etc etc etc

Last Days by Brian Evenson - a self-mutilation guidebook. not really. that would've been funny. this book is not funny, or not funny very often. it's amusing sometimes. Evenson's prose is flat, tempered, and full of violence. it's a detective story intertwined with a superficial spiritual component (i say this negatively) that keeps the reader reading and also wanting a bit more. while it's good, i felt the vague quiet annoyance that i feel too often with genre-bent fiction, that it's characters were a bit too characterless. still, it was fun to play in.

Livability by Jon Raymond - i mentioned this one a while ago. Raymond is the author of the stories "Train Choir" (now a movie called Wendy and Lucy) and "Old Joy" (also a movie). i liked the movie Old Joy better than the story. i felt the movie complicated the characters, went deeper into their lives and their disappointments. his stories are affecting, but sometimes i feel they're rough sketches for a larger thing. the small changes in the movie Old Joy added so much to the characterization and the story as a whole that I wondered: why didn't Raymond write it like this? the prose is clean, clear, but a little bland, though this does fit the lives of his somewhat bland and over-ordinary characters living in an over-ordinary world. "The Suckling Pig" is one of the better stories in the collection for its depiction of odd loneliness and foreigness.

As I Lay Dying by Faulkner - reread it for a class i'm teaching. still as cool as ever.

Last Night by James Salter - to me, Salter's gotten to that point in his career where he's crafting sentences so perfectly and knows so well how to a construct a story that there's almost nothing one can do except sit back and be sort of impressed. he's a craftsmen. these stories are stories, exactly like stories, with a nice twist, a compression of language and emotion, a perfect character sketch, etc. he's also a writer of sex, of attraction between the sexes, and that's evident here again. still, it doesn't compare to A Sport and a Pasttime, but that's okay.

i read some other stuff, but that was longer ago now and i don't feel like i could write about it accurately at all. thank you. i'm going to read blake butler's Ever next. thank you.

fictionauting: a critique

i have been on fictionaut for a couple weeks now. i have some thoughts about it. i want to say these thoughts in some concrete way, i don't know why. i think, mainly, fictionaut is an interesting space. overall i've enjoyed my time on the site and there seems to be a lot of very good, surprising writing.

i will start with things that make me uneasy.

the "favorite" tag has many possible problems, obvious ones:

1. stories become about competition (who can get the most favorites) and that seems strange. favoriting pushes a "standard" or "judgment" thing in very concrete form right to the front of the story, ie, right to the front of the piece of art. art isn't to be experienced like this. what i like about art, when i'm doing well, is that i don't 'judge' right away. i think there is something to be said for 'letting the art happen.'

2. there are logistical problems with the favoriting system. it could lead to Author A favoriting a story of Author B so that Author B comes to Author A's story and favorites it. in this scenario, everyone is masturbating on everyone else's stories.

3. should published stories be allowed to be "published" on fictionaut? i don't know. a nice answer to this might be something like "as long as the story is not in a current issue; it must be archived or in a back issue. " that seems fair. that way, the journal gets its visitors or purchases, etc. while journals' copyrights need to be respected, i do believe in the "art" more than the "journal" itself. while the journal is the vehicle - the tool for getting the art out there - it is the art inside that matters.

4. (personal) it became difficult (for a moment) for me to say "thank you" and "great story" a lot with any authenticity or sincerity even when i like a story. i was feeling worn out. i can make myself be authentically sincere and nice in an email occasionally to a stranger, but fictionaut almost forces me to be authentically sincere to strangers very often, which is not possible. there is also the strangeness of having a bunch of "noise" thrown at a story, reducing it in some way, i don't know how, i haven't thought far enough.

5. upon setting up my account, i thought, i'll read stuff that other people have read (i looked at "views") and then i'll "construct" my "favorites" list so i can have a sort of "complete" looking profile. but this got me wandering, what about stories that don't have as many views? so i began looking at those with less views. then i began wandering, what stories am i missing? i saw there are like 53 pages of people profiles on the site, so i'm probably seeing, what, a tenth of those stories, probably less? accessiblity issues seemed weird there. Fictionaut may need an archiving format.

now i will say the positive things; these positives are not meant to cancel out anything above, they are only either another way to view a thing or, i don't know, me just trying not to look at everything so negatively (the numbers don't correspond, sorry, i'm lazy, they should).

1. i'm not terribly sure it matters whether a story has been published or not. no, i don't think it matters. if it is art, it doesn't matter. if it is a thing that is supposed to be free and viewable and gettable, it doesn't matter. within the rules of publishing, it does matter, but in terms of art, it doesn't matter whether the art is in one journal or another or both.

2. "favoriting" stories/poems is also already happening in the online community, it just doesn't seem as odd because it's coming from individual web sites. people link stories on their blogs and have online zines on their blogs, etc, which is essentially the same as "favoriting." often many people talk about the same story or same book on their blog (for instance, a lot of people have talked nice things about Light Boxes, which we call reviews), so this could be viewed as many people "favoriting" this book. however, these "favorites" don't actually come on the book, as in Fictionaut. what does come on the book, however, are blurbs by other fairly famous writers. this is the same thing Fictionaut does with comments. the comments, i think, are like blurbs. still, all the reservations i have about favoriting are still valid above.


3. the word "competition" is scary in terms of Fictionaut. is Fictionaut using a "competition" based system to "choose" which art is "best"? yes it is. but this is what all journals do anyway, except readers don't get to see the losers, those rejected manuscripts. one of the more interesting things with Fictionaut (and not intended to be interesting in a malicious way) is that readers now get to see the losers, those not faved or commented on, etc.

4. i read this blog post searching for stuff about fictionaut. i like darby larson and what he says about things. his writing i like too. Abjective (the journal he edits) looks amazing and the writing is always staggering, so much so that it makes me feel like i should stop. but then i realize that i'm writing with a completely different set of aesthetic values. this is why i'll never send to Abjective, however much i enjoy it. anyway, he mentions that an aesthetic will arise in Fictionaut and this, in some way, will limit the site, ie, limit the type of writing on the site. i think this is true, but again it's no different than any online journal, with a set of editors, all with particular aesthetic values. darby's aesthetic values for Abjective, for instance, while not easily definable by me right now, do seem very clear to me. so, if Fictionaut begins to move toward a particular aesthetic, i don't see what is wrong this. this is what is supposed to happen. the system becomes self-organizing or else it'll fall apart. the worry is that an inferior aesthetic will dominate or an aesthetic that leaves out too much good writing. the real hope would be that the aesthetic somehow continually changes, slips to other types of stories, etc...

5. the other thing darby writes about is lack of critical analysis. i agree. there is a lack of critical analysis, but it doesn't appear, as of now, that that's what Fictionaut is about. i view fictionaut as an online self-publishing journal edited by writers. it allows writers like me to pick a story i like and favorite it, giving it attention or a comment, publishing it in my profile. so in this way, my profile becomes an aesthetic statement and my own sort of mini-journal, which is interesting. in this way, one can reject a dominant aesthetic if one arises. maybe. also, i have seen some good critical analysis, some really close reading and revision in comments. so there is potential for critical analysis.


that is all. i've spent way to much time writing this and not grading papers and i'm still hungover from two days ago. i feel like i'm taking this all way too seriously.

neo-neorealism.

so tired of reading negative things that people say about so-called "realism" "traditional" writing or "narrative" driven writing. i've been reading a lot of blogs saying these things. this is my own fault, i know. so fucking tired of the inattentiveness of people calling things "realistic" or "narrative" driven when these texts are just as artificial as so-called surreal, magical realism, etc. fuck. fuck. i'm getting really tired of these hierarchies that are so broad and vague. i'm becoming less impressed with magical realism and surreal things because sometimes it feels like it's all i read online.

here is an article from AO Scott, helping reverse the above trend a little, from fb: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/magazine/22neorealism-t.html?_r=1. i have seen Old Joy and Half-Nelson. i would say Old Joy fits more as Neo-neo realism, where Half-Nelson is attempting, like The Wrestler, to be "gritty" or something. other films i think are examples of neo-neo realism are Junebug, Lars and the Real Girl, and probably stuff by David Gordon Green. as a side note, i read Jon Raymond's Livability (has Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy in it) and it's a good book of stories, but it's not great. the stories, in my opinion, are too loose and the language is not interesting enough. i did like what happened in the stories, but prose itself is plain and unsurprising. i feel that the movie Old Joy is better than the story because the film has a more surprising and unique style than the prose of the story.

i will be posting a long critique, with both good and bad things, about fictionaut soon, tonight.

newness

i've gone from being obsessed with html giant to being obsessed with fictionaut. such a cool space. i have an invite left. does anyone want an invite? kenny? pat, did you get that first one?

andrew wyeth and others

i don't know anything about painting or sculpting or other arts. i heard about andrew wyeth on the radio this last january. he had just died and they talked about him. i wanted to see his paintings. then i forgot about him. then emily and i went to greenville, sc. the city art museum happened to have an andrew wyeth gallery. i like his later paintings, like this of a wild dog. or this one of man in snow. or this one of a house. some of his earlier paintings, or many of them, seem very very good technically, but a little sentimental or something. i like his later ones and the ones where he lets the painting and brush just go, real loose, almost sloppy. some of the unfinished ones (i think they were unfinished) were really cool, too, and one of a fire.

also, this guy's (bob trotman) stuff was neat. he had made these enormous people carved out of wood, all in business suits, all looking like frankenstein's monster. it was creepy in a good way. i don't think just looking at the sculptures works, the physical space they took up was huge. i liked it.

i have a new thing at elimae. i like the ones called "creature," "working life," and the abrahams story with the long title.

Waltz With Bashir

we watched this last night in the mall theatre. we were the only people in the theatre, as always, and the mall for whatever reason always seems to snag a new independent film. the animation is terrific. visually, the movie is hard not to look at. it's about the war in Lebanon from the early eighties (i believe i've got the years right) and deals with a man's loss of memory twenty years later. he was in the war, he knows, but he can't remember what he did. there are many sort of typical "war movie" scenes, ie, when the men aren't fighting, they're partying on the beach with their guns. this is almost expected; it has to be there. it can't be horror the whole way through. still, the movie is mostly very original, even dealing with war. what's most interesting to me, however, are how the past scenes of war are woven in with a present time narrative of our main character trying to regain his memory. we learn, quite quickly, that he's repressing his memory. we begin to see his psychology, along with the psychology of many of the soldiers (now former soldiers) around him. this is what i was most impressed with by the film, it's meditation on the unstable nature of memory (nothing new) along with how that unstable nature is influenced by a person's psychological make-up. the animation, then, done in a dream-like and exaggerated manner, fits with the notion of an unstable past. the film is moving, hard to look at at times, even though it's animated, and makes a move toward the end which i saw coming but which was powerful enough anyway. there are other trailers and scenes out there.

some online writing i've been liking

this short by sean lovelace over at juked.

this story by matt bell, which probably everyone knows about, at storyglossia.

these poems by j. marcus weekley at prick of the spindle.

this thing by david erlewine at 971 menu. incidentally, 971 is now taking all lengths of stories. hooray. greg, i may send you something this summer if that's okay, if i have a thing to send. i won't be sad if you say no, don't worry. it won't mess up our friendship. i will feel a little hurt, understandably. you will feel, i hope, slightly guilty. we may stop visiting each others websites as much. i might turn to meditation, seeking to calm my pain. you may, understandably, renege your rejection and ask me to send again, the guilt too much. i may, confusedly, stop crying and say, Wha? really?

this thing at elimae by Nathan Neely.

and i almost really love this story by Larry Shapiro at anderbo, but i don't quite. though i did enjoy reading it, by the end i felt cheated or something. or perhaps maybe by the middle i began thinking, No, do something else, please do something else. it lacked surprise, but still, the read was nice and for whatever reason i couldn't stop, so that's something. also, it's longer than most of the stories listed here and strangely is the only 'traditional' story of the group (whenever i use 'traditional' or 'kafka-esque' or 'avant-garde' i think i'm using these terms in the broadest sense instead of attemping to really define what i'm saying in two or three paragraphs (though i believe i have done this in the past, giving my definition of 'avant-garde' and 'representationalism,' at least in terms of so-called 'minimalism'). there's a lot of stuff going on right now about the word 'experimental.' some not liking that word because it's too vague, broad, non-specific and sometimes limiting, etc. 'experimental' is set up as the opposite of 'traditional,' i think. but oddly, no one i've read lately seems to have a problem with the word 'traditional' (not that i've seen anyway) or for that matter 'linear' or even for that matter something like 'plot-driven,' which all seem equally vague and limiting to me, if you think about it; ie, 'plot-driven' stuff to me often seems more 'character-driven,' etc. my worry is terms like 'experimental' or 'avant-garde' are seen as not-good because they are non-specific, loose, limiting, but then no one seems to care when something is called 'traditional' or something. so, it feels like a 'slippery-slope;' if you're going to give up 'experimental' then you also have to give up 'traditional.' i'm fine with that. i think i like that, but there has to be awareness of both sides of the terminology. also, the discussion or dislike of 'experimental' shows maybe a bias toward this type of work (whatever it may be), where it is viewed as 'better' and not deserving of limitation in the same way 'traditional' work can be.) sorry for the digression, anderbo-story.

this 'kafka-esque' (ha ha) thing by Thomas Cooper at annalemma.

travelogue

i hiked up buffalo mountain today, going up the eastern side first, then descending on the south-western part. i hadn't been up all the way since fall, when emily and i hiked with pat, then later with corey, then later with my sister and adam. the trails were wet and muddy, snow still camped in the shadows of trees, but it was warm, sun out, and i sweated a lot. i wanted to walk my mind clear. at the top, on one side there's a view of the city below, distant and pretend as a toy, and on the other side more mountains, cast in a haze of blue shadow. i brought up Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North. i read about him wanting to become a weather-beaten skeleton. that sounded good. then i hiked down. the streams rushed due to all the melting snow, and in one, i slipped on some ice and crashed into the water. somehow my ankle came out of it sore, but that ankle's always sore. i'm tired, dirty, and smell bad in a good way.

i think i'm failing on my blog, therefore in life/snowstorm

this may only be a perception. i haven't posted for some time. i feel as far away from my blog as i am from the moon. like something magical and massive has left me and is slowly passing me by. i may be failing in any number of interpersonal relationships as well.

also, i've been making very bad decisions. on sunday evening, i drove through a snowstorm, a drive which normally takes two hours. it took four hours. i saw cars and children abandoned on the side of the road. the children were eating snow, trying to survive. they had spears and deer carcass. they had become cunning. at one point, it was impossible to see more than twenty feet, it was snowing so hard. everyone going up the mountains had pulled over, except me and a semi and a few other cars, all following the semi. the semi was a beacon of hope to many cars that night, i believe. the news said one inch in asheville; it was more like four or five - i don't feel my decision to drive was wholly my fault, though i may be deluding myself.

when i got into the tennessee mountains, where the traffic always thins out, my car and three other cars headed up the first big mountain hill, going twenty miles an hour, fishtailing on the snow. sadly and frighteningly, the semi was gone. there was no salt down on the roads and no snow plows had been through. we made it up the mountain, then when we reached the peak, to start the descent, two of the cars just stopped and turned on their emergency blinkers. i felt the stopped cars waving at me like, Good luck, you're gonna die. i felt myself look metaphorically at the other car next to me like, Well, fuck it, let's do it and die together stupidly. his/her car went first then i went. i tapped my breaks the whole way down. it seemed to take forever. i kept thinking, I'm going to swerve off the road and die. i will be found at the bottom of a gorge, dead in my car with a tree branch gouged through my stomach and a policeman will say, Moron, to his friend, who will say, Let him be, Scott, he's dead after all. i really did think things like this. then i would think, Focus on driving or you're going to die.

i fishtailed down the mountain, but i was only going like ten miles an hour, so i didn't plummet off a mountain edge, happily. emily was calling hospitals along 26 looking for me. i learned two things: 1) driving in a snowstorm is hard work, don't do it, turn around or stop, you will lose parts of your life anyway due to stress, and 2) a cell phone would have been helpful. i may need to get a cell phone no matter how much i hate them. my neck hurt afterward and still hurts today. this has been a completely factual re-telling.

there are some interesting things happening on html giant. i think some people disliked the post, but i thought it was rather interesting and i had sort of been feeling the same way.