Sunday, November 30, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Best Thing I Heard on TV at the Hilton Garden Inn in Louisville
"Maybe scallops will fly out of me britches!"
--Mr. Krabs
--Mr. Krabs
Monday, November 24, 2008
2 1/2 Questions for Amanda Nazario...
...whose sure-fine story, "Big C and Lil Puppet," has just gone live @ Wigleaf.
1.
SG: This story would seem to take its place in the slim niche of dogwalking literature. There's the Ann Tyler novel--Accidental Tourist, is it? The new woman, she's a dog walker, right? I read it a long time ago. Don't know why I keep it around because I'll pretty surely never read it again.... Then there's Arthur Bradford's debut collection, Dogwalker. Now there's a kick-ass book. Have you read it? The dogwalking material isn't as memorable as the mutant puppies material or the having-sex-with-dogs material, but still. Okay, so what's my question? Dogwalking? What you're reading lately? What your dogs are reading?
AN: I love Dogwalker too! Being a dog walker/writer with literate friends, I get asked a lot whether I've read it. Though it deals with dog walking almost not at all, I'm able to relate to it anyway -- Bradford's bizarre/cruel situations, softheartedness, and slightly weird narrative voice are all right up my alley. I think about "Chainsaw Apple," wherein a guy falls in love with a girl after accidentally chainsawing her face, about... once a week. However, my own writing is more similar to Anne Tyler's, if I have to pick between them. Her Saint Maybe is a novel I like; in my longer stuff I aspire to that level (depth? can you aspire to depth?) of sadness. That's a sad book, man. And the dog in The Accidental Tourist is a Corgi, which is my favorite breed of dog, so there's something else she and I have in common. Right now I'm rereading Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, which I read last summer and realized I had to read again -- its articulation of a desperate lifestyle, of absurdity and hilarity in desperation, is addictive. The dogs I walk live better than I do; I think some of them read P.G. Wodehouse.
2.
SG: You're a deejay, and you're a writer. This means that if we ever met at a party and somebody started feeding me cigarettes I would try to talk to you all night about the many possible parallels between the pop song and the story, music and lit.... How would that conversation go (before you started focusing keenly on something beyond my left shoulder)?
AN: The first thing I'd say would be that deejays in clubs learn fast how to deal with drunks who won't shut up. This would make things awkward. I would apologize. Then I'd say I do notice endless similarities between music and literature, and I hope what I write can satisfy people the way a good pop song can. (I choose pop because that's the kind of music I know best; I could try to write a piano concerto-like story, but I doubt it would go very well.) It's exciting to imagine this can happen, that two artistic disciplines so different from each other can produce the same feeling in a person. As literary fiction continues to incorporate new stuff -- by "stuff" I mean drawings, verse, experimentation with visual space, etc. -- there seems to be a lot of room in it for music. Not that this is that new an idea. I'm thinking right now of Dos Passos's interstitial "camera" sections that have song lyrics in them. I guess I just mean I'm excited to see more of that, to see more of a conflation of music with literature, and not just because right now many of my stories contain copyrighted song lyrics that make journals not want to pick them up.
3.
SG: How often do you daydream about...?
AN: Constantly. It's a wonder I get any work done at all.
1.
SG: This story would seem to take its place in the slim niche of dogwalking literature. There's the Ann Tyler novel--Accidental Tourist, is it? The new woman, she's a dog walker, right? I read it a long time ago. Don't know why I keep it around because I'll pretty surely never read it again.... Then there's Arthur Bradford's debut collection, Dogwalker. Now there's a kick-ass book. Have you read it? The dogwalking material isn't as memorable as the mutant puppies material or the having-sex-with-dogs material, but still. Okay, so what's my question? Dogwalking? What you're reading lately? What your dogs are reading?
AN: I love Dogwalker too! Being a dog walker/writer with literate friends, I get asked a lot whether I've read it. Though it deals with dog walking almost not at all, I'm able to relate to it anyway -- Bradford's bizarre/cruel situations, softheartedness, and slightly weird narrative voice are all right up my alley. I think about "Chainsaw Apple," wherein a guy falls in love with a girl after accidentally chainsawing her face, about... once a week. However, my own writing is more similar to Anne Tyler's, if I have to pick between them. Her Saint Maybe is a novel I like; in my longer stuff I aspire to that level (depth? can you aspire to depth?) of sadness. That's a sad book, man. And the dog in The Accidental Tourist is a Corgi, which is my favorite breed of dog, so there's something else she and I have in common. Right now I'm rereading Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, which I read last summer and realized I had to read again -- its articulation of a desperate lifestyle, of absurdity and hilarity in desperation, is addictive. The dogs I walk live better than I do; I think some of them read P.G. Wodehouse.
2.
SG: You're a deejay, and you're a writer. This means that if we ever met at a party and somebody started feeding me cigarettes I would try to talk to you all night about the many possible parallels between the pop song and the story, music and lit.... How would that conversation go (before you started focusing keenly on something beyond my left shoulder)?
AN: The first thing I'd say would be that deejays in clubs learn fast how to deal with drunks who won't shut up. This would make things awkward. I would apologize. Then I'd say I do notice endless similarities between music and literature, and I hope what I write can satisfy people the way a good pop song can. (I choose pop because that's the kind of music I know best; I could try to write a piano concerto-like story, but I doubt it would go very well.) It's exciting to imagine this can happen, that two artistic disciplines so different from each other can produce the same feeling in a person. As literary fiction continues to incorporate new stuff -- by "stuff" I mean drawings, verse, experimentation with visual space, etc. -- there seems to be a lot of room in it for music. Not that this is that new an idea. I'm thinking right now of Dos Passos's interstitial "camera" sections that have song lyrics in them. I guess I just mean I'm excited to see more of that, to see more of a conflation of music with literature, and not just because right now many of my stories contain copyrighted song lyrics that make journals not want to pick them up.
3.
SG: How often do you daydream about...?
AN: Constantly. It's a wonder I get any work done at all.
Dawn of Twelve Stories
And it looks good.
Wigleaf connections: Molly Gaudry co-edits. Jimmy Chen has a story in it. Matt Bell has a story in it. And Steve Almond has a story in it. What's the Steve Almond connection? I know what his next thought is going to be after reading this. His next thought: I've gotta send something to Wigleaf.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Out of Control Line-ups...
...in these three print mags, just out or pre-orderable (by following links)
New York Tyrant
Quick Fiction
Keyhole (handwritten issue)
I could name names. But just trust me: out of control.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Aperdictulum
I was really slack once about subs. I'd lose my list of places I'd sent stuff to, then figure it didn't matter much anyway, because no one really liked the stories I was writing. But before I got to that place in my head -- before I came down from the high of the writing itself -- I'd think that I had the best story in the world and send it to like fifty places. As a result there was a story of mine that was once accepted at four different journals. And of course numbers 2-4 I can never send stuff to again....
Why am I thinking about this? Wigleaf has lost a couple stories in this way recently-- both to Quick Fiction, which I guess makes sense, since it's pretty much my favorite mag. One of the writers felt really terrible, and I wrote to her saying that I wanted to encourage in her the misguided idea that she owed me one. That writer was Molly Gaudry, and I guess I was successful in my appeal, because she wrote another, the fabulous "Come See the Monkey," which has just gone up.
Why am I thinking about this? Wigleaf has lost a couple stories in this way recently-- both to Quick Fiction, which I guess makes sense, since it's pretty much my favorite mag. One of the writers felt really terrible, and I wrote to her saying that I wanted to encourage in her the misguided idea that she owed me one. That writer was Molly Gaudry, and I guess I was successful in my appeal, because she wrote another, the fabulous "Come See the Monkey," which has just gone up.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sometimes It Takes Years for Things to Occur to Me
Like w/ the cover of Harry Nilsson's 1971 album here: is he holding a bowl? I looked at this the other day and looked again and thought, He's holding a bowl.
One time I sang "Coconut" in the car and B jumped in with the "Doctor" parts and from the back seat it was like, Do that again, Do that again, Do that again, Do that again....
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