“Hymnal” is now up at Monkeybicycle. It’s a strange story about a vacation on the shores of Lake Huron. I’m glad to get work placed with Monkeybicycle. They’ve put out excellent fiction by Molly Laich and Brian Oliu, and it’s exciting to be among that company.
Finished Marcel Benabou’s Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books. Read My Life In Heavy Metal by Steve Almond. Began Room by Emma Donoghue and Moby Dick by, you know, Herman Melville.
Didn’t get much from Benabou’s book. There were many sections that were conceptually interesting, but the overblow, baroque style jarred with me.
Take this sentence: “Thus, I drafted without too much trouble, and sometimes even with intense jubilation, a great quantity of first pages: were someone to take an interest in them one day, that person would create an anthology that might not be lacking savor.” It could be rewritten as “I wrote many first pages, some of which had merit,” without shifting the meaning too much. It could be that Benabou is trying to parody ornate prose, but I’m not sure that’s what he was going for.
Another possibility (and this is possible for most Oulipan work) is that the piece operates under a constraint I don’t understand. However, many of the constraints and generative techniques in Perec’s Life A User’s Manual are not readily apparent, but served the novel well. For example, his lists of items provide characterization as well as introducing dramatic weight into the story — these are characters whose stories are told partly through the accumulation of objects.
A short-short of mine, “You Lose Six Hands in Three Years,” is up at Alice Blue Review.
In some of my new work, I’ve been thinking of stories as methods of access — they’re a tool for accessing and restructuring common experience. The details in the story (the box, the carpet, the hands) are all basic ones, but reassembled into something both unfamiliar and accessible (by that I mean something the reader can interact with, and not, you know, Phil Collins).
Alice Blue is great — they’ve put out work from Amelia Gray, Mike Young, and Matt Bell, among others. They’re also good people. I’ve been sending them work for a while, and they’ve always been positive and gracious.
Read Immobility by Brian Evenson, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Hobart 13. Finished Diane William’s Vicky Swanky is a Beauty and Lorrie Moore’s Anagrams. Started Why I Have Not Written Any of My Books by Marcel Benabou.
Some short notes on these after the jump.
“Billy the Kid vs. Dracula” is up over at Juked.
This should be mentioned. The story was born out of frustration over the movie’s misused premise.
Also, this.
Other points of reference: Shadow of a Vampire, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Guy Maddin’s Keyhole.
Juked is fantastic, and I’m glad to be among their ranks. Check out this gut-wrenching story by Emily Koon, or this short-short by fellow Caketrain author Rob Walsh.
Read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress. Finished Blake Butler’s Sky Saw and Raymond Queneau’s The Flight of Icarus. Started Diane William’s Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty and Loorie Moore’s Anagrams.
We should crown Diane Williams as the god-like ruler of short-story collection titles. Vicky Swanky Is a Beauty? Romancer Erector? Some Sexual Success Stories Plus Other Stories in Which God Might Choose to Appear? It’s just no contest. I’ve read some of her work in various lit mags, mainly old copies of The Quarterly. The stories in this collection are very good, and she’s tightened her sentences even more. I’m enamored with the way her and Gary Lutz make plot feel like a repercussion of language.
More small notes after the jump.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my motivations behind trying to publish, and I’ve got 3 theories worked out. They’re sorted from least to most probable. It is descriptive of my own reasoning and not intended to be prescriptive.
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The first way is the most complicated, and also the most problematic. We’re going to assume that a piece of fiction is an experiment. I should clarify that by an experiment, I don’t mean what is commonly referred to as “experimental fiction” — I simply mean that we should consider the story like we would a scientific experiment. We can then assume that the piece will achieve varying degrees of success or failure. While one could argue that the author should be the judge of the story’s success, it makes more sense that a reader should judge this, the reader being more objective and less personally involved with the piece. So, in this situation, the writer sets the conditions of the experiment, performs it, and the reader determines its success. The writer requires a reader for the piece to be evaluated as successful.
Read Kate Zambreno’s Heroines, Jane Bowles’s Two Serious Ladies, Jac Jemc’s My Only Wife, and Michael Kimball’s Big Ray. Started Blake Butler’s Sky Saw, Raymond Queneau’s The Flight of Icarus and finished Daniel Levin-Becker’s Many Subtle Channels.
Zambreno’s Heroines is, on the surface, difficult to categorize. It’s a book length work of both literary criticism and memoir. However, the form works and seems very natural — it fosters my belief that fragmentation is often more natural than adherence to traditional form. Heroines is unashamedly subjective, justifiably angry, and very readable. Sometimes when reading a book I think that it’s something we are going to have to come to grips with as a culture, and this is one of those books. Zambreno has identified an unacknowledged problem — how the literary cannon, psychiatry, and the culture as a whole has sold these women short, and how we continue to dismiss creative young women.
I read Big Ray in one evening. I can’t remember the last time I’ve read a book in a single sitting.
I’ve got some thoughts on Diane Cook’s story Flotsam, appearing in Redivider 10.1, after the jump.
“Five Cities,” a short story of mine, is in Gigantic Sequins 4.1. The issue features work from Brandi Wells and Rebecca Hazelton. You can preorder it here. I’m proud to be included.
I’ve started Many Subtle Channels by Daniel Levin Becker, as well as The Recognitions by William Gaddis.
Becker’s book is thoroughly charming so far, as any book concerning Oulipo should be. The Recognitions is funnier than expected. My previous experience with extremely long books is limited to 2666 and The Man Without Qualities. They’re both incredible books, but they haven’t made me laugh out loud as much as Gaddis’s book. I’m also fascinated by expressions of faith that fall outside the norm, and the book has those in spades.
I read M. Kitchell’s Variations on the Sun, from Love Symbol Press. Some thoughts on that after the jump.
Will VanDenBerg 