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'When Ben Spivey, editor of Blue Square Press (an imprint of Mud Luscious Press), sent me the galleys of
Irritant by Darby Larson, I wasn’t expecting the form to be quite what it was. What it is: a 600+ page paragraph––sort of. One immediately looks at the text and thinks, “This is Steinian,” or, “This is going to be difficult to get through.” Due to length, the book is daunting. But once you get started with it, it becomes easier to read, and, as Blake Butler recently noted, its “intentionality” is what propels it along. Irritant doesn’t so much have a cast of characters (though there are figures that appear) as much as it has an impulse––not without intention, mind you, which makes it work––in the form of the “irr,” short for “irritant,” I’m assuming. And what this “irr” does is move through a cartography of the imagination. Guy Davenport would have loved this! I thought. It’s a geography, and not without its twists and turns that make it move steadily, though with vectors and (again) intention, toward a commonality of thought that one can find, oddly enough, universal. Because of the intricacy of the images that Larson employs, the book is universal in scope, I think. Here’s a little bit more, using quotes where appropriate, to give you a sense of what I mean:
The irritant appeared in back of the truck and the rest is the moon on the back of the sun. The mirrored blue ate smoothly. Okay! Is that okay said something extra exasperatedly. The irr crawling on its elbowthumbs in front of this porch gave the porch of the water a yawn. The artichoke and the mirrored man awake next to the covered water slept for something extra. The man felt like sighing. So the trampled uterus slept while the irritant gave the slept uterus an artichoke for its cough? The man wore the heart of the irritant and there was little left in it.'So much is packed into a length that approximates about half a “traditional” paragraph, but is embedded, of course, within Larson’s story. It’s a sexual scene, of course, replete with innuendo and birthing––almost. The irritant is (and continues to morph in and out of these roles) both man and woman, and also, oddly, child. Is the irritant a creative urge? One could aptly guess so. Does the irritant spend itself, giving and wasting its powers, as the Bard of Avon would have advised against? Yes, possibly. There are many ways to read the impulsive irr’s intentions throughout the text, and it’s just barely propelled enough along to give us a hint of what’s to come, but not so pressed forward (forcefully) that the text doesn’t leave room for surprises. I think it’s entirely possible to read Larson’s narrative as a story about creation and destruction, echoing (slightly) the old refrain of both capital and Hindu mythology: “create––sustain––destroy.” We recognize our own impulses, and hence receive (if that is indeed possible) the mirror that helps us see through these urges.'
-- Laura Carter, FanzineDarby Larson
IrritantBlue Square Press'There are two books I’ve read only ever in bed somewhere on the cusp of sleep and waking drunk in the logic of their sentences, those being Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus and Joyce’s
Finnegans Wake. Darby Larson’s
Irritant has turned into the third. It is a puzzle machine of engrossing order, deceptively simple in how it wakes and slips and snakes itself with mesmerizing syntax inside a single 624-page 1-paragraph-shaped monolith of colors and suns and prayers. The result is a relentless, terrifying spell, or book of spells, or library of books of spells, or worse, a multi-mega-leveled text-world the likes from which I or my ability to sleep may never find an exit.'
– Blake ButlerDigestable Moose Kidney Sculpture Gardenby Darby LarsonA boney face may take my exquisite lick like gutter saviors saving, savoring days saddening happier blooming radial tires for toilet seats and off we eat toward tea green seas when our guitar strings need shinglier sugar coaster rings and here's a necklace for your faceless lady, and when I'm seventier let's drinklier sanguidlierly scrump period. A mix run through a run through a mix and lift paper clipped cunt spunky kitten powder baked boney face taking out its outfits missing pippy. Digestable moose kidney sculpture. Knocking nothing but bona fide moose lodging paw served with jingoistic chicken fingeristic ticks, soon, malpracticing misdemeanors disheveled hangularly placed within distances of similar instances of disimilar similes. How can you say ett. Spring water summertime poem summertime spring water summertime poem for our four fungus omnibuses. How can you say eat my boney face moose marathoning pippy lock down shut. Blunt shuck the chuck nunnery. Up. Jaded eco bottle smash to the good luck gunnery jump. Dynamic. Wok when struck in duck pat cat jab. Digestable moose kidney sculpture, part seven. My sharp exquisitely mixed lick stained grounded rabbit focus may miss your tender jelly lip stained boney nose, my canned toe from the americannery, bless you. Where's the something's weather boots besides ancienting Frank Blasterman's squid fresh slaw and ketchup, Frank's boney finger says how much in the typewriter cannonball, the television incision, the paperweight hopscotch jelly date? Period. Tuner downtown, turn down the pope faux pas, sleek, before we're heads in a sewer kilt with parsley. Frimagine Frat Fumage. The jungle grunt staked to the pylon means the rainbow ghosts are high on bylines regarding brandy lines sharing gauntlet boxes under autumn moms. Don't point that atom bomb at the apple parlor our cougar mother gave dixie dad a bad wake-up shut-up under cup Vienna meal lacerating a first base save. Punch. Or unch eal ave eal and the walrus comes a crumblin down to the hell of your neighbor, Earl, eal ave eal unch. Jumping Judy on Jeopardy: What is part eighty; digestable moose kidney sculpture garden, the one we'll make love in, the one we'll rump mumps on, the ones we'll light Haiti on fire for to appease our ignition syndromes. Renunciate. Reorganize the fiberglass bones of his face then trace our lines to shine and juxtapose infinity with it until streams from your eyes are strung strong, long, and right. Pass me a knife. The sink while you're at it. North. Flip South. Flip North. South. Jest eh jecket fer yer cells. Mirror West. East. Mirror East. Six dark and lucently sixes high pick up pick up, ground's on just even through meatened walls colored brown and tangerine babies exquisilick tambourine tantrums in valley-maiden Spain. Take your pants off, let me get a look at your gorgeous grammar. Later, huddle for a win in the vegan insidious crop of & or % or OR for kidney bean submarines in summer under tongues, stutter, stutter, got ahead and suture this clock, stutter, shut from its one thousand eight hundred four parts, digestable etc. The bones of the grammaphone have a youness no one is hating you for. One million four hundred thirty-four thousand seven hundred eighteen. Cloudy. How may our owls howl hungrily appropriating stereominimal anti-notions absobliminally flutely? Yesterday? Just run the other way but turn around first, see the stone, run at the water, see the trees, head toward the desert on the kidney planet of androtesticulodrema. There's a joke heading toward you, duck. Tell me to tell the phone to stop sounding hurt, to stop when its ripe, to eat when its hungry or not or when something's in front of it, or when the hen wakes up, when the young one runs a lung off, when the starter motor's juiced, when the pen in your head's dead. Debah sevah Farah sevah Jurah sevah. Digest my moose kidneyish skull, part tulip. And run the other way. And there goes your boney face facing honey lipped Q-tips facing killer bishoped sex goddess garbage tartar controlled, packed and shipped. Uh. Exfamatory story: Nickel dives in dressed and sent to them so said them with weapons and twinkies, so much for the seven dresdens, the hend. Part one of digestable moose kidney sculpture jargon: so they's right and yeah I say so's here's when what? for like right on. Sew a pear a punk taught a vixen eight oaked paint to get a bear a truck tire, hate, yolk, faint. What was this that said and went higher? There was always this question that what was this that said. What is this that was said and made to hang from deceased rat skulls, their boney faces with traces of semen eating marrow. Address. Ah, the schedule's shot like a grape tacked to a target, shot by a sling with a lost tooth from the head of the baby Adrian. Sew a pear a punk taught a vixen eight pears pulled taught and necklaced. Sew a pear a punk taught a vixen eight nickel dives in dressed and sent. Nickel dives in dressed and sent when the starter motor's juiced, sliced, winched. Hatred, but what if I said I love you and gave you an exploding kitten. Then the bakery would stay open till Tuesday for us. Now there's a love story in these words forever. Where's my machete? Where's my oar, I've got to steer my friend's ship before we drift hipsterishly into the llama sauna a kidney beats heartly on the floor of. Finally we arrive: Digestable llama kidney sculpture, part circle part square. Frimply Frimagine Frit: Do you, Bitch, take Bastard to be yours to punch in the gut? I do. Let's moon this honey and wax the backs of these camels to surf. D. Use the vorce. On with it, with it, on, it with on, it on it. Your pop got licked up. Your rook got bishoped. The compact disc you swallowed is shit. Intra. And now the smoke detector's been smithereened by the staccatoed fricasee she'll serve to the funeral-goers going home and channeling Charles, handsome Charles, see his bust in the corner made of the boney faces of moose skulls, so don't start a fire, there's nothing to detect it, take this peppermint pill for your ignition wishing, this herbal principle for your smoking fundamental amplifier. Dance. Here's a check, check, death sentence: The subject killed the predicate. Greeters gents and magmaphants, step up left of the cleft toward the sword stuck in the giant shrimp scampi. Here's a tree and here's a snail and here's the squirrel-ka-bob and here's the tree again and the snail and the squirrel-ka-bob again and here's, oh, a new tree with condescending leaves and a heart made of tea leaf seeds, trash compacted and cookie-cuttered. All here in the hard-on of Sidney's digestable bone scultpure garden of groping, Frank strollering Adrian around Muriel's naked clown pose. Walk by and she'll ask for an empty post-it note she'll crumble and eat and weather-talk the day away, fall in love, out of, in, out, iut with you, so be ready. D. M. K. S., part F, insert notch of part LL into hole of part UR. She tripped and fell up the stairs where her hair was braided by Brandy waiting in the attic for all the falling up braidy girls until the attic's full and they're falling out of windows onto the yardless driveway, bouncing from car to car to work to colate the magistrate's blind date's tax returns. Back to sleeping dream: Sister? Someone? What's this ghost skull floating in the fridge for? Don't kiss me, I'm rhetorical. Why's dad dressed like a pirate again? Back to reality: Why's dad dressed like a baby pirate grandma's pushing in a baby carriage made of tin? Is Shawna still in the sauna with the surfable camel? We need her out here to lay on the stones and undulate the clown car, tell her. Can we all please move toward the garden and get organized, stand in a circle, in a semispherical meteor shape, next to the kidney, Sidney spit out your gum somewhere other than the bed of tulips. Now everyone, big smiles, cheese. That one's going to outer space like my poor dead husband Jeffrey's ashes I ate half of before spitting the rest at the sky. Can you tell me why the wine is raining onto our curvy bodies instead of into the blood of our curvy thighs? Can you whine us why the raining bodies curve into the blood of our lady's eyes? Can you hope less and read on? Can it miss us by kissing us gently like a fly lands on a flake on the land of our stray rabbits passing frenzily by and chanting? The sun's what's up. During my clever thing I'm cleverly going to do that thing I do with pickles, where I die and slice the pick and suck the juice and come to life, clever. Here's what Frank looks like, a picture I drew, let me describe: chainsaw boney face in formaldehyde. Remember: Part two: Digestable moose kidney sculpture visits the Louvre:
bonjour je suis la sculpture de rein d'élan et je fais mal horriblement comme les souris étant envoyées dans la gravité. Part ninety-eight: Digestable moose kidney sculpture returns to the garden, trips over Muriel's poses and into roses. Ala. Ogo. Epe. Take the soup and walk away, no one will miss it cept the waiter who shit in it. Ogo. Save me a high C. Ah. What the. The. What in the. Pour it quick. Part beetle part walrus. Part it quick. Sweaty. Here is earth. A table saw upon it. And we said it suits us. And then there was light and we said here is light, ah. And the land happened under. The donkey walked by. It's the way the world was made, not a bang but a sigh. Ah. An extriation. Did you notice the woman riding the donkey? Her name was unpronouncable. Did you notice the gift I gave was wrapped in lace and velvet ribbon? Did you notice the donkey kissing the moose, the woman kissing the lizard? What did you do with the bucket of text I gave you? It was a gift. Pour it all onto the cobblestone path and let the ants take it. This is making sense. What's a pound of hen for in the den's buckle drawer by the fire I started? Where's the siren at? Nevermind. Go to the farm, buy a pig, bring it back, ask it how, while so much war is won and worn smartly, will we ever get back to the farm by the chart the general shouted his directions toward and Ronny captured in type though he's blind and faithless like a wingless plane, a tongueless tribute, a bloodless bank? Answer: Part gangrene, part visually impedimental, part temperately clusterjunked. And here we come to the swing of the thing, swinging and thinking, how did the digestable moose kidney sculpture acquire that hat? It's what you've been thinking. I'll tell you finally. The hat was a gift, something I picked up in Haiti. Take a picture of the owl on it, sit on its boney face before Ronny fires the cannon and we're all back inside our exhaustion and slipper time for final pajama wine pillow pouring next to Frank and Unpronouncable coitusing noisily in the bed above and others and just lay back, no, I'll lay back, I'll try, the thing in the light has meaning, we'll find it tomorrow maybe, or if the squirrel jumps its small ship and into my friend's, we could continue the rowing together, toward what it might mean for the two of us, while above, planets twinkle and drinkle their oxygenated oil. See the kidney in the window, part three: kiss me.
Tickled Pink (for Darby Larson)Mel Bosworth reads 'Reflexive' by Darby LarsonUPDATEIFICATION! by the wrong Darby Larson_____________________
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'
The Suiciders is born out of failure. It started out simply enough – an ultra-realistic account of teen serial killers on a road trip. I wrote it and re-wrote it and re-wrote it again countless times, and I could never manage to get it right. There was always something wrong. It felt like I was trying too hard – and it read that way, too. Until I asked myself one day, what if I were to not try at all?
'What does it mean to set out to write the ultimate “bad novel”? Not just bad as in subject matter, but method — grammar, syntax, narrative — not to intentionally be wrong, but to not care about the possibility of getting it all wrong. Everything you are told not to do in writing. Critics would be forced to come up with a new language to praise or reject it — neither an enviable nor a pitiable task. But as a project, perhaps it represents one way forward — or at least a way of correcting certain age-old prejudices.
'At the same time, I have to admit that this isn’t really what I’m doing. Even when I’m being anti-form, I’m still too much of a goddamn formalist. If you read the manuscript, there’s too much language there, too much structured noise, to convince any thinking person that all I’m doing is merely flinging words upon a page. The key is the language – the materiality of the structure itself. Finally, with this novel, I am allowing myself to do what I’ve done with my previous novels – which is to re-invent the Novel. This is a task that every novelist should set out to do, each time she sits down to write. But so few do these days. They want to be Philip Roth, a pillar of the establishment, even though so many claim (fashionably) to be against that establishment. In my case, or the case of
The Suiciders, I allow the language to play an equal, perhaps even dominant role in regards to all the other components that have traditionally formed the Novel. The “characters” are not, in fact, characters. They are proper nouns. Proper nouns that are allowed to melt into, become, deflate other, less proper nouns. Language = character = plot, etc. In releasing language from its submissive servitude to meaning (meaning as it is traditionally constituted in the Novel), new meanings emerge, new linguistic structures, new narratives, new modes of perception, new possibilities of being.
'I’m still naïve enough to believe in the figure of the artist-revolutionary, but this naiveté is balanced with the realization that revolutions caused by art are seldom acknowledged at their inception by the wider cultural milieu, and that the changes they impel thus occur at a rate comparable to the shift in tectonic plates beneath the earth’s surface.
'This is a very different way of creating revolution, one that necessarily avoids politics, avoids collectivity, and celebrates the power of the individual consciousness while simultaneously rebuking both the traditional bourgeois conception of the alienated urban individual and the quasi-fascistic cult of personality that continues to be celebrated wherever art is publicized. Where the life of the mind is concerned, totalitarianism has already triumphed, and its benefactor has been American-style democracy. This is reflected widely in the “literature” that is most praised and consumed in our culture, a literature that can no longer be considered an art. Enough cynicism, enough irony-coated “minimalism,” enough anti-intellectual hipster posturing. Up with the anarchy of the signifier, with the creation of new myths, with momentary lapses of cognition, with an embrace of psychoses, with an outpouring of unmitigated sexuality – in short, with the freedom that we only find in the realm of the imaginary.'
-- Travis Jeppesen, Open DemocracyTravis Jeppesen
The SuicidersSemiotext(e)'During the first decade of the second millennium, a group of seven friends—Zach, Lukas, Adam, Matthew, Peter, Arnold, and Taylor—occupy an indeterminate house in an unidentified American suburb and replay a continuous loop of eternal exile and youth. Permanently in their late teens, the seven young men are as fluid and mutable ciphers, although endowed with highly reflexive, and wholly generic, internal lives. “Once you learn how to love, you will also learn how to mutilate it . . . I want to feel so free you can’t even imagine . . . Let’s get out there and eat some popsicles. There is work to be done.” Eventually, the group decides to remove themselves from the safe confines of the house and to embark upon a road trip to the end of the world with their friend, the Whore, and their pet parrot, Jesus H. Christ.
The Suiciders is their legacy.
'Chronicling the last days of a religious cult in rural America, Jeppesen’s debut novel Victims was praised by the Village Voice for its “artfully fractured vision of memory and escape,” and by Punk Planet for its masterful balance of “the laconic speech of teenagers with philosophical density.” In
The Suiciders, Jeppesen ventures beyond any notion of fixed identity. The result is a dazzling, perversely accurate portrait of American life in the new century, conveyed as a post-punk nouveau roman.'
-- Semiotext(e)ExcerptThe house. A stained gothic apparition of a dump, abandoned when found. Matthew’s friends were there a lot, when they weren’t running away from him. To keep him company, he bought himself a fat fuck parrot. Fed it dead possum every night at the same hour, when he remembered he was still alive. The parrot’s name was Jesus H. Christ. Matthew sat there. Adam is over on the floor. Peter sniffing whiteout. Yellow cup drools. I have so many friends, it hurts me to know them at times.
These bad boys had stopped going to school. They had better things to do, like fuck knows what. They would be great artists some day, if only you could learn to consider death an art. Get that fucking whiteout out of your nose, Peter. The whiteout is my muse, Peter responds. A milk stain around his nostrils. Goddamn entropy hovering like a cloud.
Peter disarranged some wires. Some fancy music got played. A song of evil spirits getting naked in the zoo. Let’s go to the zoo! Matthew protested. Which one am I. I don’t want to go to the zoo, they don’t have any goddamn art there. Matthew will be a pedophile and look at all the children. Children have brains they don’t get for free. Their parents must pay a lot of money for them. Then they destroy the state, everyone gets fucked in the ass. My sooty membranous gyration.
I decided to go take a dump and read the bible. Multi-tasking has come to define this century I woke up one day and found myself in. You can’t blame us for the state of the world. We’re just some teenage kids with bad hair.
Adam, meanwhile, was squeaking. One of the reasons he got kicked out of school. Because he’d just sit there all day making high-pitched noises to himself. Like a mouse dying of cancer but really really enjoying it.
Pretty song plays. Adam bit himself just for fun. Bit his wrist until the blood came. Flowers for Algernon. That’s the name of the TV Movie of the Week. Forcefeed television demented fears, it will reciprocate via Evening News. Jesus H. Christ flew over, landed on Adam’s head, fluttered its feathers. Hey Matthew, can a parrot fart?
Adam continued to squeak. Matthew picked up a guitar. Peter covered himself with a blanket. He wanted to forget something. He didn’t remember what.
Joy can only be excavated from ruins. It has to match a definition of primal. Every which way you yearn, you still prefer doing nothing. Maybe that’s what’s so philosophical about your bodily movements.
I want to go to the zoo. I want to go to the zoo. I want to go to the zoo. I want to go.
The teenagers had so many friends. That’s why they didn’t need each other – they had all the others. Still, they wanted. One day you will grow up and want something too, then you’ll realize it’s all been a big mistake. I cleaned my butthole with a page of genesis. I found the story dry. Whoever wrote the bible didn’t understand the mechanics of language. Not the way Adam does. He’s a real poet, sitting over there squeaking. Sometimes when he gets carried away, little white things appear in the corners of his mouth. The teacher threw him out of class. Then he came over here where he could squeak in peace, away from the dictates of the western world. Here, we leave our televisions on in silence. You can even make love to the radiator if you want. Situational broadcast from the radio in the kitchen. Sometimes I go in there to hallucinate a girl. She never comes back twice. She must be afraid of what she finds here.
The house we found ourselves. It didn’t even cost anything. People moved out, no one wanted it, we invented ourselves in here. Rush through the introductions so as to not find out too much about each other. The only thing we had in common was this desire to be teens for the rest of our circumstance.
Satan’s ashtray. This part of the world the sun don’t come out too often. At least we had the animals. The animals are there for us when the sun isn’t. Sometimes you dream the animals going into the sun. The sun swallows all the animals on this planet and burns them up into magma. We have to live in a world without animals, it is so sad, you want to die. But you become an animal instead, and therefore death will never come to you. Peter bit himself again. Or was it Matthew this time. Wait I’m so confused. I have difficulty telling my friends apart from one another. That is because they all look exactly the same. The same stringy black hair, empty eye sockets, hollowed-out expression. My friends are merely effigies I keep to remind me of the animal inside my mind.
(cont.)Travis Jeppesen reads 'Wolf at the Door'Motile 'Blid Drip' based on a poem by Travis JeppesenRabbit Hole @ ZDB_______________________
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'I read Robert Vaughn's
Microtones while sitting halfway up a mountain in Connecticut. At first, this detail seemed insignificant; I read books all the time while sitting along West Rock's trap-rock ridge. (I'm currently unemployed. So.) But, as I read on, I found a possible parallel between my experiences hiking through New England and Vaughn's work. And I’m not just talking about the fact that the cover of
Microtones features an empty bench atop a mountain. ...
'This is where the tension lies in
Microtones, that battle between the competing (and very human) forces of existentialism and optimism. Take the poem 'Turbidity,' which begins like this:
Holidays are hard:
I'm going to take
a walk, escape the
silence of this house
I was never home,
home on the range
hospital corners are still
"beats me?"
'It's a somewhat bleak start--the holidays prove to be difficult because the poem's speaker is isolated in some way, and in fact, always has been. But Vaughn isn't one to drop in some darkness and then hightail it. The poem's final line is this: 'There's something I forgot.' It’s a miniature detail but it injects a small bit of optimism into the piece. The sentence seems to imply that there is still something left. In saying 'There's something I forgot,' as opposed to 'Something has been forgotten,' hope lingers, at least for a little bit, the hope that the ‘something’ may be found.
'More than anything else,
Microtones is an understated meditation on isolation, which I think comes as a result of that tension between despair and hope. Specifically, mentions of death are met with the idea that death, no matter the circumstance, is somehow the fault of the fallen. This seems like the highest form of isolation. ...
'Vaughn, if anything, is refreshing in his consistency.
Microtones is a balanced and focused work and one that calls for multiple reads. Its true strength lies not necessarily in what's on the page, but in the place where Vaughn’s words and ideas take you.'
-- Jake Goldman, The Small Press ReviewRobert Vaughn
MicrotonesCervena Barva Press'After reading Robert Vaughan’s
Microtones over the period of several days, I am still uncovering new facets. As befitting a series of poems that take us through the sometimes gritty and always exasperating story of a family, the perspective is always shifting. The poems thrive on confusion combined with temporary insights that seldom lead to permanent awareness. Vaughan knows that the deepest mysteries are often buried in what at first appear to be moments of revelation.' -- Literary Orphans
'Robert Vaughan sucks us into his luminous vortex with guts, humor and grit.
Microtones is as much about transcendence as falling. Vaughan blasts through the subterfuge of the unsaid and lets us "face gravity head-on." This is a fearless, unparalleled collection reminiscent of Lydia Davis that takes us on a "free fall" of a ride we want to jump back on over and over again. Read it!'
-- Meg TuiteExcerptsWrestling with GeneticsThe sports gene I get from my dead father. He returns to me now as a scent. Waterlogged leaves. He's the tetherball attached to my pole, the flying trapeze of my soul. He runs a bar tab higher than a kite then turns to me and says let's hit the road, son. And when I argue with him about the keys, he says that's a bunch of horseshit. But then I bluff: I know he's an accident waiting to happen. I can see his ailing pickled heart sitting in a laboratory glass jar on a top shelf too high to reach. I wrestle him to the ground, grab the keys, load Dad into the back seat. And for once, just this time, he won't barrel down a back road at one hundred miles an hour, straight into the side of a quarrelsome train.
LegacyAn observer would have
thought her unsuited
for that frame.
I wondered why my
parents kept the photo on
the piano. She’d died over
ten years ago. Died on her
own, by her own stupidity.
A visitor would have
thought her adorable,
precocious, serene.
Unable to see the contagious
recklessness. Unable to see
the damage she inflicted.
How my family came undone.
I slip her photo into
the desk drawer. Underneath
a stack of report cards.
Robert Vaughn interviewed @ Cutty SpotRobert Vaughan reads Gertrude Stein's "Cezanne"Robert Vaughan reads "Flash" by Maureen Seaton*
p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, sir. I'm so happy to be staying on and thinking privately from the sidelines of the pro/con Snowden debate. I look forward to reading your Outfest report, thanks!
Everyone, Mr, David Ehrenstein directs his considerable powers of observation towards the line-up of this year's Outfest via Fandor, if you're interested to see what's what. Here. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, T. I'm sure Katherine is very grateful for your and others' kind, understanding words. If I hear from her, I'll let everyone know. ** Bill, Hi, Bill! You saw CCCC live? Cool, envy, cool. No, we didn't get any live music in while in Japan except for, oh right, some J-Pop girl trio who happened to be performing in this giant mall where we happened to be at the opportune moment. They seemed truly bad, but the giant crowd of boys watching them were losing their shit. Thanks for the Ikeda link. I'll be very all over that in a few minutes. Great! ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi. Thanks for speaking so thoughtfully to Katherine. ** Grant maierhofer, Hey, Grant! Oh, Herve Guibert can be really great. My favorite is 'The Compassion Protocol', but it's hard to get your hands on, so, if you can't, the much easier to attain 'To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life' is also superb. Oh, man, you shouldn't hold back from posting on HTMLG. I mean, unless you really want to hold back. They need you, and it's still an excellent context. I just think it's in a generally less interesting era right now, but that could change if guys like you spark it up. Excited for your novel whenever it gets born. Uh, well, it's happened a few times that it ended up taking a couple of years for a novel to finally get published. The good thing about that is that I'm usually into a new one by then, and I'm less vulnerable about the published one since I usually think whatever I'm working on is or will be my best. I'm doing fairly extremely well, and you? ** Steevee, Excellent news about how top and alive that new Miike is. I'll watch out for it here closely. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thanks for giving Katherine your wordage. ** Kier, Ditto, re: speaking to Katherine. Well, Nick has disappeared for longish whiles before and then turned up again in good shape. I hope this is one of those. But, yeah, he's much missed. What are doing today, pal? ** Rewritedept, Mm, I don't think I've heard that split, no. Really nice about the AMT thing. Is there video? Rad band practice is, well, rad. I don't know what 'Bob's Burger' is, so no. Really, I'm lost when it comes to TV, especially American made. I don't want a dog as a pet, but I really like dogs. I think people's reasons for having them as pets is actually all over the place and it's not a need that can generalized about, but, you know, I have this hatred of generalizations. Cool that you got the Sotos rereleases, and 'Hogg' too, naturally. Um, wow, uh, yeah, err, wow about your, uh, libidinal success story. ** Allesfliesst, Wow, dude, how seriously really good to see you! It's been, what, months if not any number of them. Sweet. I did get to Japan, yes. Yeah, we seemed to manage getting about on our own, or so we think. How would we know for sure, I guess? Anyway, it was even greater than I had imagined. We're going to try to go back there asap. I'm very glad you're still alive. Nature Theater of Oklahoma, yes, although I haven't seen them perform yet. But everybody I respect seems pretty bonkers about their work. Knock 'em out, man. What kind of ice cream? Love to ya, buddy. ** Flit, Hi, F. Give me words when you've got some. Would be a boon. ** The Man Who Couldn't Blog, Hi, Matthew! Excellent about the 100 new words. Windfalls come in 100 size. Gerogerigegege was a really terrific find. Thanks a lot for that. And I spent some time reading up on them. They're very interesting behind the scenes as well. I bet you could get a magazine to let you do that. Whether said magazine would be of a sort to bankroll the expenses involved, I don't know. The not-knowing Japanese part seems a cool angle to me, but then again, I'm just a blogger. Maybe it would make a good fiction piece or something? I totally imagine that. ** Nemo, Man, very best of luck with the ECT treatment today, and don't be too spooked. Chances are that it'll do nothing but good, right? Let me know how it went. Love, me. ** Misanthrope, Katherine found your alley! Mm, no I'm not trying to write a novel about not being able to write a novel. Well, there might be a little section or something about that but nothing sweeping and Chabon-like or anything. 'I'm still on the old': When have you ever been on the old? ** xTx, Hi! Oh boy, it's good to see you! Thank you for kindly talking to Katherine. How are you, my dear pal? How's the novel? How's everything? Big love, me. ** S., Do dancers wear lycra? Is that what those skin-tights are made of? Huh. I don't know what I assumed they were made out of. There's maybe a little trace of Charles Guislain, but not a whole lot, but I saw CG in normal lighting in person, so I'm not the best judge. Anyway, as you probably know, he doesn't look anything like how he used to now. He is completely unrecognizable. ** Sypha, So pretty that you'd pop his chest pimples with your teeth? Understood, no problem, about your quietness. I hope you feel much better extremely soon. Cool about the review. I'll go read it post-p.s.
Everyone, here's Sypha: '(R)ecently I was friended on Goodreads by this woman from Toronto who was a fan of [my novel] "Grimoire." She even wrote a long review of it, which I think is the most in-depth (and, well, only) review of it online. Anyway, I sent her an e-mail back thanking her. She seems nice. Anyway, here's her review.' Aw, dang about missing that anthology's deadline. Maybe it'll be so loved that they'll do a volume 2. ** Kingdom slide, Hi, D! Yeah, it was too difficult to sustain, exactly, especially because I did try to maintain that while also giving it a narrative surface while simultaneously trying to damage the narration with the, well, unvarnished truth, etc. Too much. Like I said, I may go back occasionally and see if I can tinker the thing or at least parts of it into functioning correctly. I will go read that thing you were thinking about all day when I get done. Thank you, man. I didn't know Hikikomori, but that quote you pulled out is very compelling, yes. Thank you a lot for that. I feel an investigation coming on. I wish for high speed underground tunnels or that Star Trek de/re-materializing thing and etc. all the time. Can you imagine? I could say, See you in a second, and mean it. I could type that 'it', snap my fingers, and your door would broadcast a knocking sound that, whoosh, would then, when answered, reveal me standing on your threshold. Of course, it's probably 5 in then morning your time right now, so they'd have to fix the time difference problem too. Anyway, blah blah, I too so wish, my friend. ** Armando, My favorite contempo horror film? Hm. It's such a boring choice, but, seriously, the only movie that has honestly scared most of the shit out of me as an adult is 'Blair Witch Project'. Mm, I really like 'The Cabin in the Woods', but it didn't scare me. Hm. I'll keep thinking. I haven't seen the second Zombie 'Halloween' film. I'll rectify that absence. Thanks, man. ** Right. 3 books I've loved of late. That's what's up today. Enjoy. See you tomorrow.
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