I have a couple collaborative/ large theme projects set to go off in December. Both should be pretty exciting, I think. More on those, later.
I just know you're sitting on the edge of your seat.
Until then--any suggestions on writers I wouldn't know? Books to check out? I'm thinking something in a David Ohle/Ben Marcus/Samuel Beckett/Cormac Mccarthy shade. Something wild and big and strange. Something that'll drop my jaw.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Recent Reads: Lutz and Salesses
I continue to be a not very productive reader. Still, here are some books that I have recently read and enjoyed.
Throughout my reading of Gary Lutz's reissued I Looked Alive I continuously thought, "This is the strongest, smartest, most distinctive" prose by an American probably since Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift in the late 70s or some of his novellas in the mid-80s. Lutz is certainly highly regarded and almost deified in certain circles, but its a shame that he isn't more well known.
An excerpt from a random page: "The youngest of the girls had proposed herself out of the least promising of bodies and had ever after let her life take its line from the coercive slants and downturns of her sisters" (from "Spills").
Matthew Salesses' Our Island of Edidemics is a bizarre, warm, smart, lyrical, and fantastically creative little book. It is the sort of book I've often wanted to write, but couldn't find the ability within myself. Matthew is such a talented writer, a writer to be envied, for sure, and I look forward to his new works as they continue to emerge.
A random excerpt from "Island", this from the very sharply rhythmic (and grotesquely funny) "Our Organs Would Explode Inside Us", "We gained weight, and cramped from overeating, and feared our organs would explode inside us. We hobbled around our island, our bodies pumpkin carriages waiting for midnight. We ate and grew and ate. We wished death on our hunger as our bodies inexplicably lived. We didn't know how to make our bodies stop."
Throughout my reading of Gary Lutz's reissued I Looked Alive I continuously thought, "This is the strongest, smartest, most distinctive" prose by an American probably since Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift in the late 70s or some of his novellas in the mid-80s. Lutz is certainly highly regarded and almost deified in certain circles, but its a shame that he isn't more well known.
An excerpt from a random page: "The youngest of the girls had proposed herself out of the least promising of bodies and had ever after let her life take its line from the coercive slants and downturns of her sisters" (from "Spills").
Matthew Salesses' Our Island of Edidemics is a bizarre, warm, smart, lyrical, and fantastically creative little book. It is the sort of book I've often wanted to write, but couldn't find the ability within myself. Matthew is such a talented writer, a writer to be envied, for sure, and I look forward to his new works as they continue to emerge.
A random excerpt from "Island", this from the very sharply rhythmic (and grotesquely funny) "Our Organs Would Explode Inside Us", "We gained weight, and cramped from overeating, and feared our organs would explode inside us. We hobbled around our island, our bodies pumpkin carriages waiting for midnight. We ate and grew and ate. We wished death on our hunger as our bodies inexplicably lived. We didn't know how to make our bodies stop."
Friday, November 19, 2010
In the Shadow of the Darkness (redux)
You remember all those crazy thoughts Raskolnakov had in the fugue of delirium? Well, lately I've felt a little like that mad old boy. Today I took a walk wherein I became feverish and strange. Luckily I had a pen and paper with me.
From within the mouth of madness is born a weird bliss. Here's what I'm thinking: I've decided to combine the 13 best stories from my two novels-in-stories, Birds of Prey and the Ancient House, plus my chapbook, "The Lost Bodies of Our Alligators", plus my novella, "How the Days of Love and Diptheria--", plus two other stories into a 50,000 word collection entitled In the Shadow of the Darkness of Strange Animals.
Done!
Now my only question is, what does one do with a 50,000 word story collection?
From within the mouth of madness is born a weird bliss. Here's what I'm thinking: I've decided to combine the 13 best stories from my two novels-in-stories, Birds of Prey and the Ancient House, plus my chapbook, "The Lost Bodies of Our Alligators", plus my novella, "How the Days of Love and Diptheria--", plus two other stories into a 50,000 word collection entitled In the Shadow of the Darkness of Strange Animals.
Done!
Now my only question is, what does one do with a 50,000 word story collection?
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