Out and In

Some decent webzines have died this year. There's Unpleasant Event Schedule, whose name should definitely be recycled by someone (they never did publish the Karyna McGlynn work they were promising). There's 3711 Atlantic, which ran some good stuff last year, and Steel City Review, which probably would have had one story in Wigleaf's next Long Shortlist if it hadn't folded (Dawn Corrigan's).

But if some web journals are biting it, a much higher number of them are just starting out. Roland Goity's LIT N IMAGE is a nice-looking new one, with work in its autumn issue by Barry Graham. The two BG pieces, incidentally, are both part of his new chapbook from Achilles--NOT A SPECK OF LIGHT IS SHOWING. The evidence points to this chapbook being damn good....

2 1/2 Questions for Shane Jones...

...whose gem of a short, "Attics," is just up @ Wigleaf.

1.

SG: The other day on your blog you, uh--expressed impatience with the idea of plot and character development. You wondered whether a novel could read "like a Rene Magritte painting looks and feels." I was interested in that for a few reasons. One reason is that you're pretty good at working character tensions, as the stellar title story of your Greying Ghost chapbook makes clear. Is there a question here? If there is, is it one that's answerable?

SJ: I'm usually just rambling on my blog, which is pretty much what I was doing when I made the Rene Magritte comment. I think the answer is yes and no. When I look at a painting by Magritte I feel the following things: confusion, delight, surprise, and excitement. That overall feeling is what I like in literature. I think a novel could feel like a string of Rene Magritte paintings, maybe. I'd like to read a novel that had that blurb on the back: "Feels like walking through a gallery of Magritte paintings." It makes me excited. As far as plot and character, I just don't care much about it, or at least I pretend not to. People get wrapped up in plot and character and talking about "narrative arcs" and it's just kind of stupid. When I'm writing I don't think about character development or how my plot is developing. Does anyone? I'm just trying to keep the energy in the language going. I'm stringing together sentences that surprise me and make me happy, for as long as I can.

2.

SG: I'm probably too fond of drawing parallels between indie rock and indie lit, but here goes: in the recording industry, though major lables have tended to be middle-of-the-road, they've always kept an eye on the indepedents, which is to say that there's a kind of relationship. The majors often grab for the innovations that the independents have fostered. Geffen signs Nirvana--to use a skinny-white-guy example--and everybody makes money: Geffen, Nirvana, and Sub Pop too. Do you see anything of this sort on the horizon for independent lit?

SJ: Well, I think it can happen and it has happened. I really hope I'm not wrong with this, but I believe Zoe Trope's book Don't Kill The Freshman was originally published by Future Tense and because it became so popular, and the amount of "buzz," Harper picked it up and gave Zoe a six-figure deal (I think Zoe agreed to expand the book). That couldn't be more indie rock-star making it big. That's the equivalent of some indie band playing two shows and getting a huge record deal because 10,000 kids showed up. The problem is I'm not sure the audiences are the same. People who think they are reading indie-lit go to a local bookstore and pick up Don Dellilo or Jonathan Safran Foer and they think they are indie because of it. Also, the actual act of reading has become indie, and the bookstores are feeding them mainstream writers hyped as indie and cool and hip and. I wish it wasn't like that. It would be funny if Haper and Penguin and Random House started giving out six-figures deals to people like Blake Butler, Peter Markus, Chelsey Minnis, and about a dozen other I'd like to list. I think they all deserve it.

3.

SG: Do you ever look in the mirror and think…?

SJ: I just looked in the mirror and thought "Wow, that's a lot of face." When I shave my face looks really wide. I kind of look like a turtle.

About Lou

Maybe somebody like Dave Clapper or Chad Simpson will come over here and tell me I'm over-simplifying, but I'm laying all the blame for the Cubs being out of it on Lou Pinella. He seems to me one of those defensive types who refuses to acknowledge what he doesn't like. Like W, come to think of it. This is a very good way of making yourself stupid.

I'm referring in particular to Game One of the divisional series against the Dodgers. The Cubbies had been swept the year before--last year--and Pinella should have seen, but refused to acknowledge, how crucial a good showing in Game One was, especially given the expectations this year, with the Cubs having home field throughout the playoffs. So: fifth inning. The Cubs have a two-zip lead, and Pinella's starter, Ryan Dempster, gives up two shaky walks to load the bases. What's Pinella thinking? That there are two outs? That there's no reason to panic because he has the stronger team? Come on. Dempster's flailing. Anyone can see that. And this is the playoffs. And your players need this game.

I'm telling you, it's on Pinella. If he gets Dempster out of there, Loney--who's not Manny Ramirez after all--doesn't hit the grand slam, and the 'oh no' feeling doesn't work its way into the Cubs hitters....

New Lamination Colony

The graffiti is just something to look at. No official relation to LC. But it seems right maybe in its big splashy somethingness....

Well, I'm excited. The last LC was all sorts of fun, and this one's bigger.

I've got a story in there, "I Talk with the Mermaid." Here's the rest of the line-up: Amanda Billings, Joshua Ware, Phil Estes, Matt Kirkpatrick, Stacy Kidd, Jamie Iredell, Ian Davisson & Ryan Downey, Krammer Abrahams, Shane Jones, Angela Genusa, Daniel Bailey, Brandon Barrett, Brandon Scott Gorrell, Gene Morgan, Conn Thomas O'Brien, Thomas Cook, Molly Gaudry, and Matt Bell.

Skip Sands' Family Tree

I'm rereading M. Herr's Dispatches for a class I'm doing. Everybody stole from Herr, so DJ shouldn't be faulted, but man did I do a double take when I got to the part of 'Breathing In' relating to "spooks"--Western intelligence types in Vietnam.

"By 1967 all you saw was the impaired spook reflex, prim adventurers living too long on the bloodless fringes of the action, heartbroken and memory-ruptured, working alone together toward a classified universe. They seemed like the saddest casualties of the Sixties, all the promise of good service on the New Frontier gone or surviving like the vaguest salvages of a dream...."

Stylewise, DJ is of course a lot closer to Herr than to, say, Tim O'Brien. But that passage! Is that not Skip Sands?

Rogue Post-Mainstream media

During Thursday night's VP debate, Sarah Palin used the phrase "mainstream media." To paraphrase, she said something like, "I'm not going to allow my comment/words/etc. to pass through the filters of the mainstream media, I will speak directly to the American people."

I happen to have recently had the displeasure of reading some posts and comments on several far right websites, and so the phrase set off an alarm in my head. On these far right websites, they use the acronym MSM, demonstrating their belief that the ordinary media outlets in our nation have been hijacked by some nefarious forces. Since we are talking about the right, after all, it's safe to say that they are not articulating a marxian critique of the corporate-owned media.

During the last eight years, certain phrases have become code understood mostly by Bush's right-wing evangelical base; phrases like "no more legislating from the bench" and the like signal a certain position on abortion and similar "values" issues. But what Sarah Palin did on Thursday was to use a code word that signaled to a particular, mostly underground, group of white Christian nationalists that she speaks their language. That's darn scary. You betcha.

The Gentleman from Indiana

This is the 1899 first novel from Indiana native Booth Tarkington, and also the title of my new story over at Titular in the novels section. That dark spooky guy in the background there -- he's not in mine. The guy and the girl? Maybe.

Tarkington is probably best known for The Magnificent Ambersons, which won a Pulitzer and which I think Orson Welles made into a film. But Gentleman was made into a film too, and also a stage play. The gentleman from Indiana did pretty well with the Gentleman from Indiana. I hope to also. I expect a Pushcart, at the very least.