Patterns of Silver Light and So Forth

Laura Ellen Scott's DEATH WISHING

2012-01-09T12:24:00.000-08:00

Still tying up loose ends from '11....

Death Wishing: a fave read of the year. Here's my Amazon take on it:

This is a good book in lots of ways—but one really basic one: when you set it down, after finishing a section, it’s going to call you back to it; and when it’s over, you’ll miss its people—maybe a lot. Scott’s narrator, Victor, is a piece of work. Lives with his kid, works for his kid in the back of his kid’s vintage clothing shop. As for which one of them is the more together individual, it’s kind of an open question. But he’s a wonderful narrator—really wonderful, with a touch that’s warm and amused, sometimes sardonic but never closed off. With Victor as narrator, Scott’s able to deliver some knock-out prose. And with Vic as our guide, Scott’s New Orleans becomes—for me, at least—something like a recurring dream: a twisted, innerly glowing place, one that follows a logic you don’t fully get but will recognize, still…..

Wigleaf 2011 (Props + Thanks)

2012-01-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

Cezarija Abartis
Krammer Abrahams
Steve Almond
Kate Axelrod
Kyle Beachy
Lauren Becker
Lena Bertone
Michael Bible
Robert Bradley
Ryan W. Bradley
Craig Buchner
Amy Butcher
Kate Hill Cantrill
Brian Allen Carr
Doug Paul Case
Lucy Corin
Christy Crutchfield
Shome Dasgupta
Tim Dicks
Claire Donato
Trent England
Ashley Farmer
Michael Fischer
Kathy Fish
Jane Flett
Jen Gann
Rachel B. Glaser
Luke Goebel
Amanda Goldblatt
Carissa Halston
Casey Hannan
Kyle Hemmings
Frank Hinton
Jessica Hollander
Tim Horvath
Joanna Howard
Emily Howorth
Lindsay Hunter
Ashley Inguanta
Travis Kurowski
Catherine Lacey
Molly Laich
Suzanne Lamb
Jeff Landon
Catherine LaSota
Sean Lovelace
Ling Ma
Lacey Martinez
Tara Masih
Courtney Elizabeth Mauk
LaTanya McQueen
Rob Mentzer
Brian Mihok
Greg Mulcahy
Edward Mullany
Darlin Neal
James O'Brien
Brian Oliu
Ellen Orleans
David Peak
Adam Peterson
Jennifer Pieroni
Glen Pourciau
Sam Rasnake
Ryan Ridge
James Robison
Andrew Roe
Nicholas Rombes
Jim Ruland
Joanna Ruocco
Ann Rushton
Niloo E Sarabi
Ben Segal
Gregory Sherl
Curtis Smith
Lauren Spohrer
Angi Becker Stevens
Terese Svoboda
Robb Todd
J.A. Tyler
Valerie Vogrin
Chelsea Laine Wells
Bonnie ZoBell

Bunch of Shit about Me Cause This Is My Blog about Me

2011-07-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and the day before and the day before that I drove across Iowa. It's not that bad a state to drive across, if you stay off I-80 and I-35, which I did.

I read from the Gymnos @ Defunct Books in Iowa City Sat. Nite. Where was Barry G? I think Michigan. So I didn't finally get to meet Barry G. But the reading was great and it was good to hear and meet the others (readers): Charly Fasano, Becca Roberts, Amy Ganser and Jesus Angel Garcia.

My set list: Buffalo, Flagstaff, Asheville, Omaha, Albuquerque. (As an intro to that last one, I slipped in a Neil Young reference: something like, All I know about Albuquerque in real life is that they say Sante Fe is 90 miles away...)

David McNamara was there, and he verified that the snow of Buffalo is often a wet snow.

So that was the reading.

Also: new story at The Literarian: "Kiss of the Underachiever."

Also: me and Tim Horvath and others converse in Polish @ Minimal Books, thanks to the excellent Piotr Siwecki. ( Mine--"Kosciol"--was first seen as "Church" in Unsaid #4.)

Also: new story in Midwestern Gothic. When I heard there was a mag called Midwestern Gothic, I saw that I had no choice but to try to publish something there. This story, "Extravaganza," is set in the Twin Cities in the 90s, largely in St. Paul's Union Depot (which lets me pull in The Great Gatsby).

Also: Matt Bell gave my Redivider story, "Desultory," some nice consideration in one of his Short Story Month posts (This was late in the month, and I'd really enjoyed a number of the earlier ones, so seeing the "Desultory" post was super fun). Among other things, he gave some thought to the title and how it might be taken. Reading that part helped me expose for myself one interesting (and sort of wrong-headed) way I'd been thinking of the word: as being akin to the word "offertory" -- like they have in church.

That's two church references for this post. Three, if you count the words of the Flagstaff Gymnopédie.

Happenings in the House of Wigleaf

2011-05-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

In his Foreword to this year’s Top 50, Ravi Mangla mentioned a few changes, which I’d like to highlight in this space.

First, I’ve stepped down as Series Editor for the Top 50. Among the factors in that decision (there are several): I’ve come to see that a formal separation between the editors of the Top 50 and the editors of Wigleaf proper can only enhance the status of our award annual.

Joining Ravi, who becomes Series Editor (three cheers!), are two new Associate Series Editors, Greg Gerke and Laura Ellen Scott. It’s fair to say that I’m ecstatic about having them with us.

Greg is the author of THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH SVEN (BlazeVox), a collection of stories. He’s got fiction in or coming from Denver Quarterly, NOO Journal, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol and lots of others.

Laura is the author of a forthcoming (and much anticipated!) novel, DEATH WISHING (IG), and a collection of shorts, CURIO (Uncanny Valley).

As writers, both Greg and Laura are great (objective fact), and in different ways they’re both inimitable (another objective fact). And as readers and people, they’re great too. Welcome, Greg and Laura!

Okay Other New Stuff

2011-03-03T20:06:00.001-08:00

New CutBank. Sweet cover. Looks kind of New York Tyranty. Includes a short of mine, "Sixteenth Street."

Missed out on getting this @AWP: the new JMWW annual. Their '10 (awesome, w/ lots of writers I love) is documented. Includes--I think--the second of the two I pubbed there last year, "On the Bifurcation of Garments for Men."

And then Nicolle Elizabeth's supa gr8 diy zine, the 1 AM project. If you can't get hold of this--and getting hold of it will be tough--you can check it out in pdf thru NOO Journal. Includes another of my shorts, "Human Being."

AWP '11: Highlights and Regrets

2011-02-08T07:23:00.000-08:00

Am still in recovery mode so I guess it's a good time to sloop back through stuff.

Will use the highlight/regret motif, see how that works...

Highlite: getting to see, on successive nights, Robert Lopez and Randall Brown read stuff from that great lost issue of Mississippi Review that Kim Chinquee edited.

Highlite: spending time w/ Ben Loory and Gabe Durham at/after the Thurs nite reading in Columbia Heights. Surefine human beings there, both.......

Regret: not getting to meet Cathy Day, who I saw at the Friday reading in Adams Morgan but couldn't get to before she left.

Highlite: getting to meet Steve Almond that same night and talking some Gary Lutz.

Highlight: huge flappy pizza w/ Lauren Becker in an overlit cubby of a place in Adams Morgan in the rain. And Tim Jones-Yelvington there, in black pumps, the full Tim J-Y splendor, saying, "I do not eat pizza." (that was a mishearing, it turns out, but Tim and I have agreed to let it stand).

Highlight: having Beth Thomas as a co-staggerer late late Thurs nite in Dupont Circle as we looked for our fancy hotel.

Regret: not meeting Terese Svoboda.

Regret: not meeting Mary Caponegro, who Greg Gerke was just about to introduce me to when I walked off.

Wandering around w/ Greg at the Book Fair, taking the slow ride of my hangover.

Highlight: talking w/ Erin Fitzgerald at the Black Cat about the deejay, who'd put on "Footloose." Our conclusion: not cool, never cool, never to be cool.....

Regret: not buying more books/mags when I was standing at the tables and had the chance.

Highlight: having the waitress @ Kramer Books ask me, when she realized I was at the conf, "Oh, what have you written!?" and being able to just pull out the AG's instead of stammering in my usual way.

Highlight: Getting to see Mary Hamilton read her Wigleaf story, "It Is True that Me and Theodore Swallowed Pop Rocks and Pepsi Cola and Now We Are Dead" (I told her afterwards, It's like I went to see Skynryd and they played "Freebird")

Highlight: Having Ryan Bradley as a tablemate at the bookfair. I wasn't there much because Wigleaf has no physical product, but people still came up looking for me, and Ryan didn't get too annoyed. Really enjoyed hanging w/ him when I was there: top notch man.

Regret: Attending two great readings and so missing two other great ones (particularly bummed not to have seen Divination at the 4 P's and Vermin on the Mount.

Regret: speaking of Vermin: not meeting Jim Ruland!

Highlight: meeting Mary Miller in a red hallway at Millie & Al's when we were both trashed (so I didn't have to worry about how trashed I'd been, later)

HIghlight: meeting Jurgen Fauth and talking to him and having the woman he'd been talking w/--a short woman in a dark coat--slowly turn around: Nicolle Elizabeth.

Regret: not meeting Dawn Raffel

Triple Highlight: texting Molly Gaudry from the too-loud/crowded Madam's Organ and having her call back to say she was across the street, and going over there and finally meeting her and then having her there for my reading Friday nite...... big hearts for MG...

Highlight: my reading Fri nite. Is that bad form, to have yr own reading be one of yr highlights? The thing: I hadn't read for a while, and I'd never read for a crowd like that, w/ so many people knowing my stuff..... Was super fun, and I feel good about how it worked out (I was going to read a passage from a novel in prog but let myself get pulled into going on w/ the AG's).

Highlight: Roxane Gay's line: "Facebook is in my face!"

Highlight: Smoking outside the Black Cat w/ a manic dude who turned out to be Corey Zeller, watching him propose switching lids w/ a third guy, and watching the third guy bristle and say, "No, no, it's my birthday."

Regret: saying a bunch of really stupid things to people, and having them say stupid things back.

Highlight: saying a bunch of really stupid things to people, and having them say stupid things back.

Highlight: getting to meet Myfanwy Collins and talk for a while. What an excellent person!

Highlight: Lily Hoang. That's it. Just Lily Hoang.

Another highlight: Matt Salesses. Just Matt Salesses.

Regret: not meeting Michael Martone (yes, Rob S told me to go that panel....)

Highlight: finally meeting Amber Sparks, after missing her for what seemed like the whole weekend.

Highlight: meeting Zach Dodson at the Featherproof/Make table, and having a guy on the Make side ask, "Are you Chris Garson's brother?" (turned out to be Joel Craig, who I'd met once half a lifetime ago--now poetry editor for Make)

Regrets: Not getting to talk more w/ all the very good people I met. Tim Horvath! Mitch Parker! Heather Fowler! Blake Butler! Rob Swartwood! Nicole Monaghan! Tara Laskowski! Mike Young! Randall Brown! Bess Winter! Jamie Iredell! Kirby Johnson! Glenn Shaheen! Brooks Sterritt! Luke Goebel! Jensen Beach! Jen Michalski! Dave Housley! Extie Ecks! David Erlewine! On and on........

Hightlight: Dinner w/ old friends and one new in Cleveland Park Sat. nite. Then debriefing w/ Laura Ellen Scott at her place in Northern Virginia.

Highlight: this exchange w/ a stewardess on the flight back:

me: I'll have--no. I'll just have a coke.

woman: what were you going to say?

me: I'll have a coke.

woman: no. say it.

me: it's fine.

woman: what were you going to say? tell me. I bet you'll be glad that you did.

me: did you say it was a 'cashless' bar?

woman: ah but i have these coupons! someone didn't want them up front. you could have one and be drinking for free.

me: then I'd love a Bloody Mary (translation: I love you very very much)

Highlight: Meeting and talking w/ Michael Nye on the shuttle ride home from the airport.

Regret: Being too whirled to mention--later, now--everybody I probably should mention here.

Regret: What yesterday was like.

New Ones

2011-01-19T23:17:00.000-08:00

In the new issue of Carolina Quarterly, a longer story: "The Goth of SecurityOne Field." Other fiction there by Caitlin Horrocks and Samar Fitzgerald; thnx going out to Phil Sandick and Lindsay Starck at CQ, and also to Melissa Marconi, wherever she is, who gave me some feedback on a radically different first-version of this story in a coffee shop in Santa Clara.

And a 700-word piece, "Desultory," in the new Redivider, which also contains stuff by Randall Brown, John Oliver Hodges, Matthew Kirkpatrick and others. Brooks Sterritt helped w/ this one and so will get free beer if I run into him in DC.

Wrap-up: Wigleaf in Twenty Ten

2010-12-29T11:17:00.000-08:00

Last 2010 post @Wigleaf today: Nicolle Elizabeth's FOUR STORIES, with maybe her best-ever postcard.

Thanks again to Brian Evenson, for selecting the Top 50, and thanks to everyone on the following list for what I think has been our biggest and brutalist year:

Grace Andreacchi
Arlene Ang
Meakin Armstrong
Adrienne Bard
Kyle Beachy
Michael Bible
Ann Bogle
Eric Bosse
Mel Bosworth
Jessica Breheny
Randall Brown
Edmond Caldwell
Kim Chinquee
Ryder Collins
Dawn Corrigan
Sara Crowley
Stephen Dunn
Nicolle Elizabeth
David Erlewine
Nina Feng
Erin Fitzgerald
Tuere T.S. Ganges
Roxane Gay
Vanessa Gebbie
Greg Gerke
Barry Graham
Tawnysha Greene
Tina May Hall
Jim Heynen
Eric Higgins
Donora Hillard
Steve Himmer
Laura Hirneisen
Colleen Hollister
Tim Horvath
Jennifer A. Howard
Joe Kapitan
Matthew Kirkpatrick
Andrea Kneeland
Darby Larson
Sarah Layden
Charles Lennox
Lisa Lim
Sean Lovelace
Sarah Malone
Michael Martone
Susan McCarty
Natalie McNabb
Jen Michalski
Hans Michaud
Megan Milks
John Minichillo
Kyle Minor
Tirumal Mundargi
Thomas Mundt
Mark Neely
Cami Park
Gary Percesepe
Dan Piepenbring
Lloyd Phillips
Glen Pourciau
Dawn Raffel
Andrew Roe
Sophie Rosenblum
Matthew Salesses
Kevin Sampsell
Kathryn Scanlan
Evan Schaeffer
Peter Schwartz
Laura Ellen Scott
Chad Simpson
Andrea Slye
Lucas Southworth
Amber Sparks
Brooks Sterritt
Rose Sullivan
Jack Swenson
Chantel Louise Tattoli
Beth Thomas
Girija Tropp
J.A. Tyler
Anne Valente
Ben White
Bess Winter
Robley Wilson
Kate Wyer
Anne Valente
Donna D. Vitucci
xTx
Mercedes Yardley
Salvatore Zoida

COUNTDOWN: FIFTEEN BEST TRACKS OF 2010

2010-12-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

15. All Saints Day, "You Can't Be Alone" (from S/T)

Bent-up, low-fi would-be anthem. I pretty much love this shit.

(free download @ One Track Mind)

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14. Kurt Vile, "Invisibility: Nonexistent" (from the SQUARE SHELLS ep)

Kurt Vile is easily the musician I'd most like to get stoned with.

(free download @ Hippies Are Dead)

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13. Japandroids, "Younger Us" (from the YOUNGER US 7")

Great song. Soundwise they channel The Replacements here, which makes frontman Brian King's unhealed nostalgia seem right.

(free download via Pitchfork)

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12. Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, "I Learned the Hard Way" (from I LEARNED THE HARD WAY)

Amy Winehouse might not have reminded you how great Motown was, but Sharon Jones will.

(free download @ Aquarium Drunkard)

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11. Japanther, "Spread So Thin" (from ROCK 'N ROLL ICE CREAM)

It hasn't ever taken that much to make a great pop song. Just oooo's and electricity.

(free download @ 5 Acts)

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10.(tie) The Black Keys, "Tighten Up" (from BROTHERS); Best Coast, "Boyfriend" (from CRAZY FOR YOU)

I hope The Black Keys never stop pretending that rock n' roll hasn't come and gone. Best Coast's CRAZY FOR YOU was one of my favorite albums of the year; this song was the most embarrassing for a grown heterosexual man to be caught singing.

(free download @ Passion of the Weiss; other free download @ Culture Bully)

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9. Doug Paisley, "End of the Day" (from CONSTANT COMPANION)

There were good wooden songs by Black Mountain and Blitzen Trapper in Twenty Ten. But this was the best. Dude's Canadian, may sort of remind you of Neil.

(video @ youtube)

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8. Gil Scott-Heron, "Me and the Devil" (from I'M NEW HERE)

Here's how happy I am to see Gil again:

Gil! Gil! Gil! Gil! Gil!

(free download via Stranger Dance)

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7. Perfume Genius, "Mr. Peterson" (from LEARNING)

A spare, churchly requiem. "He let me smoke weed in his truck." That line instantly puts it in my top ten. "He made me a tape of Joy Division." Or maybe that one.

(free download via Captain Obvious)

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6. The Arcade Fire, "Ready to Start" (from THE SUBURBS)

From a top-three album of the year. Lots of great songs on it; had a hard time choosing.

(free download via ListenBeforeYouBuy)

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5. Blair, "Hello Halo" (from DIE YOUNG)

Most underappreciated release of the year. Yeah, she's kind of nineties, but this song—thing of genius. "Don't know what I'm sayin, don't know what I'm sayin, don't know what I'm sayin, don't know what I'm sayin…Got a radio in my head…." Becomes a pop song about writing pop songs.

(free download via Das Kleinicum)

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4. Sleigh Bells, "Rill Rill" (from TREATS)

In-fect-ious.

Braces?

What about them? She's all about them.

(free download @ The Stark Online)

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3. Deerhunter, "Desire Lines" (from HALCYON DIGEST)

Who's better than Deerhunter?

Rhetorical question.

(free download @ Covert Curiosity)

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2. Kanye West, "Runaway" (from MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY)

Will probably always remember seeing the premiere of this at the close of this year's VMA's.

Drama from persona. What it's all about.

(video @ youtube)

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1. No Age, "Fever Dreaming" (from EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN)

Louder. Louder. Louder.

(free download @ Pitchfork)

My 2010 Best Of's @ The Big Other

2010-12-22T20:17:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wish it were called The Big Otter. My fingers would prefer typing that, it seems. The Big Otter.

I did a list of twelve. I wrote it kind of like a story, not really knowing what was going to be on it. But don't let me undermine it. This is a very important list.

(It's up w/ some others--by Norman Lock, K. Sparling, J. Iredell, and K. Sampsell)

Trailer for UNFINISHED

2010-12-22T20:15:00.000-08:00

U5

2010-12-08T15:00:00.001-08:00

The arrival of this has pre-empted all other reading.

It's, like, really good. Really.

It's not quite as long as the last one. I'm on page 100 or so, and I'm more aware this time: the pleasure is going to run out.

My story in it, "Dermatographism," is right now one of my own favorites of mine. One reason--and I was saying this to fellow contributor/rising star Luke Goebel the other day: I like the end of it more than the beginning. (Usually I like my beginnings the best.)

Another Swell Pre-Order

2010-12-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

This one, from Jaded Ibis, is going to be an amazing thing.

To finish an somebody's unfinished story--this would imply a hand-off, would imply, as a result, a story of halves, with a visible seam.

But you won't find one, a seam. Lily Hoang took my start--a story I'd called "Eight Ball"--and exploded it from the inside, put new stuff in the air. So then finishing it--this seemed, to both of us, more possible.

Can't wait to read the whole book, which includes Lily's 'finishings' of stories by Kate Bernheimer, Blake Butler, Beth Couture, Debra Di Blasi, Justin Dobbs, Trevor Dodge, Zach Dodson, Brian Evenson, Carol Guess, Elizabeth Hildreth, John Madera, Ryan Manning, Michael Martone, Kelcey Parker, Ted Pelton, Kathleen Rooney, Davis Schneiderman, Michael Stewart, and J.A. Tyler.

One Swell Pre-Order

2010-11-29T14:00:00.001-08:00

{C.}, an MLP Stamp Stories Anthology, can be got as part of this year's MLP subscription --which, at $40, is a great deal (full length works by Norman Lock, Michael Stewart and Mathias Svalina, plus a bunch of handmade chapbooks, by Kristina Marie Darling, Andrew Borgstrom and others).

Or it can be ordered alone.

Here's the idea: people write stories of fifty words or less, and these stories are then formatted into stamp-sized texts and printed on small cards (they're titleless but carry the author's name). Next--my favorite part--the cards go out to independent presses which are participating in the project by slipping them into the pages of direct orders like bookmarks. I've read a couple of them in this way (most recently one by Gregory Sherl which was in a copy of Sam Pink's great Ambulance book from Cow Heavy). And I've heard from a couple of people who've read mine (it's going out w/ issues of The Cupboard). Am itching to read the full deal, which includes--man i don't even know what to say about this list..... I'll just make sounds.... mah mah mah....

"Dog" in NANO Fiction

2010-11-18T08:19:00.000-08:00

Been eating this issue up--great stuff by Nin Andrews, Matt Bell, Chas Carey, Doug Paul Case, Sarah Eaton, Erika Eckart, Luke Geddes, Greg Gerke, Nathan Good, Anya Groner, Andrew Kozma, Daniel Lawless, Charles Lennox, Sara Lippmann, Kirsty Logan, Sean Lovelace, Sarah McCartt-Jackson, Shawn Andrew Mitchell, Cheyenne Nimes, Laurie Nye, Carrie Oeding, Michael Palmer, Hannah Pass, Marie Potoczny, Matt Prater, Jim Ruland, Nick Sansone, Kathryn Scanlan, Gregory Sherl, Katie Jean Shinkle, Justin Sirois, Eugenia Tsutsumi, and Desmond Kon.

See lots of Wigleaf contributors there. Could count them but that would require numbers.

Thnx to Glenn Shaheen and the NANO F crew. Is the girl's foot being atomized by spinning blades in the cover art? Sort of disturbing.

"Silt" up on HTML Giant's LMC thing

2010-11-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

One of the two from the NY Tyrant -- pdf w/ take by Robb Todd (who wrote that Halloween story that was in 3:AM last yr--pretty swell if you missed it).

One of the quoted words is wrong, which makes me hope that he wrote it from memory because if he did, that would be, you know, great.

Thnx to Robb and also Tim Horvath, who thinks in the comments some typically smart things.....

Afterthought: about the title, which Robb was wondering about. I had it sitting on the table, like. When I finished. It seemed--I'm not sure why--to work. And nobody called me on it -- of the people who read it right off.......

Short @ JMWW

2010-10-04T20:03:00.000-07:00

In the fall issue--flash section, John Madera's first full quarter editing that.

Odd title: "On the Bifurcation of Garments for Men."

Thnx to John and Ed. in Chief Jen Michalski. There's a great intro by John and other vsf by Alexandra Chasin, James Hannahan, Tim Horvath, Kevin Kilian, Miguel Morales, David Peak, Davis Schneiderman, Ken Sparling and Terese Svoboda.

story up @ New Ohio Review

2010-09-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

It's called the "The Fake I.D." and it's up as a teaser for the fall issue, which is just out.

My other one there, not web accessible, was written at about the same time: "Is That You, John Wayne?" Have to thank outgoing editor Jill Allyn Rosser and the /nor staff for their input on that one: they asked me a fairly simple question about the ending, which helped me get it right finally.

Haven't read any of the issue yet, but I'm looking at the names--Campbell McGrath, Karen Brown, Phong Nguyen, Stephen Dunn.... It's next in line. (I may start w/ the last section, "Altered Views: Fiction Reconsidered," where writers discuss "works of fiction about which they [have] changed their minds over the years." Charles Baxter writes on Paula Fox, Julianna Baggott on Garcia Marquez, Peter Ho Davies on D. Barthelme.... Looks pretty great.....)

One other thing, relevant to the only people likely to be reading this: they've just started taking online subs, /nor has.

B's Book: REMOVING MOUNTAINS: Extracting Nature and Identity in the Appalachian Coalfields

2010-09-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

It's just out from the University of Minnesota Press, and I'm reading it now for the first time in final form. What I'd say: really great--compelling and smart and super-important.

As we got used to telling people in the just-about ten years it was getting made, the book is a study of the cultural politics surrounding the environmentally destructive practice of mountaintop-removal coal mining in southern West Virginia.

Here's a paragraph from the first chapter, in which the conditions that give rise to Appalachia's being a 'national sacrifice zone' are being examined:

"The Sago mine tragedy brought to national attention the issue of mining safety and the pattern of increasing unenforcement of regulations and loosening of regulatory oversight of the coal industry that coalfield communities have been dealing with for decades. The coal industry has made it very clear to coalfield residents that it considers fatal accidents in mines, like the many fatal road accidents caused by overweight coal trucks, to be just part of the cost of doing business (Burns 2007). After the Sago disaster and several subsequent deaths at other mines, national and state legislators scurried to enact more stringent protections for workers (Ward 2006c). But cable news coverage of the events chose not to focus on the details of state and federal regulations, their ineffective enforcement through nominal fines, and the lack of proportional response to serious infractions (Ward 2006b). Instead, national coverage of the Sago disaster became a sentimental story of dashed hopes and a miraculous recovery. The conventions of the genre--tight-knit communities, simple piety, and hard-edged suffering--allowed the incident to become an allegory of American national character, an iteration of the story of the ideal white Appalachian. As was Jessica Lynch, the miners were portrayed as always ready to sacrifice themselves to provide for their families and nation. The miners' families and communities justly joined in the sanctifying of the miners on national television; not only did this allow them to express their grief and their love for the deceased, but this is one of the only representations Appalachians can access to escape their stigmatized identity on the national stage. Occupying the narrative of ideal, sacrificing, Christian citizenship allowed West Virginians to portray their communities and the deceased miners in a positive light on the national screen."

@ Third Face

2010-08-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

i-view @ 3rd face w/ Barry Graham, who i finally get to meet at AWP next year. i try to be uncautious--incautious?--in talking about Wigleaf, my balls and other stuff. and there's 6-song life-story playlist w/ really good music on it, tho via somewhat wack videos.....

The News re: Wigleaf

2010-08-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

As of tomorrow, officially—but actually right now—Wigleaf is back on its regular schedule.

The first new story: Tina May Hall's "Last Night of the County Fair." It's part of her soon-to-be-released collection, The Physics of Imaginary Objects, which won the 2010 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. (I've read the book in galley and it's awesome; here's another sweet piece of it, from The Collagist.)

Now for the randomized list of some of the other sure-fine writers w/ work coming up in Wigleaf this season:

Andrea Kneeland
Glen Pourciau
Anne Valente
Beth Thomas
Jessica Breheny
Gabe Durham
Joe Kapitan
Hans Michaud
Vanessa Gebbie
Dawn Corrigan
Sophie Rosenblum
Arlene Ang
Sarah Malone
Dan Piepenbring
Lloyd Phillips
Meakin Armstrong
Ryder Collins
Grace Andreacchi
Tim Horvath
Ann Bogle
Sara Crowley
Edmond Caldwell
Donna Vitucci
Adrienne Bard
Susan McCarty
Steve Himmer

I'm pumped to the top for this stuff. Please stop by often (new stories are posted every few days)—and if you feel like it help me spread the word that we're back…..

"Say My Name" @ Everyday Genius

2010-08-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Luke Goebel for putting this short out there. He's had a great month @EG, running work by Dawn Raffel, Gabe Durham, LIncoln Michel and others.

"Say My Name" was originally part of a three-set; the other two are coming out in the fall issue of New Ohio Review. Really happy to have it @EG; seems like the right place for it......

Thurs Nite, AWP '11, NW DC

2010-08-05T20:49:00.001-07:00

Unsaid 5

2010-08-05T20:32:00.001-07:00

BRIAN KUBARYCZ/ANNE CARSON/JOE WENDEROTH/BLAKE BUTLER/JONATHAN CALLAHAN/ROBERT LOPEZ/MICHAEL KIMBALL/A. MINETTA GOULD/DAVID HOLLANDER/JENNY GROPP-HESS/GREG AMES/JOSEPH CELZIC/ANNE VALENTE/ERIKA LORENTZSEN/DANIELLE BLAU/DAWN RAFFEL/TRENT ENGLAND/M.T. FALLON/BRIAN EVENSON/KIM CALDER/ROZALIA JOVANOVIC/LUKE GOEBEL/CATHERINE FOULKROD/A WOLFE/PETER MARKUS/KATY WYER/JASON SCHWARTZ/TOM MCCARTAN/SHANE FIREK/AMBER SPARKS/ROBERT KLOSS/ELIZABETH MIKESCH/PAMELA RYDER/LINCOLN MICHEL/MICHAEL COPPERMAN/LITO ELIO PORTO/ALEXIS ALMEIDA/MONICA HARHAS/EVELYN HAMPTON/SEAN PATRICK HILL/PAUL MALISZEWSKI/B.R. SMITH/JEFFREY LAMONDE/ALEXANDRA CHASIN/TOM LAVERTY/ANDY DEVINE/M SARKI/RICHARD ST. GERMAIN/ALLISON TITUS/KEITH NATHAN BROWN/LIAM O'BRIEN/MATT BELL/COOPER ESTEBAN/SCOTT GARSON/ERIKA MOYA/SASHA FLETCHER/JOSEPH SCAPELLATO/STEPHEN GROPP-HESS

Not yet pre-orderable. But shit man. The wait is on.

Tyrant 8

2010-08-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

The last issue was killer. The one before that was killer. The one before that....

I've got two in this one. Am excited for them to get read.....

Pre-order here.

FF Net

2010-08-05T20:14:00.000-07:00

Last Thurs (just got home--am behind) a short of mine was reprinted @ Flashfiction.net ("Front Yard...." which originally appeared in QF #12).

Randall Brown does a great job w/ this site, and he offers a great riff on the story at the end of the post. Thanks, Randall!

Jessica Breheny's SOME MYTHOLOGY

2010-07-14T10:12:00.001-07:00

I've been following Jessica Breheny since I read her story "Bug Funeral" in Avery #4. She's got a new chapbook out, SOME MYTHOLOGY, from Naissance, and can I say: it's pretty damn good....

If you're a writer--and you probably are--you'll appreciate JB immediately as a stylist. As a stylist, she's first rate. Like, for this last little while of my life, I haven't read anyone better.

Here's a bit from the first par of the opening story, "MirrorMirror," which was first pubbed in 580 Split:

"I live in a secret room with mushrooms and bats, skeletons and roots, pitchers and pipes. When I fly I have no legs. I hold out apples for my guests. Every night I set out to study fear."

And, because I can't help myself, a whole par from the title story:

"It wasn't until later that I met you in a class on Greek Mythology, and we drank the city into a sweet swirling puddle neighborhood by neighborhood, and you showed me how history is toppled together in a heap of velvet and cocktails, waltzed me into an oblivion of drunken ghosts. We Shanghaied each other from bars to corners to bars, and when you kissed me, at a bus stop haunted by garbage that flew around us like birds, it was poison and whiskey, a death that happened to someone else a long time before we were born."

W/ paragraphs like that, I'm a happy reader, but SOME MYTHOLOGY offers more: it's really cohesive, really carefully conceived as a whole--in ways I'll probably be better able to articulate when I read it again. But I sense that right away. Maybe I could say this for now: in these stories, if there's mythology, it's blurred, pulled into the anxieties of lived experience.... And if there's experience--regular fucked-up subjectivity--you can see how its subjects try to negotiate it as story/mythology, and later how they negotiate the stories themselves.....

Final analysis: great stuff: go forth and read.

3 Gymnos, translated

2010-07-12T08:14:00.000-07:00

Some of my forebears are from Poland. I'm doing a seance tonight to call one back and get him/her to read one of the Gymnos that Piotr Siweki has translated for the Minimal Books blog.

He did Oklahoma City, Houston and Baltimore.

He's also translated work by Kim Chinquee, Molly Gaudry, Matt Bell, and lots of other friends and familiars.

....

Have been on the road, and am leaving again soon. Happy July everybody.....

Open Query Letter: 'VSF' Anthology

2010-06-10T13:40:00.001-07:00

[Opening Paragraph: The Pitch]

I'm putting together ananthology called VSF: Very Short Fiction. I see it as the Flash Fiction anthology of the 21st century. I want you to want to publish it.

[Paragraphs Two, Three and Four: One Argument]

Hazuka and Thomas and Thomas' '92 Norton anthology, Flash Fiction, popularized the term, 'flash fiction,' and also an aesthetic – stories that often seem, in their art, flash- or glimpse-like. Such stories can be wonderful, of course, but a lot has happened since then; a lot is happening now.

Here's how I would characterize what we're currently seeing: pretty much every really talented new writer is participating in the exploration of a form whose conventions are far, far less set than are those of the full-length short story.

The VSF anthology will offer:

• a range of lengths under the 1000-word mark. In '92, Hazuka and Thomas and Thomas set the ceiling at 750 words, but most of the stories included were between 500 and 750 words. To capture what's happening now, I think you need an anthology that has a more than token offering of microfiction, and one that's also open to what people are doing in the 750 – 1000 word range.

• a range of styles and approaches. Writing in his intro to the Best American Short Stories volume of '92, Robert Stone had this to say: "As of 1992, American writers seem ready to accept traditional forms without self-consciousness in dealing with the complexity of the world around them." As of now? Writers are doing amazing vsf within what Stone calls the "realist mode," but they're certainly not confining themselves to that, or to any tradition.

[Paragraph Four: Who the Hell are You?]

I'm Scott Garson. This is my blog. Welcome. I'm the editor of Wigleaf and the Series Editor of the Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions annual. My collection of microfictions, American Gymnopédies, was published as part of the WWP very short fiction series. (Jim Heynen's blurb: "Like Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies, Garson’s atmospheric shorts surprised me with their subtle shifts and eccentricities. Linked by geographic places, the collection progresses in tiny increments to become a dance between internal and external geographies. In perception and execution, this is a wonderfully original work.")

[Paragraph Five: Why Aren't You Doing This the Conventional Way?]

I'm not lazy but writing letters bores me. I think I can get a publisher this way. I think it will be the right publisher.

[Paragraphs Six and Seven: A Parting Argument]

This anthology will be landmark and will sell.

It will sell because it will be fucking great. It will be fucking great because it will offer the best of an intense reading experience that most readers are not now being offered. Very short fiction isn't poetry, but it's closer to poetry than the novel and even most short stories. Pick up the average collection of stories nowadays—something like More of This World and Maybe Another—and you get fat, relaxed paragraphs that assume, from the start, readers' willingness to invest in a character that hasn't yet been introduced. This is much like most novels (and is the reason, I think, that readers don't spend a ton of money on collections; if they work like novels, why not read the real thing?). Very short fiction works differently. I won't limit it via definition, but I'll say this: in vsf, each word is a choice. Together they will burn into your brain. You'll feel like you're on drugs. You'll feel like you're on crack. You'll be saying, Please, Mr. Garson. More.

[Paragraph Eight: Polite Adieu and Expression of Good Wishes]

Thank you so much for visiting today, best,

Scott

Mini I-view @ Fictionaut

2010-06-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

Happy to be boxed in the F-naut Five. Thnx to Meg Pokrass.

Newsbits

2010-05-30T04:54:00.000-07:00

* Guest post up at Emerging Writers Network for Short Story Month. There've been lots of great ones at EWN this month, by Dan Wickett and Stacy Musynski and others. Mine's on "Ghosts and Lovers," a story from Joanna Howard's recent collection, On a Winding Stair.

* Little 'pensee' up at The Laughing Yeti, Shome Dasgupta's Writers on Reading project. Words by Matt Bell and Brian Evenson went up in the days after mine. (I've been returning to this site; it's sort of addictive.)

Unofficial Acknowledgements Page for American Gymnopédies

2010-05-23T09:11:00.000-07:00

So: American Gymnopédies is here. It's sold out again (for now?), but for anyone who got one, copies should arrive by Tuesday.

Some public thanks here for my editor/publisher, Molly Gaudry @ WWP. I read it through, the collection, for the first time this morning, and I realized something—maybe something obvious but something I hadn't fully realized before: what you get in the case of something like this, if you're the writer, is not all yours. MG brought to this thing ambition, investment, big talent. She's been a visioner. Heart MG.

Others who need to be upped for contributions or involvements big or small: David McNamara at sunnyoutside, James Ullmer, who did the cover and interior art, Pia Ehrhardt, Jim Heynen, Michael Martone, David McLendon, Sara Lippmann, Peter Cole, J.A. Tyler, and all the editors of the mags in which some of the Gymnos were first published—though the editors, except for Corium, do get thanked in the pages (thnx Corium).

Today I'm a happy boy.

Next in line for the WWP Very Short Fiction series: Pedro Ponce, with Alien Autopsy, and Kathy Fish, with Foreign Film. I've taught stories from both of these collections. Believe this: I'll be the first one ordering them.

Have You Heard the Zeppeliny Four-Tet Remix of Madvillian's "Great Day"?

2010-05-20T08:35:00.000-07:00

That's a good song for.....

The Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions 2010

Brian Evenson is a god.

Ravi Mangla is a comet.

Lisa Lim is a midnight movie. (is that graphic not a big step up?)

Two random enticements:

* included in this year's list is one that makes Hint Fiction seem verbose. A four-word story that I think kicks the ass of Hemingway's famous six-word one.

* included also is a story that could not have been chosen for the flatmancrooked anthology, Not about Vampires.

Sentence about a Sentence I Love @ Big Other

2010-05-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

You might recognize this sentence.

In Fairness

2010-05-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

I hit The Faster Times pretty hard for its ranking of lit mags a couple of wks ago.

Lincoln Michel, the author of that ranking, has revised the original post. The ranking has become a simple list of mags, and there's a pretty straightforward acknowledgement as to the arbitrariness of the cut-off point.

So uh--no further complaints.....

Are we on the internet, or are we on the internet?

One Thing

2010-05-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

I just want to say one thing about Susan Steinberg's story "Cowboys," in the Spring issue of American Short Fiction.

1. This is great!

"I am still able to lie there nights. But I am unable to do much more than that.

Meaning I am still able to lie there nights, but I am unable to stick around in the mornings.

Meaning I am unable to lie there pretending I want what it is certain women want.

Because of this and because of that. And I cannot pretend to be anything other than the result of this and that."

1. This is great!

"...The doctor had been up all night.

Trying to save your father, he said.

To no avail, he said, and I wondered at the word avail, wondered if the doctor got to be a doctor because of whatever it was he had that made him use the word avail."

1. This is great!

"A man I knew in Warrensburg, Missouri, a man I knew from the job I needed to quit, had been bitten by a brown recluse. He'd rolled over it one night in bed and got bitten in the ass. When he told me the story I laughed. I was like, Why were you naked? He was like, Wrong question. Because he was trying to tell me the bite dissolved the skin on his ass. Because he was trying to tell me that this just wasn't right.

The technical term is necrotized.

The point is I was not always serious.

No, the point is we're limited."

1. This is great!

"There is no intentional meaning in this story.

I would not subject you to intentional meaning.

I would not subject you to some grand scheme."

1. This is great!

2. Okay--a few other things.

3. Those quotes? Those are just from the first five pages. There are five more. And I could have quoted stuff just as good from the first five. Easily. There are enough good sentences in this story to last you all year--if you read w/ your flashlight in bed.

4. I guess I make myself clear but just to be sure: you have to fucking read this story.

5. And one more thing: Susan Steinberg, if you're out there, if you've figured out a way to get Google Alert to separate you from all the other Susan Steinbergs in the world: please send something to Wigleaf! We can't give you that dollar appreciation which is so nice--which I don't mean to knock--but we can love you. We're good at loving people. And is there ever enough love?

Robley Wilson @ Wigleaf

2010-05-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

The story is "Bears."

Dawn Raffel had a great post about him @ EWN towards the end of last year. In it she calls him "one of the under-sung heroes of American fiction."

Hobart GREAT OUTDOORS / extras

2010-05-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

Number 11 hasn't shown up in the mailbox yet (one of the chief bummers of not going to AWP....), but the issue is loaded and the traditional 'Bonus/Extras' update just went live on the Hobart website.

I did, on command, an 'extra' outdoors gymno (my cont. to #11 being gymnos for Duluth, Big Sur and Mississippi River).

Tim Jones-Yelvington supplied the place, Champaign-Urbana. Thnx Tim!

David Erlewine, M.T. Fallon, Molly Gaudry and Laura Ellen Scott each flipped me a word to use. Thnx D, M, M and L!

p.s. points if you can guess which words were supplied, and double secret bonus points if you can guess by which person.

Official Statement

2010-05-01T14:12:00.001-07:00

Mary Timony seems a little fucked up in this one. Wigleaf hearts Mary Timony.

My Contempt...

2010-04-28T14:52:00.000-07:00

....seems to going out to the Faster Times today, for its new ranking of lit mags.

I'm not all that contemptuous of a person, so I'm asking myself why.

If Wigleaf had made his list, would I feel different? Probably not -- though I might find myself less willing, at the moment, to say what I think...

So why then? Possibilities:

1. I've never loved Cliff Garstang's lit mag rankings, but Cliff has always been completely frank about what they represent: nothing but Pushcart success. In the Faster Times list, I see Lincoln Michel going for what Cliff is going for--an objective-type sense of which lit mags are held in high esteem. But he's not as forthcoming about how the calculations are made.

2. In the 'Why?' section – like, why offer such a list –- he suggests that he's trying to help writers who may be overwhelmed by the number of mags out there and so not know which are the most prestigious. Am I being too bone-headedly literal if I point out that another clear function of any such ranking is to rank? The Faster Times may or may not be super interested in helping fiction writers – who knows – but there's a clear enough basis for interest in stratifications, assertions of relative prestige. Who's up? Who's down? Who's in? Who's out? Tell us, People Magazine. I mean, Faster Times.

3. Back to number 1: the lack of forthcomingness about how mags are assigned 'tiers': Michel is quick to make clear that the rankings don't reflect his own favorites, among which he lists Noon, Unsaid and New York Tyrant. These happen to be among my own favorites, too. Have to say, though: a couple of mags in that general 'family' appear in the lower tiers (fuck you, I’m not listing them)—while some higher-profile/more fully established mags (Barrelhouse, for example) are omitted. Yes, I'm wondering about pandering.

4. Back to number 2: People Magazine. Why do we even do this shit? If you think, as I do, that the fiction in the New York Tyrant is, in general, better and more important than the fiction in the New Yorker, let me suggest that you have an obligation: to lend it your fire, to declare, wholeheartedly, your belief in it. You can be a tool, try to serve the man, or you can be part of how perceptions change.

I-view + Gymno @ Stymie

2010-04-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

My D.C. Gymno is reprinted at Stymie Magazine, which has been revamped nicely (Congrats to Editor Erik Smetana and everyone else there). It's alongside an i-view conducted by Sara Lippmann. We talked about Townes Van Zandt, Gass, desire in writing and lots of other stuff. Was much fun...

Am excited to sit down and do the full reading. Some of the contributors: Brian Oliu, Dawn Corrigan, Ben Loory, Sean Lovelace, David Erlewine, and Daniel Orozco (of "Orientation" fame).

b;ljgewa;ljgk

2010-04-21T05:34:00.000-07:00

Marvel Comics is doing an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's story, "The Electric Ant." Here's the promo copy:

"Garson’s world continues to unravel around him as he ponders the nature of his existence as an Electric Ant—an organic robot. But there are interests that want to prevent Garson from discovering the truth of his situation. And they are prepared to use deadly force."

Letters to... Oh, whatever

2010-04-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

Maybe because I e-know some e-people who are starting their non-e MFA's, I've been thinking a little about my own grad schooling.

Here's what I'd say for the benefit of those e-people, none of whom needs my help in the slightest.....

1. Your truest, you-est stories might not be the ones people love or the ones people hate. They might be the ones people don't have much basis for, the ones they meet with a not-ungenerous quiet.

2. If you're made to read or hear stuff about how much work writing is, how much bleeding and torture should be involved, be suspicious. Seriously, why the fuck would anybody ever consider doing something as nuts as fiction writing if it was no fun? Whatever a real good time is, for you, that's what you should be having when you write. Doesn't matter if it all gets thrown out.

Upcomings @ Mud Luscious

2010-04-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

There's an excerpt from Am. Gymnos up @ Mud Luscious now, in the all-excerpt issue. Tons of real goodness here from upcoming releases by Amelia Gray, Rachel Glaser, Peter Markus, Robert Lopez, Joanna Ruocco, Alissa Nutting, Ken Sparling, Roy Kesey, Michael Kimball, Lily Hoang, Aaron Burch, Jac Jemc, James Kaelan, Adam Robinson, James Chapman, Ted Pelton, and Dawn Raffel. Thnx to J.A. Tyler for putting it all together.

Corium Mag #1

2010-03-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

Some big-time talent on this one: Lauren Becker, Greg Gerke and Heather Fowler edit.

The first issue looks world smooth. Happy to have 2 Gymnos there alongside work from these friends and fantastics: Stephen Elliott, Sean Lovelace, Alec Niedenthal, Adam Moorad, Donna Vitucci, Kathy Fish, Beth Thomas, Kim Chinquee, Sheldon Compton, Ryan Ridge, Julie Babcock, Eric Beeny, Andrea Kneeland, Christina Murphy, Laura Ellen Scott, Shaindel Beers, Corey Mesler, Sam Rasnake, Rusty Barnes and Cami Park.

I read the LES short, which rocks. Looking fwd to the rest.

JMWW Spring Issue (All-Flash)

2010-03-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

March 15 is looking just as neyesh as March 1. 3/10: makes a good argument for web fiction, if such arguments need to be made any more......

David Erlewine edited this issue, and I'm seriously pumped for it. I've worked w/ some of these writers @ Wigleaf, and I've admired others from afar. The full list: Charles Lennox, Jarrid Deaton, Gary Moshimer, Rusty Barnes, Katrina Gray, Timothy Gager, Seth Fried, Tria Andrews, Damian Dressick, Sheldon Lee Compton, Ethel Rohan, S. Craig Renfroe, Andrew Roe, Kyle Minor, Michael Czyzniejewski, Matt Bell, Edward Mullany, Matthew Salesses, Kevin Wilson, Curtis Smith, Tara Laskowski, Molly Gaudry, Erin Fitzgerald, Meg Pokrass, Roxane Gay, Sam Nam, Robert Swartwood, and Ben Loory.

My story there is called "Supreme" and starts like this: "I ditched the pizza delivery boy's subcompact behind a Quonset hut of corrugated steel and made for the hills, desirous, you could say, of goodness--feeling good--and thinking maybe I had the night's blessing...."

Big thnx to David and Jen Michalski for putting this thing together. By the end of the day, I'll have dented it good......

'Hee hee' and 'Yup'

2010-03-09T13:50:00.001-08:00

"...let’s admit that literary fiction is a genre, too, shall we? Expectations guide its readers, that of respect for consensus reality and the poignancy of seemingly ordinary lives..." --Peter Straub @ The Millions.

Chapbook Month

2010-03-09T04:53:00.000-08:00

Dan Wickett of Dzanc Books has proposed that March be chapbook month. These three can't be read yet--they're on pre-order--but they must be propped.

1. Chad Simpson's Phantoms.

I read an advance of this and was happy to contribute praise. In addition to those words, I can give these: the collection is so solid. You may read it quickly, but in retrospect, the very short fictions in Phantoms might take on more breadth and solidity than do many of the novels you've read.

2. Nicolle Elizabeth's Threadbare Von Barren, a collection of very short fictions and prose poems.

I published one of Nicolle's early stories in Wigleaf (and have since snagged two more of hers). I remember titling a blog entry about that first one "Nicolle Elizabeth for Prestidigident," and that seems apt. She's an original, a conjurer. Her stories are marvels of life and craft.

3. Matt Bell's Wolf Parts

Matt does as much as anyone does for independent publishing, and his own writing is one of independent publishing's triumphs. I've read his two previous mini-books--How the Broken Lead the Blind, and The Collectors--with admiration, appreciation and real delight. I couldn't be more excited to read his forthcoming full-length collection, How They Were Found, which includes some of the best and most memorable stories I've read in a long time. It's a good bet that Wolf Parts--which is available only for a limited time thru pre-order--is going to deliver.

No Comment

2010-03-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

Today @ Wigleaf

2010-03-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

Tuere T.S. Ganges' "Pray for Danielle"

Help w/ HO #11 Bonus Materials?

2010-02-25T14:02:00.000-08:00

You know how Hobart always does bonus stuff for the new issues online?

I have three Outdoors Gymnos in there and was thinking I'd write another for the web bonuses-- 'on demand.'

Requested:

One person to give me a place in the comments here.

Five other people to supply nouns that will be used.

Two @ 3:AM Mag

2010-02-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

If there's a such a thing as a classic web mag, 3AM would probably be it.

A pair of mine just went up there, "Listings," and "Self Portrait as a Man of Importance." These two are newish and to me feel kind of post-Gymno. Thnx to Utahna Faith, 3AM's American flash editor who helped w/ them (and thnx also to others who helped).

Will something like a billion people see these things? Weird to imagine people reading them who haven't read anything else of mine.....

Push Push

2010-02-09T09:47:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the more unusual stories can use a little push: Lucas Southworth's "Crossing Our Communication Networks."

Day's Big News: DZANC BEST OF THE WEB 2010

2010-02-02T09:38:00.000-08:00

Have been hearing about the nods.... I want to congratulate everybody but especially, on behalf of the mag, those writers whose stories in Wigleaf were honored with inclusion:

Elizabeth Ellen, for "Samuel L. Jackson Is Not a Good Name for a Rabbit"
Dave Housley, for "Pop Star Dead at 22"
Sean Lovelace, for "A Sigh Is Just a Sigh"
Mary Miller, for "Aesthete"
and Jennifer Pieroni, for "Now, Right Now"

Don't think this is the last you'll be hearing from me about Dzanc's BOW 2010. Truly can't wait.

And capping the good news: my story from American Short Fiction, "Premises for an Action Plan," will be there 2.

So uh--yay!

How Long B4 Unsaid #4 is Gone?

2010-01-25T18:05:00.000-08:00

A while back, I went on a little jag here about David McClendon not making Unsaid easier to buy. It's only fair that I report the good news: you can get it via Paypal now.

#4 is easily one of the best things published in '09. It's 'ginormous,' as my 7yr old would say. After finishing it, I was reluctant to file it away; I'm currently going back thru for rereads of my favorite stuff.

Now that it's paypalable, it'll be interesting to see how long it lasts......

Anatomy of a Flash at The Big Other

2010-01-25T14:01:00.000-08:00

My story "The Fifty," from the New York Tyrant, has been reprinted @ The Big Other, with Q+A, as part of the Big O's new Anatomy of a Flash thing. Thnx to the Tyrant and to Greg Gerke.

Some Randomness RE: Am. Gymnos

2010-01-24T20:20:00.000-08:00

1. I wrote the first one in the collection, "Houston," first.

2. I've written a couple more after sealing the collection. After the first time we sealed it, I wrote "Nashville" and "Buffalo," and those two ended up getting included.

3. Thirty American states are represented, plus D.C. California has three, and Missouri, New York, and Minnesota have two each.

4. I wrote the "Minneapolis Gymno" while actually listening to Satie, but others came from other musics. "Sandusky" comes straight out of the song by the same name on Uncle Tupelo's March 12 album.

5. Some come from other stuff. I dedicated "Greenbrier" to Blake Butler because I wrote it from a line in one of his lists of 50.

6. "Seattle" was the first one published, in SmokeLong. Among the last to be published elsewhere will be "Mississippi River," in Hobart. That's one of me and Molly's faves.

7. Fourteen of them are set in places I've never seen. That number feels low.

8. I wrote "West Palm Beach" from a photo on Flickr and from the great first song on the Will Oldham Gulf Shores ep.

American Gymnos on Pre-Order (big day!)

2010-01-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

I won't try to be all cool about this: so excited!

It's something I'm not used to -- thinking of myself as lucky -- but I really am: to have worked with Molly Gaudry and others on this, and to be part of the WWP Very Short Fiction chapbook series (The first, Matt Bell's HOW THE BROKEN LEAD THE BLIND, is going to be a collector's item, I'm pretty sure, and the next, ALIEN AUTOPSY, is by one of my own favorite writers of vsf, Pedro Ponce). And then the cover art, by the super-sweet James Ulmer.....

Another lucky thing: to have had such fantastic writers as first readers. Some excerpts from their words on the words:

"Like Erik Satie's Gymnopédies, Garson's atmospheric shorts surprised me with their subtle shifts and eccentricities. Linked by geographic places, the collection progresses in tiny increments to become a dance between internal and external geographies. In perception and execution, this is a wonderfully original work."
—Jim Heynen, author of The One-Room Schoolhouse

"Scott Garson concocts, in American Gymnopédies, a diabolical geography of loss out of an atlas of jim-dandy and cracker jack, snap-shotting the American township grid, netting up the world in a strung-out string theory of gorgeous adhesive prose."
—Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone

"There's a world of detail, sound and story humming through each of these short pieces about cities. Garson's an alert writer, and he engages with each place in a way that stirs, worries, and delights."
—Pia Z. Ehrhardt, author of Famous Fathers and Other Stories

"Garson's collection reads like a travelogue of the periphery. These are plainspoken reports from a different way of seeing."
—David McLendon, editor of Unsaid

Now let me see if I can get this paypal button thingy to work.....

New Pages Reads the Wigleaf Top 50

2010-01-18T09:39:00.000-08:00

Henry F. Tonn does the write-up in the new group of reviews. He covers included stories by Roy Kesey, Kevin Wilson, Tai Dong Huai and Robert Olen Butler.

There's a little more Top 50 talk in the nice back-and-forth between Ravi Mangla and Greg Gerke at The Big Other.

Hppy 2 Bday Wigleaf

2010-01-17T08:22:00.001-08:00

Only two. Hard to believe. Maybe because there are so many babies around -- The Collagist, Matchbook, Necessary Fiction, etc.

Haven't decided what's going up tonight. Erin Fitzgerald's story, "Trumpet Voluntary," holds the top spot now. I love this one, and also Kevin Sampsell's, beneath it, and also Tawnysha Greene's, and also.......

"Interstate" @ The Mississippi Review

2010-01-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

Very happy to have one here. It's the All-Flash issue, edited by Kim Chinquee, and it's pretty much tops, with stories from Mary Akers, Randall Brown, Lydia Copeland, Kathy Fish, Avital Gad-Cykman, Greg Gerke, Daniel Grandbois, Peter Grandbois, Tiff Holland, Jeff Landon, Paul Lisicky, Robert Lopez, Darlin Neal, Carol Novack, Lorna Perez, Jen Pieroni, Peter Ramos, Gail Louise Siegel, Carrie Spell, Rusty Spell, Ed Taylor and Diane Willams.

Some samplings:

"She was next to me, all over my side of the question, and I told her, 'You're like an animal!'

Although, nobody worries about her manners, they know they're good."

—from Diane Williams' "Wrigglework"

"In my dreams all those animals talk. I see their eyes in my window, like glowing blue stars, and hear them at the foot of my bed—the pads of their feet, their dew claws in my blankets, their high, unpracticed words in my ear. It's some other language, but I know what they mean."

—from Lydia Copeland's "Checkers"

"I got a ride from a baldheaded truck driver named Gil all the way to Bedford, a small churchy town near Roanoke. Gil was a talker. In thirty minutes he filled me in on the various ways his children had disappointed him, and how to please a woman orally.  
 
'You just gotta get in there and love what you're doing,' he told me. He gripped his big hands around the steering wheel like someone trying to crack open walnuts."

—from Jeff Landon's "Where I'm Going"

"The trouble is this woman is smarter than me by at least half. I realized I needed a new strategy, something else to go on. This is how I came to the second decision.

I had to start thinking way over my own head."

—from Robert Lopez' "Nine off the Break"

"Am I asking for too much when I propose he was giving us the bones of something we could give flesh to in another life? Life after life—and, oh, the grand dinners beside the littered shore! And oh, the trips given up on two miles before the tip of the continent! Who could ever say what childhood was from here, what it felt like to be caught up inside the mouth of it?"

—from Paul Lisicky's "Mr. Cat"

Link for I-View @ The Collagist

2010-01-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

Heah

Wigleaf Subs

2010-01-02T17:07:00.001-08:00

....closed until March 1. catch-up time needed.

Time to Roll this Year's Credits

2009-12-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

Ravi Mangla has done his second annual "Best of Wigleaf" post over at his blog. Loved this.

What follows: a list of every one of the writers who've allowed us to run their stories in Wigleaf this year.

I drink to all y'all. You've each made my year better.

Lauren Becker
Matt Bell
Crispin Best
Z.Z. Boone
Andrew Borgstrom
Blake Butler
Jimmy Chen
Myfanwy Collins
Lydia Copeland
Dawn Corrigan
Kristina Marie Darling
Cherie Hunter Day
Francisco Delgado
Katrina Denza
Spencer Dew
Ryan Dilbert
Trent England
Nicolle Elizabeth
Elizabeth Ellen
M.T. Fallon
Kathy Fish
Erin Fitzgerald
Roxane Gay
Barry Graham
Amelia Gray
Mary Hamilton
William Reese Hamilton
Jim Heynen
Sarah Hilary
Lily Hoang
Dave Housely
Tai Dong Huai
Debbie Ann Ice
Jamie Iredell
Jac Jemc
Stephanie Johnson
Jason Jordan
Tim Jones-Yelvington
Thomas Kearnes
Suzanne Lamb
Darby Larson
Tara Laskowski
Kirsty Logan
Ben Loory
Sean Lovelace
Conor Madigan
Kendra Grant Malone
Ravi Mangla
Kuzhali Manickavel
Piers Marchant
Corey Mesler
C. Robert Miller
Greggory Moore
Gary Moshimer
Edward Mullany
Tirumal Mundargi
Nuala Ni Chonchuir
Jason Lee Norman
Jennifer Pieroni
Meg Pokrass
Corinne Purtill
Paula Ray
Ryan Ridge
Tree Riesener
Ethel Rohan
Jake Ruiter
Fortunato Salazar
Ben Segal
Claudia Smith
Craig Snyder
Angi Becker Stevens
Terese Svoboda
Robert Swartwood
Chantel Tattoli
Beth Thomas
Ann Walters
Brandi Wells
Rachel Yoder
Joseph Young
Shellie Zacharia
Catherine Zickgraf

C Y I Dub The Collagist Best New Mag

2009-12-15T12:59:00.000-08:00

The Collagist made my sort of eclectic list of 2009 Best Of's @ BIG OTHER.

The new issue is the flash fiction special. It includes winner and finalists of the FF contest, as judged by Kim Chinquee (Todd Cantrell, Stace Budzko, Chella Courington, and Kristine Uyeda), plus vsf by Jim Ruland, Jennifer Howard, Lindsey Merbaum and me. Haven't read beyond the fiction yet, but I can vouch for these stories. Like most Collagist fiction, each seems to open according to its own unique DNA.

My cont.: a short plus three micros from the American Gymnos project, a southern set. The short is called "A Note on the Lyrics." Probably I'll say more about it on the Collagist blog later. For now, big thanks to Matt and Steven and crew.

LR's 2009 Bad Sex in Fiction Award

2009-12-05T08:50:00.000-08:00

Littell's passage probably deserved its win--in that contextlessness makes it the most ridiculous. But Roth's is really worse, as writing. Dude was snoozing thru his sex scene. Check them all out heah.

My Turn @ the Unsaid Book Club

2009-12-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

I've been enjoying these a lot. Much thanks to Dan Wickett and David McClendon for taking the trouble.

Ridiculous Chanukkah Music from Sasha Baron Cohen's Brother

2009-12-05T08:40:00.001-08:00

Let the Wild Pimpage Start

2009-11-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

Lots of action this month on American Gymnos.

Here's a detail from the pretty-likely cover -- by Philly-based artist James Ullmer.

The final list includes two more since last time I wrote about this: "Buffalo" and "Nashville."

Linking here to the first four ever to see daylight (sharable now that fictionaut has opened its doors).

Six "Says" Pieces at Everyday Genius

2009-11-10T09:21:00.000-08:00

It's Joseph Young's month there, and so far it's been a good one--w/ Greg Gerke, Kathy Fish, Justin Dobbs, and the man A Rob himself.

"Meliana," at 40-some words, is the longest of these I've done. There are five others too. Thnx to JY for taking them in.

Upcomings

2009-10-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

Among the stuff coming up this season @ Wigleaf: work by Jim Heynen. Linking here to Matt Briggs' excellent post about JH in his Rediscovered Reading column @ Fictionaut. Heynen is one of my first favorite writers of vsf, so--very excited about this.

And while I'm on the subject: story and p-card from Elizabeth Ellen up today. Probably goes w/out saying, but her stuff is don't-miss. EE pushes things further.

Seed

2009-10-27T06:24:00.000-07:00

"SEED will be a historical first: a short-story collection that you can also stick up your vagina or rectum." --Miracle Jones

"About Me and My Cousin" @ matchbook

2009-10-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

I kind of feel like I hadn't even read this one until I read it there.

Yes, I wrote it. But take a look. You'll see why.

Brian Mihok and Edward Mullany do matchbook--and kudos to them: it's a great new mag. Super happy to have something there (and to have stuff forthcoming at The Collagist, which is the other of my favorite new mags).

Ultra Micro @ Nanoism

2009-10-09T16:43:00.000-07:00

I have an untitled piece at Nanoism, Ben White's webmag, which, if you haven't checked it out, is a really nice venue. They've run lots of good stuff lately, including work by Peter Schwartz and Mercedes Yardley.

They're on Twitter, too, and are oriented towards that format: texts of < 140 chars w/ no titles.

I'll confess: I wrote this short on Twitter, wondering if there'd be some kind of magical zap if i got it down to 140 chars exactly (which i did!).

Do I Really Care?

2009-10-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

...that TriQuarterly is dead? People are falling all over themselves to decry the move to "open source." I don't think they even know what that means. Here's what it means: the admin. at Northwestern has regarded TriQ more or less as an organ of scholarship, a 'review' in the sense of peer review. Within the peer-review culture, the easier the pub is to acquire, the less stature it has. For example, I'll bet lots of money that TriQ wasn't free to students of Northwestern, even though their money funded it. Because if it had been free--even to students--it would have had less stature. It seems people are rushing to embrace the idea of stature itself. Something closed off. Distant and admirable. Fuck stature. I won't miss TriQ. I think there's a very good chance that, with the online ("open source") version of TriQ, the CW people at Northwestern will produce something a lot more compelling.

Pre-orderable: Sojourn #22

2009-10-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen a TOC yet, but I sure do like the cover!

My cont. to this one is a set of 5 Gymnos, including the "Sandusky Gymnopedie," which was written to this song (U. Tupelo fans will have already guessed which one).

rrreeedit: Ravi Mangla's "Gratitude"

2009-10-04T13:55:00.000-07:00

here

What's Your Point?

2009-10-04T08:29:00.000-07:00

These are real publications:

Tweet the Meat
Zombie Feary Tales
Untied Shoelaces of the Mind
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
wtf pwm
TheRightEyedDeer
Dark and Dreary Magazine.

Here's Something to Check Out

2009-10-01T07:09:00.001-07:00

Have you seen Laura Ellen Scott's VIP/VSF blog? Some real goodness up today--bunch of collaborative micros, by Joseph Young and Kathy Fish. In their intro, they talk about the process, which involved each handing over five partials, to be completed by the other, as 'hybrids.'

J. Young: "What a great thing not only to take someone else’s words and work with them and care for them as if they were your own, but also to give over care of your own words, words so meticulously chosen and labored over, and entrust them to someone else."

Just recently I did something similar w/ Lily Hoang for her 'Unfinished Story' collection. In her recent conversation with Molly Gaudry, Lily says how the thing kind of started as a question: "How many people abandon perfectly good projects?" She says how she asked writers "to send me their trash, their discarded & unwanted, and I would promise to love them."

I'll wait to describe the particulars later, but, as J. Young says, it was an awesome experience/experiment. And the collaboration yielded a much more kick-ass story than I ever would have got by pushing on thru......

At Least Two People Have Taken Photos of Their Betty Boop Pumpkins and This Is One

2009-09-29T21:13:00.001-07:00

Kirsty Logan's sort-of Halloween story, "All-Night Cartoon Party," is up @Wigleaf.

If after reading that you want more seasonal fiction, there's always Thomas Cooper's "The House on the End of the Street" in the archive.

Why the Betty Boop pumpkin? A.) Why not? B) There's a B. Boop mention in the K. Logan story.....

Anudder I-ivew

2009-09-29T09:58:00.001-07:00

Fictionaut has just opened the curtain.

Nicolle E. interviewed me RE: the Wigleaf group for the f-naut blog last week. Here it is. (Two for the price of one: Barry G. is interviewed too).

Let me know if you want an invite (so's you can join the Wigleaf group).

Matt Bell's Dark Sky Interview

2009-09-29T05:19:00.000-07:00

Recently I offered some considerations on lit on the net (for the note to accompany my upcoming thing in matchbook).

But I like Matt Bell's thoughts on this better.

Newly

2009-09-20T15:57:00.000-07:00

Craig Snyder's "Death City" is just up @ Wigleaf.

This story is delicious. Have seconds.

Speaking of CS, the September Rumble is out, with stuff by Dawn Corrigan, Roxane Gay and others.

This Week @ the ASF Blog: On Ritual

2009-09-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

The photo is of the new issue, which is just out (get it get it get it).

But this is about the blog: I've got some small # of words up today about writing ritual/routine. Stephanie Austin's (w/ a nice bit about candles) was up yesterday, and these people come later this week, one a day, i think: Amelia Gray * Matthew Salesses * Melissa Swantkowski * Josh Weil....

Nibbiteshitu

2009-09-12T09:42:00.001-07:00

This is where you get on and off the antique roller coaster on the lake in Arnold's Park, Iowa. I hadn't ridden this thing in years until this summer. This summer my kid turned 7 and was tall enough to ride finally. She's high strung, and I didn't expect her to want to ride more than once. Because like I said the thing is antique. The cars fly all over the place on the tracks--back and forth, up and down. All that keeps you from rocketing out is a single worn drop bar. No harnesses. No belts.

But my girl did want to ride again. And again and again.

I'd never gone so many times in a row. In the old days they didn't have day passes.

So I had occasion to notice: the ride ends without warning. You're flying, you're spun, and they slam on the brakes. So you're sitting there--right there where you see in the picture. Inside you all is still turmoil, but you're sitting perfectly still.

Spin Your Head on this Shit

2009-09-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

1. The aesthetic is political
2. Your subject position tends to influence your aesthetics.
3. The boiling in your blood -- as you work some of this out -- is a pretty good sign that you're a fool.

Call for Subs: Southern Review Baseball Issue

2009-09-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

Just heard about this.

I guess I'm excited because I actually have one to try them w/.

Les Nouvelles du Leaf

2009-09-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

* No, we're not going print, but we're IN print--or Gary Moshimer is. On the back page of the new issue of Two One Five Magazine, an arts and culture glossy distributed for free in Philadelphia, is a "Wigleaf Presents" section, and Gary Moshimer's story "Birds" from this past spring. Looks like a strong possibility that we'll be working w/ the editors there on another tie-in story for the next issue.

* For a while I've been thinking about the possibility of starting a Wigleaf group/community platform. No place ever seemed quite right until now: we've just launched one on Fictionaut. The only problem: for a short while, anyway, Fictionaut is still in testing, which is to say you can't get in without a contact. Let me know (by comment or email) if you'd like to check it out right away: I've been given some 'invites' for this purpose.

Today When I Look at My Blog I Will See Pictures of Me and My Kid on It

2009-08-27T08:58:00.000-07:00

The Nurse Left Work at 5:00

2009-08-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

And, leaving, her attention was drawn to a grasshopper, which it appeared someone had painted. Perhaps some small child. The grasshopper toiled in the road, struggling, dragging its cruelly besilvered limbs across the pavement.

The nurse stopped for a moment, those silver limbs flashing in her eyes like realizations.

Should she come to the assistance of another poor creature on this planet, unto whom no good had been done? The nurse debated.

She had an itch on her ass cheek, but she neglected this as a consideration in favor of that which for her was the Trump Card of Her Days.

Ronald had left her not two weeks before. And what had he told her -- terrible Ronald -- as he posed for her memory in the frame of her door? He had said, I've given what love I can give. I know my love is gleaming, baby, and I don't want to smother you.

And now the nurse realized: that painted grasshopper in the street: it was she! She'd been given a chance somehow to save herself via this mechanism. But what, oh what, would she do?

RB on Twitter Fiction

2009-08-22T05:58:00.000-07:00

There's an interesting post on Randall Brown's site about work in the, um, 140 character range. I was interested. (I confess to having written a short on Twitter's real-time character counter -- it's forthcoming in Nanoism).

Brown starts by talking about shorts in general and the test often put to them: "Can you deliver a story in so few words?"

More RB: "Even when [the short] gets Twittersized, people focus on the challenge of delivering a story with so few words. Personally, as either a writer or reader, I don't particularly want 140-character stories."

I'm like: right there with you, right there with you....

I'd actually take it further: not only don't I want them, I really dislike them. I love vsf for its openness, for the freedom it gives writers. But people who try to telegraph full story arcs in 140 characters have rapidly created what I'd call a tight genre -- the antithesis to openness. I mean, you know exactly how these things are going to go. You know how to read them, you know how to write them. Often the exercise turns on the ability to imply a single lurid punchline. Like, oh, she's been poisoning his food. Oh, he doesn't know that she's packing to leave him.

Traditionalists would go, This isn't fiction! Without sharing their reasons, I'd be close to agreeing w/ them.

You Know You Want It

2009-08-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

"Jamie Iredell is a stylist with claws." OK, I made that up. But Jamie is double all right.

Here's the link.

Tomorrow I Will Shave My Face

2009-08-20T11:25:00.000-07:00

and dress myself and go and sit with others, to whom I won't say much, though words will bump around

Name that Rejection

2009-08-18T13:31:00.001-07:00

We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material.

add meh add meh

2009-08-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

After careful consideration, I have decided not to publish your--

No.

After careful consideration, I have decided not to launch a Wigleaf group on facebook. I like the relative personalness of giving news about updates via my own fb account. So if you'd join a Wigleaf group, add me instead.

Guest Post by 4 yr old

2009-08-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

WE
EAT
FOOD
TO
MAKE
US
BIG
AND
STRONG

Worm du Silk

2009-08-14T05:46:00.000-07:00

I just heard they're making a Silkworm documentary.

I wish Tim Midgett would submit something to Wigleaf.

I guess the story of the documentary is: great band nobody ever heard of. That's a new one!

Here's something good. The guy w/ the dark facial hair is the drummer, Michael Dahlquist. He's dead.

On Realism in Fiction

2009-08-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

One of the best and really only reasons not to scrap old copies of Houghton Mifflin's Best American Short Stories annuals: the introductions.

Robert Stone edited one in '92. That's almost twenty years back, if you're counting. He worked a lot harder in his intro than most people do, offering a full and pretty enjoyable consideration of the first story in Dubliners, "Araby." Next he said this:

"As of the last decade of the twentieth century, the pleasures and principles of the short story seem to remain generally what they were in Joyce's day."

And how does he understand 'pleasures and principles'? You've got to read Stone's Joyce thing to get a full sense, but here's a big clue, from later in his intro:

"In their variety, these stories (chosen by Stone for the annual) reflect what is probably the most significant development in late-twentieth century fiction, the renewal and revitalization of the realist mode, which has been taken up by a new generation of writers. This represents less a 'triumph' of realism than an obviation of the old arguments about the relationship between life and language. As of 1992, American writers seem ready to accept traditional forms without self-consciousness in dealing with the complexity of the world around them."

Before I poke at those words, I want to articulate a sense of what lots of people would call the difference between then and now. Now, first of all, we're post 'generation.' I don't think there ever really were unified generations of American writers, but now everyone knows it. In the most obvious sense, as of 2009, you've got writers who work within the commercial economy of New York publishing; you've got writers who work within the subsidized economy of American universities and their presses; and you've got Indie writers, who work for free or within non-subsidized sub economies. Obviously there's a lot of blur between those lines, but I'll go on. Now, as of 2009, it also seems clear that American writers are no longer unified in their readiness "to accept traditional forms without self-consciousness in dealing with the complexity of the world around them." And this is probably truest of Indie writers, some of whom look back to the people Stone was tacitly burying in '92--people like Calvino, Barthelme, Coover.

Now for the poking. I'm not an expert on the rhetoric having to do with what Stone calls "old arguments about the relationship between life and language," but it seems to me that at its most basic, it would be like in painting. Do you go representational, like the old masters? Or do you completely cut the line between what you paint and whatever you might see--assuming you've taken your meds--on your walk to the newsstand? Do you go fully abstract? At its most abstract, writing is, you know --words, mixed around on paper. That can be interesting. Personally I like it more in poetry than in fiction. But it can be interesting. Regardless, I don't think it's really what Stone's talking about here. He's not talking about a Jasper Johns of fiction writing. (Who would that be?) He's talking more about fabulism, metafiction, those sorts of things. Why do I stress that? Because both fabulism and metafiction are ordinarily representational--that's to say, these stories often give us what we take to be people, and these people are often moving their limbs.

So then a realist, for Stone, might be this: a STRICTLY representational artist, a writer who deals with the 'complexity of the world' by trying to get us to pass through his prose to what we will take as that world.

I'm going to say some more about this, but first I want to bring in Adam Robinson, whose comments in a recent Dogzplot interview matched what I've heard from others in e-conversations.

Check this out:

"I read a story by Paula Bomer today called “An Important Day in the Life of Marjorie Wallace” that I think fits into the definition of the word “realist” (my quotes are meant to indicate the popular term, marked by straight prose where, for instance, the word “tree” denotes “a leafy plant with a trunk and branches”) and it was okay. It has a beautiful and effective conclusion that is worth reading the story for, but to me, the payoff doesn’t seem big enough to rationalize all the work she must have put into writing it. I mean, when the story was over, the sum of my thoughts was: huh. Not as a question or anything, just blank.

And plus, when you write that way – if you make a tiny little mistake, like she does with this clause – “a wonderful February sun falling onto her face” – you risk losing your audience. And mistakes like this are much more obvious in traditional, unmediated prose. Plus, in this story she has the main character, Marjorie, yell at a merely casual friend for not calling her six weeks earlier. I thought, “No one would do that.” So I was basically workshopping this story as I went along, even though I just wanted to read it for whatever reason people read stories. I did the same thing with a Barbara Taylor Bradford book I recently listened to in my car. With “realist” stuff, I always already feel like an expert on whatever a writer is talking about, and I get distracted by matching it up to my own perspective or something. I figure, why bother – unless there is some flat out stunning style to it."

As I'm reading Stone, he and Robinson are together in seeing realism as strictly (as opposed to loosely) representational--"straight" prose meaning transparent: "the word 'tree' denotes 'a leafy plant with a trunk and branches'." Why Robinson ends up saying "why bother" is to me really interesting, and really revealing, in terms of where lots of people are nowadays. As he says, when he reads realism, he ends up noticing 'mistakes.' I do this too. If realists--or 'strict representationalists,' as I'm seeing them here--are offering us only a vision of a world we can imagine we all share, then we, as readers, are going to invest something in asking the obvious question: is this REALLY the world we all share? And somewhere along the line, this question--which readers and writers both ask--starts to get pretty boring. Like, yes, a person might open a cupboard in the morning before realizing that in fact all of the clean cups are in the top rack of the dishwasher. Like, yes, a good deal of testy dialogue might precede someone or other's breaking into tears. That's pretty boring, right? That's realism for a lot of the more interesting writers nowadays. Realists deal not with what's plausible, in some cases, for certain individuals, but with what's PROBABLE, likely, for most people, in most cases. Strict representationalists give us consensus characters, about whom a majority might say, yes, that's us, these are our lives.

And, you know, that's like pretty dull (not to mention the political fact that people outside the consensus get buried).

Literary writers working within the subsidized academic economy may be the worst offenders here. Commercial writers, always focused on the big buck, tend more towards the exceptional. A homeless man's journey to the White House.... something like that.....

Back to '92: Though Stone was probably willing to consign people like Barthelme to the history books, I definitely don't think he was thinking about realism in this greatest-common-denominator way. His own fiction isn't much like that. And look at the stories he was talking about in his intro. This is from the third paragraph of one of the 'realist' stories Stone picked--DFW's "Forever Overhead":

"And dreams. For months past, there have been dreams like nothing before: moist and yielding and distant, full of busy curves, frantic pistons, soft warmths and great failings; and you have awakened through fluttering lids to a rush and a gush and a toe-curling scalp-snapping jolt of feeling from an inside deeper than you knew you had, spasms of a sweet deep hurt, the street-lights through your window blinds cracking into sharp stars against the black bedroom ceiling...."

I mean, if this was what we thought of as 'realism' now, I think we'd see more writers open to it.....

Kurt Vile

2009-08-08T08:28:00.001-07:00

I love this guy.

Here, via The Fader, is an mp3 from his second full-length album, which is forthcoming from Matador. (The track is called "Overnite Religion.")

Twitter Sucks

2009-08-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

but I just put Wigleaf up there and will (grimace) 'tweet' when there are updates.