New Dead Families

The first issue of New Dead Families--and the introductory essay by mastermind Zack Wentz, made my soul sing. Therein resides the sort of literature I believe in.

As an ex-MFAer, I've spent serious time amongst those who regard non realist and experimental fiction as ... less than savory. Write a non-realist piece for a workshop and you may as well cut a red "E" into your forehead with a utility knife. We all know how many MFAers there are out there, too, and these MFAers are only bound to have children. Naturally, I worry about the state of our lit. New Dead Families, I think, is Zack Wentz's answer to this particular ruination of our peculiar species.

So, much thanks goes out to the man himself for the work he does, and for making my story "Wherein the New King Speaks on the Subject of the Flesh of Whales" a part of this wonderful second issue of New Dead Familes which features great works by Amber Sparks, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, David Backer, I. Fontana and more.

Check it out, please. Much strangeness and horror resides herein.

Another

Saramago has died.

Holy smokes!

Just read and re-read and am re-reading J.A. Tyler's "All These Violent Children (An Episode of Hills)" up at Word Riot. What sick images. Twisted, writhing rhythms. A work of great horror and greater beauty. Yes, I wish I wrote this. I'm burning with a jealousy now.

Then I read here that this is a tease of a 80,000 word novel he's calling Water. The description nearly caused me to give up my own writing in a fit of gnashing and weeping. It sounds absolutely brilliant. A masterpiece.

Days like this I think of my own meager, unpublished little books and I ask of them, What can you make of yourselves, out in the world, when such wolves slink low along the hills? My poor little books, so pink and bemused admidst a gray terror.

Summer Reading: Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball

"Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if our house had really flooded. Maybe we could have started our marriage over again."

Good stuff

The June Pank is a real killer. Still working my way around the words but the first two names I clicked proved really rewarding--

the poems by XtX are esp. fine. Some of these line breaks are really nasty.

I've only recently been catching up on James Tadd Adcox but he's fast becoming one of my favorites. His story Diseases, Disorders, Breaks is strange and beautiful in all the best ways.

Intuition

How much do you work by intuition? Do you feel the need to understand on an intellectual or analytical level the events in your story, or do you allow yourself to know them, on a gut level, an intuitive level? Do you intentionally construct thematic layers to your stories? Do you add scenes and character traits and events so the story will mean something? Do you write with your conscious mind or with your belly?

Ever by Blake Butler

"Through the floor the room made of my excess began to vibrate in the sound."

Of the stuff I've read, and I try to read everything, I think this is Blake Butler's best. Ever's power only inflates on the second and third read.

Here, even the shed skin is loaded with importance and meaning. Every curdle and fold contains multitudes.

when all our days are numbered marching bands will fill the streets & we will not hear them because we will be upstairs in the clouds- Sasha Fletcher

"We are none of us a little shocked when the earth splits open & swallows us whole. When it does we will proceed as we have before because when the earth splits open & swallows you whole if you do not die you will end up in a small house under the ground with a very tiny chimney that will lead you absolutely nowhere without an umbrella & not even the tide will reach you there where you are when you are underneath the ground."

Much mayhem at >kill author issue 7

I'm living above my means at >kill author issue seven.

Yes, my story, The Boss' Son, is sharing space w/ really great works by heavies like Amber Sparks, Matt Bell, Roxane Gay, James Tadd Adcox.

As you read you will find much mayhem.

good stuff

Will spend some time cozied up to the new action, yes. So far is great. What catches my eye already--and my admiration--are Jamie Iredell's from The Book of Freaks which is really after my heart. I've seen some of this around, I think. Should be a good one when it comes out. And Christopher Higgs' Remix of Samuel Beckett's Endgame which is as fine as it sounds. Back to reading.

Summer reading: An Island of Fifty by Ben Brooks

"The roots of the dreams of the industrial civilization will be a steel giant & I will feed him my heart."

Summer Reading: Rubicon Beach by Steve Erickson

"Of course there is no such number, Mr Lake. We have all the numbers already. We know all the numbers, we found them hundreds of years ago. If that's so, answered the young man across the table, then tell me why the Old World came to the New."

Published for Day/ I don't think so

I thought about doing the Word Riot "Published for a Day" deal.

But it didn't feel right.

If you want to read my book you can:

Here's the description:

Birds of Prey is a collection, a novel, a memoir in nightmares. The lives of such monomaniacs, geniuses, anti-socials, and murderers as Proust, Heracles, Jay Gatsby, Gandhi, Herman Melville, Orson Welles, Napoleon, Alfred Jarry, Don Quixote, Werner Herzog and others are herein manipulated and distorted into new shapes and truths.

You can click on the links to the side if you want to see some of the stories. Others will appear in various pubs as we go along.

If anyone wants to see the 25,000 word manuscript let me know and I'll send it along.

David Markson, R.I.P.

RIP David Markson

Markson had more integrity than the rest of them put together. After his one big success turned into a horrible Frank Sinatra movie, and after people stopped reading, he became one of our great artists. He was the most innovative although for years nobody knew. Every page of Vanishing Point, the Last Novel, Reader's Block, This is Not a Novel, and Wittgenstein's Mistress are unlike any you've ever read, and they are all a joy to read.

People are starting to catch onto his works and I hope at the end Markson understood that his readership had arrived, that his influence was vast, that he would not be forgotten.

Books Books Books ... Summer Reading

These I will read soon: Recieved mlp novellas today: Sasha Fletcher's when all our days are numbered marching bands will fill the streets & we will not hear them because we will be upstairs in the clouds. I've read and admired a few excerpts in places like Sleepingfish, so I look forward to it. Then Ben Brooks' An Island of Fifty. Brooks is our wild prose Rimbaud. From what I just read this is his best work too.

These I have lately read and admired:

O Fallen Angel by Kate Zambreno. "Maggie is in a dark wood and the wolf comes up to her and he slams her face into a tree. He chops her up into pieces, the bad, bad wolf because she is a bad, bad girl."

Our Us & We by J.A. Tyler. "We have legs, sick minds, hearts that beat water adn they say as they have told us that an ounce of air, a fraction a fracture, a bleed of oxygen from outside, the bubble will enter our hearts, the us of we and stop the beating, the bleating."

Some oldies:


Bob, or Man on Boatby Peter Markus: "Bob throws the guts of these dead fish back into the river so that the guts of these dead fish can turn back into fish."

A really oldie:

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller Jr. "The gold incisor flickered when the fire danced high."