Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I just thought for a long time about whether to capitalize the 's' in the last sentence of this post

I should probably be in a good mood but I'm still not.

A really good thing is happening, it seems. I'm not going to talk about it specifically for a while.

It concerns things that will manifest themselves almost one full year from now. It concerns words and time with words and like that.









I don't know, I wonder if I will get to a point that I do enough or have done enough on any given day that I feel satisfied or relaxed. I don't even know what I am looking for, I have found threads of it, and yet the more I do my nature seems to stay in one point, when it comes to certain things.

That is very vague.

All of this blather is vague-ish, I should probably delete it.











Things right now are very good.

I should feel gracious.

I really do, it is only in myself that I feel misaiming, or like every day is so short, or that I haven't found the button that slows the slur speed or something.











Today I reread a lot of Gary Lutz's STORIES IN THE WORST WAY. It'd been too long. On a sentence by sentence level it is probably one of the most pristine and wise books ever written. You could really take almost every single line and put it on a page by itself and show it to someone and have them be taken aback a little, or at least look and remember the words a while after, even out of context, more so than other words.

If you haven't read it, read it, move it to the top of your list. If you've read it, read it again. That's good advice.

I am a purple colored cistern.










I don't know what to do when I realize certain things.










Nice boy good boy.

There is a new issue of DIAGRAM up, I always get a little giddy when they put up a new one, I read it all, I usually click through and find the fiction or things shaped like fiction then I read the contributor notes then I read the poems, I like the author notes they let authors supply that illuminate or deviate from the text.

This issue has the fabulous Kathy Regina and Atlanta brethren Benjamin Solomon, both of those pieces are really strong and make me want to write.

Diagram, maybe that's the best thing about them: they make me want to write.

Sometimes I will keep certain texts on Diagram open on my browser behind the MS Word while I am writing and peek back and forth at them, I like the shapes of the texts.










I like the show I LOVE MONEY, I can't help it, I have watched every episode, some several times, when I miss one I feel anxious, I look for it to appear on ON DEMAND, I check sometimes often to see if they will update and put the new one on there, I can't help it.

WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE? has a new format, they tell you the categories of the questions now all in advance, and the contestants now have limited amounts of time to answer, it makes me sad.

I really don't watch that much TV, except when I feel bloated or it is very late and I have written all day.











I had a sentence in my head in the car today and I forgot it, that sentence was going to be a book

Every day I could probably make several sentences that would become a book, it's not an issue

I feel haphazard and giddy

I forget everything unless I write it down or don't forget it

Each snardvunt is a palimpeses in my gunt.











I am writing another book now, I can only do a couple lines a day on it, the lines are very broken up on the page, it about a woman who works in a grocery store, I think I am ripping off David Markson again, I don't care, it is going to take me a long time to write it I think, I want the book one day to be 450-550 pages of mostly single sentences or small sentence clusters making up each paragraph, I like reading books like that, I want it to be my semi-minimalist version of THE TUNNEL

THE TUNNEL is the greatest accomplishment in literature, as is also INFINITE JEST

suck my dick

26 comments:

DOGZPLOT said...

gass is gonna be reading at awp this year. i hope he makes my brain explode. if not him someone...soon...please

BLAKE BUTLER said...

wow, that is nice.

they are doing a tribute to him, i wonder if he will speak

Susana Mai said...

i feel like you are speaking for me. how can i be so lucky and unsatisfied? i never get enough done, feeling accomplished and all. Everything is frayed and quick and lost and not enough.

i should...i don't know. i should everything.

but i'm not. i'm really just really just really not.

i feel abandoned by myself.

ryan call said...

i like gary's last name a lot i think

Kofi said...

I should look into your title suggestions. I stumbled across one of your stories online and your sentences seemed to like me.

I often feel unaccomplished when I am awake.

Lately I haven't been sleeping.

Anonymous said...

"His guff can be accommodated. Goading the reader with obscenity and bigotry, Gass breathes so hard, we never believe Kohler as a cracked vessel of foul vapors and invidious intent. He’s a bogus boogie-man, guilty of overacting. He hogs the page. The Tunnel bellyflops not because it is morally repugnant or systematically repellent, but because it is so damned literary, or rather literary in the wrong way. The Tunnel aspires to the unparaphrasable status of pure style (.....) It’s modernism’s last gasp, and way too late." - James Wolcott, The New Criterion

Anonymous said...

I will read that Gary Lutz book, because Amy Hempel wrote a blurb for him and I am a whore like that.

I was looking at that Benjamin Solomon one-sentence story, and I couldn't finish it. I justified that to myself by saying, "Well, how the hell can I be expected to read a sentence that long?" Meanwhile, I will sit down and read stories that are much longer, and paragraphs and so on. Was it because it was one sentence that made me not want to read it? Have I been brainwashed by composition classes against run-on sentences?

It's all very disturbing. For the life of me, I cannot decide what makes a story right now. I am incapable of deciding what or how I want to write. That is to say, I feel what you feel, or what you perceive to feel, or what you project to perceive to feel, but I doubt we have much else besides that in common.

What I really want to write is something that Tobias Wolff would read and say, "Hey, that's not so bad." I'm thinking I might get some scorn for saying that.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

james wolcott is a fuck, fuck him

BLAKE BUTLER said...

lutz always reminds me of this sketch from the state where michael ian blakc is a talk show host with a guest involving monkey torture. 'barry lutz'

The Man Who Couldn't Blog said...

tunnel is a book by russell edson. i like to mention russell edson whenever possible.

i left a peach in the fridge. it was on the top shelf. it froze. my fridge is cold, bitch. cold.

The Man Who Couldn't Blog said...

i apologize for using "bitch" in that fashion. someday, i will get a troll, and that troll will call her or himself matthew_says_bitch_a_lot.

Darby said...

Have you read Edson's novel, the Song of Percival Peacock? I keep almost buying it, but the reviews keep saying it's crap, and so I don't.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

bitches

The Man Who Couldn't Blog said...

i haven't read the novel, but i'm just going to go out on a limb and say it is the finest novel ever, ever written.

wait. that's not out on a limb. that's me clinging to the trunk.

also, noise for obama.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

i would like to read that novel, i think i started to read it once, i forget why i didnt, is it hard to find?

no political promoz here ho

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I was just wondering.

BlogSloth said...

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I was just wondering.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

haha, i'm pretty sure it's shipped sean, if it hasnt i promise i will put it out tomorrow......

ryan said...

sales aren't rising

Keith Montesano said...

the asian no colony

The Man Who Couldn't Blog said...

i'm pretty sure that's a promo for lightning bolt...

Darby said...

Somehow I received a 2nd No Colony in the mail today. I don't think I paid for it. Maybe it belongs to Sean. Maybe Sean and me are the same person. Maybe Sean is my wife. P.S. I love you, Sean.

Seriously though, I have two No Colonys and I don't know why. One came from Butler and one came from Baumann.

Anonymous said...

i think you are right. a tribute. he probably wont read. oh well.

- bg

jereme said...

i have yet to receive my no colony. this kind of stuff only happens when i get 'excited' about something. i shouldn't get excited about things.

seeking perfection in an imperfect mind. there is no goal.

barry and levon says 'put yo ass in the pudding'

Anonymous said...

Lutz is God. People should spraypaint that on walls in Pennsylvania.
Edson is God too (there are more than one). I was at a new friend's place last night and he was putting together a new Matthew Rohrer chapbook (he does Octopus Books). I was looking at his bookshelf and he had a couple of really rare Edsons and some rare Tate stuff as well. I was drinking an orange cream smoothie from Ben & Jerry's. I was overwhelmed.
This new friend that I speak of is Zachary Schomburg and he is also God. Don't believe me--read The Man Suit.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

hi kevin, i'm going to buy some paint and make that on faces here in atlanta

mmm orange cream