Bloomsday

He took a reel of dental floss from with waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed teeth.

Thank you, Mr Joyce.

Big Other

I've been blogging over at Big Other. Check it out, and thanks, John, for inviting me.

post-&NOW

I'll have a full write-up on my experiences at &NOW, but I'm happy to say that I've survived it without too much scarring.

It was great to see old friends--HTML Giant folks (Blake, Ryan, etc.), FC2 folk (Lance, Andi, Steve, Debra, etc.), Chiasmus people (Trevor, Shane, Kate Z.), Les Figues people (Vanessa & Teresa), Starcherone people (Ted, etc.) & old old friends (Bee & Michael Stewart!)--and meet new, by which I mean once virtual & now real, friends--Josh, Matt Bell, Matt Kirkpatrick, James Yeh, John Madera, JA Tyler, etc.

I didn't sleep or eat nearly enough but I made it! Onward!

This made me laugh...

"If a poet demanded from the State the right to have a few bourgeois in his stable, people would be very much astonished, but if a bourgeois asked for some roast poet, people would think it quite natural. That would not scandalize our wives, our daughters or our sisters." -Baudelaire

beauty plus pity

thing is: i agree with vn to a point. yes, of course, seeing something of beauty incites pity because beauty necessarily dies, but does this make it art?

i want to believe great art--great writing--is more than this.

i also want to believe that there is more to literature than satisfaction and comfort. am i wrong?

i'm not trying to go head to head with vn here because i agree with almost everything he says, even his harsh--read: honest-- critiques about "talent," but there are some things that beg questioning. such as, for instance, the role of great literature and what "defines" art.

Feeling good?

I spent all of yesterday (minus time to eat) editing, and I have to say: I'm really proud of this collection. There are some damn fine stories in it. Is this a bad thing to think? Should I, as a writer, feel down on my writing? I hope not.

Then again, the crushing defeat of rejection wouldn't feel so bad if I didn't feel so good, right?

But of course, I'm still in the Honeymoon high phase, where I think everything is brilliant. In six months, I'll wish it was in a box, being burned, with some potatoes roasting underneath, that way, there will be some semblance of value or worth to those wasted pages. But I'm being melodramatic. As always.

something to think about

"The real is produced from miniaturised units, from matrices, memory banks and command models--and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal, the produce of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere." --Baudrillard

PEN/Beyond Margins Announced

It's official: PEN/Beyond Margins.

Hooray!

I'll have a post on contests as a concept forthcoming...

finishing stories: an update

so far, i've finished 16 stories. i'd like to finish 21 stories for the collection, and i have more than enough in my vault of "story starts."

thing is: there is an odd gender balance. of the 16 stories, only 4 are from other women. when i originally solicited unfinished stories, there was a gender balance.

so i wonder: are women more "protective" of their writing? or is this merely a coincidence? would i be so generous to share my work with others? is it a question of generosity? i'm not really sure i'd even be able to answer this until it happened, although i love the idea of collaboration.

of course, i've had males voice their concern over sharing their work, and i think this is perfectly legitimate. furthermore, i could do ANYTHING with these stories, and these writers would have their names attached to it.

certainly, i don't write this as any kind of criticism! it's more of a curiosity. i'm grateful to those who have shared while fully understand why others have not. i'm not really sure what i'm saying. mostly, i haven't blogged in a while.

i do have to say though, i think the stories i've finished are pretty cool. it's exciting to have starting point, and i don't even have to come up with my own story!

new interview up

ryan manning interviewed me here.

Word Spaces

Ryan Call displays my workspace on HTML Giant. Pretty cool.

Massive Novella Compendium

Please check out this Novella Compendium that John Madera has compiled. Very cool, and looks like I've got my summer reading...

Grading: A Moment to Give Thanks

I am in the midst of grading essays for my Feminist Memoirs class. The prompt is: The Personal is Political. The stories are amazing, breathtaking, and while reading these painfully personal & political stories, I understand why I teach. This makes it worth it. Knowing that students trust me enough to share these stories, that these stories may never have been written down if not for an assignment for a class that requires an honest delving into the personal, that these stories may well have evaporated into the fog of busy life & repressed into the clamour of daily life, that I can read these stories makes teaching worthwhile. Teaching, whereas it's difficult, tedious, exhausting, etc., teaching is amazing. So to my Feminist Memoirs class: thank you.

Books

I like books. I love books. It seems though that I am a dying breed.

There's this conversation that keeps repeating--the record skipping, continually bringing me back, regardless of my own desires--about the death of the book. I don't buy it. I believe there will always be book lovers, people who want to read books, people who want to make books. The books of the future will be beautiful. They will be even more lovely than we can conceive now.

And the trash, the shit they sell in the cookie-cutter bookstores, let all that go onto Kindle. I won't mourn their loss. But books, real books, book-objects, they will survive. They will remain. Those will be the books I will fall for, over and over again.

Realism

In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze & Guittari write, "The real is not impossible; on the contrary, within the real, everything is possible; everything becomes possible" (27). So then, I think I like the real but only inasmuch as I prefer the fabulous. So if the non-real (irreal) is possible in the real, then obviously, I like the real. I think. Am I getting this right?

Falafel

I like falafel. Just yesterday, I had falafel at the Tomasula house. It was great. (I also like Maria's couscous, which is the best damned couscous ever.) Today, I will go have more falafel with Laura. Life is good.

Midterm exams

Whereas having midterm exams means that one has to not only write but also grade them, it also means not needing to prep for that day. This translates into something I like very much.