October 2011
7 posts
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Au revoir.
I’m probably done here. I haven’t been much inspired to post, and I don’t feel I’m getting anything out of it. Unfollow at will (although I will continue to keep up with those of you I am following as of now). Thanks for reading, all!
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In a transparent terror that floated like egg...
Alone by Tomas Tranströmer
I
One evening in February I came near to dying here. The car skidded sideways on the ice, out on the wrong side of the road. The approaching cars – their lights – closed in.
My name, my girls, my job broke free and were left silently behind further and further away. I was anonymous like a boy in a playground surrounded by enemies.
The approaching...
“Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it...”
– Flaubert
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Death and the Penguin
Mellville House is publishing Andrey Kurkov’s crime-fiction, including one of my favorite books of all time (see title of this post). Hot. And they’re having a celebratory Adopt-a-Penguin program. What’s not to love? The details:
We will adopt a penguin in the name of any bookstore who successfully sells 25 copies of either book (combined or single title) in the series, which...
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Read something. →
“A London Life” by Henry James (via Bookslut).
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The Kenyon Review Fellowships →
This is a banging opportunity for post-grads.
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That we do not speak is louder than bombs.
dear love, by Barbara Jane Reyes
you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire. new, sexy diagnoses have been added to the lexicon on your behalf (“charlie don’t surf,” has also been added to the lexicon on your behalf). in this home that is not our home, we have mutually exiled each other. i walk down your street in the rain, and i do not call you. i walk in the opposite...
September 2011
17 posts
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“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by...”
– John Berger, Ways of Seeing
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THE HUNT FOR HEMINGWAY →
booksijustread:
TAGLINE - In an epic life of perpetual motion—Paris, Pamplona, Mount Kilimanjaro, Key West, etc.—one place was truly home to Ernest Hemingway: the Finca Vigía, his rustic estate outside Havana. It was kept by the Cuban government as a shrine in the half-century since his suicide, and its full contents remained a mystery until 2002. One of the American team that finally gained...
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In case you should find yourself in the mood for... →
Judy Blume, I had no idea.
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In you, seas burn for names.
Egg Topper by Lilah Hegnauer
And who’s to stop us? The twin cities of barrel and pepperbox? You are the Aegean to my Marmara;
in you, seas burn for names. In you, a little elbow noodle wants for a plain, narrow cupboard.
We have it all. And then some. And the plainest thing is this: marry me. Port arms! Time, and the
eye of a needle, metaphor, metaphor. As a pelt, wrap it, cinch it, belt it,...
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Apology
babyjaneis-a-bside:
a girl, she named her jewel, she sang along with a metronome, a sweet alto. it didn’t picture as she meant. she hurt. she sank bare legs in white pebbles. she sat on a tire swing and watched her father kill her mother. little jewel, her mama gave her name and stance, but she loved her father more.
misterchu asked: To the Devil with those that published before us! —Aelius Donatus
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Brooklyn Book Festival Schedule, Reorganized
You guys, don’t forget the Bk Book Fest this weekend. I am being fancy at the Cape for my first married anniversary and won’t make it, but it looks like there’s some hot stuff on the schedule.
meaghano:
luckypaperstars:
Behind the cut, a copy of the schedule for the Brooklyn Book Festival grouped by time, instead of by location. See who you’ll be missing!
I left out the...
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This red lick of wilderness.
Address by Stephanie Ford
Landlord, I am all pilgrim— lost in privet hedge and primrose, in hemlock funk and fringe. For how long did you watch and ogle as I swerved like a bird heart severed from the bird? If you are so near and mine to please, then we are neighbors. Won’t you grant me a gatepass that we may gin the juniper, share a porch-swing, and drink to the ankle-monitor of a small...
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My dear Mr. Greene gets a nod as one of the... →
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Best typo ever. →
Susan Andersen apologizes for a hilarious editing mistake in her new romance novel Baby, I’m Yours:
“I apologise to anyone who bought my on-sale ebook of Baby, I’m Yours and read on pg 293: ‘He stiffened for a moment but then she felt his muscles loosen as he shitted on the ground’,” says Andersen. “Shifted - he SHIFTED!”
And don’t miss the...
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Read something. →
Denis Johnson has posted the first two chapters of his new novel on Facebook.
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Nothing is essential.
Flood by Eliza Griswold
I woke to a voice within the room. perhaps. The room itself: “You’re wasting this life expecting disappointment.” I packed my bag in the night and peered in its leather belly to count the essentials. Nothing is essential. To the east, the flood has begun. Men call to each other on the water for the comfort of voices. Love surprises us. It ends.
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Read something. →
This Frederick Karinthy short short story is amazing. Via 50 Watts.
When I was seventy-eight I discovered that my wife had been betraying me with another man for fifty-four years, so I went to St. Margaret’s Bridge and took a lovely header into the river, thereby winning the diving championship of the Metropolitan Athletic Club. Subsequently, I established a record in underwater swimming,...
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It's the McSweeney's Annual Column Contest! →
I shall think on this. (But that’s probably all I’ll do. You?)
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So it's September.
And I’m supposed to be back. You know what’s weird? I actually liked having some time off from obsessing about the literary world. What I did on my summer (i.e. August) vacation:
A lot of my job.
Some reading. I didn’t read as much as earlier in the summer, and I wasn’t thrilled with most of what I read, including Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, Black Dogs by Ian...
August 2011
1 post
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I no sooner arrive than leave.
I’ll be taking a break and observing the book industry holiday of August here. Not that I’m in the book industry. I just need to take some time off from trolling the internet so regularly and focus on some other things for a while. No guarantees I won’t pop in on occasion, but for the most part, I’m checking out.
Here’s a poem until next time…
The Trapeze...
July 2011
27 posts
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August 6th is "Do Nothing But Read Day." →
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Here's the 2011 Booker longlist! →
In pictures.
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They cooed over their art.
babyjaneis-a-bside:
Olives and blonde braids and freckles, sun-burnt at the city commune. “Abigail,” she said, sticking out her tattooed hand from a small frame on a wooden barstool. Maze-eyes, rubied and smoked. She fell off the ladder leaning against an old apple tree; girls in long skirts moved her arms and legs. They cooed over their art, licked their lips.
Going to Asheville by hanna...
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Read something.
writerintheattic:
The third issue of Curbside Quotidian is now live. Be sure to read the editor’s introduction, and my story “Ingenue.”
Link to Issue here.
Story by a former MFA classmate, Christine Utz.
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Lessons learned from submitting writing for... →
A thoughtful list from Blake Butler over at HTMLGIANT. I like:
6. Deletion is holy.
And:
9. If you really want to publish a book one day you will publish a book. The time that you spend getting there is kind of wonderful. Don’t cut it short. The emotional range is valuable.
And:
18. Want to restate: this submission/publication thing is ephemeral. Yeah it’s nice and fun that it exists,...
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“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”
– Samuel Beckett
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“Everything that was said to me I seemed to have heard before, and I could no...”
– Joan Didion (from “Goodbye to All That”)
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I'm, you know, still here.
Where Did You Get Your Love? by Jean Valentine
You leapt sometimes or walked away sometimes. That time on the phone you couldn’t get your breath I leapt but couldn’t get to you — I’m, you know, still here, still tulip, resin, temporary.
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How to get a story into the BASS.
Wendy Wimmer is working on a great series analyzing the Best American Short Stories in an attempt to improve her chances at getting one of her own stories in. Very interesting so far. For example:
…these five publications have the highest percentage of female authors in the BASS (let’s call them the The Girl Scouts)
New England Review (84.6% female)
Alaska Quarterly Review (75% female)
...
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Read this. →
Guernica has the first ten pages of Kyle Minor’s novel The Sexual Lives of Missionaries. I kind of love the opening paragraph, among other things. Looks like the book’s not out until next year.
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How to build a bookstore. →
Where the Dust Went →
sarahwrotethat:
I have a flash-fiction piece up today on the Atticus Review:
In Beijing it dimmed everything faraway and lodged sharp and fine at the corners of their eyes and in splits deep under their thumbnails. At the airport the book she bought had dust pressed in its red vinyl cover and opened with the scent of a basement. She felt the book in her inside pocket, half as light as a...
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The Guardian first book award submissions for... →
Open to public scrutiny and discussion for the first time.
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These abandoned novels seem better off that way. →
One of them is titled I Probably Pooped on Your Couch. And it’s not so much a novel as it is a…memoir, I guess?
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And all people are imaginary.
Canceled Title by Molly Brodak
Nails gnaw palms all night, I hear, syllable-flocked, a steep scene: teeth of piano keys, handsome, and I can’t sort, can’t cope, & go rank lakes on the way home, and the way is always dream-branched, patch of birch, sunk in bad banks I heard, I never felt: bright like, fence pressed: I got all small around you, imaginary, and all people are...
Yup!
whynotshesaid replied to your photo: Nothing book related, but I’m a very proud big…
That is amazing. The Boilermaker is a BFD. Your little bro should be proud!
Thanks!! Yes, he is quite pleased!
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Half-galaxies of other cars' odometers seen...
Cheap Cloning Process Lets You Have Your Own Little Elvis (Weekly World News) by Matthea Harvey
If the real Elvis was a racecar, the little matchbox-sized Elvi we buy are the half-galaxies of other cars’ odometers seen through a cab window at night. When my Elvis does a hip swivel (like a bobblehead dog on the dash, he’s game, will swivel all day long) it doesn’t cause a full-on...
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“Unlike your baseball player and your prizefighter and your matador, how does a...”
– Ernest Hemingway (According to old friend A.E. Hotchner in this piece about the suicide and the role of the FBI in driving Papa mad in the end.)
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Poetry bombs. →
The Millions: The Year of Wonders →
booksinthekitchen:
The previous Friday, bidding on my first novel had reached six figures, then paused for people to track down more cash. I’d later learn one editor spent the weekend trying to reach her boss on his Tanzanian vacation, finally getting through via the satellite phone of a safari boat on the Rufiji river, but that he wouldn’t OK a higher bid because he couldn’t get the manuscript...
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"Writing is bad for you." →
I’ve come to realize quite recently that I’m not a “good” or “nice” person. I was a little surprised about it, actually. Maybe this is why (via Rick Gekoski over at The Guardian):
It has become increasingly clear to me over these last 10 years, in which I have written more regularly than before, that the more I write the worse I become. More self-absorbed,...
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Love hates incoherence.
Love, the English Teacher (after Lawrence Lieberman) by Lois Marie Harrod
Love, the English teacher, grades the snow. She checks the drifts. From her gray pencils
drop white sheets. They bury themselves like leaves. Whatever rots, worms itself into another tract,
Prefixes become roots, suffixes mend the broken reed. I write a story
That lacks a theme, the plot’s a thistle. Love...