Sunday, August 30, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
I saw my head in the head of heads
Home from Europe, gassed to the nines. Did up Paris, Chartres, Annecy, Turin, Asti, Venice, Rome. Bonkers in my teeth. Tired. Tryin'.
Had a fucking ball though, straight up. My once again massive thanks to Ken Baumann for getting me on board and being a real brother. Rad 100. Also big thanks to Dennis Cooper, Alberto Brosio, and Luca DiTrapano (as well as GianCarlo for helping us find his cousin).
Luca took us on a late night tour of Rome to many secret spots during which we drank 4 bottles of wine, including Dom Perignon, coupled with shots and other crap that took me to blackout mode. I barfed in the tour car, like a gimp. And I guess also got out of the car and laid down on the concrete in front of the Coliseum at some point, preserved here in image for the one blanked in my brain:
At some point as well we rapped ODB and 3-6 in the Vatican City, video forthcoming.
I have seen more of Jesus than you could ever lick.
I am going to write a novel about the closet that was in my hotel room in Venice. In that city you can watch chubby bitches rub their butts together on public TV. I had a dream about the perfect person, who was a lesbian, and had a small rind of fur.
I will holler more later maybe.
On the plane home began reading Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless, his diaries from the making of Fitzcarraldo, which is seriously fucking phenomenal. Seriously fucking phenomenal.
Here is all of what I read in Europe.
Just excitedly ordered Sean Lovelace's How Some People Like Their Eggs. So should you. Sean is smart.
Yesterday was my day on Everyday Genius, Michael Kimball edition, it is from a thing I was writing about weird kids I knew in elementary and middle school.
Didi Menendez is selling a tie with my face on it. :)
Shit's goin down. I'm tellin ya.
PS: Scorch Atlas drops in about a week. Amazon shows it as shipping now, I have heard people are receiving it from there. But you should of course more importantly pick it up direct from Featherproof. More on that, the remix contest (sorry for delay), and more soon.
PSS: Cool and new-styled review of SA by Nik Korpon at Outsider Writers. Thanks Nik!
PSSS: EVER gets a nice write up by AD Jameson in the new issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction
Had a fucking ball though, straight up. My once again massive thanks to Ken Baumann for getting me on board and being a real brother. Rad 100. Also big thanks to Dennis Cooper, Alberto Brosio, and Luca DiTrapano (as well as GianCarlo for helping us find his cousin).
Luca took us on a late night tour of Rome to many secret spots during which we drank 4 bottles of wine, including Dom Perignon, coupled with shots and other crap that took me to blackout mode. I barfed in the tour car, like a gimp. And I guess also got out of the car and laid down on the concrete in front of the Coliseum at some point, preserved here in image for the one blanked in my brain:
At some point as well we rapped ODB and 3-6 in the Vatican City, video forthcoming.
I have seen more of Jesus than you could ever lick.
I am going to write a novel about the closet that was in my hotel room in Venice. In that city you can watch chubby bitches rub their butts together on public TV. I had a dream about the perfect person, who was a lesbian, and had a small rind of fur.
I will holler more later maybe.
On the plane home began reading Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless, his diaries from the making of Fitzcarraldo, which is seriously fucking phenomenal. Seriously fucking phenomenal.
Here is all of what I read in Europe.
Just excitedly ordered Sean Lovelace's How Some People Like Their Eggs. So should you. Sean is smart.
Yesterday was my day on Everyday Genius, Michael Kimball edition, it is from a thing I was writing about weird kids I knew in elementary and middle school.
Didi Menendez is selling a tie with my face on it. :)
Shit's goin down. I'm tellin ya.
PS: Scorch Atlas drops in about a week. Amazon shows it as shipping now, I have heard people are receiving it from there. But you should of course more importantly pick it up direct from Featherproof. More on that, the remix contest (sorry for delay), and more soon.
PSS: Cool and new-styled review of SA by Nik Korpon at Outsider Writers. Thanks Nik!
PSSS: EVER gets a nice write up by AD Jameson in the new issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Bitch gitcha mind right / Lemme talk to em
In Rome sitting buttass on my bed next to my in-house fishtank with the complimentary rubber ducky on the bed. Legs are sore from days walking. Think Ken is already asleep in his room across the hall. We have done a lot a lot. It has been too good. My twitter feed follows some of what happened. Too tired to replicate it here. Tomorrow we storm Rome some more, get blessed, eat $$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Email is backed up beyond my eyes, trying to catch up. Laying low in this baller hotel for a while and zoning.
The toilets here flush with huge buttons on the wall that you can regulate how long it flushes. That makes sense.
Americans might really be swine, they do kind of stick out and seem hokey here, Italians are nicer than Parisians. I repped today with my Mickey Mouse shirt that says Florida on it and the girl at the gelato stand put a bauble on my huge ice cream tower with Mickey on it too. Super.
Venice is a heckuva a place, you have to be careful tho, on the 2nd night there we got really drunk and missed the late ferry back at the usual spot and were too blasted to figure out where the one that did late night rides was. We seriously walked halfway across Venice stumbling sweating trying to find it. The streets there clear out at like midnight. Blank as a blank. Nowhere nobody. So strange, corridors. We finally laid down on benches and slept in a small park sparely laid with trees. Woke up an hour or so later and got on a boat that still didn't go where we wanted, finally Ken just bought a 3rd hotel room and we crashed from 4 am to 10am
Yoik
I have eaten some shit I would never have eaten, raw veal, squid ink, weird crawly things, fucked cheese of spores, things i couldn't say what they were, Ken does it big
Ken rules, i owe him a lot for making this trip happen, like beyond
man
boom
I am tired of typing now
Email is backed up beyond my eyes, trying to catch up. Laying low in this baller hotel for a while and zoning.
The toilets here flush with huge buttons on the wall that you can regulate how long it flushes. That makes sense.
Americans might really be swine, they do kind of stick out and seem hokey here, Italians are nicer than Parisians. I repped today with my Mickey Mouse shirt that says Florida on it and the girl at the gelato stand put a bauble on my huge ice cream tower with Mickey on it too. Super.
Venice is a heckuva a place, you have to be careful tho, on the 2nd night there we got really drunk and missed the late ferry back at the usual spot and were too blasted to figure out where the one that did late night rides was. We seriously walked halfway across Venice stumbling sweating trying to find it. The streets there clear out at like midnight. Blank as a blank. Nowhere nobody. So strange, corridors. We finally laid down on benches and slept in a small park sparely laid with trees. Woke up an hour or so later and got on a boat that still didn't go where we wanted, finally Ken just bought a 3rd hotel room and we crashed from 4 am to 10am
Yoik
I have eaten some shit I would never have eaten, raw veal, squid ink, weird crawly things, fucked cheese of spores, things i couldn't say what they were, Ken does it big
Ken rules, i owe him a lot for making this trip happen, like beyond
man
boom
I am tired of typing now
Monday, August 17, 2009
This keyboard eats catt
Trying hard to typeon this tiny keyboard, I have real faat fingers
Parisis is fucking expensive, man. You get one shot with a waiter then it's blppppppppp
Spent mostof todayy walking around with Dennis Cooper and Ken, we met at the glass pyramid then went drank a lot of coffee, ate, mre coffee. DC is the kindest person. So wonderful to be around. He showed usthe Beat hotel wherethose dudes wrote, and the streetwhere Perec and Artaud both lived. Much wondrous conversation andrelaxing. A wonderful afternoon.
Later We went to a contemporary museum with lots of crazies in it, some Louise Bourgeois meat sculptures andlots of weirding/ I liked the video of the room with the neon bulbs falling out 1by1 until the room was dark.
We thought about tryng to fnd where Deleuze threw himself out the windowbut nahh.
Ken crashed early, our sleep is megafcukked. I walked in the streets after dark for a good while drank a mojito, felt good came here, now gonna flp thru this new Werner Herzog Conquest of the Useless I got, I think tomorrow we may go to Nice, nice.
I ant type on this little board ne more, oh. Oont.
Parisis is fucking expensive, man. You get one shot with a waiter then it's blppppppppp
Spent mostof todayy walking around with Dennis Cooper and Ken, we met at the glass pyramid then went drank a lot of coffee, ate, mre coffee. DC is the kindest person. So wonderful to be around. He showed usthe Beat hotel wherethose dudes wrote, and the streetwhere Perec and Artaud both lived. Much wondrous conversation andrelaxing. A wonderful afternoon.
Later We went to a contemporary museum with lots of crazies in it, some Louise Bourgeois meat sculptures andlots of weirding/ I liked the video of the room with the neon bulbs falling out 1by1 until the room was dark.
We thought about tryng to fnd where Deleuze threw himself out the windowbut nahh.
Ken crashed early, our sleep is megafcukked. I walked in the streets after dark for a good while drank a mojito, felt good came here, now gonna flp thru this new Werner Herzog Conquest of the Useless I got, I think tomorrow we may go to Nice, nice.
I ant type on this little board ne more, oh. Oont.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Scrawl ass w: 100 wicked
Leaving on Saturday for random sporadic trip to France & Italy for about 8 days to see some shit with master Ken. Going to buy a tree and scrape it with my face.
In case of trouble, REF: Warszawa by David Bowie and Brian Eno from the album Low.
Think I am going to take The Great Fire of London by Roubaud, maybe another very fat book too. Fat books are the only books.
Soon after that, will be on tour in support of Scorch Atlas with Robert Lopez for Kamby Bolongo Mean River also out that month and Sam Ligon for Drift & Swerve already out. Here are what the dates look like for now:
12 - Brooklyn, NYC - Barbes
14 - Portmouth, NH - River Run Bookstore
15 - Northampton, MA - TBA
16 - Boston, MA - Brookline Booksmith
17 - Providence, RI - Myopic Books
18 - Clinton, NJ - Clinton Bookshop
19 - Baltimore, MD - 510 Series
20 - Philly, PA - TBA
Mark it?
Here is a brief review/presentation of Scorch, focusing mainly on design, and including lots of pictures.
Excellent post today on DC's regarding Gaspar Noe and his father Luis Felipe Noe. How much longer will I have to wait to see Enter the Void??? Excited to hang out with Dennis in Paris.
Today will reach 40k word mark on a new novel about a black field that spreads, a twin brother who speaks tongues, a horse with very long hair, a series of 10,000 fences, a flat pyramid, and quite a bit of blood.
Watch After Hours if you haven't seen it. Scorsese's Lynch. Loved.
Life is poodles.
In case of trouble, REF: Warszawa by David Bowie and Brian Eno from the album Low.
Think I am going to take The Great Fire of London by Roubaud, maybe another very fat book too. Fat books are the only books.
Soon after that, will be on tour in support of Scorch Atlas with Robert Lopez for Kamby Bolongo Mean River also out that month and Sam Ligon for Drift & Swerve already out. Here are what the dates look like for now:
12 - Brooklyn, NYC - Barbes
14 - Portmouth, NH - River Run Bookstore
15 - Northampton, MA - TBA
16 - Boston, MA - Brookline Booksmith
17 - Providence, RI - Myopic Books
18 - Clinton, NJ - Clinton Bookshop
19 - Baltimore, MD - 510 Series
20 - Philly, PA - TBA
Mark it?
Here is a brief review/presentation of Scorch, focusing mainly on design, and including lots of pictures.
Excellent post today on DC's regarding Gaspar Noe and his father Luis Felipe Noe. How much longer will I have to wait to see Enter the Void??? Excited to hang out with Dennis in Paris.
Today will reach 40k word mark on a new novel about a black field that spreads, a twin brother who speaks tongues, a horse with very long hair, a series of 10,000 fences, a flat pyramid, and quite a bit of blood.
Watch After Hours if you haven't seen it. Scorsese's Lynch. Loved.
Life is poodles.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Story by Story: Brian Evenson's 'Fugue State' (15) 'Life Without Father'
Fifteenth in the order of stories in Brian Evenson’s Fugue State (out now from Coffee House Press) is ‘Life Without Father,’ which originally appeared in Lit.
In so many of the stories in Fugue State, the power has laid not in the saying of the thing itself, but in the circling of that saying. Elucidating the black center by describing it in relief, as it is a center that can not be described, thus its horror.
In ‘Life Without Father,’ however, it is no longer as much the circling of the unsaid, as the face of the unsaid thing itself. In handling a situation wherein there is a very clear emotional response to be intoned in any reader (specifically, a daughter dealing with her father’s peculiar death), Evenson evokes a further response by, rather than stoking the gross layer, inverting it, entering the unsaid.
This kind of tension has been used to great ends in horror films rather extensively⎯the thing the audience can see but the persons on the screen can not⎯but here it is allowed a rather different kind of intoning, as the unsaid comes from a blank spot in Evenson’s protagonist, as the daughter can not quite explain the condition of her father’s death⎯nor can the reader. There is an emotional distance, then, which in its revolving around the hazy and terrifying approach to death (as laid bare and gruesome in the first graphs of the story), becomes more volatile by having no volatility at all.
What is odd about the function of this kind of ununderstanding in ‘Life Without Father,’ is that in its function in the characters’ lives, it opens in them a unspeakable clarity, a “new period of… existence, a step closer to… death” (144). Thus, in the sort of circling and continuous unreckoning of the blank spaces of the previous stories, there is a smaller, calmer kind of awakening, which in its manifestation becomes inexplicable, and thus ends the story here itself.
The result is again rather Bernhard-ian, making the repeated phrase “Correction,” here in the story used as a demarcation of the shifting of the mind between new modes, an embedded homage, both directly in the naming, and in the taut and seemingly harmless manner of circling a great horror than Evenson so aptly wields to shape the blank.
Further Bernhardian method is used here to great ends, in the face of the unreckoning, by resorting to description of minute, seemingly mundane details to distract the reader from what is looming on its face. As in: here, in seeing her father’s strange, inactive manner of moving into death, and into clarity, the daughter focuses on making hashmarks in her school book for each time she alters his body, paying close attention to the count, a number that she will then revisit as the nature of that death is called into question, opening her own door into herself.
In the course of the stories here in Fugue State we are entering the tunnel out of the book, as it were, a point which, in folding against the first half of the book seems to mirror the beautiful, quiet but unnerving moment of ‘Girls In Tents’ that we wormed through on our way in. In a way, it is even more unnerving realizing that this story, which in most any other book would seem violent and revolting, here seems a moment of breathing in⎯which in realizing that realizing makes me think again of all I am breathing in among this reading, and in this very room where I am sitting with the book unable to see behind my chair.
It is in such ways that Evenson’s books are not books at all, or even books within books⎯they are weapons, they are tools and tunnels.
In so many of the stories in Fugue State, the power has laid not in the saying of the thing itself, but in the circling of that saying. Elucidating the black center by describing it in relief, as it is a center that can not be described, thus its horror.
In ‘Life Without Father,’ however, it is no longer as much the circling of the unsaid, as the face of the unsaid thing itself. In handling a situation wherein there is a very clear emotional response to be intoned in any reader (specifically, a daughter dealing with her father’s peculiar death), Evenson evokes a further response by, rather than stoking the gross layer, inverting it, entering the unsaid.
This kind of tension has been used to great ends in horror films rather extensively⎯the thing the audience can see but the persons on the screen can not⎯but here it is allowed a rather different kind of intoning, as the unsaid comes from a blank spot in Evenson’s protagonist, as the daughter can not quite explain the condition of her father’s death⎯nor can the reader. There is an emotional distance, then, which in its revolving around the hazy and terrifying approach to death (as laid bare and gruesome in the first graphs of the story), becomes more volatile by having no volatility at all.
What is odd about the function of this kind of ununderstanding in ‘Life Without Father,’ is that in its function in the characters’ lives, it opens in them a unspeakable clarity, a “new period of… existence, a step closer to… death” (144). Thus, in the sort of circling and continuous unreckoning of the blank spaces of the previous stories, there is a smaller, calmer kind of awakening, which in its manifestation becomes inexplicable, and thus ends the story here itself.
The result is again rather Bernhard-ian, making the repeated phrase “Correction,” here in the story used as a demarcation of the shifting of the mind between new modes, an embedded homage, both directly in the naming, and in the taut and seemingly harmless manner of circling a great horror than Evenson so aptly wields to shape the blank.
Further Bernhardian method is used here to great ends, in the face of the unreckoning, by resorting to description of minute, seemingly mundane details to distract the reader from what is looming on its face. As in: here, in seeing her father’s strange, inactive manner of moving into death, and into clarity, the daughter focuses on making hashmarks in her school book for each time she alters his body, paying close attention to the count, a number that she will then revisit as the nature of that death is called into question, opening her own door into herself.
In the course of the stories here in Fugue State we are entering the tunnel out of the book, as it were, a point which, in folding against the first half of the book seems to mirror the beautiful, quiet but unnerving moment of ‘Girls In Tents’ that we wormed through on our way in. In a way, it is even more unnerving realizing that this story, which in most any other book would seem violent and revolting, here seems a moment of breathing in⎯which in realizing that realizing makes me think again of all I am breathing in among this reading, and in this very room where I am sitting with the book unable to see behind my chair.
It is in such ways that Evenson’s books are not books at all, or even books within books⎯they are weapons, they are tools and tunnels.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Skipping version of 'Listening Wind'
New Yinzer new issue guest edited by Claire Donato, includes excellent words by Brian Foley, Justin Taylor, Evelyn Hampton, and about 12 others, an excellent and tight issue. I have a paragraph, 'Accident,' in a way a manipulation of Thomas Bernhard's The Voice Imitator. Thanks to Claire & Jeff.
Also just out is the new issue of Puerto Del Sol, the first under the fiction editorial flagship of the excellent Evan Lavender-Smith, includes new by Eric Chevillard (trans. by Brian Evenson), Peter Markus, Dan Beachy-Quick, Joanna Scott, Jenny Boully, B.J. Hollars, and a ton more, really excited about the future of this magazine.
My thing is a new story 'Choir(s)' that is the first story-length thing I think I've published since those appearing in Scorch Atlas, and is maybe rather different. Thanks to Evan & Mike Meginnis.
Reading Alain Robbe-Grillet's Recollections of the Golden Triangle, fuck. Wish I'd read this 5 years ago, would have saved me some time.
I have a new writing room, it feels weird, shifted from where I've been writing for at least 5 years now, this new room has red curtains low light purple walls and looks straight onto a quiet road. Hm. I guess I'll see. Still trying to get my brain back after almost a whole month of zoning. In there somewhere, not really.
Also just out is the new issue of Puerto Del Sol, the first under the fiction editorial flagship of the excellent Evan Lavender-Smith, includes new by Eric Chevillard (trans. by Brian Evenson), Peter Markus, Dan Beachy-Quick, Joanna Scott, Jenny Boully, B.J. Hollars, and a ton more, really excited about the future of this magazine.
My thing is a new story 'Choir(s)' that is the first story-length thing I think I've published since those appearing in Scorch Atlas, and is maybe rather different. Thanks to Evan & Mike Meginnis.
Reading Alain Robbe-Grillet's Recollections of the Golden Triangle, fuck. Wish I'd read this 5 years ago, would have saved me some time.
I have a new writing room, it feels weird, shifted from where I've been writing for at least 5 years now, this new room has red curtains low light purple walls and looks straight onto a quiet road. Hm. I guess I'll see. Still trying to get my brain back after almost a whole month of zoning. In there somewhere, not really.
Monday, August 3, 2009
'black metal'
Web extras for HOBART 10 is alive, including a set of collages the wonderful Guy Brookshire made for my story 'Smoke House,' which have changed the way I see the story in a pleasing way. Also supplemental issue material by Mike Young, B.J. Hollars, Alicia Gifford, JoeAnn Hart, some fun and good things.
Last night I read Dennis Cooper's The Sluts straight through after buying it at a local gay bookstore in heavy rain, for some reason it was the only DC I hadn't read, it ended up being perhaps the most visceral prose experience I've had in a long while, it is about a urban myth-style series of internet sex forum postings that involved Sade body destruction and extreme sex and Clue-like cryptic hysteria, I seriously felt like someone was pressing on my chest at several points, and I could not stop reading. One scene very briefly involving blowtorches on a face I believe I will never forget. If more books felt like this more people would read.
Following from that I had a dream that I believe in dream time lasted 7-12 days, I was locked in a very large building where many rooms had no floors, there were weapons and strange food and people were taking drugs and making gangs and performing odd music, there was some kind of transfusion going on between our bodies, nudity and sometimes calmness or I would not be able to find anyone for hours, in one room I found I was hanging onto the outside of a very large truck, I tried to die by throwing my body off the truck, when I died I ended up back in the house. Even as black and fucked as the house was I did not want to wake up from it, I reentered sleep 2-3 times, the last time I woke up I found I could not get back in.
All of this came into me after a long weekend in which I honestly felt like I could not proceed thinking or speaking in language. I have had this feeling several times since I began writing seriously, each time getting not more intense, but less intense, meaning that I cared even less that I was beginning to not care.
I hope this renewal fuels a longer blank in that blank but I am not sure.
The fact that suddenly now after years of not being able to stand Thom Yorke's The Eraser I have found myself unable to listen to most anything else might mean I am truly losing cells.
Or otherwise:
A Box for Black Paul 9:44 Nick Cave From Her to Eternity Rock 1 8/1/09 12:47 PM
Cabin Fever 6:13 Nick Cave From Her to Eternity Rock 1 8/1/09 12:38 PM
Well of Misery 5:26 Nick Cave From Her to Eternity Rock 1 8/1/09 12:31 PM
From Here to Eternity 5:35 Nick Cave From Her to Eternity Rock 1 8/1/09 12:25 PM
Things Will Never Be The Same 9:56 Black Dice Beaches And Canyons Alternative & Punk 4 8/1/09 12:16 PM
The Door Opens the Other Way 7:12 Belong October Language Indie 6 8/1/09 11:50 AM
Late Night 3:32 Belong Colorloss Record Electronic 51 8/1/09 11:36 AM
Protection 4:30 Liars Liars 4 8/1/09 11:29 AM
Pure Unevil 3:54 Liars Liars 18 8/1/09 11:28 AM
Second Hour 3:33 Flying Saucer Attack Chorus Alternative & Punk 1 8/1/09 11:24 AM
Respect 3:20 Flying Saucer Attack New Lands Alternative & Punk 2 8/1/09 11:20 AM
ELUVIUM / INDOOR SWIMMING AT THE SPACE STATION 10:29 ELUVIUM COPIA Unknown 34 8/1/09 9:53 AM
Zerthis Was A Shivering Human Image 15:37 Eluvium Indecipherable Text Electronic 13 8/1/09 9:53 AM
Last night I read Dennis Cooper's The Sluts straight through after buying it at a local gay bookstore in heavy rain, for some reason it was the only DC I hadn't read, it ended up being perhaps the most visceral prose experience I've had in a long while, it is about a urban myth-style series of internet sex forum postings that involved Sade body destruction and extreme sex and Clue-like cryptic hysteria, I seriously felt like someone was pressing on my chest at several points, and I could not stop reading. One scene very briefly involving blowtorches on a face I believe I will never forget. If more books felt like this more people would read.
Following from that I had a dream that I believe in dream time lasted 7-12 days, I was locked in a very large building where many rooms had no floors, there were weapons and strange food and people were taking drugs and making gangs and performing odd music, there was some kind of transfusion going on between our bodies, nudity and sometimes calmness or I would not be able to find anyone for hours, in one room I found I was hanging onto the outside of a very large truck, I tried to die by throwing my body off the truck, when I died I ended up back in the house. Even as black and fucked as the house was I did not want to wake up from it, I reentered sleep 2-3 times, the last time I woke up I found I could not get back in.
All of this came into me after a long weekend in which I honestly felt like I could not proceed thinking or speaking in language. I have had this feeling several times since I began writing seriously, each time getting not more intense, but less intense, meaning that I cared even less that I was beginning to not care.
I hope this renewal fuels a longer blank in that blank but I am not sure.
The fact that suddenly now after years of not being able to stand Thom Yorke's The Eraser I have found myself unable to listen to most anything else might mean I am truly losing cells.
Or otherwise:
A Box for Black Paul 9:44 Nick Cave From Her to Eternity Rock 1 8/1/09 12:47 PM
Cabin Fever 6:13 Nick Cave From Her to Eternity Rock 1 8/1/09 12:38 PM
Well of Misery 5:26 Nick Cave From Her to Eternity Rock 1 8/1/09 12:31 PM
From Here to Eternity 5:35 Nick Cave From Her to Eternity Rock 1 8/1/09 12:25 PM
Things Will Never Be The Same 9:56 Black Dice Beaches And Canyons Alternative & Punk 4 8/1/09 12:16 PM
The Door Opens the Other Way 7:12 Belong October Language Indie 6 8/1/09 11:50 AM
Late Night 3:32 Belong Colorloss Record Electronic 51 8/1/09 11:36 AM
Protection 4:30 Liars Liars 4 8/1/09 11:29 AM
Pure Unevil 3:54 Liars Liars 18 8/1/09 11:28 AM
Second Hour 3:33 Flying Saucer Attack Chorus Alternative & Punk 1 8/1/09 11:24 AM
Respect 3:20 Flying Saucer Attack New Lands Alternative & Punk 2 8/1/09 11:20 AM
ELUVIUM / INDOOR SWIMMING AT THE SPACE STATION 10:29 ELUVIUM COPIA Unknown 34 8/1/09 9:53 AM
Zerthis Was A Shivering Human Image 15:37 Eluvium Indecipherable Text Electronic 13 8/1/09 9:53 AM
Thursday, July 30, 2009
'Water' | Scorch Atlas
'Water' | from Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler from blake butler on Vimeo.
Video trailer w/ text from Scorch Atlas
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Large french fries and sneakers
yeah cool life is cool
people are eating every day now and getting fatter
i feel really fat
i have on a shirt i bought from the thrift store 14 years ago
its probably essentially a shirt of bacteria and nits
you're supposed to put your money where your mouth is, i'll wear the shirt
i still need to get in a fight
i'm probably not a good sport or even good at chess anymore
i used to could have ripped
earlier today i felt sure i'd seen a police officer shot in the face by the side of the road with his face all eat up already
every noun should be a verb
i think a lot about a lot of people
i think a little about a lot of people
what's not a waste of time
maybe jelly or getting wet
people thinking about people thinking about money is funny
sheesh
don't ask about my dad, it's just not good
people are eating every day now and getting fatter
i feel really fat
i have on a shirt i bought from the thrift store 14 years ago
its probably essentially a shirt of bacteria and nits
you're supposed to put your money where your mouth is, i'll wear the shirt
i still need to get in a fight
i'm probably not a good sport or even good at chess anymore
i used to could have ripped
earlier today i felt sure i'd seen a police officer shot in the face by the side of the road with his face all eat up already
every noun should be a verb
i think a lot about a lot of people
i think a little about a lot of people
what's not a waste of time
maybe jelly or getting wet
people thinking about people thinking about money is funny
sheesh
don't ask about my dad, it's just not good
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Eating Scorch Atlas, page 2
Blake Butler eats Page 2 of Scorch Atlas from blake butler on Vimeo.
Mike Meginnis dissects EVER, including two video posts of the reading I did for the NYC launch with Gary Lutz and Robert Lopez. Feels weird to watch one's self read.
An excerpt: "There is nothing floating about these sentences. Again: They are fundamental. Your fundament is your asshole, where shit comes from. There is shit in this book, and come, and blood, and mold, menstruation, mucus, fat curtains. I resist intimations of transcendence. Some might call these sentences musical. But not everything pleasure is music (though most of it is) and we should demand recognition of this. There is pleasure in the sentence, in these sentences."
Just got my order from the ridiculously awesome Dalkey Archive sale, 10 of any of their titles for $65 shipping included, going to go stare at some now.
Monday, July 27, 2009
YEAR OF THE LIQUIDATOR presents Kristina Born
So, at the end of 08 Shane Jones and I discussed starting a press, releasing some small beautiful books from new people, and having fun.
And now, about half a year later, we're really excited to announce the first title from YEAR OF THE LIQUIDATOR:
ONE HOUR OF TELEVISION by Kristina Born.
In the words of Shane: "It feels really good to type that." It does it does.
It feels even better to read ONE HOUR OF TELEVISION even though afterwards Shane couldn't sleep and was scared to watch American Idol, and I felt like paper was trying to eat me in my sleep.
You may have read work from Kristina Born in fav places like UNSAID, NO COLONY, and GUSTAF.
Her first book is our first book is your first book and you can order now for its release in October. It is $10 postage paid to the US and a couple bucks extra elsewhere.
We're excited about this. We plan on publishing 2 titles a year. No other info given at this time. Some info on ONE HOUR OF TELEVISION, including a brief excerpt, is up at the site.
YEAR OF THE LIQUIDATOR
And now, about half a year later, we're really excited to announce the first title from YEAR OF THE LIQUIDATOR:
ONE HOUR OF TELEVISION by Kristina Born.
In the words of Shane: "It feels really good to type that." It does it does.
It feels even better to read ONE HOUR OF TELEVISION even though afterwards Shane couldn't sleep and was scared to watch American Idol, and I felt like paper was trying to eat me in my sleep.
You may have read work from Kristina Born in fav places like UNSAID, NO COLONY, and GUSTAF.
Her first book is our first book is your first book and you can order now for its release in October. It is $10 postage paid to the US and a couple bucks extra elsewhere.
We're excited about this. We plan on publishing 2 titles a year. No other info given at this time. Some info on ONE HOUR OF TELEVISION, including a brief excerpt, is up at the site.
YEAR OF THE LIQUIDATOR
1st Scorch Atlas Review
The first review of Scorch Atlas is in, and could not be more kind. Comparisons to DFW and Lynch? Yes please.
An excerpt: "The pervading oddities and grotesqueries bring to mind the fiction of Brian Evenson or the filmic work of Harmony Korine or David Lynch. Still, nothing is done solely for the squeamish factor, rather, things are what they are in this twisted world and throughout, the people that inhabit Butler's stories still grope for their humanity. They fight for their homes. Their schools. Their blood lines."
&
"In the same way that Infinite Jest, written thirteen years ago, presupposed communication being fragmented via technology, in particular, the internet, Scorch Atlas presupposes a bleak, dystopian future (although let's hope it's farther off than thirteen years from now) where people bloat and grime, the world is a cracked shell of its former self and families do what they must to eke out an existence."
Read in full: 'Scorch Atlas Does Not Bode Well for Us' @ Keyhole
Big big thanks to Gene Kwak.
An excerpt: "The pervading oddities and grotesqueries bring to mind the fiction of Brian Evenson or the filmic work of Harmony Korine or David Lynch. Still, nothing is done solely for the squeamish factor, rather, things are what they are in this twisted world and throughout, the people that inhabit Butler's stories still grope for their humanity. They fight for their homes. Their schools. Their blood lines."
&
"In the same way that Infinite Jest, written thirteen years ago, presupposed communication being fragmented via technology, in particular, the internet, Scorch Atlas presupposes a bleak, dystopian future (although let's hope it's farther off than thirteen years from now) where people bloat and grime, the world is a cracked shell of its former self and families do what they must to eke out an existence."
Read in full: 'Scorch Atlas Does Not Bode Well for Us' @ Keyhole
Big big thanks to Gene Kwak.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Larix U' Thule
Sitting on the bed sometime ready to die,
not really
Hurrying to the gymroom to run 3.45 miles, black kid already with afro sitting on concrete porch playing by himself | under the window where last week I saw a naked girl getting flash photographed & how she smiled & touched the glass I did not even slow down | the afro child talking to himself or to the object he is holding that I can not recognize from anything
He says something to me in my passing and the only words I hear inside them are 'Michael Jackson'
& in hearing that much & how his eyes are I go, Oh yah, with the short A sound the way I have suddenly affected in recent weeks, only realizing post-answering that he has asked if the figure pictured on my shirt is Michael Jackson & no it is a woman with white skin and red lips almost showing her tits
(long story, how I got this shirt) (not really long at all)
& he watches me approach him briefly with the shirt on & then think better of it & I go on & he is not there when I come back sopping & the lights in the apartment there are off
The pool today was very busy, people were large or small, I stood behind the bars
Last night the man in the bar with forearms big as three of mine with the skin head and the tattoo of flames where there should have been hair, who under whatever could not stand up & instead toddled through the bar leaning on whoever was right there
grabbing Chris's ass & Alex's ass & air humping at a forced huddle group hug, taking whoever would let him by the hand & somewhat barking & to Chris, "It feels good" "What feels good" "(incoherent)"
Alex (my paraphrasing): "There are some kinds of people who you can see who have just been through the thing, & there's nothing you can do to stop them."
On his chest Alex with the tattoo of Jeff who we realized has been gone now 8 years
The fruit juice that was in the refrigerator last I looked is not there either | & there are all these books inside my house
I don't know I guess I feel pretty good
If I ever had the chance to buy a machine gun cheaply I would lay it on the floor of here in the most difficult place to walk around
& leave the bullets in the oven
Open the book perpetually beside my bed, pick a sudden sentence, try to imagine it as an advice:
"Every proposition must already have a sense; assertion cannot give it a sense, for what it asserts is the sense itself. And the same hold of denial, etc.
"One could say, the denial is already related to the logical place determined by the proposition that is denied."
& the second book beside my this year sandwiched underneath the other, another sentence sent in:
"He is cured by faith who is sick of fate."
not really
Hurrying to the gymroom to run 3.45 miles, black kid already with afro sitting on concrete porch playing by himself | under the window where last week I saw a naked girl getting flash photographed & how she smiled & touched the glass I did not even slow down | the afro child talking to himself or to the object he is holding that I can not recognize from anything
He says something to me in my passing and the only words I hear inside them are 'Michael Jackson'
& in hearing that much & how his eyes are I go, Oh yah, with the short A sound the way I have suddenly affected in recent weeks, only realizing post-answering that he has asked if the figure pictured on my shirt is Michael Jackson & no it is a woman with white skin and red lips almost showing her tits
(long story, how I got this shirt) (not really long at all)
& he watches me approach him briefly with the shirt on & then think better of it & I go on & he is not there when I come back sopping & the lights in the apartment there are off
The pool today was very busy, people were large or small, I stood behind the bars
Last night the man in the bar with forearms big as three of mine with the skin head and the tattoo of flames where there should have been hair, who under whatever could not stand up & instead toddled through the bar leaning on whoever was right there
grabbing Chris's ass & Alex's ass & air humping at a forced huddle group hug, taking whoever would let him by the hand & somewhat barking & to Chris, "It feels good" "What feels good" "(incoherent)"
Alex (my paraphrasing): "There are some kinds of people who you can see who have just been through the thing, & there's nothing you can do to stop them."
On his chest Alex with the tattoo of Jeff who we realized has been gone now 8 years
The fruit juice that was in the refrigerator last I looked is not there either | & there are all these books inside my house
I don't know I guess I feel pretty good
If I ever had the chance to buy a machine gun cheaply I would lay it on the floor of here in the most difficult place to walk around
& leave the bullets in the oven
Open the book perpetually beside my bed, pick a sudden sentence, try to imagine it as an advice:
"Every proposition must already have a sense; assertion cannot give it a sense, for what it asserts is the sense itself. And the same hold of denial, etc.
"One could say, the denial is already related to the logical place determined by the proposition that is denied."
& the second book beside my this year sandwiched underneath the other, another sentence sent in:
"He is cured by faith who is sick of fate."
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