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'Lately I have been thinking about the formal choices available to writers. Specifically fiction writers, as it’s where I spend most of my creative time.
'Much of the controversy around books, ebooks, piracy, publishing, and pricing models seems to signal a need for a significant formal change. It is as if piracy and disintermediation are arriving just at the time when writers need to be pushed off the comfort zone of the novel, the essay, the chapbook.
'I love those forms. Especially novels. They are going nowhere. But lamenting the inability to “make a living” in the old world of the novel is at least a waste of creative energy and at worst a self-pitying cry in a woody nostalgia.
'Story, anti-story, and poetry must endure genetically. We seem unable to dispose of it and we’re driven to it. The market has never and will never extinguish this. Economic proof: Have the poets stopped writing?
'As we outsource our memories and divide our attention spans, perhaps our culture is gradually asking us for a leap in form which respects the newer tools available to us, our newfound nomadic technical abilities, our socially acceptable headphone isolation in public, our ability to be in and not in the public space. Perhaps what is great about the oral tradition is asking to return, perhaps our world is waiting to be a real “memory palace” for our future fiction.
'If replicable and instantly shareable deprecates the economic value of a form (and you value that), maybe you’re creating within the wrong form.
'I’m working on some ideas which explore this. We have new tools which have changed the world on par with the printing press. There is, among the noise and the trivial, the opportunity for enduring and engaging art, or if not that, at least art that is on par with the processing power and the networked world.
'No one is asking us to stop writing books. Want one? Write one.' -- Eric Raymond
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Eric Raymond Confessions from a Dark Wood
Sator Press
'Ken here. I don't often laugh, cry, and spit food on my computer screen simultaneously, but this book made that happen. You'll meet Nick, a hapless pawn in the world of global capital brand management consulting. And his girlfriend Sadie Parish, the first domestic suicide bomber. And his boss, emperor of bullshit, Pontius J. LaBar. And PJ's dreaded orangutan. It's a hilarious, heartbreaking, painfully smart satire that guides you through the high dollar swamps of modern industry.' -- Sator Press
Excerpt
from LaBar Partners Limited, an extension of 'CfaDW's' world beyond the book
An Open Letter of Welcome from Our CEO, Pontius J. LaBar
It is with a great sense of duty and humble joy that I, Pontius J. LaBar, CEO of LaBar Partners Limited, am now compos mentis and corpus sanus to present the relaunched LaBar Partners Limited Global Web Presence and Thought Leadership Portal Version 2.0™ (L.P.L.G.W.P.T.L.P.v.2).
Greetings, digital denizens and brand management enthusiasts!
Permit me one engaged page view to escort you through the executive tour! After a brief hiatus in which we retooled and reinvested in our steadfast commitment to provide valuable counsel to the world’s C-suite executives, I could not be more thrilled to throw wide our digital doors to you. We have officially rejoined the conversation.
My only disappointment is that your each and every visit here is not greeted with a thrum of kettledrums and animated Adobe Flash fireworks (which, believe me, I fought tirelessly for in the interminable web development “process.” Three firms, and not one could seem to fulfill my grandest vision! But I digress.)
Rumors Dismissed
First, let me dispel the scurrilous rumors you may have heard in our absence from the grand stage of global brand capital management theater:
Onward, now! The ecstasy of what’s to come:
Some have posited that after the traumatic events of 4/09 that we have entered the post-post-idea economy. Risible rubbish! Very little blue ocean has been mapped in this regard. All evidence, to be frank, suggests just the opposite.
We are constant in our assessment that the post-idea economy is thriving. Fear not, for we shall illuminate it for you here.
Your faithful guide & steward,
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Pontius J. LaBar, CEO, LaBar Partners Limited
Legal Disclaimers & Editorial Notes
[1] Awards forthcoming.
[2] Be aware, loathsome spies and detestable moles, that we have consorted with those wizards at Google Analytics to trace you hither and yon, and will know of your each and every “Web 2.0 move.” If you are here from Canard Consulting, which some of you no doubt are (curse you!), I revel in the misery you must certainly be racked with as the elegant giraffe neck of LaBar Partners Limited casts its shadow across your threshold once more!
It is not lost on me that you have cloaked your own web presence (I am bedeviled to not find it online). I can only assume this means you have holed up for another run at us, (or is part of some anti-digital strategy?) which I find intriguing, but unconvincing, and this!: For your ill ledger, do not mistake my mild curiosity as a potential concession of one dirty dime in billable hours! RECOGNIZE that the Giraffa camelopardalis gallops TRIUMPHANTLY across the brand capital savannah!
Eric Raymond 'Live at 851'
Eric Raymond 'Exhibitionist'
Eric Raymond, The Great Overland Book Company reading 11/6/11
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'Ana Carrete’s poetry plays with words. Her poems play with themselves. That sexual double-entendre is appropriate and typical of her work. The word “come” is always euphemistic in Ana’s poetry. Sex is on the brain, and the brain is a clever, punning, playing one, with a wry sense of humor. The twenty-five-year-old girl-woman who writes these poems is rarely without her sense of humor, even when it’s grim.
'Carrete, who lives in San Diego but has spent much of her life in Tijuana, where her family lives, is a bilingual poet, a gchatting, video-making, online-lit-mag-editing 21st-century poet. She is fun and sassy. We get to live in her head in this book, and I enjoy it and love that I can’t pin down her tone, I never know what to expect next. Her poems are blunt but subtle, they are playful but serious. She means it. But what is it?
'Sex and religion and family and pop culture and lots of thoughts are in these poems, poems with titles like “freudian clit,” “obedient riot girl,” and “download my pathetic soul.” Ana is a confessional or autobiographical poet in a sense, but she is so playful and creative, so aware of language, and so dexterous with it, that she creates a new world in and with her poems. She’s playing around in her head and she wants you to hear.' -- Stephen Tully Dierks, HTMLGIANT
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Ana Carrete Baby Babe
Civil Coping Mechanisms
'The first time I heard Ana’s writing was 2 years ago. In November of 2010, I read at the ‘Ear Eater’ reading series in Chicago. Ana was another reader. She was reading via Skype. There were a lot of people at the reading. After I read, I walked out of the room and stood in a hallway, staring at the floor. After a few difficult conversations with people in the hallway, I heard the host of the reading talking to someone on the computer. It was Ana. Ana started reading. I laughed a lot and enjoyed her reading. Seemed like other people weren’t enjoying it as much as me but I was enjoying it a lot. I stood in the hallway laughing and shaking my head ‘Yes’ and people looked at me. I kept thinking, ‘I want to go into the room and watch her face reading’ but then I would think, ‘No, don’t do that, just listen.’ Not sure why I kept telling myself not to go into the room where she was reading but I stood in the hallway and listened and enjoyed it a lot. Two years later, Ana emailed me Baby Babe. I opened the PDF just to skim a few poems but then I read the whole book. When I was done reading the book, I thought, ‘I’ll be glad to have this book so I can look at it whenever I want.'' -- Sam Pink
Excerpts
women dance with cleaning products in commercials
i want to dance with a vacuum cleaner
walk backwards then towards your feet
inhale your shoelaces
make you trip
my organs are like external hard drives
some cables go up and occupy my throat
if you suck my tongue hard enough
you can keep it forever
my mouth is a vacuum cleaner
i can suck
so long suckers
the strangest things you hide in your fannypack
before you run away from home
pamela anderson
a cellphone
and mascara
can you run away when you’re twenty
five
is it still called running way or is it called
growing up
sometimes i feel free
between walls but i’m still terrified
of not being able to figure it out
on time
i’m trying
there’s soap in my eyes
and i cry and when i blink
soap bubbles come out of my eyes
and if you pop my tears well
you can kiss my ass
BABY BABE
pools swimming
mckanye
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'A shamanic healer in San Francisco, who charges way more money than $12 USD, says we are always every age we have ever been. She promises to heal us of the behaviors that once protected us, at 3 and 8 and 13, but now no longer serve us. She will heal us with repeated sessions in which she asks ‘who is talking?’ and ‘what age is that person?’
'For $12 USD, Ben Mirov’s HIDER ROSER provides direct textual access to this sort of temporal and spatial inquiry. You can keep it in your bag. You can have it all the time. What’s more, the poet reveals his own story (or the story of a mirror character) (or many mirror characters) (who is talking who is talking?) reducing the feelings of aloneness we may experience on our own trips. He gives us his eyeball, still wet. He gives us his ID. I read this book during a week of bad panic attacks, or “death lite” as I like to call them. I felt understood by Mirov’s book. “If your wolf gets too heavy / don’t pop the flares,” he advises. “No one will rescue you. You are the rescue team.” ...
'There is a beautiful sadness in these poems. Mirov skillfully co-inhabits the realms of the physical and the metaphysical, the containment suit and the dark star. In a world both familiar and foreign, Mirov inquires as to the nature of the universe, as well as the absurdity of layering institutions over the void. We are keeping “busy all day.” We are running from something. What is it?
'This book isn’t nihilist and it doesn’t throw up its hands. Rather, it contends with what we can still do in spite of the strangeness of it all. Friends go bodiless and faceless, yet somehow they maintain the power to deliver us to the tangible safety of a “porch coated in rain.” There is still the ability to kiss, which brings on both an astrophysical journey through time and space as well as the spilling of a “mug of strong black tea” in this dimension. There are One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, which provide no consolation to “the soldiers / in Afganistan who spend their nights / shooting at the same five guys.” But when the speaker, as lost human, needs the consolation of “Wandering Ghost Bridge” and “snow-capped mountains,” One Hundred Poems from the Chinese are so there. Poetry is the bridge that makes the strangeness of this universe not only bearable, but meaningful.' -- Melissa Broder
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Ben Mirov Hider Roser
Octopus Books
'Mirov's poems are like dead soul dispatches from an emotional robot. Contained in them is the terrible recognition of the mere materiality of the universe—and that somehow arising from that is an irrational attachment to friends, loves, and a man named Ben Mirov. The poems are an attempt to speak of these things, often opening into imaginative spaces tinged with the absurd. The continued disconnect between what the speaker describes and what he may or may not feel is funny, until it's revealed to also be sad.' -- Dan Magers
'It seems like HIDER ROSER was written by Ben Mirov. His name appears on the cover and in the poems the book contains. However, he did not write this book. I did. Ben Mirov's function in the process was more like an android, receiving messages from an alien source. If you ever actually meet the vessel I know as Ben Mirov, his personality and conversational capacity will underwhelm you. I hope these poems will not.' -- Ben Mirror
Excerpts
HIDER ROSER
You want to write about a horse
but you have written hose. Think of meat.
Meat thinking of jogging.
Meat going out on a date to see the water.
The water is beautiful and she allows you
to put your arm around her.
Smell her ear, part of a star
that exploded when you were negative
10,000 years old. It smells like vanilla.
In a few hours she is gone.
In four years, even goner
and Dan is telling you something about nothing
the sparrows in his tattoo
forever flying out of a rose
until Dan is dead.
Pretty soon you have a loft
and people are getting to know your work
rearranging the letters in horse rider
to get hider roser, which means something
you will never understand
with only a few minutes left
one end of the hose going into your head the other
going don’t know where
THE BRAILLE OF EVENINGS IS WRITTEN IN POEM
I stare out of my window with a flashlight behind each eye.
I do not know what I am looking for.
The bushes barely quiver in the wind.
A few people get into a mauve truck.
I return to my couch.
Darkness creeps into the corners of the microwave.
A river disappears into a plastic coffee cup.
I pet a moth as big as a baby.
The desert approaches
inch by ecstatic inch.
What did the lamp say?
Permission to drink ink from the sink?
I feel a vineyard growing inside me.
No need to be alarmed.
Shut the door. Glass of wine. Try to sleep.
My eucalyptus grove can hardly breathe.
Memories of pagoda duck-pond relief.
Diode, diode, nomenclature.
Nocturne for Susie.
The people return to the apartment complex.
Their suits and ties are torn to shreds.
Their cars are barely audible songs.
A grizzly bear snags a salmon made of dreams.
I remove the duct tape from my naked body.
If the sun comes up
I won’t be a different person.
I IS TO VORTICISM
as red leaves are to riverbanks.
As American History is to blackout drunk.
As blackout drunk is to flying away.
If you come upon a vortex in your laundry tonight
don’t be afraid.
Give it a name like Scheherazade.
Take it to dinner,
feed it oysters and champagne.
They don’t teach you this in college
or how to deal with moving faster than the speed of light
into a brick wall,
but that’s how I got my diploma
knocking around in the chrysalis
until they pulled me out
and the figment in my wings dried
and my tongue refused to bifurcate.
Mighty big snow-globe head.
Mindful of harmless laser beams.
Three or four ideas spinning around a coat hanger.
Lasso after lasso.
Trailer: 'Hider Roser'
Ben Mirov In Conversation
Ben Mirov reads at YesYes Books
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p.s. Hey. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Cool, thanks for the choices. All good and noted. I don't think I'll get that Plush one, but I'm definitely going to go take a look at it in the 'flesh', I think, and it should win a prize for being a little too something or other. No, actually, weirdly or something, it's an homage to the Lush soap. It's a buche in the form of a weird soap. Strange, no? That Wilmotte one is really starting to grow on me. It doesn't seem to get much enthusiasm from my future buche co-eaters, but, yeah. Thank you, man. ** Pilgarlic, Hi, man. Good to see you! Yeah, I'm kind of particularly into the 'match' ones, and the firecracker one too. There's a toy thing going on that floats my boat. I hope the doctor visit was worth the no coffee. I get a headache from hell if I don't get my coffee within about 20 minutes of opening my eyes. I almost put a Driveby Truckers song in my portion of the drinking gig. I can't remember why I didn't. Variety reasons, I think? Still have never seen 'Boardwalk Empire', weird. It isn't here in France (yet). Probably will be, probably on cable, which I don't have. Oh, man, I'm happy for your dog, but I would have acted like Rita. Until recently, we had a bad mice problem here at the Recollets, and at one point there were four mice scrambling around my room, and, in that case, after a couple of weeks of enjoying their petite company, I could have used Beryl. You good? Got some sweet holiday plans upcoming maybe? ** Misanthrope, Oh, dude, thanks a lot for the you-know-what. I've got it down for Tuesday the 18th at the moment, and I'll let you know if it gets moved north or south for some reason. Sure, get over here and chew some Buche with us. Paris at Xmas is a guaranteed classic usually. ** Billy Lloyd, Hey! I did, and I do! Huh, I would have thought you could score a mass of burnable CDs for a pittance in this digital age. But an eZine plus eMusic would be enough. Whatever you decide, and whenever, I want them. No, if you believe the slave wannabes, and I kind of do in most cases just because I'm an optimistic, idealistic kind of guy, there are crazily good looking guys who want to be, oh, encapsulated in plastic shrouds in dark dungeons or rendered limbless and then raped every second for the rest of their lives, etc. I would think that such a slave would need to be quite a puzzle to keep some master that horny, so yeah. Thanks about 'The Sluts', man, of course. And for your buche votes. At some point, I'll decide and then you'll get to see me and other pals do autopsies on the chosen cakes and condemn them to the dungeons of our stomachs. ** David Ehrenstein, How did it go last night? Tell me, tell us. Sadly, I discovered yesterday that the Chanel buche is only on sale in Japan, so that one's out. When I first ran across Ed White, he was skinny as a rail. ** Allesfliesst, Don't think I didn't think about devoting my December to a nonstop buche-centric diet, but you nailed the problems: dough and getting doughy. Ah, so Buddha knows he's sweet and has the means and wherewithal to accentuate his sweetness when needed. I like that additional complication, naturally. Yeah, Joy Williams is manna. I wish she'd write another book. It's been fucking forever. ** Cobaltfram, Thank you for the buche picks. I'm writing them down. It's really impossible to know how I would be greeted by George's brother, which is quite nerve wracking. I keep thinking that he must know about the Cycle and about my vociferous devotion to George, but it's totally possible that he has no clue about that. He knows how very close George and I always were, but I don't know if he knows that we eventually became lovers, and, if not, that's a lot to lay on someone who's younger brother killed himself. I don't know. It's very stressful, but I will find out one of these probably near days. Happy to hear you've gotten up to 75%. I think I'm down to 40% as of this morning. I don't want to employ an elegiac tone or wax lyrical because those things are tricks and devices. They're the standard schtick that writers use when writing about something personal and tragic, and I've always hated that approach. It's purely manipulative, and it turns a unique tragedy into something general. I think it speaks far more of the writer's ego than of what he or she is trying to mourn and celebrate. I would rather fail than subject George's memory to that horse shit. That's why, ha ha. Flattening, interesting. What do you mean by that? Flattening it how? 'God Jr.' got cut down and didn't. In my original plans and notes and stuff, the novel was going to proceed further, and the father was going to turn the monument into a tourist attraction and hunt down the video game's designer to seek out 'the truth', but I never actually wrote those parts out. Later gator. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Bill! Welcome back! Of course I remember you! Thanks for your buche votes. Yeah, the Herme has a real pull for me, especially. Wow, that's an amazing story about your girlfriend/wife's physical battle. I'm hugely grateful to you for sharing that with me. It's very meaningful to me. And I'm very touched that it made you think of my posts about George and my great dilemma and pain about him. 'The terror of losing control of the story of my beloved': yes, exactly, so much. If I can write this book, or rather finish it in such a way that I think other people would find value from reading it, you'll see that what you said is so key and important to my experience, and George's too. Thank you so much, Bill. I'm very happy that you're back. ** Pascal, Cool, thanks for the heads up on the Riviere, man. Great day to you. ** Steevee, Very interesting report on 'Zero Dark Thirty'. Thank you. Hm, well, it sounds like something to definitely see. I see it won the NYCC (sp?) best film prize yesterday. Does that surprise you? ** 5STRINGS, Good, you're okay. Country living has its selling points, yeah. Well, hm, I guess I've never lived in 'the country'. The country of France? Nah. Good buche picks. It's hard to get away from nutty and fruity in buches, not that I want to. Yeah, I need to go concentrate on the ingredients. It takes me a while to realize that they taste like something specific. I just think that they're edible eccentricities for a while. ** SwAmPeX, Oh, gosh, thank you. Aren't you kind. You sound like you're doing all kinds of great. Wow, excellent! So, the writing is happening in a more pleasing way, good, good. What's the short film? It isn't online, is it? Boyfriend! Seriously, you are like the exciting success story du jour. That's so sweet. You have to -- well, you don't have to -- let me read some of these things you're making at some point when they're ready, okay? Being an adult is so weird. I still don't really know how to do that. I just try to stay the same and kind of reposition myself as appropriately as possible as things happen around me or something. 'Bachelorette', huh, I'll go check out what I can find about that. Yeah, you sound so great. That's so awesome! ** Pisy caca, You have a new gap in the middle of your name. It's interesting. Okey-doke, thanks for the buche votes. It's a hard choice this year. Hm. Yury's doing real well. He's going gangbusters on his fashion line and business, working hard almost 24/7 at the moment getting his designs made into prototypes and meeting with tailors and possible distributors and stuff. So, he's doing really well. Ah, I see, about the book you're translating. Yeah, it's great that you've got all that work. I remember when you were really fearful about getting enough work. What is the concentration of the online American poetry course? Is it a general overview thing, or does it concentrate on particular schools or types of poetry? Interesting. Poetry is the art form of the gods or something, I think, maybe. I don't know. So good to have you in reach again, my pal. Love and hugs like Xmas wrapping. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, it's like a designer cake. Cake as art in the best cases, I guess. They look more opulent in the photos than they do in real life. Saw that about Luke Fowler. Yeah, fuck it. I loved his film. Curious about the Elizabeth Price. It sounds interesting, and, yes, anything that uses the Shangri-Las as its noise has to be at least kind great or something. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Cool two. Buches, I mean. The only real reason I might not do the Michalak is that I did his 'toy car' one last year. But I don't know. And it's pricey. Not that that has ever stopped me. You're kicking ideas around in what form? Are you doing writing experiments? Or is it mostly mental at the this point, or ... ? ** David J. White, Hey, Mr. White! Oh, shit, 'Late Spring' is in my top 10 all-time favorite films, so a big high five re: that one. And I love 'Tokyo Twilight' too. Yeah, hope the Ozu post is okay. We'll see. Or you tell me. Well, yeah, your 'OT' film was fucking great! I don't know if this'll mean anything, but the French director Christophe Honore watched it when I linked to it on FB, and he told me he really loved it. I'm sure whatever you do with 'TBotFL' will be fantastic. No worries. And, yeah, if you end up wanting to try 'Try', just let me know. And for sure on the NYC meet up and real world friendship. As soon as I get plans in place, we'll sort that out. Great! Sucks I can't friend you on Facebook due to that place's stupid friends limit. I wonder how that 'Subscribe' option works. I don't know why people can subscribe to me but not to you, for instance. That place is so weird or not weird enough or something. Everyone, David J. White, who directed the terrific short film based on my short fiction piece 'Oliver Twink' that I directed you to the other week is on Facebook if you want to friend an awesome artist and guy. He's here. ** Rewritedept, Hi, pal! Never saw 'The Upsetter'. Need to. Definitely. I wish that new Orb/Perry collab album was better. Ellis is an awfully good writer. Dude really knows his way around the sentence. Your love is very understandable. My favorite Rimbaud translation by far is this one. I've been okay. Had jetlag, but it's gone. Trying to get back into the novel and enjoy pre-Xmas stuff. No December trips for me. I've got a bunch in January, but I'm home free for now. Favorite punk albums '77 - '81 ... man, that's a tough one. It gets into what counts or doesn't count as punk, I guess, too. I'm going to need to think about that one. Give me a day. I'm too into best-of lists to toss one off without thinking a bunch first, but ... Everyone, Rewritedept would be very interested to hear what your favorite punk albums are, dating from the years '77 to '81. You want to toss some faves his way? Would be cool. His picks, if you missed them, are: wire - pink flag. bad brains ROIR tape. minor threat s/t EP.' Have at it, folks! Slow and great at the same time. That happens. So, have you made peace with the drummer? Yeah, fill me in re: band or writing progress when the time is right, please? ** Foggy Sapphires, Well, hey there, Caroline! How very lovely to see you! Oh, yes, I know Peter de Rome's work. I saw a bunch of his films back in the '70s when such things were only viewable in stinky, dark theaters, and his stuff made quite an impression. I didn't know he was still alive! Wow. I'll hit those links and read those interviews this afternoon, thank you! And let me know, if you don't mind, when your interview with Nick is available. Everyone, here are a couple of big treats for you from d.l. Foggy Sapphires. First, here is a trailer for Ethan Reid's documentary 'Fragments of Peter de Rome' about the legendary, great gay porn pioneer and auteur Peter de Rome. And here is an interview with Ethan Reid about the documentary. Really fascinating stuff. Go check it out. Love from rainy, foggy Paris to you, my friend! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thanks for the buche picks. I don't know, I'm torn about what buches to pick. I think I'll need the input of my fellow buche eating friends to make the very final decision. Yury really likes the Marcolini, so that might be the Xmas day one, we'll see. I think I might be leaning towards one of the Hevins or the Roussel or the Herme. Don't know. Thanks about the wishes re: my novel, and the same goes double for yours. Flatness is a real problem with mine right now too. Or seeming flatness. It's really a different kind of huge problem than 'TMS' was. With that, it was whether my art was up to the massive task I wanted from it. Here, it's more ... how do I possibly represent something so extremely important to me and real. How do I diminish and destroy my art in honor of it without losing readers' absorption. Very, very hard. Still trying. No, I haven't read that Aira novella, but, and this pretty weird, I picked it up in S&;Co. the other day and came 'this close' to buying it. It seems like your recommendation in combo with that near miss must be a sign. I will purchase it when I next go over there. Thank you, Jeff, and, yeah, best of the best getting your novel fully into your hands. Obviously, I'm very interested to hear anything about the work that you want to share. ** James, Hi. Thanks for your choices. Yury likes the Laduree one too. As I said above, I did Michalak last year, so that's a strike against going back to his well. Yes, I was sorry to hear that you didn't get the Santa Fe job. Maybe it's a blessing? Living in Santa Fe ... I don't know? My fingers are very crossed re: Ventura and/or Berkeley, be assured. 70,000 nice going. Oh, right, that ridiculous Mayan thing. I can't people are actually freaking out about that, but I guess it's fun or something. People are so freaked about the 21st in Russia that the government had to issue some sort of statement assuring the frightened masses that the world won't end. Of course, if the Russian government says something, you can immediately assume they're lying, so maybe there is a reason to freak out, ha ha. Much love back. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, J. Thanks for the choices. Herme is a real possibility. It looks so fucking chocolate. And the Pouchkine, yeah. It's hard. Yep. ** Esther Planas, Hey again! I did check out the website. It looks super interesting, even when not understanding the language well and all that. Fantastic idea and thing! Yay for you and for them for yaying you! Love back in bunches. ** Bill, Nice batch, right? Yury in fact nixed the Hediard one straight off. Actually, it was his first pick, but when I told him it was the Kremlin clock, he absolutely refused. His Russia phobia is quite a thing. I think I'm going to go do a tour and look at them in person. Big up to you, B. ** E., Hi, e.! Happily obliterated, ah, that sounds so nice. I can't remember the last time I was happily obliterated. Dang. Hope the all-nighter isn't too all. Saskia rules, yes! Yeah, hm, if I come across or remember things that are that good, you'll get s telegram-like comment from me. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Wonderful to see you! Okay, cool, another vote for the Hugo & Victor. That's like the dark horse buche. Macarons, growl, yum. I'm actually going to go buy myself some today. Tennessee Williams, interesting. How did you happen into his work? Great stuff, obviously. Great about you not having to teach! That is exciting! ** Okay. Three more books I've loved of late for you today. All of them are highly lovable, trust me. Check them out. See you tomorrow.
'Lately I have been thinking about the formal choices available to writers. Specifically fiction writers, as it’s where I spend most of my creative time.
'Much of the controversy around books, ebooks, piracy, publishing, and pricing models seems to signal a need for a significant formal change. It is as if piracy and disintermediation are arriving just at the time when writers need to be pushed off the comfort zone of the novel, the essay, the chapbook.
'I love those forms. Especially novels. They are going nowhere. But lamenting the inability to “make a living” in the old world of the novel is at least a waste of creative energy and at worst a self-pitying cry in a woody nostalgia.
'Story, anti-story, and poetry must endure genetically. We seem unable to dispose of it and we’re driven to it. The market has never and will never extinguish this. Economic proof: Have the poets stopped writing?
'As we outsource our memories and divide our attention spans, perhaps our culture is gradually asking us for a leap in form which respects the newer tools available to us, our newfound nomadic technical abilities, our socially acceptable headphone isolation in public, our ability to be in and not in the public space. Perhaps what is great about the oral tradition is asking to return, perhaps our world is waiting to be a real “memory palace” for our future fiction.
'If replicable and instantly shareable deprecates the economic value of a form (and you value that), maybe you’re creating within the wrong form.
'I’m working on some ideas which explore this. We have new tools which have changed the world on par with the printing press. There is, among the noise and the trivial, the opportunity for enduring and engaging art, or if not that, at least art that is on par with the processing power and the networked world.
'No one is asking us to stop writing books. Want one? Write one.' -- Eric Raymond
Sator Press
'Ken here. I don't often laugh, cry, and spit food on my computer screen simultaneously, but this book made that happen. You'll meet Nick, a hapless pawn in the world of global capital brand management consulting. And his girlfriend Sadie Parish, the first domestic suicide bomber. And his boss, emperor of bullshit, Pontius J. LaBar. And PJ's dreaded orangutan. It's a hilarious, heartbreaking, painfully smart satire that guides you through the high dollar swamps of modern industry.' -- Sator Press
Excerpt
from LaBar Partners Limited, an extension of 'CfaDW's' world beyond the book
An Open Letter of Welcome from Our CEO, Pontius J. LaBar
It is with a great sense of duty and humble joy that I, Pontius J. LaBar, CEO of LaBar Partners Limited, am now compos mentis and corpus sanus to present the relaunched LaBar Partners Limited Global Web Presence and Thought Leadership Portal Version 2.0™ (L.P.L.G.W.P.T.L.P.v.2).
Greetings, digital denizens and brand management enthusiasts!
Permit me one engaged page view to escort you through the executive tour! After a brief hiatus in which we retooled and reinvested in our steadfast commitment to provide valuable counsel to the world’s C-suite executives, I could not be more thrilled to throw wide our digital doors to you. We have officially rejoined the conversation.
My only disappointment is that your each and every visit here is not greeted with a thrum of kettledrums and animated Adobe Flash fireworks (which, believe me, I fought tirelessly for in the interminable web development “process.” Three firms, and not one could seem to fulfill my grandest vision! But I digress.)
Rumors Dismissed
First, let me dispel the scurrilous rumors you may have heard in our absence from the grand stage of global brand capital management theater:
1. All of the very sharpest minds of our team have returned to the fold.
Despite a few dull-witted defectors, praise from our clients remains at an all time high.
2. Our portfolio of services is more hale and hearty than ever. (I dare say the dive gets deeper each day!)
3. Though it is true we cannot legally claim the fully mutual endorsement of our preferred brands portfolio, there is no crime in the form of free speech & well-deserved praise!
5. All court-ordered community service and ongoing reparations are being dispatched with the utmost concern.
Onward, now! The ecstasy of what’s to come:
* A robust and insightful stream of dynamic twitterings, not the least of which is complimentary 140-character consultations.
* Frequent electronic publication of the firm’s award-winning[1], nuanced thought pieces (provided gratis!) on topics most relevant to the post-idea economy, penned by our team as well as exciting guest authors.
* Become a vital contributor to senior-level insights by joining the The LaBar Partners Limited Street Team.
* The unfettered, remorseless routing of our lesser competitors and black-hearted critics[2].
Some have posited that after the traumatic events of 4/09 that we have entered the post-post-idea economy. Risible rubbish! Very little blue ocean has been mapped in this regard. All evidence, to be frank, suggests just the opposite.
We are constant in our assessment that the post-idea economy is thriving. Fear not, for we shall illuminate it for you here.
Your faithful guide & steward,
Pontius J. LaBar, CEO, LaBar Partners Limited
Legal Disclaimers & Editorial Notes
[1] Awards forthcoming.
[2] Be aware, loathsome spies and detestable moles, that we have consorted with those wizards at Google Analytics to trace you hither and yon, and will know of your each and every “Web 2.0 move.” If you are here from Canard Consulting, which some of you no doubt are (curse you!), I revel in the misery you must certainly be racked with as the elegant giraffe neck of LaBar Partners Limited casts its shadow across your threshold once more!
It is not lost on me that you have cloaked your own web presence (I am bedeviled to not find it online). I can only assume this means you have holed up for another run at us, (or is part of some anti-digital strategy?) which I find intriguing, but unconvincing, and this!: For your ill ledger, do not mistake my mild curiosity as a potential concession of one dirty dime in billable hours! RECOGNIZE that the Giraffa camelopardalis gallops TRIUMPHANTLY across the brand capital savannah!
Eric Raymond 'Live at 851'
Eric Raymond 'Exhibitionist'
Eric Raymond, The Great Overland Book Company reading 11/6/11
__________________
'Ana Carrete’s poetry plays with words. Her poems play with themselves. That sexual double-entendre is appropriate and typical of her work. The word “come” is always euphemistic in Ana’s poetry. Sex is on the brain, and the brain is a clever, punning, playing one, with a wry sense of humor. The twenty-five-year-old girl-woman who writes these poems is rarely without her sense of humor, even when it’s grim.
'Carrete, who lives in San Diego but has spent much of her life in Tijuana, where her family lives, is a bilingual poet, a gchatting, video-making, online-lit-mag-editing 21st-century poet. She is fun and sassy. We get to live in her head in this book, and I enjoy it and love that I can’t pin down her tone, I never know what to expect next. Her poems are blunt but subtle, they are playful but serious. She means it. But what is it?
'Sex and religion and family and pop culture and lots of thoughts are in these poems, poems with titles like “freudian clit,” “obedient riot girl,” and “download my pathetic soul.” Ana is a confessional or autobiographical poet in a sense, but she is so playful and creative, so aware of language, and so dexterous with it, that she creates a new world in and with her poems. She’s playing around in her head and she wants you to hear.' -- Stephen Tully Dierks, HTMLGIANT
Civil Coping Mechanisms
'The first time I heard Ana’s writing was 2 years ago. In November of 2010, I read at the ‘Ear Eater’ reading series in Chicago. Ana was another reader. She was reading via Skype. There were a lot of people at the reading. After I read, I walked out of the room and stood in a hallway, staring at the floor. After a few difficult conversations with people in the hallway, I heard the host of the reading talking to someone on the computer. It was Ana. Ana started reading. I laughed a lot and enjoyed her reading. Seemed like other people weren’t enjoying it as much as me but I was enjoying it a lot. I stood in the hallway laughing and shaking my head ‘Yes’ and people looked at me. I kept thinking, ‘I want to go into the room and watch her face reading’ but then I would think, ‘No, don’t do that, just listen.’ Not sure why I kept telling myself not to go into the room where she was reading but I stood in the hallway and listened and enjoyed it a lot. Two years later, Ana emailed me Baby Babe. I opened the PDF just to skim a few poems but then I read the whole book. When I was done reading the book, I thought, ‘I’ll be glad to have this book so I can look at it whenever I want.'' -- Sam Pink
Excerpts
women dance with cleaning products in commercials
i want to dance with a vacuum cleaner
walk backwards then towards your feet
inhale your shoelaces
make you trip
my organs are like external hard drives
some cables go up and occupy my throat
if you suck my tongue hard enough
you can keep it forever
my mouth is a vacuum cleaner
i can suck
so long suckers
the strangest things you hide in your fannypack
before you run away from home
pamela anderson
a cellphone
and mascara
can you run away when you’re twenty
five
is it still called running way or is it called
growing up
sometimes i feel free
between walls but i’m still terrified
of not being able to figure it out
on time
i’m trying
there’s soap in my eyes
and i cry and when i blink
soap bubbles come out of my eyes
and if you pop my tears well
you can kiss my ass
BABY BABE
pools swimming
mckanye
___________________
'A shamanic healer in San Francisco, who charges way more money than $12 USD, says we are always every age we have ever been. She promises to heal us of the behaviors that once protected us, at 3 and 8 and 13, but now no longer serve us. She will heal us with repeated sessions in which she asks ‘who is talking?’ and ‘what age is that person?’
'For $12 USD, Ben Mirov’s HIDER ROSER provides direct textual access to this sort of temporal and spatial inquiry. You can keep it in your bag. You can have it all the time. What’s more, the poet reveals his own story (or the story of a mirror character) (or many mirror characters) (who is talking who is talking?) reducing the feelings of aloneness we may experience on our own trips. He gives us his eyeball, still wet. He gives us his ID. I read this book during a week of bad panic attacks, or “death lite” as I like to call them. I felt understood by Mirov’s book. “If your wolf gets too heavy / don’t pop the flares,” he advises. “No one will rescue you. You are the rescue team.” ...
'There is a beautiful sadness in these poems. Mirov skillfully co-inhabits the realms of the physical and the metaphysical, the containment suit and the dark star. In a world both familiar and foreign, Mirov inquires as to the nature of the universe, as well as the absurdity of layering institutions over the void. We are keeping “busy all day.” We are running from something. What is it?
'This book isn’t nihilist and it doesn’t throw up its hands. Rather, it contends with what we can still do in spite of the strangeness of it all. Friends go bodiless and faceless, yet somehow they maintain the power to deliver us to the tangible safety of a “porch coated in rain.” There is still the ability to kiss, which brings on both an astrophysical journey through time and space as well as the spilling of a “mug of strong black tea” in this dimension. There are One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, which provide no consolation to “the soldiers / in Afganistan who spend their nights / shooting at the same five guys.” But when the speaker, as lost human, needs the consolation of “Wandering Ghost Bridge” and “snow-capped mountains,” One Hundred Poems from the Chinese are so there. Poetry is the bridge that makes the strangeness of this universe not only bearable, but meaningful.' -- Melissa Broder
Octopus Books
'Mirov's poems are like dead soul dispatches from an emotional robot. Contained in them is the terrible recognition of the mere materiality of the universe—and that somehow arising from that is an irrational attachment to friends, loves, and a man named Ben Mirov. The poems are an attempt to speak of these things, often opening into imaginative spaces tinged with the absurd. The continued disconnect between what the speaker describes and what he may or may not feel is funny, until it's revealed to also be sad.' -- Dan Magers
'It seems like HIDER ROSER was written by Ben Mirov. His name appears on the cover and in the poems the book contains. However, he did not write this book. I did. Ben Mirov's function in the process was more like an android, receiving messages from an alien source. If you ever actually meet the vessel I know as Ben Mirov, his personality and conversational capacity will underwhelm you. I hope these poems will not.' -- Ben Mirror
Excerpts
HIDER ROSER
You want to write about a horse
but you have written hose. Think of meat.
Meat thinking of jogging.
Meat going out on a date to see the water.
The water is beautiful and she allows you
to put your arm around her.
Smell her ear, part of a star
that exploded when you were negative
10,000 years old. It smells like vanilla.
In a few hours she is gone.
In four years, even goner
and Dan is telling you something about nothing
the sparrows in his tattoo
forever flying out of a rose
until Dan is dead.
Pretty soon you have a loft
and people are getting to know your work
rearranging the letters in horse rider
to get hider roser, which means something
you will never understand
with only a few minutes left
one end of the hose going into your head the other
going don’t know where
THE BRAILLE OF EVENINGS IS WRITTEN IN POEM
I stare out of my window with a flashlight behind each eye.
I do not know what I am looking for.
The bushes barely quiver in the wind.
A few people get into a mauve truck.
I return to my couch.
Darkness creeps into the corners of the microwave.
A river disappears into a plastic coffee cup.
I pet a moth as big as a baby.
The desert approaches
inch by ecstatic inch.
What did the lamp say?
Permission to drink ink from the sink?
I feel a vineyard growing inside me.
No need to be alarmed.
Shut the door. Glass of wine. Try to sleep.
My eucalyptus grove can hardly breathe.
Memories of pagoda duck-pond relief.
Diode, diode, nomenclature.
Nocturne for Susie.
The people return to the apartment complex.
Their suits and ties are torn to shreds.
Their cars are barely audible songs.
A grizzly bear snags a salmon made of dreams.
I remove the duct tape from my naked body.
If the sun comes up
I won’t be a different person.
I IS TO VORTICISM
as red leaves are to riverbanks.
As American History is to blackout drunk.
As blackout drunk is to flying away.
If you come upon a vortex in your laundry tonight
don’t be afraid.
Give it a name like Scheherazade.
Take it to dinner,
feed it oysters and champagne.
They don’t teach you this in college
or how to deal with moving faster than the speed of light
into a brick wall,
but that’s how I got my diploma
knocking around in the chrysalis
until they pulled me out
and the figment in my wings dried
and my tongue refused to bifurcate.
Mighty big snow-globe head.
Mindful of harmless laser beams.
Three or four ideas spinning around a coat hanger.
Lasso after lasso.
Trailer: 'Hider Roser'
Ben Mirov In Conversation
Ben Mirov reads at YesYes Books
*
p.s. Hey. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Cool, thanks for the choices. All good and noted. I don't think I'll get that Plush one, but I'm definitely going to go take a look at it in the 'flesh', I think, and it should win a prize for being a little too something or other. No, actually, weirdly or something, it's an homage to the Lush soap. It's a buche in the form of a weird soap. Strange, no? That Wilmotte one is really starting to grow on me. It doesn't seem to get much enthusiasm from my future buche co-eaters, but, yeah. Thank you, man. ** Pilgarlic, Hi, man. Good to see you! Yeah, I'm kind of particularly into the 'match' ones, and the firecracker one too. There's a toy thing going on that floats my boat. I hope the doctor visit was worth the no coffee. I get a headache from hell if I don't get my coffee within about 20 minutes of opening my eyes. I almost put a Driveby Truckers song in my portion of the drinking gig. I can't remember why I didn't. Variety reasons, I think? Still have never seen 'Boardwalk Empire', weird. It isn't here in France (yet). Probably will be, probably on cable, which I don't have. Oh, man, I'm happy for your dog, but I would have acted like Rita. Until recently, we had a bad mice problem here at the Recollets, and at one point there were four mice scrambling around my room, and, in that case, after a couple of weeks of enjoying their petite company, I could have used Beryl. You good? Got some sweet holiday plans upcoming maybe? ** Misanthrope, Oh, dude, thanks a lot for the you-know-what. I've got it down for Tuesday the 18th at the moment, and I'll let you know if it gets moved north or south for some reason. Sure, get over here and chew some Buche with us. Paris at Xmas is a guaranteed classic usually. ** Billy Lloyd, Hey! I did, and I do! Huh, I would have thought you could score a mass of burnable CDs for a pittance in this digital age. But an eZine plus eMusic would be enough. Whatever you decide, and whenever, I want them. No, if you believe the slave wannabes, and I kind of do in most cases just because I'm an optimistic, idealistic kind of guy, there are crazily good looking guys who want to be, oh, encapsulated in plastic shrouds in dark dungeons or rendered limbless and then raped every second for the rest of their lives, etc. I would think that such a slave would need to be quite a puzzle to keep some master that horny, so yeah. Thanks about 'The Sluts', man, of course. And for your buche votes. At some point, I'll decide and then you'll get to see me and other pals do autopsies on the chosen cakes and condemn them to the dungeons of our stomachs. ** David Ehrenstein, How did it go last night? Tell me, tell us. Sadly, I discovered yesterday that the Chanel buche is only on sale in Japan, so that one's out. When I first ran across Ed White, he was skinny as a rail. ** Allesfliesst, Don't think I didn't think about devoting my December to a nonstop buche-centric diet, but you nailed the problems: dough and getting doughy. Ah, so Buddha knows he's sweet and has the means and wherewithal to accentuate his sweetness when needed. I like that additional complication, naturally. Yeah, Joy Williams is manna. I wish she'd write another book. It's been fucking forever. ** Cobaltfram, Thank you for the buche picks. I'm writing them down. It's really impossible to know how I would be greeted by George's brother, which is quite nerve wracking. I keep thinking that he must know about the Cycle and about my vociferous devotion to George, but it's totally possible that he has no clue about that. He knows how very close George and I always were, but I don't know if he knows that we eventually became lovers, and, if not, that's a lot to lay on someone who's younger brother killed himself. I don't know. It's very stressful, but I will find out one of these probably near days. Happy to hear you've gotten up to 75%. I think I'm down to 40% as of this morning. I don't want to employ an elegiac tone or wax lyrical because those things are tricks and devices. They're the standard schtick that writers use when writing about something personal and tragic, and I've always hated that approach. It's purely manipulative, and it turns a unique tragedy into something general. I think it speaks far more of the writer's ego than of what he or she is trying to mourn and celebrate. I would rather fail than subject George's memory to that horse shit. That's why, ha ha. Flattening, interesting. What do you mean by that? Flattening it how? 'God Jr.' got cut down and didn't. In my original plans and notes and stuff, the novel was going to proceed further, and the father was going to turn the monument into a tourist attraction and hunt down the video game's designer to seek out 'the truth', but I never actually wrote those parts out. Later gator. ** Bill P. in Chicago, Hi, Bill! Welcome back! Of course I remember you! Thanks for your buche votes. Yeah, the Herme has a real pull for me, especially. Wow, that's an amazing story about your girlfriend/wife's physical battle. I'm hugely grateful to you for sharing that with me. It's very meaningful to me. And I'm very touched that it made you think of my posts about George and my great dilemma and pain about him. 'The terror of losing control of the story of my beloved': yes, exactly, so much. If I can write this book, or rather finish it in such a way that I think other people would find value from reading it, you'll see that what you said is so key and important to my experience, and George's too. Thank you so much, Bill. I'm very happy that you're back. ** Pascal, Cool, thanks for the heads up on the Riviere, man. Great day to you. ** Steevee, Very interesting report on 'Zero Dark Thirty'. Thank you. Hm, well, it sounds like something to definitely see. I see it won the NYCC (sp?) best film prize yesterday. Does that surprise you? ** 5STRINGS, Good, you're okay. Country living has its selling points, yeah. Well, hm, I guess I've never lived in 'the country'. The country of France? Nah. Good buche picks. It's hard to get away from nutty and fruity in buches, not that I want to. Yeah, I need to go concentrate on the ingredients. It takes me a while to realize that they taste like something specific. I just think that they're edible eccentricities for a while. ** SwAmPeX, Oh, gosh, thank you. Aren't you kind. You sound like you're doing all kinds of great. Wow, excellent! So, the writing is happening in a more pleasing way, good, good. What's the short film? It isn't online, is it? Boyfriend! Seriously, you are like the exciting success story du jour. That's so sweet. You have to -- well, you don't have to -- let me read some of these things you're making at some point when they're ready, okay? Being an adult is so weird. I still don't really know how to do that. I just try to stay the same and kind of reposition myself as appropriately as possible as things happen around me or something. 'Bachelorette', huh, I'll go check out what I can find about that. Yeah, you sound so great. That's so awesome! ** Pisy caca, You have a new gap in the middle of your name. It's interesting. Okey-doke, thanks for the buche votes. It's a hard choice this year. Hm. Yury's doing real well. He's going gangbusters on his fashion line and business, working hard almost 24/7 at the moment getting his designs made into prototypes and meeting with tailors and possible distributors and stuff. So, he's doing really well. Ah, I see, about the book you're translating. Yeah, it's great that you've got all that work. I remember when you were really fearful about getting enough work. What is the concentration of the online American poetry course? Is it a general overview thing, or does it concentrate on particular schools or types of poetry? Interesting. Poetry is the art form of the gods or something, I think, maybe. I don't know. So good to have you in reach again, my pal. Love and hugs like Xmas wrapping. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, it's like a designer cake. Cake as art in the best cases, I guess. They look more opulent in the photos than they do in real life. Saw that about Luke Fowler. Yeah, fuck it. I loved his film. Curious about the Elizabeth Price. It sounds interesting, and, yes, anything that uses the Shangri-Las as its noise has to be at least kind great or something. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Cool two. Buches, I mean. The only real reason I might not do the Michalak is that I did his 'toy car' one last year. But I don't know. And it's pricey. Not that that has ever stopped me. You're kicking ideas around in what form? Are you doing writing experiments? Or is it mostly mental at the this point, or ... ? ** David J. White, Hey, Mr. White! Oh, shit, 'Late Spring' is in my top 10 all-time favorite films, so a big high five re: that one. And I love 'Tokyo Twilight' too. Yeah, hope the Ozu post is okay. We'll see. Or you tell me. Well, yeah, your 'OT' film was fucking great! I don't know if this'll mean anything, but the French director Christophe Honore watched it when I linked to it on FB, and he told me he really loved it. I'm sure whatever you do with 'TBotFL' will be fantastic. No worries. And, yeah, if you end up wanting to try 'Try', just let me know. And for sure on the NYC meet up and real world friendship. As soon as I get plans in place, we'll sort that out. Great! Sucks I can't friend you on Facebook due to that place's stupid friends limit. I wonder how that 'Subscribe' option works. I don't know why people can subscribe to me but not to you, for instance. That place is so weird or not weird enough or something. Everyone, David J. White, who directed the terrific short film based on my short fiction piece 'Oliver Twink' that I directed you to the other week is on Facebook if you want to friend an awesome artist and guy. He's here. ** Rewritedept, Hi, pal! Never saw 'The Upsetter'. Need to. Definitely. I wish that new Orb/Perry collab album was better. Ellis is an awfully good writer. Dude really knows his way around the sentence. Your love is very understandable. My favorite Rimbaud translation by far is this one. I've been okay. Had jetlag, but it's gone. Trying to get back into the novel and enjoy pre-Xmas stuff. No December trips for me. I've got a bunch in January, but I'm home free for now. Favorite punk albums '77 - '81 ... man, that's a tough one. It gets into what counts or doesn't count as punk, I guess, too. I'm going to need to think about that one. Give me a day. I'm too into best-of lists to toss one off without thinking a bunch first, but ... Everyone, Rewritedept would be very interested to hear what your favorite punk albums are, dating from the years '77 to '81. You want to toss some faves his way? Would be cool. His picks, if you missed them, are: wire - pink flag. bad brains ROIR tape. minor threat s/t EP.' Have at it, folks! Slow and great at the same time. That happens. So, have you made peace with the drummer? Yeah, fill me in re: band or writing progress when the time is right, please? ** Foggy Sapphires, Well, hey there, Caroline! How very lovely to see you! Oh, yes, I know Peter de Rome's work. I saw a bunch of his films back in the '70s when such things were only viewable in stinky, dark theaters, and his stuff made quite an impression. I didn't know he was still alive! Wow. I'll hit those links and read those interviews this afternoon, thank you! And let me know, if you don't mind, when your interview with Nick is available. Everyone, here are a couple of big treats for you from d.l. Foggy Sapphires. First, here is a trailer for Ethan Reid's documentary 'Fragments of Peter de Rome' about the legendary, great gay porn pioneer and auteur Peter de Rome. And here is an interview with Ethan Reid about the documentary. Really fascinating stuff. Go check it out. Love from rainy, foggy Paris to you, my friend! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thanks for the buche picks. I don't know, I'm torn about what buches to pick. I think I'll need the input of my fellow buche eating friends to make the very final decision. Yury really likes the Marcolini, so that might be the Xmas day one, we'll see. I think I might be leaning towards one of the Hevins or the Roussel or the Herme. Don't know. Thanks about the wishes re: my novel, and the same goes double for yours. Flatness is a real problem with mine right now too. Or seeming flatness. It's really a different kind of huge problem than 'TMS' was. With that, it was whether my art was up to the massive task I wanted from it. Here, it's more ... how do I possibly represent something so extremely important to me and real. How do I diminish and destroy my art in honor of it without losing readers' absorption. Very, very hard. Still trying. No, I haven't read that Aira novella, but, and this pretty weird, I picked it up in S&;Co. the other day and came 'this close' to buying it. It seems like your recommendation in combo with that near miss must be a sign. I will purchase it when I next go over there. Thank you, Jeff, and, yeah, best of the best getting your novel fully into your hands. Obviously, I'm very interested to hear anything about the work that you want to share. ** James, Hi. Thanks for your choices. Yury likes the Laduree one too. As I said above, I did Michalak last year, so that's a strike against going back to his well. Yes, I was sorry to hear that you didn't get the Santa Fe job. Maybe it's a blessing? Living in Santa Fe ... I don't know? My fingers are very crossed re: Ventura and/or Berkeley, be assured. 70,000 nice going. Oh, right, that ridiculous Mayan thing. I can't people are actually freaking out about that, but I guess it's fun or something. People are so freaked about the 21st in Russia that the government had to issue some sort of statement assuring the frightened masses that the world won't end. Of course, if the Russian government says something, you can immediately assume they're lying, so maybe there is a reason to freak out, ha ha. Much love back. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, J. Thanks for the choices. Herme is a real possibility. It looks so fucking chocolate. And the Pouchkine, yeah. It's hard. Yep. ** Esther Planas, Hey again! I did check out the website. It looks super interesting, even when not understanding the language well and all that. Fantastic idea and thing! Yay for you and for them for yaying you! Love back in bunches. ** Bill, Nice batch, right? Yury in fact nixed the Hediard one straight off. Actually, it was his first pick, but when I told him it was the Kremlin clock, he absolutely refused. His Russia phobia is quite a thing. I think I'm going to go do a tour and look at them in person. Big up to you, B. ** E., Hi, e.! Happily obliterated, ah, that sounds so nice. I can't remember the last time I was happily obliterated. Dang. Hope the all-nighter isn't too all. Saskia rules, yes! Yeah, hm, if I come across or remember things that are that good, you'll get s telegram-like comment from me. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Wonderful to see you! Okay, cool, another vote for the Hugo & Victor. That's like the dark horse buche. Macarons, growl, yum. I'm actually going to go buy myself some today. Tennessee Williams, interesting. How did you happen into his work? Great stuff, obviously. Great about you not having to teach! That is exciting! ** Okay. Three more books I've loved of late for you today. All of them are highly lovable, trust me. Check them out. See you tomorrow.