"It's a question of several persons who were each several persons, in different places at the same moment."

Keith Montesano wrote a really generous and 'from the gut' review of SCORCH ATLAS in manuscript form, I look fwd to being able to write one in the same vein when Keith's incredible GHOST LIGHTS aka WTF CITY comes out, which I feel will be soon. If there are any publishers reading this who are looking for a killer poetry ms, he is the one to talk to.









For clarity's sake: I don't hate meaning. I hate forced meaning, statically intended meaning, 'themes' 'thematic orchestration' 'this is who my character is' 'forced arcs' 'forced illumination of character's love life history and upbringing, as if we are programmed by what we've done' 'I want to know how this character makes love' No thanks. As if anyone could palpably know something that nobody else knows or has never said enough to say it in a clear way, or by studied evocation. As if all themes haven't been handed to us on plates and again and again and again for years and year. There is a reason you don't watch books on TV.







I enjoy watching THE PICK UP ARTIST 2 & I miss I LOVE MONEY already, I really do.








I am reading, among other things, Robert Pinget's TRIO right now from Dalkey, a French surrealist from the 50's, hung with Robbe Grillet and shit, the intro to the book is all him talking about how writing should be a process of total discovery, and how he refuses to go into his work knowing anything beforehand.

It is a really sexy book, pure black slick cover with nails on it.



TRIO, which is three novellas, I recommend heavily, it's kind of like the post magical realist stuff a lot of people do now, where weird shit happens and its cycled into these crazy offshoots and weird images that begin to tie into one another but in bizarre ways, but mixed with the everyday, a kind of collision of layers, kids vomit jam, boys stuff cucumbers full of explosives and chuck them at people, a guy finds a stairwell on the beach to nothing, but in a metered mind, this paragraph:

"All night long he annotated the text. The next he'd got the formula off by heart. That evening, without even thinking, he recited it. The penknife with which he was about to cut a slice of bread plunged itself, of its own accord, between his two eyes."

All this is in like the first 25 pages, awesome. Way head of its time.

It has an intro by Updike, if that makes you feel better.








I am the #1 google hit for 'blood comes from vegina while fucked by black brutally'. Super neat.








In other news, I am now coediting with Lily Hoang an anthology of innovative writers under 30. Yeah, I know it sucks that you are 30 or more, I am gonna be 30 in a couple months. But I think it's time there was an anthology focusing on really young weird voices. So Lily and I are really excited about this thing. Here's the call (please no personal emails re: this):

Lily Hoang & Blake Butler are now in the early stages of putting together an anthology to feature innovative writers under the age of 30. The anthology has interest from a respected small press.

Please submit no more than 15 pages of prose/poetry/whatever goes to: thirtyunderthirty@gmail.com by January 15. Send as .doc or .rtf attachment. (For truly exceptional cases, we will consider longer submissions.) Previously unpublished work only please. Also, all submissions should be open to editorial review.

We’re looking for the innovative, fresh, exciting writing, and as long as you’re under 30 & doing new things with words, please submit.

We want to find some really crazy shit, form and language innovation is what we're after, so send the weird shit, the new.







Tomorrow or next day will post about publication search history for SA. Thanks to everyone for all the kind words and salutation. It means a lot.

i have a ceramic giraffe fellating an invisible dick on my tv stand no shit it would make a killer tattoo

god am i inside the internet
god are you inside the internet

HTMLGiant

also now No Colony's website got updated, it has info about the new issue, it has an excerpt from the issue in the form of Sean Kilpatrick's story HUBBY, which really by now I have read 8-22 times, Sean is doing new things with words

there are also two previously unpublished and really cool pieces by Corey Zeller and Patrick Leonard, I really like the pieces on the site, please continue to buy issues, we love your knee





Sean Kilpatrick and I are slowly rewriting NAKED LUNCH together, for serious, wait till you see it, Sean is my abuse brother, something is alive inside him, he is eating the toothpaste rotting in my colon







i got a review copy of Lily Hoang's forthcoming book from Fairy Tale Review Press, it is called CHANGING, i literally when i took it out of the envelope said, Fuckin wow, it is a beautiful beautiful book, the style of the interior is like a puzzle, wait till you see this thing, Lily is the shit, I will have a review and more words about the book later, but Joyelle McSweeney's blurb on the back says a lot: "This is an impossible thing, a dream object." it really is








my review of Norman Lock's ebook GRIM TALES is in the Oct issue of the Believer, I mentioned this on HTML Giant, it seems this issue is a semi-Lish themed issue, it has a Diane Williams interview by Kevin Sampsell that I am excited to read, it has pieces with Will Eno and David Ohle, some other

you can read my whole review online the Believer site

a corresponding interview I did with Mr. Lock will be on Hobart before year's end, Norman Lock talks about his work with a pointed intelligence he is a wise man, and wow.





Derek sent me a potential cover for EVER, I cried a little, Derek is too good for me to say anything else







according to a mention in this piece on Michael Kimball's amazing DEAR EVERYBODY, i am a powerhouse international literary agent who represents Nobel winners, that is good to learn, i am not seeking unsolicited submissions because I am sort of a cunt, also Michael Kimball is Das Kapital, what more could I need








the current background on my laptop is a house on fire from a Tarkovsky film, before that it was a photo of a Chihuahua standing on hamburgers, i miss my dog, i want to be my dog and/or this dog

Engorged Sinus of the Bird Hormone

I got a rejection today from New Ohio Review, for my story THE DISAPPEARED, which appears in their current issue. That's kind of new. The editorial culling process employed by these bigger magazines is really confusing, so it probably confuses them too. I know the editor from the first 3 issues who had accepted and published the story just got yanked for reasons I am unsure of. Still, I want to send them a copy of their own magazine back with my story in it and the rejection slip attached, and a rejection of their rejection.

Rejection letters now just make me smile, if anything, I have no feelings anymore, the work is what the work is, in fact I think I get more kicks out of rejections than I do acceptances somehow, is that weird?

Shane Jones had some extremely nice things to say about my forthcoming novella EVER... to be mentioned in the same breath as Unguentine, Motorman and the Singing Fish is beyond...

No Colony went off to printers today. I feel like we shat a baby, Ken and I. Looks like we'll be having a couple of launch parties in the next few weeks or month, one in NYC and maybe west coast and/or Atlanta. More on that soon.

Luna Park Review called NO COLONY "2008's most talked most about and most feared new lit mag."

Whatchu know about dat?



Atlanta/Brooklyn based magazine THE OPEN FACE SANDWICH just took one of the last unpublished stories in Scorch Atlas. Their first issue looks really nice and has work by Deb Olin Unferth, Ariana Reines, etc. People should buy issues and send to them, they read quickly and have a good style, aesthetic.

I am going to post a list of the small presses I found when subbing my longer books recently, ones that are open and accessible seeming. This is a note to self to remember to do this.



The 4th issue of Keyhole Magazine is now for presale and it looks amazing. Keyhole just keeps getting better and better, I can't wait to see this issue. It includes new work by Kevin Wilson, whose story from 2006 in Diagram fucking rules: THE DEAD SISTER HANDBOOK, as well as friends Jason Jordan, T.J. Forrester, more.

Adam Robinson continues to be one of the most entertaining people on the lit web, profiling/interviewing some bitchass kid named Zach

Thanks to everyone so far who has had kind words, posts, etc., about LILY HOANG's THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL, I hope people keep reading it, the story is designed that each page stands apart and they weave together, so reading in splashes is encouraged. It's hard to read long online, so the book will be there for you, gobbbless the interslice. Please more share!

I can't believe I missed these guys in Atlanta this year:



Atlanta.

Sigh.

NEW LAMINATION COLONY EBOOK: Lily Hoang's THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL

Now available for your consumptive g-spot banging, please observe the newest Lamination Colony ebook by LILY HOANG:



It's a sick little magickal book, please enjoy.

This book scrunched me into a ball the second I clicked open on the email it arrived in, it choked me into submission with its fairy screwtape and its post-Eraserhead screech.

Also note: Lily's first book PARABOLA was just released by Chiasmus Press (after winning their Un-Doing the Novel contest), so if you are interested you should consider a purchase. She also has a second novel CHANGING forthcoming from Fairy Tale Review Press and THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION from Les Figues Press.

Lily is on fire, for a reason.

If anyone is interested in interviewing Lily re: the creation of this ebook, as well as her other new forthcoming work, please email me and I will put you in contact.

Those who review THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL on their blogs or elsewhere and/or throw up links or magic rice or otherwise turn their voices into metal eaters who crowd the streets screeching our condition via Ms. Hoang, these people will surely find something underneath their pillow within 7-9 days, no shit. Share the demon.

WHERE AM I excerpt @ Pequin

There is a new excerpt from my 10 day novel, WHERE AM I WHERE HAVE I BEEN WHERE ARE YOU, now live at Pequin >>>> The Son's Book

It is very short and random, more a moment than a 'scene,' and fairly unlike most of the novel (ie: this one and this one) though all of the novel's many little sections are pretty different from one another, while still remaining somewhat narrative I think. Somewhat.




I am reading the Dalkey Archive rerelease version of Stanley Crawford's THE LOG OF THE S.S. THE MRS. UNGUENTINE and so far it is one of the most unexpected and refreshing things I have read in a long time. I mean it is goddamn amazing.


It has a new afterword by Ben Marcus.




I wonder if Ben Marcus has a new book somewhere forthcoming?

I wonder if I could get Ben Marcus to blurb EVER? I think I am also going to try to dig up David Markson.

I think too much.

Bookslut gave me a shoutout.

Lily Hoang's THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL will debut later today or tomorrow, depending on certain things.

Time to begin writing something new so I can shut up some.

'Live in a Hive of Sex Rooms and Flickering Blue Movie Cubicles'

JOHANNES GORANSSON has a new hybrid-form novel (almost) out called DEAR RA from Starcherone Books, who also recently released Zachary Mason's THE LOST BOOKS OF THE ODYSSEY (which I am reading now and loving quite a bit).

I read Johannes's last book, A NEW QUARANTINE WILL TAKE MY PLACE and was absolutely ripped by it, what Johannes is doing, a kind of multihanded-in-one-mind movement towards a new brutal surrealism in quick pleasure bursts. QUARANTINE was one of my favorite new books so far this year, and I am excited to read DEAR RA. A review will be forthcoming, but in the meantime, if you are interested in new surrealism, Johannes is vital, order yourself a copy of both, you will not regret it.



*******************

Thank you to everyone who has preordered and/or blogged re: NO COLONY issue 1. I am excited.

Jereme Dean bought 4 copies and is giving away 3 of them in THIS POST ON HIS BLOG. He is having a comment contest and will select 3 winners to get free issues. Jereme Dean is a king, I love this idea for promo, more people should do this, more people should try to be as killer and real as Jereme Dean. Go enter his contest and get a free issue and if you don't, maybe buy'n?

Seriously, thanks Jereme.

UPDATE: Matthew Simmons has pledged to reward 3 more entries to Jereme's post with free copies.

That's wha I'm talkin boutz.

*******************

Today I am focusing on sending out my newer novel to as many open appropriate places as I can find. There seems a bit of a dearth of open free submissions of book-length manuscripts, especially the kind I am sending right now: often bleak, brutal and surreal.

I finally got to unbox my books and it was weird to see them breathing on the shelves again. I spent a while last night looking at my books trying to find ones that seemed of a mind with what I'm doing that I could send to. Particularly the very surrealist and multiformed one I just finished, which I still can't decide between the two titles of, though I think for sending out I will use HOW MANY FLOORS DOES THE NIGHTMARE HAVE?

I realized also that the novel takes a lot from all the imbibing of William Burroughs's novels that I read so often 5-6 years ago. Reading over the passage I had underlined in THE SOFT MACHINE, I realized how much that language and imagery bank had cut into my brain. If there's any major precedent for NIGHTMARE? it is him: his jump cuts, his blabber layering, his brutalism and his sense of recording of moment.

Where would Burroughs publish those books now? If he were new? (He still could be.)

What press would have put out THE WILD BOYS? I don't know more than a couple possibilities, I really don't. That's scary.

Here is an embedded manifesto from THE SOFT MACHINE:

There is the work of getting it off the shelves and that is what I do. We are not interested in the individual models, but in the mold, the human die. This must be broken.

I also found another title I want to use from this line:

Grope movie and walked in on the wrong room warmly. Exempt light and lungs.

GROPE MOVIE: that may have to be the title now.

It's a weird state, this state.

TUPELO PRESS is now open to fiction and nonfiction, but they charge a $45 reading fee, and you're only allowed to send up to the first 100 pgs, and if they like they'll ask for more. $45? Really? What, are you using diamond encrusted page turners? I understand certain reading fees, but that just seems ridiculous?

Maybe I'll get desperate.

I don't feel desperate.

OH!: Lily Hoang's Lamination Colony ebook THE WOMAN DOWN THE HALL, will be out probably by the end of this week. Look out, it's a doozy.

Here's a preview image of the front page: