated ’09 fiction: Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “Thiebold,” from The New York Tyrant. Psycho-cultural politics. Who else is writing fiction like this? Fuckin stunner.

4. Best pure pop song, “Lust for Life,” from Girls’ ALBUM.
5. Best post-pop song, “Rollerskate,” by Matias Aguayo.
6. Best band for people who’ve decided they don’t miss Bob Pollard that much after all: Times New Viking.
7. Best new mag, online or print: The Collagist.
8. Best reissue of any kind, book or music: Gary Lutz’s STORIES IN THE WORST WAY.
9. Best defense against bad reviews: Bob Dylan dedicating all proceeds from his holiday album, CHRISTMAS IN THE HEART, to charity.
10. Best attempt to induce mass insanity via transmission: the free-credit-report.com jingle.

Scott Garson‘s AMERICAN GYMNOPÉDIES is coming soon from WWP. He edits Wigleaf. He blog HERE.

John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024). His other fiction is published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His nonfiction is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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