'xTx’s book Today I Am A Book takes her craft in a whole new direction. Civil Coping Mechanisms does a very truly grand thing indeed by publishing this, her best, piece of work. Indeed the writers here at Beach Sloth fought tooth and nail for a sneak peak at the book. Having read it multiple times, reveling in the joy and tragedy of the book, the team here at Beach Sloth is convinced that it is one of the finest things put to paper. In a world where fewer and fewer things are put to paper, this is a huge accomplishment.
'The book opens on a redwood forest in Northern California. Over the course of eons the trees grow ever closer to the light. By talking amongst themselves the trees gain a sense of purpose. In particular one tree begins to get rather spiritual talking about growing towards the light. With rapt attention the other trees pay attention growing with the spiritual leader tree. Fast-forwarding through this brief setup in only 130 pages, the trees arrive to the visit human inhabitants moving amongst the trees. Unable to comprehend the fact that the trees are an integral part of a state in a country called “The United States of America” the trees grow like they always have. Eventually liberal-minded individuals visit the forests and take pictures of themselves next to the trees using various filters on their camera phones to make themselves look cool.
'For a while the tree accept this fate, as they have accepted many worse things in the past. The spiritual tree leader worries at what this intense commercialization of the forests might do. Will the attention help protect fellow trees or make them more vulnerable? Before the spiritual tree leader can come to a satisfying conclusion, he is struck down by the power of a chainsaw. Finding it ironic as the trees were only days away from creating their own defense mechanism that involved shooting acid at humans, the spiritual tree leader is driven away, never to see his tree flock again.
'Deep in the recesses of a paper making factory the tree wonders what horrible thing it will be transformed into. The tree finds itself being ripped apart. Out of the remnants the tree finds itself turned into a book. At peace with its future the tree says to itself Today I Am A Book and is proud to be an exclusive edition of the last Harry Potter book.'-- Beach Sloth
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Further
xTx's Nothing to Say blog
xTx interviewed about 'TIAAB' @ Nerve
'A Look At the Textured Cover of xTx’s “Today I Am A Book”'
xTx interviewed @ Electric Lit
The Sunday Interview: xTx @ The Rumpus
'52 Weeks / 52 Interviews: Week 32: xTx' @ Monkeybicycle
Podcast: xTx interviewed @ Other People w/ Brad Listi
Poems by xTx @ Pank
'Abandonment', a story b xTx
Chaos Questions #7 – xTx @ Enclave
'Dear Wigleaf,'
'Things You Find on a Train', a story by xTx
'Ready', a story by xTx
xTx @ Facebook
'Today I Am A Book' @ goodreads
'today xTx came out with another book'
Buy 'Today I Am A Book' here
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Extras
Story Swaps: xTx and Scott McClanahan
Mel Bosworth reads 'Standoff' by xTx
Alex J Allison reads 'Standoff' by xTx
'Normally Special' by xTx, reviewed by Wing Chair Books
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Interview
from Literary Orphans
What does your writing space look like? Paper? Laptop? A study? A bedroom? A car outside a Dunkin’ Donuts?
xTx: It looks like my lap and it looks like a jailhouse lunchroom with no windows.
Where do your ideas for writing projects come from? Do you sit down and actively brainstorm, or does the jelly-filling just hit you walking down the street?
xTx: Definitely the jelly-filling. Or sometimes a jellyfish. It’s definitely a hitting though.
When you’re in your special writing place, writing out the jelly, are you listening to music? If so, what kind(s)?
xTx: I usually like to listen to anything by William Basinski when I am writing because they are all the same and they all put me into trances. Right now I am listening to Wye Oak. This one time I co-wrote an entire book listening to Neutral Milk Hotel’s, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
What book was that? (that you co-wrote listening to Neutral Milk Hotel)
xTx: It was Shudder Pageant, co-written with the awesomely talented and bearded Mel Bosworth.
Was there a particular moment that spurred you to submit your work?
xTx: Yes. Before i started submitting stories I was only blogging. One of my blog friends posted that he had a story published in an online zine. It was an amazing story. I had no idea there were such things as online magazines. I started exploring. I got the courage up to submit. Here we are.
You and Roxane Gay have an amazing partnership and friendship; can you talk about the first time you interacted with her?
xTx: All I remember is that her online presence intimated me. She accepted one then two stories from me for PANK and tentative email communication began from there. It was an unfolding that is continuing to this day.
Is there anything you can share about the novel you’ve been writing?
xTx: It is a dark novel about a magician set in a world that bends different than ours.
When you say that your upcoming book’s world bends differently than ours, can you give away any tidbits about that? (If it’s too soon I understand!)
xTx: I think ‘bends differently than ours’ says it all without giving anything away. I’ll leave it at that for now.
What inspired you to write about a magician? Are we talking fantasy with real magic magician, or now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t magician?
xTx: We are talking both of those types of magicians combined. I was inspired by my “story” title, “Nobody Trusts A Black Magician.” I thought, who is this black magician? And then I saw him, in a decrepit one room apartment, sitting on a wilty bed, underneath a flickering light bulb hanging from a cracked and peeling ceiling, his hands on his knees, his head wanting to be buried in those hands and he looked so sad and so pathetic. It was then I knew I wanted to draw him. Find out why he was so sad. So that’s what I’ve been doing.
Do you think we should separate the art from the artist?
xTx: Yes and no. Not sure that is possible. I think it depends what you want to attach and what you want to separate. Those things are able to be sorted out maybe, but overall, if it came from me, it is of me, I think.
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Book
Civil Coping Mechanisms
'Today I Am A Book is maddening, the ‘I’ bringing you in close only to wink and push off again. It is an alluring, irresistible book. And it was written by xTx. That should be all you need to know. She is a master and we are her grateful subjects.'-- Lindsay Hunter
'Today I Am a Bookactually feels like many books, wound expertly into one. It’s a book of compelling narratives. A book of destabilizing experimentation. A book that entices you with wild imagination and then bucks you with raw and real emotion. A book that makes you laugh, then gasp. It is surprising, rollicking, and powerful; a perfect stage for xTx’s singular vision.'-- Diane Cook
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Excerpt
from Nerve
Today I Am Unemployed
Today I am unemployed. So far, every day feels like a Saturday. Yesterday while I was driving around in the middle of the morning running errands something felt wrong. It felt like I forgot something. I kept looking down to make sure I was wearing pants.
Reality is weighted, heavy. It is an anvil tied to the all of you, pulling you down. Extra gravity. At night it turns to locusts. A tiny, swarm with equal heft. They nest inside the mind. They are a wriggling, restless mass. They don’t let you sleep.
Last night I brought shit into the bed. I smelled it everywhere but I didn’t do anything and he didn’t notice.
In the morning, I found shit on my elbow and on my wrist. I untucked the fitted sheet and folded it over the smears so the maid wouldn’t see.
Last night was a living, awake, nightmare. The kind where when you wake up from not really being asleep, it is still there.
Tomorrow is Saturday.
I wonder if it will feel like Thursday.
____
Stories
What Naomi Says
They didn’t find the body until weeks later. Its hands chewed off, the rest of it torn through like an old sheet. Naomi said it smelled exactly like death should.
I ate the peach just pulled from the fridge. Its juice ran down my chin, cold, like, “Wake up chin! Wake up!”
My silence, my chewing, just made Naomi talk more. I learned things I didn’t want to. Things people reading the newspaper would never know. I thought of a giant mother hiding the eyes of its thousands of children. I thought, my life should have so many hands.
It didn’t.
I was left to see everything, thanks to Naomi.
Especially thanks to Naomi.
After all the facts and peach meat were spent, she stopped me from throwing the pit in the trash. Instead, she pulled me, pit-fist first, out the back door through the garden she’d left to die and back to the trees that lined the creek.
“There. Throw it there,” she ordered, pointing.
The morning paused while I wished for a giant mother with matching hands. Then, taking a breath full of how death should smell, I aimed at the thing, threw.
The Mill Pond
All of my tank tops are striped the wrong way for a girl of my size. They are also too short. My belly bulges out from beneath the bottom like, "Hey, wanna play with me?" My corduroy pants are also striped, but in the fabric. That is how they are made. My hair hangs like greasy blanket fringe. I feel like a stripe. I am a stripe. A big bulging stripe painted down the middle of a highway by a drunk highway stripe painting guy—probably my dad.
My mom won't buy me new tank tops because she thinks forcing me to wear tops that are way too small for me is motivation for losing weight. I don't tell her that the only motivation it is giving me is to put on my shortest tank top, go out in the backyard to my old playhouse and kill myself with her sewing scissors.
"We can go shopping for some new clothes when your belly fits back inside, Tinker." She says this in a voice that I would like to punch. Also, it is hard to judge an infant, I know, but there should be laws against naming your baby daughter Tinkerbell if the baby's father's family has a history of obesity. Seven pounds, two ounces at birth turning into 160 at age thirteen on a 5'2" frame is a recipe for misery. "Bertha" would've been kinder.
The tank tops belong to last summer. My belly belongs to this summer. My mom won't buy me new tank tops because she is cheap and also poor so she is blaming it on me and my belly. I wear my cords because I won't wear shorts because of my thighs. They are too wide for the style of shorts they sell now. My thigh flab bulges out from the too tight leg holes. I tried on a pair of light brown ones once and my thighs looked like upside down ice cream cones. The flavor they looked like was a sort of watery peach strawberry swirl, like how if those two flavors melted out on a white kitchen floor in long thick strips that looked exactly like my legs.
There is no way I am going to wear boys shorts or my mom's shorts. She actually told me, "It's stupid to wear pants all summer, Tinker. Why don't you wear one of my old pairs?" Then she held up a pair of jean shorts that looked like a perfect light blue square. I walked out of the trailer and after the screen door slammed shut I heard her say, "What?" and then, to herself, "I like them." I could picture her through the side of the trailer, holding them in front of her, against her straight waist, a square on a square. I kicked a rock at the dog and then walked to the Shop N Save to get a Suzy Q.
Even in my cords my thighs rub together. My pants don't wear out in the knees first. Ever. And, if I ever ran—which I never do—smoke would wisp from the hot friction, especially in cords. Something about the raised stripes mixed with the valleys between them. Air flow mixed with fusion energy or something. I think we learned about it in science class but I sit in the back, in the corner, away from everything, not paying attention, so I could be wrong. There is a window in the back of that classroom that looks out towards the road. Across the road there is an old farm. Next to the farm there is a field. Behind the field there is a row of trees. Behind the row of trees there is another field and then another row of trees and then there is the mill pond. I go to the mill pond a lot and so when I sit in the back of class and Mr. Lewis is teaching about fusion energy and molecules and things, I stare out the window in the direction of the mill pond and his voice becomes cicadas.
I take the long way to the mill pond now. Last summer I would take the shortcut through Mister Dean's property because it cuts out almost a mile. I'd duck through the broken part in the fence that separates his property from the road and I'd follow the chicken wire alongside his east garden until it hit his cornfields and then I'd walk through the widest row until I came to the end of it and go through the fence and down to the dried riverbed before following that to where the field for the mill pond started. If you kept going straight on the riverbed, you'd get to the outside of town and that's where the Shop N Save was. Cutting through Mister Dean's property was the quickest way for me to get to both of my favorite places.
He'd always be out there in his garden. I'd hear him first. Whistling and humming, whistling and humming. He wore a ladies straw hat and it would bob above the tomato plants like a lady was there picking the ripe ones.
I never really paid attention to Mister Dean and I didn't think he paid much attention to me until one day he was just there leaning against a fence post like he was waiting for me.
"Your name's Tinkerbell, right?"
"Yes."
"Where you going all these times you walkin''cross my property?"
I didn't want to tell him the mill pond because I didn't want anyone to know about my secret place so I just told him I was going to the Shop N Save to get a drink.
"I got a drink," he said. "I got Kool-Aid. Why don't you come up? It's hot."
I looked at Mister Dean and then I looked at the fence post and then I looked at my feet and then the fence post and then Mister Dean again.
"You come up or you don't come 'cross my property no more."
And because I dreaded going the long way and because it was really hot and because I didn't know what else to say, I came up.
And that's how I started having Kool-Aids with Mister Dean.
He had a real house with a porch that only had one chair. He would make me sit on the chair and he would lean against the porch rail facing me or he would sometimes sit on the stairs, sideways, so he could look at me. Mister Dean was about as old as my mom, I guessed. I didn't like how I could always hear his breathing, this raspy gurgle. It never left him, even when he was speaking. It made me think of the cicadas at the mill pond and how their buzz never stopped, it just filled up the air like a jar. Mister Dean's breaths were like that but they never became part of the everything so that eventually you didn't hear it anymore. His shirts bunched funny in the back and I wondered if he hid black filmy cicada wings under them.
I found out later he did not.
I don't know why they call it a mill pond because there is no mill. Maybe there was one there back in the 1800's or something but now there is not. I sometimes walk around in the brush around the mill pond looking for, like, relics of a mill. Ruins, I guess; pieces of something that used to be whole. Like old concrete slabs or stones or a broken turny-wheel for energy making, like the ones on riverboats like they have on the Mississippi. Maybe some sort of old chutes that look like playground slides, but rusted. Big wooden beams with iron spikes sticking out of them. Big chunky things that look like they were put together with strong hands that knew how to make things that would last forever. They'd be broken but still strong. They would still look dignified, even though they were just old pieces of something bigger.
The brush is high in places and where there is no brush, there are weeds. I have looked as much as I can even though I might get bit by ticks or snakes. I just feel like I want to find proof of something that I feel is true.
But I never do.
We drank the Kool-Aid out of jelly jars that were always dirty but I never said anything. We'd sit on his porch and drink the Kool-Aid until it was gone. We would talk about things that people talk about when they don't really have much to say to each other; water-treading things. I looked at my Kool-Aid a lot; some days pink, some days red, some days purple or blue. Sometimes he'd ask me how old I was even though I had already told him before. Sometimes he'd look at me for a long while and then say, "Tinkerbell . . . " like he was rolling my name around in his mouth and then he'd shake his head and laugh a little. He mostly looked at me and did little nods. And breathe.
I must've said something about Suzy Q's once and one day he brought me one with my Kool-Aid. I told him, "No, that's all right." And he said, "No girl, you go on. Eat it." And I said, "No, I'd better not. My mom . . . " and he said, "Your mom, what?" And I didn't want to tell him about how my mom won't let me eat sweets and how she hides all her cookies even though I always find them and how I heard her on the phone telling her best friend Avery how "Tinker's just gettin' so goddamn big." And, so, I just set that Suzy Q down on my thigh for as long as I could, like it wasn't delicious, like it was a turd or a dead thing like I wasn't sitting there wanting with every part of me to shove it right into my mouth. But after a while, I did. I ate it. I ate the Suzy Q. I couldn't help it.
Mister Dean watched me eat the Suzy Q. How I unwrapped it and shook it out into my fist like it was a squeezed out pup. How I let the wrapper fall. How it blew across the dirty porch wood and fell off the side. He watched how I took it with both my hands and pulled it apart, slowly. How I listened to the quiet wet split of the cream pulling away. How I smelled at it, the sweet chocolate scent erasing the faint cherry smell of Kool-Aid and the wet dirt smell from his just watered garden. He watched as I placed one half down on my thigh, cream side up and ate the other half with my eyes partly closed like when I was alone. Shoving and chewing and swallowing until its length was gone and then licking each of my fingers clean of its guts. Mister Dean watched me eat each half like he'd never seen anyone eat anything before.
"You really like them things, don't you?" His breath, for once, sounded gone.
And I didn't answer because he already knew the answer.
"You want another one?" He asked me this in a voice meant for church.
And I didn't answer that question either and he didn't wait for it. He got up from the stairs and disappeared into the house. When he came out he had the box. He leaned himself against the porch railing, opened the box, got one of the little chocolate cream cakes, and reached it out to me, just far enough to where I'd have to reach.
"Say please," he said.
I didn't want to, but then I did.
Mister Dean watched and then Mister Dean made me say please two more times.
Later on the only please I would say would be followed by the word, 'stop'.
On the Kool-Aid days, I'd never make it to the mill pond.
There is a little dock on the mill pond. There is a little row boat tied to the dock. I guess it belongs to the farmer, but nobody uses it. It never moves. I know this because I put a rock on it once. I put it in a wobbly place so if someone were to use it, it would surely fall. The rock is still there. The rope that ties it has moss growing on it and a spider web that always stays the same. The oars sit like an X in the belly of it. It might as well be on land.
After I am done looking for ruins, I lie on the dock, on my back, and pull my tank top up to my boobies. I rub my belly in the sun. I pray nobody comes but I also hope they do. Nobody ever does. Dragonflies land on the rowboat rope and then they fly away and then they come back and then they fly away again. Sometimes they land on my knees. It's quiet there. The water never moves. It doesn't really have a shore. Its outsides are mostly cattails, and by the dock, lily pads. Every so often there are clear plops that break the hum of the cicadas that like to do their buzz when it's so hot outside. Their buzz sounds like how the sun feels hot. The wet frog plops are the only cool sound out there. The middle of the mill pond is a perfect circle. The water is black like it refuses to reflect the sky or can't. From the sky, looking down on the mill pond, I'm sure it looks like a big green eye-ball, the cattail heads brown flecks in the green, its middle the shiny black pupil, staring up at the clouds. Like me.
I think about falling into that black pupil sometimes. Untying the rope, disturbing the spider web, falling the wobbly rock, and climbing into the belly of the boat. I have never rowed anything, but I would figure it out and paddle through the iris of green cattails and lily pads until I got to the pupil. I could lie on the boat for a while, there in the middle of the pupil. Stare up into the sky with it; just me and the mill pond's pupil. The dragonflies would find my knees and I would rub my belly in the sun. When I felt ready, I would stand up in the boat. I'd stand there in my too short, too small striped tank top and my striped in the fabric pants and my blanket fringe hair and I'd think about the ruins I could never find. I'd think about how I knew what it was like to be a ruin. The cattails would watch and the cicadas would hum their buzzy heat song and when I jumped into the pupil's shiny black it would make a cool plop sound like the frogs' do. On my way down I'd wonder if I would ever be found and how nice it would feel to be looked for.
*
p.s. Hey. ** Keaton, Hi. Well, while you seem to have put the ass/anal near the center of commenters' attentions yesterday, I nonetheless like to think that my pancakes had something t do with it too. Yeah, never been to Pittsburgh. Or even close. Don't know why. It sounds colorful in some kind of unique way, huh. The accent thing, huh. Maybe I'll do a Pittsburgh post or something. Weirder things have happened, I think. I realize that I don't know what the limerick form entails, which is weird, I guess, so I don't know if those are limericks are limericks or 'limericks'. I mean, they're nice and funny in any case. Whoa, you were productive yesterday. Everyone, Keaton has held out an offer to 'bring [you] diamonds'. Who in their right mind would say no to that? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Well, at least over here, Houellbecq has successfully provoked, if, that is, getting the media all swerved in his direction counts constantly, and I guess that does count a lot these days? RIP: Richard Glatzer, and, of course, I'm very,very sorry for your personal loss. I only met Richard once, strangely, when I did a reading ages ago at his old Sit-and-Spin Club. Did you ever go there? It was a very cool, fun place. ** Steevee, It does seem that way, yeah. ** Damien Ark, Aw, thanks a lot, buddy! ** Bill, Proud, chuffed, humbled to have fortified you for the day, B. Taman Shud are interesting, maybe slightly more in theory than in experience, I don't know. Not bad, though. Shit, you too? I mean re: the allergies. It is the start of spring though, isn't it, when those annoying sleepers awake? In LA, spring always wrecks me for, I don't know, a week, two of them? Feel much, much better. ** Cal Graves, Weird how something as simple as an ass can cause an obsession with same to grow creepy, but it's true. Heck, I've kind of gotten a whole 'career' out of paying attention to that creepiness maybe? Ha ha, D'is, nice. Thank you re: my giffery, sir. Yeah, shit always results from any ambition, and I guess it's all about the proportion and whether the shit part is inspired enough. God knows shit and genius have a tendency to pal around. Oh, I liked that thing on your blog that you sent me/us too a lot, btw. I forgot to tell you. Yeah, you write so good, among other things. Deep bow. Wow, I don't know any of those photographers you mentioned, by name at least, off the top of my head. Here comes google. A piece of furniture? Hm, does a ladder count? Maybe a ladder. You? ** Kier, How do you do that, seriously? Dentagious. I should be copyrighting all of these derivations. Co-copyrighting them with you, or, wait, on your behalf. Yeah, that. Thanks about my/Zac's breakfast. Your psych will be at the meeting? Wow, that's interesting. That's cool. You finished your app! Congratulations, pal! Awesome! It would totally make sense if your recent tiredness was just or mostly stress, right, sure, huh. I hope so. Or I mean I hope it vamooses now that the big thing is uploaded. You should apply to those things, right? I mean, just remain pragmatic about how difficult it is and how undoubtedly political the decisions are and all of that. Or, I don't know. See how you feel. Oh, god, the slaughtered sheepling. RIP. What you said makes sense, though, yeah. Yesterday was kind of intense. The only boring part is that this lower back problem/weakness I've had all my life flared up yesterday, and basically I'm in near-constant pain down there and have to spend boring time stretching it out and flattering it with painkillers. Blah. Otherwise, Zac and I were working on the sound edit of Scene 2 when we got the news from our producers that, in order to meet the deadline for submitting our film to the Cannes Film Festival, we'll have to Fed Ex them a DVD of the finished film by next Saturday at the latest. It would have been nice if they'd informed us of this deadline weeks ago, but okay. So the next week/nine days is going to be intense. We lined up the sound mixer. Only problem is that one big reason we hired him is that we were told he has his own studio, which cuts down the costs. But he informed us yesterday that his studio is being relocated and is unavailable for two weeks. So, we're going to have to do the sound mix in really not great circumstances at Zac's place and try to get as clean a sound as we can by the deadline in that non-pro set-up and then go into his studio later on and do the final mix. So we'll start doing that on Monday, and then Kiddiepunk will come mid-week and we'll do the color correction and make the film's titles and end credits with him. And we have to hope the guy doing the special effects and compositing work will get his work done in time that we can insert the corrected frames and scenes into the film by Friday. It's going to be very tight. So, that was a lot to learn, and now we'll be in a work frenzy for a while. Anyway, we finished Scene 2, and then Zac had to reload all the sound files for Scene 1 because they were slightly fucked up, and that's a very laborious task, and I couldn't help, so he started doing that in hopes of being finished by this morning so we can work on the Scene 1 sound, and I went home. There's a possible new apartment that looks good, but whether I can grab it in time is a question. Empty apartments don't last long here, and my being a foreigner makes renting a place much more difficult than it is for natives. Ugh. Sorry, all of that is kind of boring to read, I know, but it was my day. Today more sound editing, some groaning in pain, a gallery opening later, and trying to get my shit together re: applying for that apartment. What did Thursday do to you? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks, Jeff. News about the sound thing is up in my day report to Kier. Good news, but it's going to be crazy next week. Favorite Queneau books? Hm. I would say, in addition to 'EiS', 'Pierrot mon ami', 'We Always Treat Women Too Well', 'Zazie dans le métro', and 'The Blue Flowers'. Very cool, about the Schroeter piece. Where will it appear? ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks a bunch, Mr. T! ** Right. Today I'm focusing attention on the new book that I'm most excited to read. It's en route to me. xTx is an amazing writer. Check it out. See you tomorrow.