this vs. that

I want to post about the apparent discrepancy of taste in the section titled "Other people's books."

The list has mainly stuff by so-called 'minimalists' or worse 'realists,' though I don't think they are either of these things. These are the writers I read a lot and have some kind affinity with, though I'm not sure why. I just like them. I think it has something to do with clarity of vision (image) and language - I'm drawn to this. I also like some big, monstrous books, that are sort of confusing, but that I find beautiful or worthwhile anyway. Suttree, I think, is McCarthy's best. The thickness of language, getting lost in that book is fun. Same with Omensetter's Luck by William Gass. Those are what I call 'big language books,' where the language of the text is what makes the book, where language actually becomes content (though, I'm not sure you can't say this same thing about the 'minimalists', it's just more obvious with these big-language books).

Here's a thing: there's this on-going debate between these different types of writers. Between say, the minimalists, the more post-modern guys (say, Ben Marcus, Gass, Barth, Foster Wallace) and maybe the regionalists, Southern Gothic, like McCarthy or William Gay. The Minimalists got yelled at in the 80's, though they sort of dominated the 80's. It was dumb for people to bitch about them; I think we all get this, in retrospect, but the problem that's come out of it is that somehow 'minimalism' is not as good, not as beautiful, or worthwhile, or (frighteningly), not as creative or inventive as the big Tomes. That's sad. I mean, it's really narrow-minded. I think for both experimental, surreal, avant-garde stuff to work, there has to be a solid base of some kind of representational stuff (not commercial shit, but good, 'literary' representational stories). This is another problem though: people conflate realism and representation. This is wrongheaded - William Gass (of whom I'm a sort of never-ending fan) even wrote a retarded essay on representation called "Representation and the War for Reality." Most of the (good) minimalists aren't trying to mimic reality though; their aesthetic is not one of mimesis as Gass would have his readers believe, and that's sort of sad, because it shows that Gass never really took the time to try to understand these works. Also, someone says somewhere that the experiments, those inventing big, obvious and new things make the world safe for the representational writers. This, also, is simply a retarded way of seeing the literary world, as it makes a hierarchy of things - See, experimental lit is the outcast, yet the protector, honorable crusader for all Writing everywhere, making the world safe for it. I think it's more a give and take thing - all the different groups feed each other, test each other. Representational authors push things in the same way that avant-garde or experimental writers push things, they just do it in (often) quieter ways. This is a symptom of our culture, I think. If it's not big and loud, we don't think it's anything great. Likewise for avant-garde/experimental films. Therefore, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufmann, David Lynch; while no one knows of Phil Morrison or Goran Dukic, though at least Terrence Malick is well-known even if his (early) films are rather quiet.

Note: I'll probably edit this post some. I don't mean to confuse avant-garde or experimental or other terms, I'm just sort of grouping those terms together for ease of, what, explanation, I guess.

if you switch the s and the p in the word "blogspot" up in the url, you will go to:
BIBLECOLLEGEONLINE.COM. wow. i don't condone such a site nor do i read bibles.

i taught Beattie, Carver, and Rick Barthelme today. earlier in the week i taught Pynchon and Donald Barthelme. it was hard teaching the 'minimalists' because they're so quiet. with Pynchon and those guys you can interpret and find meaning and explain things away - they're good for teaching is what i'm saying. with Carver and folk, it's harder to teach, i think because what's there is there, and you either get it or not. i don't know. i wasn't going to talk about teaching on here, but now i am.

also: i said i was going to post on some things, like creative writing programs and online and print stuff, etc, and i probably will, sometime. i think the general thing i have to say about it is 'incestuous.' that's how it's always been though, going back to the modernists. people publish their friends. i think that's pretty okay, both in the print and online world. more soon.

a fire drill made me find this

a fire drill made me leave my building and find the following note on the ground:

hey baby,
whats up? not much here just sittin in algebra bein bored its about 12:40...im leavin at 1:00 i'm not supposed to leave till 1:30 but i didnt take a shower oranything this mornin i just got up went home seen that Chris was still there went in got my backpack and walked back out out i love you so much baby im so happy and i hope you are too i just wanted to write you a note i thought it would be cute [indecipherable language/symbol] but i'm not sure what else to say except i love you more than life itself and i hope youre havin a good day and can't wait to see you at like 7:00 or so but I LOVE YOU! bye baby

really, without the punctuation, it's quite good. now i'm going to write a fiction story based on this note:

She wrote him a note. Then she died.

i feel mean. that is all.

syllogism and stuff

HTMLGIANT is sort of good and sort of dumb; therefore i like it. link above.

i'm going to post some stuff about these things soon, either in one god-sized post, or not. these things:

1.innovative,experimental,avant-garde fiction
2.mfa/phd writing programs
3.stories about nothing that aren't boring
4.online vs print and who cares

i think it's important to say here that i typically have no idea what i'm talking about and after thinking about things, i realize that i have no idea or change my mind then realize it. i think it's also important to say that i might not post on these things at all because i might, like, not want to anymore, think it's pointless, or not know what to say anymore.

weather

it's raining out today in east tennessee. there is a tin-covered tornado-door below my window and rain makes rattling sounds on it. out the window, there is the side of a white house, my Honda Accord ('97), maroon recycling bins, telephone wires and poles, bamboo, trees with some yellow and dark red leaves on them. i just woke up from a nap, i taught in the morning. everything feels far away. it's all the same as it always is except wet.

frederick barthelme once told me he was going to write a book called Weather. we both laughed.

when people call me from far away, they tell me about the weather where they are.

my grandparents always seemed very concerned about the weather.

my dog seems a little ignorant of weather, my cats more aware.

some people i know like to pretend it's very cold out when it's only moderately cold out. i don't know why.

sometimes when it's very cold out if you tell yourself it's not so cold, it won't be.

it's nearly impossible to masturbate when in a room without good central heating, at the very least, unpleasant.

the term 'bad weather' should stop existing.

ninja kerouac tao-guy

well-choreographed.



i don't like Kerouac all that much, but i like to hear him read. i like that he 'believes' in what he's writing so much. okay, i like Kerouac, i guess, even though i always had a hard time reading On the Road. if he read it to me, i think it would've gone better.



i like how the guy in the wifebeater looks at the camera so often: epitome of self-awareness, close to enlightened, perhaps.

Narcissistic Post (without sarcasm or other forms of humor)

i started a new story. here is an excerpt:

In Japan, Matt had a four-room flat, cooked dinner every night, had friends over, drank Japanese beer, and had long, strange conversations about life, existing, living in the modern age, what that meant, what exactly existing was (was it something to do with thinking that one was existing, or was it more of a zen thing, more of a breathing and eating thing?) how to deal with the death of nature, the natural world and the human’s place in it, and other interesting things. Interesting things. Above all, in Japan, things and people had been continuously interesting, fresh. The word clarity was a word he hesitated to use, but in Japan it was as though he was watching his life from some distant place, some clear place, a mountain perhaps, and he saw the way he was living (simply living, with no preconceptions and nothing to stop him) and knew that there was no good or bad in it all.

Looking at this basement, though, things seemed bad. Having to live with his mother, coming home to his semi-boring family, he immediately knew the clarity with which he had seen his life in Japan - that odd and alien view he had of things - was going to leave him. It was depressing. He had felt it flying over the ocean as one feels the first touch of illness. Matt sat on the futon, then laid down, then sat up again and called his brother to tell him he was coming over. His brother’s girlfriend, Stephanie, answered and said his brother wasn’t there. He was on a business trip.

Please don’t say things like that, Matt said.

I know, she said. It’s hard to believe.

I can’t talk anymore, Matt said, and hung up the phone.

this post will be about my writing. i have a book of stories called either Marathon, Ohio and Other Stories, or it's called the name of this blog, which is called, Stories Like Stories You Know. i don't know, i think i might save the second title. i'm in the middle of a novel called Meridian (which, depressingly, i found out is the name of a Toni Morrison novel today). it (mine) is about someone living in Meridian, Mississippi, which is near where i lived for three years. i lived in Hattiesburg, went to the Center for Writers there. i have my book of stories out at one place, i have been rejected by at least ten agents, and now i'm going to submit the book of stories to some more places. i will have Meridian finished in the winter and another book of stories after that, probably. you can publish these if you want to. it would be okay with me, i mean.

also: i don't like that excerpt now. i like it, i mean, but i don't think it shows enough of the story or what it's about, maybe.

Wal-Mart Realism

this happened to me: last week a man at walmart told me he was going to take me out into the parking lot and paralyze me. he was really mad. he was yelling at me in the middle of walmart, people were staring, and he was saying i was jeopardizing his family. he pointed back to them: there stood a woman with dark hair, two children, and an empty shopping cart. the man was saying this because i went around him in traffic. i didn't cut him off, i went around him, but that's okay. he didn't really let me say much, though i did say that i didn't cut him off. he said i didn't cut him off, but i went around him illegaly. so, in walmart, with a set of toy guns in my hands for my halloween costume and a plastic sherriff badge, he said he was going to take me out in the parking lot and paralyze me. he was very clear about this. he said i should be paralyzed for the rest of my life. i told him that he probably wasn't going to do that. that made him angrier. he stuck a finger in my face and yelled some more. many children seemed interested and awed. the guy in front of me in line dropped his bananas. the yelling guy said he was going to call the cops right now, this minute. i said he should and that he'd probably be in trouble for harrassing me. he yelled more about how i was jeopardizing his family. i apologized, but said i didn't think i was. then i paid for my toy guns and badge and left.

i will write some more about the stories and stuff over to the right later. i'm confident that no one is reading this.

oh. good work Barack Obama.