DRAGON THRENODY

Sam Kinison on experience vs academics:

PANTOMIME EULOGY

GNU Word Riot is up. Some sentences I liked from this issue:

Chester swims, stupid.

Masculine. Oppressive.

Never let them close his eyes—

I cannot seem to write anything but porn, and the soft...

rarely do we look up.

SOME WISE WORDS FROM OUR FAVORITE DOUCHEBAG

No, not THE SITUATION, a different douchebag...

"One of the facts that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity."

t.s. eliot from tradition and the individual talent

INTERVIEW W / LAUREN BECKER

Lauren Becker lives in Oakland, California, where she runs a quarterly reading series called “East Bay on the Brain.” She is a freelance writer and editor, health policy consultant, non-practicing attorney and former director of healthcare government relations for a number of non-profit organizations. Lauren’s fiction has been published in Pedestal Magazine, Annalemma, Opium Magazine, Pindeldyboz, Storyglossia and elsewhere. She also writes for The Nervous Breakdown and keeps a blog here.

BG: So many quality indie presses, reading series, and literary journals. What is corium bringing to the table? What words of wisdom can it offer to the literary conversation?

LB: I don’t really know how to answer. I guess I started Corium to feature words that move people. It was never my goal to generate and motivate discussion, or to critique or theorize. Corium isn’t wise in that regard; I don’t know how to do those things. I know what I like, which is very visceral, and I think the work we feature is unique and beautiful in that regard. As for literary conversation, I think Corium serves as listener. Every conversation needs that. We look for what’s beneath or behind the conversation, the feelings driving it. What it leaves behind when it’s gone.

BG: When the world ends in 2012, as the mayans predicted, and the next species takes over the earth and digs up America 1,000 years from now, what literary journals / indie press publications will they be restoring, reviving, and immortalizing, and why?

LB: They'll probably be speaking a different language; I think they might restore, etc., the ones with the prettiest pictures.

Again, I don’t know how to answer. To me, writing is so much about relatability, about seeking commonality in some way. I’m not trying to evade the question, I just can’t say what will resonate with the passage of time, even brief.

BG: What is the last book you borrowed and never returned? Who'd you steal it from and why didn't you give it back?

LB: I no longer borrow books or loan them. They are cursed practices. For some reason, those friendships or acquaintanceships end or ebb, and I really do feel like I stole. The last book I borrowed and didn’t return was Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. I borrowed it from a girl I didn’t know well. She moved and we lost touch. I still haven’t read it. I feel guilty. When someone tries to loan me a book, I tell them to give it to me or I’ll buy it or check it out from the library. I do the same. If I can’t part with it, they get a recommendation.

BG: Name the five best books you've read that you'd bet your ass nobody else has?

LB: I swear I’m not trying to be contrary, but I can’t answer this question, either. Partly because I have no idea what other people have read, and partly because it implies that I have some kind of superior knowledge. So, no ass-betting. If I read a book I think is great, I want people to know about it. Best I can do is to give some recommendations of books I don’t think have been widely read, though I could be wrong: The Book of Proper Names (Amelie Nothomb), the only good thing anyone has ever done (Sandra Newman), Vernon God Little (DBC Pierre), Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton (J.P Donleavy), and anything by Ellen Gilchrist (especially Victory Over Japan) who everyone has heard of, but it seems like nobody I know has read. These aren’t necessarily the five best books I’ve ever read (except for the Gilchrist, probably), but they’re not beaten path books and I think people might like them.

BG: Who is your favorite historical figure, past or present, and how have they influenced your literary journey?

LB: Good writing is brave, I think. Where the writer sets aside ego and channels experience, including the bad stuff – loss, pain, fear – into creation or progress. There are so many writers who do this; it’s hard to think of just one. Dorothy Allison comes to mind. Bastard out of Carolina is so stark and brutal, vulnerable and honest, and it’s no secret that the book is largely autobiographical. In an interview with Salon, she said something that resonated with me, challenged me. “Some days, when I feel really tired, I kind of believe in God because it would be easier. I don't believe in fate, except some days. And I don't believe that fighting really hard and sacrificing necessarily makes a difference, but sometimes it does.” She chooses the challenge over the easy, but is honest about the temptation. One of my favorite things I’ve written is a piece for The Nervous Breakdown, called The Things We Would Not Be, which deals with how writers (especially me) use fiction and/or humor sometimes to edit or make sense of those scary or horrific or embarrassing things that helped form us. It actually scared the hell out of me to post it. I liked that fear.

BG: BONUS QUESTION: Give us a six song playlist that tells the story of your life.

In no particular order:

Swan Dive (Ani DiFranco)
California Stars (Wilco)
Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell)
Talk About the Passion (R.E.M.)
Polyester Bride (Liz Phair)
Revelator (Gillian Welch)

SIT RETICENT WHILE I EAT YOUR PUDDING CUP

PANK announced their nominations for best of the net 2010.

I am going to be honest, I have no clue what this nomination is for.

I don't really care either.

But! The raddest internet chick I know is listed as one of the nominated authors.

Check it out here.

IT'S MONDAY AND WE ARE ALL OPPRESSED.

The present author is no philosopher, he has not understood the System, nor does he know if there really is one, or if it has been completed. As far as his own weak head is concerned the thought of what huge heads everyone must have in order to have such huge thoughts is already enough. Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one. The present author is no philosopher, he is poetice et eleganter [to put it in poetic and well-chosen terms], a freelancer who neither writes the System nor makes any promises about it, who pledges neither anything about the System nor himself to it. He writes because for him doing so is a luxury, the more agreeable and conspicuous the fewer who buy and read what he writes. In an age where passion has been done away with for the sake of science he easily forsees his fate – in an age when an author who wants readers must be careful to write in a way that he can be comfortably leafed through during the after-dinner nap, and be sure to present himself to the world like the polite gardener's boy in the Advertiser who, hat in hand and with good references from his previous place of employment, recommends himself to a much-esteemed public. He foresees his fate will be to be completely ignored; has a dreadful foreboding that the scourge of zealous criticism will more than once make itself felt; and shudders at what terrifies him even more, that some enterprising recorder, a paragraph swallower who to rescue learning is always willing to do to others' writings what, to `preserve good taste`, Trop nobly did to The Destruction of the Human Race, will slice him into sections as ruthlessly as the man who, in the service of the science of punctuation, divided up his speech by counting the words and putting a full-stop after every fifty and a semi-colon after every thirty-five. No, i prostrate myself before any systematic bag-searcher; this is not the System, it hasn't the slightest thing to do with the System. I wish all good on the System and on the Danish shareholders in that omnibus; for it will hardly become a tower. I wish them good luck and prosperity one and all.

Respectfully,
Johannes De Silentio

Here's an online version of fear and trembling. I don't like the translation much. But it is free.

SHAVE YOUR PUSSY IN THE DARK

Interview with Paula Bomer up at Dark Sky Magazine. Once, I told Paula I wanted to make a mold of her vagina and place it on my mantle. She wrote something about me soon after. It was the most beautiful thing written about me.

She's one of my favorite birds. Check her wing.

I CAN FASHION A SWITCHBLADE OUT OF TWO POPSICLE STICKS, A RUBBERBAND AND THE SIDEWALK.

Man, I feel like a supreme shit. Sam Pink is reading. Like now. Some other dudes tomorrow.

I am bad at promotional efforts. I am not a worthwhile human being.

OHIO:

THROAT POUNDER

fuck.

sententia2.

tits out of my mind:

ML PRESS. 2011 BLIND FAITH SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE

Mud Luscious Press is offering a ‘Blind Faith’ subscription deal: If you are willing to trust us on the titles & authors of our 2011 catalogue without any cover takes or blurbs, then we’ll reward you by knocking the price down. So until mid-October, we’ll give you all the 2011 titles for $35, including

GRIM TALES by Norman Lock, THE HIEROGLYPHICS by Michael Stewart, I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEUR by Mathias Svalina, [ C. ] an mlp stamp stories anthology, plus handmade chapbook volumes from Jessica Newman, Stephen Gropp-Hess, Neila Mezynski, Kristina Marie Darling, John H. Henry, Andrew Borgstrom, Ani Smith, & others

Get in on this deal here: www.mudlusciouspress.com/subscribe

Thanks and thanks and thanks again. If you have questions, email me anytime.

J. A. Tyler, Founding Editor

www.mudlusciouspress.com

BE MY MELVILLE GIRL

Q: What do you think about your films?

A: I don't.

BOOKS I READ THIS WEEK

I gotta say (and if you know me you know it pains me to say this, but if you know me well you know it doesn't), out of this bunch, Indian Killer was the big winner. I mean, there's nothing literary about it. Pure pop-fiction. There were times when it even felt a little Scooby-Dooish, but holy fuck. When I got to the end I was completely satisfied. I felt good. I felt ready to read more Sherman Alexie.

Although currently, I'm not a runner, I did a lot of it the six or seven plus years I spent in martial arts and boxing, so I got into this book quickly. I love how Tanzer was able to weave domestic relations, his sincere feelings about being a writer, and the zany affairs of his officemates, alongside valuable lessons in breathing, foot work, and pacing. Tanzer is careful how much information he gives out and when, sometimes I wanted to know more, to go a little deeper, but that day's run was over, and I was left craving his next insight.

This is a pretty beautiful book. I learned a lot from it. I can't say what I mean because I'm in the student lounge and it's loud and so many college girls in south jersey shorts, its not a good environment for intellectualizing. It's a solid look into the lives of 1950's semi-elite/celebrity. It feels to me a lot like some of Hunter S. Thompson's better stuff, but I prefer the quickness of Thompson. Sometimes Mailer drags on and on. He says in 400 pages what could be said better in 250. He can take three or four pages to describe one feeling. Which is alright I suppose, but it's not my preference.

I can't even think of one good justification why this was even published. A long way from some of Alexie's early stuff that had an abundance of flavor (Indian Killer, Tonto and Lone Ranger, Business of Fancydancing) This is lifeless.

I'm much more familiar with Hank's prose then I am poetry, but this seems to be typical of what I've read of his. The stuff I really loved broke my heart and the stuff I didn't felt like a shitty rant from a high school kid. But say what you say brotha, the man's got soul.

I hope

There's a wildfire burning in the hills, north of my cubicle and over my car and across the parking lot and above a few streets and currently a mile south of my house. I, like many other twenty-something failures have moved back into my father's place, about a month ago. I can still afford to pay a landlord for rent and pay all my bills, but I decided not to. I let a lease run up at the beginning of August and tucked my tail back between my legs and asked dear old father if I could live with him.

I borrowed his truck for a weekend, filled it with repeated loads of furniture, books, electronics, and clothes. I gave 3 couches to the Salvation Army. I threw out a lot of bullshit I decided I no longer needed or had the energy to donate or sell. I packed my childhood room with expensive bullshit and technology I would have creamed myself over at the age of sixteen when I had originally left, and I looked around and felt nothing.

I moved everything I owned and loved and believed I needed into this house and a month later I can see the fires pushing over the hills and down the canyons and over the mountain and I can almost smell my flatscreen burning. I can almost hear the whir of my harddrives failing in intense heat and choking on smoke. I can almost imagine watching the manuscript to my novel disappear forever.

Yesterday, I skipped out of work on a long lunch when the fire first started threatening my bullshit I love and my 'life' and everything I was so convinced I needed. I walked out of my cubicle and jogged through the courtyard and ran through the parking lot to my car. I drove across the parking lot and through a few streets and over some hills and arrived at a road block as thick smoke poured over the canyon. I argued with a cop and was promptly turned away. I didn't try very hard to argue with him.

I turned around and headed into a parking lot and behind a warehouse and over a median and through a neighborhood and past the roadblock and drove up the hill as fast as my four-banger could take me. I kept the windows tightly rolled up and watched the sky turn steadily more and more brown and I could stare into the sun without discomfort. I reached my house pretty quickly and called out to my cat, and ran across the deck and flung open the door and hopped down the steps and looked around at my bullshit.

I thought about taking pictures of everything and then ferrying my most expensive possessions up the driveway to my car, packing it full and then collecting doubles from the insurance anyway. I thought about pouring gasoline all over the place before I left. I thought about where I was going to go.

I ran my fingers over my flatscreen and listened to the low hum of my quadcore and kicked my lovesac and ran my eyes over the harddrives and ps3 and games and books and clothes and called out for my cat again. He woke and lazily walked up to flick his tail across my shin and I thought about what I could carry to the car and how many trips I could make before the road block got more strict and without thinking about it any harder I picked up my cat and left.

I hope it fucking burns.

I hope it all fucking burns and I hope it's tragic as fuck.