Shellie Zacharia lives in Gainesville, Florida. Her debut story collection, Now Playing, was recently published by Keyhole Press.
what are you reading now
Argh! I’m always reading several books at once. Too many. I’m reading a few short story anthologies slowly, a story or two here and there: The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction and My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro and the O. Henry Prize Stories 2007 volume. I’m also reading The Party Train, a Collection of North American Prose Poetry. And Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
last book to make you laugh out loud
Not sure, but maybe Elizabeth Crane. I read her When the Messenger is Hot and then I went and got You Must Be This Happy to Enter because I thought, yeah, these are fun stories.
strangest book you've ever read
Joyce’s Ulysses. I read it in grad school and I remember thinking, what?! I remember loving the Molly Bloom yes and yes and yes soliloquy, and I remember the professor saying, “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan” a bunch of times and not making much sense. But I know I was blown away that writing could be so wild.
book you borrowed and never returned
I’m embarrassed to say, but a vegetarian cookbook. It’s got good easy recipes, simple ones where I don’t have to run to the store for extra ingredients. But now I’m thinking I better return it and get my own copy.
collected stories of
Lydia Davis. Her collection just came out. I think I’ll buy it. Today. Okay.
book you've planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Ha! I don’t think I’ve planted books, but I’ve hidden books. Don’t need people knowing I’m reading that!
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Oxford American. And they include the Southern Music CD. Very cool. Literature and music – two of my favorite things.
most anticipated upcoming release
Well, I love the Sudden Fiction anthologies edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas – I have them all (and the Flash Fiction ones) and go back to them again and again. I don’t know when they’ll put another one out, but I’m waiting . . .
recommended reading list:
Some Books That Made Me Say “Wow”
- The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
- The Family Orchard by Nomi Eve
- Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
- Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
21.12.09
17.12.09
Emma Straub
Emma Straub is the author of Fly-Over State, a novella published by FlatmanCrooked. Her short stories have appeared in Five Chapters, Barrelhouse, The Saint Ann's Review, Juked, and many other publications. She is the co-editor of Avery: An Anthology of New Fiction, as well as the co-editor of the Read page of the Dossier Journal website. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and cats and is currently trying not to kill a number of plants. More information can be found at www.emmastraub.net.
what are you reading now
Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer by Steven Millhauser. I read his story collection Dangerous Laughter on my honeymoon in March and have been wanting to read his novels ever since. This book, as far as I can tell so far, is about a very average boy and his psychotically obsessed best friend. It's sort of like what I imagine Mrs. Danvers from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca would have been like as a child.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I've picked up and put down Updike's Rabbit trilogy in every bookstore I've ever been in, but have somehow never bought the thing. Does that count as a classic?
last book to make you laugh out loud
I recently finished Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City, which I wouldn't classify as a 'funny' book, but it certainly made me laugh out loud. The Millhauser book is also hilarious. I'm an easy laugh, should I mention that? Other things that make me laugh: pictures of kittens on the internet.
most treasured book in your collection
There are of course many many books that mean a great deal to me as a collection of sentences (Middlemarch, etc), but there are only two books on my shelf that actually mean something as objects. In high school, when I was a poet, I stole my parents' ancient and gorgeous copies of Frank O'Hara's The Collected Poems and e. e. cummings’s Poems, 1923-1954. I folded down pages and underlined and stuck post-its on almost every page. I don't think my parents are ever getting those books back.
book you borrowed and never returned
I don't borrow very often, but I do have a copy of Cold Comfort Farm that was loaned to me many years ago, as well as a copy of Charles Baxter's Feast of Love that a friend left at my house by accident in college. Is it awful to admit I haven't read either one?
if you could write yourself into any story
Probably one where I could go into another world, a la Narnia or Hogwarts, though people are always trying to kill you in places like that. Maybe just a Jhumpa Lahiri story, where my thoughts would be much more nicely worded.
last reading you attended
I had a reading two days ago, but it seems weird to pick my own. I will say this, however, in my own defense. It was the Largehearted Lit series, where musical accompaniment is expected, and I had my friends sing Billy Joel and the New Kids on the Block. A crowning achievement. Before that, the last reading I went to was the finale of Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City Marathon. He read until 4am, though I pooped out at 1:30. There were cookies, and prizes. Every reading should have cookies and prizes.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I love One Story. Does anyone not say One Story? I also love the The Paris Review, and my dear FlatmanCrooked.
best thing you’ve read online recently
I read The Rumpus every day. Also, The Nervous Breakdown and The Millions.
most anticipated upcoming release
My father, Peter Straub, has a really amazing novel coming out in February. It's called A Dark Matter and it will make you see stars.
recommended reading list:
Novels by Really Smart Ladies Who I Would Be Afraid to Approach at a Cocktail Party
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- The Great Man by Kate Christensen
- The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
- Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy
- The Keep by Jennifer Egan
- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
- Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
what are you reading now
Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer by Steven Millhauser. I read his story collection Dangerous Laughter on my honeymoon in March and have been wanting to read his novels ever since. This book, as far as I can tell so far, is about a very average boy and his psychotically obsessed best friend. It's sort of like what I imagine Mrs. Danvers from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca would have been like as a child.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I've picked up and put down Updike's Rabbit trilogy in every bookstore I've ever been in, but have somehow never bought the thing. Does that count as a classic?
last book to make you laugh out loud
I recently finished Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City, which I wouldn't classify as a 'funny' book, but it certainly made me laugh out loud. The Millhauser book is also hilarious. I'm an easy laugh, should I mention that? Other things that make me laugh: pictures of kittens on the internet.
most treasured book in your collection
There are of course many many books that mean a great deal to me as a collection of sentences (Middlemarch, etc), but there are only two books on my shelf that actually mean something as objects. In high school, when I was a poet, I stole my parents' ancient and gorgeous copies of Frank O'Hara's The Collected Poems and e. e. cummings’s Poems, 1923-1954. I folded down pages and underlined and stuck post-its on almost every page. I don't think my parents are ever getting those books back.
book you borrowed and never returned
I don't borrow very often, but I do have a copy of Cold Comfort Farm that was loaned to me many years ago, as well as a copy of Charles Baxter's Feast of Love that a friend left at my house by accident in college. Is it awful to admit I haven't read either one?
if you could write yourself into any story
Probably one where I could go into another world, a la Narnia or Hogwarts, though people are always trying to kill you in places like that. Maybe just a Jhumpa Lahiri story, where my thoughts would be much more nicely worded.
last reading you attended
I had a reading two days ago, but it seems weird to pick my own. I will say this, however, in my own defense. It was the Largehearted Lit series, where musical accompaniment is expected, and I had my friends sing Billy Joel and the New Kids on the Block. A crowning achievement. Before that, the last reading I went to was the finale of Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City Marathon. He read until 4am, though I pooped out at 1:30. There were cookies, and prizes. Every reading should have cookies and prizes.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I love One Story. Does anyone not say One Story? I also love the The Paris Review, and my dear FlatmanCrooked.
best thing you’ve read online recently
I read The Rumpus every day. Also, The Nervous Breakdown and The Millions.
most anticipated upcoming release
My father, Peter Straub, has a really amazing novel coming out in February. It's called A Dark Matter and it will make you see stars.
recommended reading list:
Novels by Really Smart Ladies Who I Would Be Afraid to Approach at a Cocktail Party
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- The Great Man by Kate Christensen
- The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
- Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy
- The Keep by Jennifer Egan
- Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
- Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
13.12.09
Claudia Smith
Claudia Smith lives and writes in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Her collections are The Sky Is A Well And Other Shorts and Put Your Head In My Lap. Her site is www.claudiaweb.net.
what are you reading now
The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I don't know. Something big, fat, and Russian. I've read the abridged translation of War and Peace; I should pick up the unabridged, someday. No, I've changed my mind. Someday I really will read all of Remembrance of Things Past.
last book you finished in a single sitting
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie by Jean Rhys
most treasured book in your collection
It's funny, I feel more attached to the words than the books themselves. It sounds arrogant but it is probably my first chapbook, The Sky Is A Well And Other Shorts. It was beautifully made, hand sewn, and it has an introduction Ron Carlson wrote. And it was a limited printing, so there aren't any more of them.
book you borrowed and never returned
Oh, I hate to admit I do this. I'm not going to say.
favorite book from childhood
Well, I still love Charlotte's Web.
most challenging book you’ve ever read
I read Ulysses from cover to cover when I was 18. That was challenging.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I think this has always been something to do with art. I would pick someone who wasn't terribly famous, or at least, what I thought of as not being a household name. You know, I think I'm lying. I'm not sure I've ever done this. I have a memory of putting on Charles Ives and placing a Chinese art book on the table once to impress somebody, but I'm not sure that really happened.
Nowadays, nobody is really impressed by my coffee table. It's got permanent marker scribbles on it. It's an art table, dinner table, and homework table, but not really a prop for books.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Does The Sun count? I don't subscribe to any, honestly. We're on a budget right now.
best thing you’ve read online recently
Well, I read this again recently because of the time of year.
"Bing Crosby Dreaming at The Lamp Post Inn" by Elizabeth Ellen
most anticipated upcoming release
I'm looking forward to Joe Young's Easter Rabbit. Oh, I have to order that...
recommended reading list:
Campus Novels
Well, because I'm trying to write a paper about Mary McCarthy, and I'm back at school, how about the campus novel? I haven't read most of these books – can I still recommend books I haven't read? Most of these are books I want to read someday.
- The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy
- Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
- The Professor's House by Willa Cather
- Eating People Is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury
- Japanese by Spring by Ishmael Reed
what are you reading now
The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I don't know. Something big, fat, and Russian. I've read the abridged translation of War and Peace; I should pick up the unabridged, someday. No, I've changed my mind. Someday I really will read all of Remembrance of Things Past.
last book you finished in a single sitting
After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie by Jean Rhys
most treasured book in your collection
It's funny, I feel more attached to the words than the books themselves. It sounds arrogant but it is probably my first chapbook, The Sky Is A Well And Other Shorts. It was beautifully made, hand sewn, and it has an introduction Ron Carlson wrote. And it was a limited printing, so there aren't any more of them.
book you borrowed and never returned
Oh, I hate to admit I do this. I'm not going to say.
favorite book from childhood
Well, I still love Charlotte's Web.
most challenging book you’ve ever read
I read Ulysses from cover to cover when I was 18. That was challenging.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I think this has always been something to do with art. I would pick someone who wasn't terribly famous, or at least, what I thought of as not being a household name. You know, I think I'm lying. I'm not sure I've ever done this. I have a memory of putting on Charles Ives and placing a Chinese art book on the table once to impress somebody, but I'm not sure that really happened.
Nowadays, nobody is really impressed by my coffee table. It's got permanent marker scribbles on it. It's an art table, dinner table, and homework table, but not really a prop for books.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Does The Sun count? I don't subscribe to any, honestly. We're on a budget right now.
best thing you’ve read online recently
Well, I read this again recently because of the time of year.
"Bing Crosby Dreaming at The Lamp Post Inn" by Elizabeth Ellen
most anticipated upcoming release
I'm looking forward to Joe Young's Easter Rabbit. Oh, I have to order that...
recommended reading list:
Campus Novels
Well, because I'm trying to write a paper about Mary McCarthy, and I'm back at school, how about the campus novel? I haven't read most of these books – can I still recommend books I haven't read? Most of these are books I want to read someday.
- The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy
- Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis
- The Professor's House by Willa Cather
- Eating People Is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury
- Japanese by Spring by Ishmael Reed
10.12.09
J. A. Tyler
J. A. Tyler is the author of INCONCEIVABLE WILSON (scrambler books, 2009), SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (ghost road press, 2010), IN LOVE WITH A GHOST (willows wept press, 2010), A MAN OF GLASS AND ALL THE WAYS WE HAVE FAILED (fugue state press, 2011), & THE ZOO, A GOING (dzanc books, 2013). His work has appeared recently with Diagram, Sleepingfish, Caketrain, Hotel St. George, elimae, & Action, Yes, among others, and he is also founding editor of mud luscious / ml press. Visit: www.aboutjatyler.com.
what are you reading now
How To Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew by Aaron Burch (forthcoming from PANK)
Hush Up and Listen Stinky Poo Butt by Ken Sparling (reissue forthcoming from Artistically Declined Press)
Easter Rabbit by Joseph Young (Publishing Genius Press)
In Candyland It’s Cool to Feed on Your Friends by James Chapman (Fugue State Press)
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I think I’ve read all the classics I was meaning to, and though it is perhaps not a ‘classic,’ I have been meaning to get to The Tunnel by William Gass.
last book you finished in a single sitting
both Peter Markus’s Good, Brother and The Singing Fish
also Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg
book you borrowed and never returned
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
most challenging book you’ve ever read
The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford
perfect literary gift for a loved one
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler (love as decay)
The Failure Six by Shane Jones (love as unfinished)
Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball (love as suicide)
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Poetry volume whatever (it didn’t do shit to impress anyone)
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Caketrain (their lit is always ripe always good always beautiful)
best thing you’ve read online recently
Ryan Call’s “How to Use This Guide” at Everyday Genius
most anticipated upcoming release
James Chapman’s The Rat Veda (Fugue State Press)
Shane Jones’s A Cake Appeared (Scrambler Books)
Peter Markus’s We Make Mud (Dzanc Books)
Roy Kesey’s Pacazo (Dzanc Books)
recommended reading list:
Books I Have Told My Wife to Read Because I Think She Might Like Them but She Hasn’t Yet and Probably Won’t
- Bob, or Man on Boat by Peter Markus
- Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball
- Light Boxes by Shane Jones
- Here They Come by Yannick Murphy
- Nothing in the World by Roy Kesey
- The Long Rowing Unto Morning by Norman Lock
- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
what are you reading now
How To Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew by Aaron Burch (forthcoming from PANK)
Hush Up and Listen Stinky Poo Butt by Ken Sparling (reissue forthcoming from Artistically Declined Press)
Easter Rabbit by Joseph Young (Publishing Genius Press)
In Candyland It’s Cool to Feed on Your Friends by James Chapman (Fugue State Press)
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I think I’ve read all the classics I was meaning to, and though it is perhaps not a ‘classic,’ I have been meaning to get to The Tunnel by William Gass.
last book you finished in a single sitting
both Peter Markus’s Good, Brother and The Singing Fish
also Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg
book you borrowed and never returned
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
most challenging book you’ve ever read
The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You by Frank Stanford
perfect literary gift for a loved one
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler (love as decay)
The Failure Six by Shane Jones (love as unfinished)
Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball (love as suicide)
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Poetry volume whatever (it didn’t do shit to impress anyone)
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Caketrain (their lit is always ripe always good always beautiful)
best thing you’ve read online recently
Ryan Call’s “How to Use This Guide” at Everyday Genius
most anticipated upcoming release
James Chapman’s The Rat Veda (Fugue State Press)
Shane Jones’s A Cake Appeared (Scrambler Books)
Peter Markus’s We Make Mud (Dzanc Books)
Roy Kesey’s Pacazo (Dzanc Books)
recommended reading list:
Books I Have Told My Wife to Read Because I Think She Might Like Them but She Hasn’t Yet and Probably Won’t
- Bob, or Man on Boat by Peter Markus
- Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball
- Light Boxes by Shane Jones
- Here They Come by Yannick Murphy
- Nothing in the World by Roy Kesey
- The Long Rowing Unto Morning by Norman Lock
- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
5.12.09
Timothy Gager
Timothy Gager is the author of eight books of short fiction and poetry. His latest (November 2009) Treating a Sick Animal: Flash and Micro Fictions (Cervena Barva Press) features over forty stories, many previously published in various literary magazines. He hosts the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts every month and is the co-founder of Somerville News Writers Festival. Timothy is the current Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review and has edited the book, Out of the Blue Writers Unite: A Book of Poetry and Prose from the Out of the Blue Art Gallery. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts and is employed as a social worker.
what are you reading now
I’m reading Steve Almond’s This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey which is actually two books, one front to back of flash fiction and the other a guide to writing. It has no ISBN number which I find fascinating, that someone as widely published as Steve is self-publishing.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I’ve read so many of the classics, I’d probably re-read Hemingway. I own his complete short story collection.
most treasured book in your collection
I have a few broadsides that I cherish. I have two limited edition Bukowski holiday poems that Black Sparrow used to put out and a signed chapter bound with a few staples of Billy Ray’s Farm.
book you borrowed and never returned
I always return books. I’d like some of the ones I’ve loaned back though.
last reading you attended
I hosted the Somerville News Writers Festival and I got to hear Rick Moody, Margot Livesey, Steve Almond, Frank Bidart, Lise Haines, Susan Tepper, Elizabeth Searle, Doug Holder, Sam Cornish, Tino Villanueva, Tam Neville and Richard Hoffman all read. It was like an All-Star Game.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I’d keep it local if that’s all I could support, so, Ploughshares. Why would I only be allowed to subscribe to one? That’s some cruel and unusual Nazi-journal banning. What kind of game is that?
best thing you’ve read online recently
The last issue of Night Train was fantastic—that’s always a must read.
most anticipated upcoming release
It’s out already but I haven’t bought it yet… The Best American Sports Writing 2010. I love that series.
recommended reading list:
All-Time Favorites
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
- The World According to Garp by John Irving
- Ball Four by Jim Bouton
- Big Bad Love by Larry Brown
- The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore
- Small Town Punk by John Sheppard
- Leaving Las Vegas by John O’Brien
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
- Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
- Ask the Dust by John Fante
- The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe
- Apt Pupil: A Novella in Different Seasons by Stephen King
what are you reading now
I’m reading Steve Almond’s This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey which is actually two books, one front to back of flash fiction and the other a guide to writing. It has no ISBN number which I find fascinating, that someone as widely published as Steve is self-publishing.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I’ve read so many of the classics, I’d probably re-read Hemingway. I own his complete short story collection.
most treasured book in your collection
I have a few broadsides that I cherish. I have two limited edition Bukowski holiday poems that Black Sparrow used to put out and a signed chapter bound with a few staples of Billy Ray’s Farm.
book you borrowed and never returned
I always return books. I’d like some of the ones I’ve loaned back though.
last reading you attended
I hosted the Somerville News Writers Festival and I got to hear Rick Moody, Margot Livesey, Steve Almond, Frank Bidart, Lise Haines, Susan Tepper, Elizabeth Searle, Doug Holder, Sam Cornish, Tino Villanueva, Tam Neville and Richard Hoffman all read. It was like an All-Star Game.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I’d keep it local if that’s all I could support, so, Ploughshares. Why would I only be allowed to subscribe to one? That’s some cruel and unusual Nazi-journal banning. What kind of game is that?
best thing you’ve read online recently
The last issue of Night Train was fantastic—that’s always a must read.
most anticipated upcoming release
It’s out already but I haven’t bought it yet… The Best American Sports Writing 2010. I love that series.
recommended reading list:
All-Time Favorites
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
- Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
- The World According to Garp by John Irving
- Ball Four by Jim Bouton
- Big Bad Love by Larry Brown
- The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore
- Small Town Punk by John Sheppard
- Leaving Las Vegas by John O’Brien
- For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
- Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson
- Ask the Dust by John Fante
- The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe
- Apt Pupil: A Novella in Different Seasons by Stephen King
1.12.09
Patrick Wensink
Patrick Wensink is the author of the story collection, Sex Dungeon for Sale! He is currently working on his first novel. He lives in Louisville, KY. No, not in a sex dungeon.
(A coloring contest is currently being held to celebrate the release of his new book. The contest will run until December 14th and the winning artist will receive an autographed stack of Patrick's favorite books from 2009. More information can be found at his website.)
what are you reading now
The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim.
I'm slowly getting into this one. The impossible feat of one hundred men having the same parents is less important than their shared paranoia and quirks. At least I think so. I'm only about 50 pages in. Oddly, Antrim doesn't divide his story into chapters or acts, so it's basically a single 200 page chapter.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
This has been staring me down from the bookcase for at least three years now. It's not so long that it is intimidating. And the subject matter sounds really enjoyable. But for some reason I keep chickening out and moving on to something else.
last book to make you laugh out loud
Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman
I'm not a huge comics or graphic novel reader. But this collection of comics was by far the funniest thing I've read in several years. Each one is a short burst of absurdity. The first comic is a fake advertisement featuring Mickey Rourke selling pubic hair stencils. It was so funny I closed the book, tracked Kupperman down online and sent him an email to thank him.
strangest book you’ve ever read
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.
Somehow it moves from 1930s Ireland to an alternate reality full of one-legged men, cops obsessed with bicycles, a theory that the universe is sausage-shaped and a secret underground layer called "Eternity" where time stands still. It’s actually much weirder than it sounds, but is still fun to read.
In the nonfiction category I have to mention The Walrus Was Paul by R. Gary Patterson. I was obsessed with this book during college. It's a very detailed account of how Paul McCartney was accidentally decapitated in the 60s and a lookalike named Billy Shears took over for him. There are websites that break all the songs and visual clues down now, but I read this book right before the internet really exploded, so I had to spin my Beatles records backwards and stare at the album covers in the mirror for clues. I have never been that fascinated with a single topic since.
book you borrowed and never returned
Triumph of the Underdog by Charles Mingus
I used to live in Portland, OR and my buddy loaned this to me, knowing I really love Mingus's music. It sat around for years and I never touched it. It's a shame, because Mingus had a crazy life and was supposedly a good writer. I actually gave it back to him before I moved to Louisville, KY. So, I guess I lied about the never returned part of the question.
favorite book from childhood
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
I couldn't name you a single story or poem from this book now, but I remember it was a hot item in grade school. I would eagerly wait for the book to be back on the shelves so I could check it out again. My mom was the librarian, so I probably got to hang on to the book a little longer than the other kids.
Fun fact: Shel Silverstein was also a highly respected songwriter in Nashville. He penned "A Boy Named Sue" for Johnny Cash.
last reading you attended
BizarroCon in Portland, OR.
My publisher, Eraserhead Press, prides itself on its bizarre catalog. They also pride themselves on readings that are an extension of this. Eraserhead put on BizarroCon and the readings were part literary event, part performance art. Some of the highlights included one story being reenacted by sock puppets, one featuring a William Shatner impersonator and one guy throwing raw meat at the audience.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Movie Stars in Bathtubs (see Recommended Reading List)
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
MonkeyBicycle
I'm partial to this journal because they took a chance on me and published my story "Sex Dungeon for Sale." But I can consistently go there and find something funny, which is pretty rare.
most anticipated upcoming release
Probably Don DeLillo's new book. He is one of those authors who make you feel like you suck as a writer after reading their work. I mean that as a compliment, because it’s always good to have a boot in the butt.
recommended reading list:
Coffee Table Books That Will Get a Reaction
My wife and I have a rotating crop of coffee table books. We don't leave them out to make ourselves look smarter, but they are instant conversation pieces.
- Movie Stars in Bathtubs
This is a very G-rated book, probably made in the 60s. It features a ton of still shots from black and white movies where people are in the tub. I have no clue why something like this was published, but it never fails to get cracked open when guests are over.
- How to Form a Rock Band
This was also made in the 60s. My mom's library was throwing it out about 15 years ago and I've held onto it tightly since then. It shows budding musicians how to buy their gear at the mall and wear matching suits, because that's what talent agents like to see. It's hilarious and about the most un-rock 'n' roll thing I can think of.
- Cleveland, the Disco King
Another book I rescued from my mom's library. This is an illustrated children's book from the 70s, featuring a little boy trying to impress the prettiest girl in school with his disco dancing.
- Scoundrels & Scalawags
This is a Reader's Digest book I picked up at a yard sale. It's as thick as the Bible, but features stories about the world's most famous grifters and con artists. My favorites are Charles Ponzi, inventor of the Ponzi Scheme and "The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower.”
- BOOBYTRAPS
This was published by the army in the 40s and 50s (I think) and given to soldiers to teach them how to kill people more efficiently. Some highlights include diagrams for rigging a whistle, a tea kettle, a briefcase, a television, an ink pen or a Barcalounger to blow up when used. I bought this when my friend dragged me along to one of those gun shows at a convention center. I was surrounded by sub-machine guns, bazookas and gun nuts, but I was drawn to the book counter. Other books I should have bought but didn't: How to Make Your Own Fireworks, How to Make Your Own Munitions. Any of these are certain to get you a few odd looks during your next party.
(A coloring contest is currently being held to celebrate the release of his new book. The contest will run until December 14th and the winning artist will receive an autographed stack of Patrick's favorite books from 2009. More information can be found at his website.)
what are you reading now
The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim.
I'm slowly getting into this one. The impossible feat of one hundred men having the same parents is less important than their shared paranoia and quirks. At least I think so. I'm only about 50 pages in. Oddly, Antrim doesn't divide his story into chapters or acts, so it's basically a single 200 page chapter.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
This has been staring me down from the bookcase for at least three years now. It's not so long that it is intimidating. And the subject matter sounds really enjoyable. But for some reason I keep chickening out and moving on to something else.
last book to make you laugh out loud
Tales Designed to Thrizzle by Michael Kupperman
I'm not a huge comics or graphic novel reader. But this collection of comics was by far the funniest thing I've read in several years. Each one is a short burst of absurdity. The first comic is a fake advertisement featuring Mickey Rourke selling pubic hair stencils. It was so funny I closed the book, tracked Kupperman down online and sent him an email to thank him.
strangest book you’ve ever read
The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.
Somehow it moves from 1930s Ireland to an alternate reality full of one-legged men, cops obsessed with bicycles, a theory that the universe is sausage-shaped and a secret underground layer called "Eternity" where time stands still. It’s actually much weirder than it sounds, but is still fun to read.
In the nonfiction category I have to mention The Walrus Was Paul by R. Gary Patterson. I was obsessed with this book during college. It's a very detailed account of how Paul McCartney was accidentally decapitated in the 60s and a lookalike named Billy Shears took over for him. There are websites that break all the songs and visual clues down now, but I read this book right before the internet really exploded, so I had to spin my Beatles records backwards and stare at the album covers in the mirror for clues. I have never been that fascinated with a single topic since.
book you borrowed and never returned
Triumph of the Underdog by Charles Mingus
I used to live in Portland, OR and my buddy loaned this to me, knowing I really love Mingus's music. It sat around for years and I never touched it. It's a shame, because Mingus had a crazy life and was supposedly a good writer. I actually gave it back to him before I moved to Louisville, KY. So, I guess I lied about the never returned part of the question.
favorite book from childhood
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
I couldn't name you a single story or poem from this book now, but I remember it was a hot item in grade school. I would eagerly wait for the book to be back on the shelves so I could check it out again. My mom was the librarian, so I probably got to hang on to the book a little longer than the other kids.
Fun fact: Shel Silverstein was also a highly respected songwriter in Nashville. He penned "A Boy Named Sue" for Johnny Cash.
last reading you attended
BizarroCon in Portland, OR.
My publisher, Eraserhead Press, prides itself on its bizarre catalog. They also pride themselves on readings that are an extension of this. Eraserhead put on BizarroCon and the readings were part literary event, part performance art. Some of the highlights included one story being reenacted by sock puppets, one featuring a William Shatner impersonator and one guy throwing raw meat at the audience.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Movie Stars in Bathtubs (see Recommended Reading List)
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
MonkeyBicycle
I'm partial to this journal because they took a chance on me and published my story "Sex Dungeon for Sale." But I can consistently go there and find something funny, which is pretty rare.
most anticipated upcoming release
Probably Don DeLillo's new book. He is one of those authors who make you feel like you suck as a writer after reading their work. I mean that as a compliment, because it’s always good to have a boot in the butt.
recommended reading list:
Coffee Table Books That Will Get a Reaction
My wife and I have a rotating crop of coffee table books. We don't leave them out to make ourselves look smarter, but they are instant conversation pieces.
- Movie Stars in Bathtubs
This is a very G-rated book, probably made in the 60s. It features a ton of still shots from black and white movies where people are in the tub. I have no clue why something like this was published, but it never fails to get cracked open when guests are over.
- How to Form a Rock Band
This was also made in the 60s. My mom's library was throwing it out about 15 years ago and I've held onto it tightly since then. It shows budding musicians how to buy their gear at the mall and wear matching suits, because that's what talent agents like to see. It's hilarious and about the most un-rock 'n' roll thing I can think of.
- Cleveland, the Disco King
Another book I rescued from my mom's library. This is an illustrated children's book from the 70s, featuring a little boy trying to impress the prettiest girl in school with his disco dancing.
- Scoundrels & Scalawags
This is a Reader's Digest book I picked up at a yard sale. It's as thick as the Bible, but features stories about the world's most famous grifters and con artists. My favorites are Charles Ponzi, inventor of the Ponzi Scheme and "The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower.”
- BOOBYTRAPS
This was published by the army in the 40s and 50s (I think) and given to soldiers to teach them how to kill people more efficiently. Some highlights include diagrams for rigging a whistle, a tea kettle, a briefcase, a television, an ink pen or a Barcalounger to blow up when used. I bought this when my friend dragged me along to one of those gun shows at a convention center. I was surrounded by sub-machine guns, bazookas and gun nuts, but I was drawn to the book counter. Other books I should have bought but didn't: How to Make Your Own Fireworks, How to Make Your Own Munitions. Any of these are certain to get you a few odd looks during your next party.
21.11.09
Mel Bosworth
Mel Bosworth is the author of When the Cats Razzed the Chickens & Other Stories (Folded Word Press, 2009).
what are you reading now
Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez. Me see him read in September. Him read good. Me buy book, shake hand. Words like nerf bullets fired from boom stick. Words fast, hit hard, but always nerf.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Moby Dick by Uncle Melville. I’ve been meaning to read it for years but I have this fear it’s going to bore me to death. But once I sit down and dig in I’m sure I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe.
last book you finished in a single sitting
I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in a single sitting, but that’s a short one. I’m not the fastest reader in the east, so even if I’m tearing through a book it takes me at least 2-3 days. I like to make friends with the books I read. Take them places. Take naps with them. Age with them. Then when I’m finished it’s kind of sad, like saying goodbye. When I run into them years later I’ll say, “My friend!” (I honestly do this.)
strangest book you’ve ever read
Wow. Hm. Strangest. The strangest movie I’ve seen is Dee Snider’s Strangeland. Or maybe I’m just thinking that because of the word “strange.” Or maybe that was the funniest movie I’ve seen. No, that would be Leaving Las Vegas. Watching Nicholas Cage fill a shopping cart with booze gets me every time. But we’re supposed to be talking about books, right? Books. The strangest book I’ve ever read would have to be… Magick Without Tears by Aleister Crowley. Read it from cover to cover. Not sure why. I don’t think I’ve been the same since.
book you borrowed and never returned
I’m not that guy. Although I did hang onto a copy of Lolita for a couple of years. I recently gave it back.
weirdest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character
Well, I once had this dream where I was making breakfast for Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Walt was all grumpy. He may have been hung over. Emily was at the window, talking to a squirrel. I was at the stove pushing around bacon and eggs in a big frying pan. The bacon popped and hot oil landed on my forearm. I screamed and then Walt screamed and then Emily screamed. I turned to see Walt with the squirrel in his mouth. Emily was kneeling on the tile, scribbling furiously on a napkin. Walt pulled a big knife from his boot. He scratched words into the tabletop as he chewed the squirrel. I wrapped my arm in a towel and then served breakfast. Walt didn’t eat because he wasn’t hungry. This pissed me off and I scolded him but he didn’t care. Emily ate a little bit of egg, but she was more interested in having me read aloud what she’d written. So I did:
Whitman is an asshole. He ate my friend, the squirrel. Bad beard, crazy man. Breakfasts, fools, longing for a solitary now lunch.
Walt got all agro for a second and made like he was going to hit her. When she flinched he laughed and then asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I told him to get his coat. When he left the room I apologized to Emily for his horrible table manners. She just shrugged. Then I noticed what Walt had carved into the table:
Wally loves Emily.
Then Dickinson morphed into a rose bush. Walt returned with his coat. When he saw the rose bush he cried and cried and then leapt out the window. I lifted a forkful of delicious looking egg to my mouth and then woke up.
funniest book title
Anna Karenina. I credit Tolstoy for inadvertently inventing the name game.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends by Mark Helfrich. Well, to be honest, I didn’t buy the book nor was it my coffee table on which it was planted. But I did campaign pretty hard for the purchase and placement. It was enjoyed by men who reeked of hot sauce and chicken wings. A few women may have enjoyed it as well. I don’t know that it truly impressed anyone, but the book had some fans, that’s for sure. I miss that book. I wonder where it is now. I hope it’s safe. I should find its phone number, give it a call, late at night, whisper, weep.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Annalemma. Because it comes from a planet far superior to ours. It has to. No other explanation.
best thing you’ve read online recently
“Attendance” by Eric Beeny.
most anticipated upcoming release
Light and Trials of Light by Cynthia Reeser
recommended reading list:
Ten Books I Read Once, Enjoyed, But May Never Read Again
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- The Aeneid by Virgil
- Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.
- Hunger by Knut Hamsun
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
- The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Reality Is What You Can Get Away With by Robert Anton Wilson
- Listen, Little Man! by Wilhelm Reich
what are you reading now
Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez. Me see him read in September. Him read good. Me buy book, shake hand. Words like nerf bullets fired from boom stick. Words fast, hit hard, but always nerf.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Moby Dick by Uncle Melville. I’ve been meaning to read it for years but I have this fear it’s going to bore me to death. But once I sit down and dig in I’m sure I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe.
last book you finished in a single sitting
I read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in a single sitting, but that’s a short one. I’m not the fastest reader in the east, so even if I’m tearing through a book it takes me at least 2-3 days. I like to make friends with the books I read. Take them places. Take naps with them. Age with them. Then when I’m finished it’s kind of sad, like saying goodbye. When I run into them years later I’ll say, “My friend!” (I honestly do this.)
strangest book you’ve ever read
Wow. Hm. Strangest. The strangest movie I’ve seen is Dee Snider’s Strangeland. Or maybe I’m just thinking that because of the word “strange.” Or maybe that was the funniest movie I’ve seen. No, that would be Leaving Las Vegas. Watching Nicholas Cage fill a shopping cart with booze gets me every time. But we’re supposed to be talking about books, right? Books. The strangest book I’ve ever read would have to be… Magick Without Tears by Aleister Crowley. Read it from cover to cover. Not sure why. I don’t think I’ve been the same since.
book you borrowed and never returned
I’m not that guy. Although I did hang onto a copy of Lolita for a couple of years. I recently gave it back.
weirdest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character
Well, I once had this dream where I was making breakfast for Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Walt was all grumpy. He may have been hung over. Emily was at the window, talking to a squirrel. I was at the stove pushing around bacon and eggs in a big frying pan. The bacon popped and hot oil landed on my forearm. I screamed and then Walt screamed and then Emily screamed. I turned to see Walt with the squirrel in his mouth. Emily was kneeling on the tile, scribbling furiously on a napkin. Walt pulled a big knife from his boot. He scratched words into the tabletop as he chewed the squirrel. I wrapped my arm in a towel and then served breakfast. Walt didn’t eat because he wasn’t hungry. This pissed me off and I scolded him but he didn’t care. Emily ate a little bit of egg, but she was more interested in having me read aloud what she’d written. So I did:
Whitman is an asshole. He ate my friend, the squirrel. Bad beard, crazy man. Breakfasts, fools, longing for a solitary now lunch.
Walt got all agro for a second and made like he was going to hit her. When she flinched he laughed and then asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I told him to get his coat. When he left the room I apologized to Emily for his horrible table manners. She just shrugged. Then I noticed what Walt had carved into the table:
Wally loves Emily.
Then Dickinson morphed into a rose bush. Walt returned with his coat. When he saw the rose bush he cried and cried and then leapt out the window. I lifted a forkful of delicious looking egg to my mouth and then woke up.
funniest book title
Anna Karenina. I credit Tolstoy for inadvertently inventing the name game.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends by Mark Helfrich. Well, to be honest, I didn’t buy the book nor was it my coffee table on which it was planted. But I did campaign pretty hard for the purchase and placement. It was enjoyed by men who reeked of hot sauce and chicken wings. A few women may have enjoyed it as well. I don’t know that it truly impressed anyone, but the book had some fans, that’s for sure. I miss that book. I wonder where it is now. I hope it’s safe. I should find its phone number, give it a call, late at night, whisper, weep.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Annalemma. Because it comes from a planet far superior to ours. It has to. No other explanation.
best thing you’ve read online recently
“Attendance” by Eric Beeny.
most anticipated upcoming release
Light and Trials of Light by Cynthia Reeser
recommended reading list:
Ten Books I Read Once, Enjoyed, But May Never Read Again
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- The Aeneid by Virgil
- Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.
- Hunger by Knut Hamsun
- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
- The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
- The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Reality Is What You Can Get Away With by Robert Anton Wilson
- Listen, Little Man! by Wilhelm Reich
14.11.09
Molly Gaudry
Molly Gaudry is the author of We Take Me Apart (Mud Luscious, 2009) and she is the fiction reviewer for East&West Magazine, which is based out of Hanoi, Vietnam. Send her an email; if she's not avoiding you, she'll respond – maybe even with a funny photograph.
what are you reading now
I just finished Esther Williams's autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid, and I'm really looking forward to having some time to begin a long project about her contribution to synchronized swimming. The idea of synchronicity is interesting. Very Benjaminian (as was first proposed by Synthia Sydnor). And old-timey Hollywood in its heyday is hopefully a great backdrop. I'm trying to watch all her movies in the weeks and months to come, and the ones I've seen lately have been viewed while simultaneously reading Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda, Curtis Smith's The Species Crown (Press 53, 2007), and M. Thomas Gammarino's Big in Japan: A Ghost Story (Chin Music Press, Inc., 2009).
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Bleak House. Or maybe Lolita. These two come highly recommended by my favorite former fiction professor, Michael Griffith. If you haven't read Michael before, learn his name now and buy his novel Trophy as soon as it comes out. One chapter, that I had the pleasure of hearing him read, is titled "A Perfectly Respectable O'clock for Your Turkey." Anyway, I'm supposed to be leading a discussion on The Brothers Karamazov over at Big Other. I might go revise this to Bleak House. Or maybe Lolita. The reading is to begin on the first day of winter.
last book to bring you to tears
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, circa eleventh grade. Singer, man. Whew.
favorite book from childhood
Shel Silverstein's poems. I read all of them, all the time. I want them now on huge white canvases, with his illustrations of course. I would hang them all over my house, if I had a house.
most scribble-ridden book in your collection
Either The Catcher in the Rye or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I've written too many papers on both, which means I've got multiple sets of notes in each. I also have two (or three?) copies of each, but I only write in the already-messy ones.
book you borrowed and never returned
My long-lost friend Drew might kill me for this first-time-ever confession. When I left college a year-and-a-half in, I stole his tattered, coffee-stained copy of Tales of Beatnik Glory. I still have it. Sorry, Drew.
most challenging book you’ve ever read
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Boring Postcards, and, my god, are they boring. I can't recall actually trying to impress someone specifically, but this was on my coffee table for a long time, all by itself. I'm unsure now what this indicates about me. Interesting.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Ninth Letter, because that's where I discovered Blake Butler, who opened me up to all of this. I'll forever be grateful. Plus, it's just so darned good-looking.
best thing you’ve read online recently
Official Brown MFA Blog #1, which I just discovered yesterday because it was linked from Brandi Wells's blog, and, as always, Christopher Higgs's Bright Stupid Confetti, which I love and look forward to like a crazy woman in a bathrobe.
most anticipated upcoming release
Mine. Am I allowed to say that? I mean, it's true. Like, I will have copies of my first-ever book in less than one month. Twenty-two days from now, I will be standing in Cambridge, MA and reading from it--it will be in my hands--and the next day I will be reading from it in Providence, RI, and maybe Brian Evenson will be there. Brown is my dream school. I do not currently have an MFA. I'm ready to be in a writing program again. I'd like to finish some of these projects that I haven't been able to devote time to because I teach full-time and all I do is grade and read and prep and grade and prep and grade. So it's like, one month, huh? Seriously? It's terrifying. And unbelievable. And I'm really, really excited.
Of course, I am also looking forward to Kate Bernheimer's The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold; Michael Griffith's Trophy; Brock Clarke's Exley; and Kevin Wilson's novel, which, if I'm not mistaken, was only recently submitted to his publisher.
recommended reading list:
Books I Refuse to Leave Behind Any Time I Move to a New City
- Midnight's Children and The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
- Blindness by José Saramago
- The Baron in the Trees and Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
- Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
- The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and The Complete Tales of Merry Gold by Kate Bernheimer
- My Happy Life by Lydia Millet
- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
- The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr
- The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories
- Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson
- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
- Light Boxes by Shane Jones
- The Persistence of Objects by Richard Garcia
- Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death by Christopher Kennedy
- Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
what are you reading now
I just finished Esther Williams's autobiography, The Million Dollar Mermaid, and I'm really looking forward to having some time to begin a long project about her contribution to synchronized swimming. The idea of synchronicity is interesting. Very Benjaminian (as was first proposed by Synthia Sydnor). And old-timey Hollywood in its heyday is hopefully a great backdrop. I'm trying to watch all her movies in the weeks and months to come, and the ones I've seen lately have been viewed while simultaneously reading Saramago's Baltasar and Blimunda, Curtis Smith's The Species Crown (Press 53, 2007), and M. Thomas Gammarino's Big in Japan: A Ghost Story (Chin Music Press, Inc., 2009).
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Bleak House. Or maybe Lolita. These two come highly recommended by my favorite former fiction professor, Michael Griffith. If you haven't read Michael before, learn his name now and buy his novel Trophy as soon as it comes out. One chapter, that I had the pleasure of hearing him read, is titled "A Perfectly Respectable O'clock for Your Turkey." Anyway, I'm supposed to be leading a discussion on The Brothers Karamazov over at Big Other. I might go revise this to Bleak House. Or maybe Lolita. The reading is to begin on the first day of winter.
last book to bring you to tears
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, circa eleventh grade. Singer, man. Whew.
favorite book from childhood
Shel Silverstein's poems. I read all of them, all the time. I want them now on huge white canvases, with his illustrations of course. I would hang them all over my house, if I had a house.
most scribble-ridden book in your collection
Either The Catcher in the Rye or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I've written too many papers on both, which means I've got multiple sets of notes in each. I also have two (or three?) copies of each, but I only write in the already-messy ones.
book you borrowed and never returned
My long-lost friend Drew might kill me for this first-time-ever confession. When I left college a year-and-a-half in, I stole his tattered, coffee-stained copy of Tales of Beatnik Glory. I still have it. Sorry, Drew.
most challenging book you’ve ever read
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Boring Postcards, and, my god, are they boring. I can't recall actually trying to impress someone specifically, but this was on my coffee table for a long time, all by itself. I'm unsure now what this indicates about me. Interesting.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Ninth Letter, because that's where I discovered Blake Butler, who opened me up to all of this. I'll forever be grateful. Plus, it's just so darned good-looking.
best thing you’ve read online recently
Official Brown MFA Blog #1, which I just discovered yesterday because it was linked from Brandi Wells's blog, and, as always, Christopher Higgs's Bright Stupid Confetti, which I love and look forward to like a crazy woman in a bathrobe.
most anticipated upcoming release
Mine. Am I allowed to say that? I mean, it's true. Like, I will have copies of my first-ever book in less than one month. Twenty-two days from now, I will be standing in Cambridge, MA and reading from it--it will be in my hands--and the next day I will be reading from it in Providence, RI, and maybe Brian Evenson will be there. Brown is my dream school. I do not currently have an MFA. I'm ready to be in a writing program again. I'd like to finish some of these projects that I haven't been able to devote time to because I teach full-time and all I do is grade and read and prep and grade and prep and grade. So it's like, one month, huh? Seriously? It's terrifying. And unbelievable. And I'm really, really excited.
Of course, I am also looking forward to Kate Bernheimer's The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold; Michael Griffith's Trophy; Brock Clarke's Exley; and Kevin Wilson's novel, which, if I'm not mistaken, was only recently submitted to his publisher.
recommended reading list:
Books I Refuse to Leave Behind Any Time I Move to a New City
- Midnight's Children and The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie
- Blindness by José Saramago
- The Baron in the Trees and Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino
- Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
- The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and The Complete Tales of Merry Gold by Kate Bernheimer
- My Happy Life by Lydia Millet
- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
- The Shell Collector by Anthony Doerr
- The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories
- Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson
- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
- Light Boxes by Shane Jones
- The Persistence of Objects by Richard Garcia
- Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death by Christopher Kennedy
- Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe
- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
31.10.09
Matthew Simmons
Matthew Simmons lives in Seattle with his cat, Emmett. He is a blogger (themanwhocouldntblog.blogspot.com, htmlgiant.com) and the author of A Jello Horse (Publishing Genius Press).
(I started this a couple of months ago and put it aside. I have decided to see how things have changed for me. Not a lot.)
what are you reading now
Then
For Those Whom God has Blessed with Fingers by Ken Sparling, which is amazingly good.
Now
The Failure Six by Shane Jones appeared in my mailbox last night. I've started it and am enjoying it. I've also been reading The Jerusalem Syndrome by Marc Maron, The Book of Jokes by Momus, and Big Machine by Victor LaValle. I have a roving eye when it comes to reading. It is often my undoing.
Oh, and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte. Holy Smokes, The Ask. Fantastic.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Then
The Idiot by Dostoevsky and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I hope to get them both read this summer.
Now
I didn't. Answer remains the same, though. Add The Third Policeman to it. I have that one on my night table.
last book to bring you to tears
Then
Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball. Blake mentioned one of his other books in his recommended reading list, and I have that one, and now I'm afraid that Michael will make me cry again.
Now
Same. Ablutions was a contender.
funniest book or story title
Then
Funniest book I've ever read is The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes, which is both a satire of academia and a gothic horror novel in one.
Now
Or, wait. Did you mean the funniest title for a book? I'm pretty sure Eeeee Eee Eeee wins that one. Ricky's Anus is pretty good, too.
best american short stories, pen/o. henry prizes, or the pushcart prize anthology
Then
Best American Short Stories from 1990. Denis Johnson's "Car-Crash While Hitchhiking." Millhauser's "Eisenheim the Illusionist." Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly, Too" "Typical" by the amazing Padgett Powell. "The Reverse Bug" by Lore Segal. Joy Williams.
Now
Same one. The one from 1990 is a hell of an anthology.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Then
Toss up between New York Tyrant and NOON right now. But I also am obscenely loyal to my friends at Hobart.
Now
I am now just loyal to Hobart. I set up a swear jar in an effort to not be so obscene. And it worked!
best thing you’ve read online recently
Then
The fake Steve Buscemi and Christopher Walken twitter feeds.
Now
Michael Martone's 4foraQuarter twitter feed.
most anticipated upcoming release
Then
Amelia Gray's upcoming FC2 book Museum of the Weird.
Now
Also, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell. Kevin Sampsell's A Common Pornography. Everything here is the best thing ever by Justin Taylor. Reality Hunger by David Shields. Aaron Burch just won that Pank contest. Molly Gaudry's novella. Blake Butler's next two books.
I'd also like to see my friend Amy Minton finish the edits on her book of short stories so it can get out there and find a publisher. She's good, that one.
recommended reading list:
Holy Smokes 2009 Has Had Some Good Books
- Ablutions by Patrick deWitt
- AM/PM by Amelia Gray
- Fever Chart by Bill Cotter
- Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
- God's Hazard by Nicholas Mosley
- Everything Matters! by Ron Currie
- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
- Last Days and Fugue State by Brian Evenson
- Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper
- On the Winding Stair by Joanna Howard
- Big World by Mary Miller
- MLKNG SCKLS by Justin Sirois
- Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch
- That Summertime Sound by Matthew Specktor
- Forecast by Shya Scanlon
- Misconception by Ryan Boudinot
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few. Mike Young's chapbook, MC Oroville's Answering Machine. Brandon Gorrell's Muu Muu House book. Tao's new book. Too many, really.
(I started this a couple of months ago and put it aside. I have decided to see how things have changed for me. Not a lot.)
what are you reading now
Then
For Those Whom God has Blessed with Fingers by Ken Sparling, which is amazingly good.
Now
The Failure Six by Shane Jones appeared in my mailbox last night. I've started it and am enjoying it. I've also been reading The Jerusalem Syndrome by Marc Maron, The Book of Jokes by Momus, and Big Machine by Victor LaValle. I have a roving eye when it comes to reading. It is often my undoing.
Oh, and The Ask by Sam Lipsyte. Holy Smokes, The Ask. Fantastic.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Then
The Idiot by Dostoevsky and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I hope to get them both read this summer.
Now
I didn't. Answer remains the same, though. Add The Third Policeman to it. I have that one on my night table.
last book to bring you to tears
Then
Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball. Blake mentioned one of his other books in his recommended reading list, and I have that one, and now I'm afraid that Michael will make me cry again.
Now
Same. Ablutions was a contender.
funniest book or story title
Then
Funniest book I've ever read is The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes, which is both a satire of academia and a gothic horror novel in one.
Now
Or, wait. Did you mean the funniest title for a book? I'm pretty sure Eeeee Eee Eeee wins that one. Ricky's Anus is pretty good, too.
best american short stories, pen/o. henry prizes, or the pushcart prize anthology
Then
Best American Short Stories from 1990. Denis Johnson's "Car-Crash While Hitchhiking." Millhauser's "Eisenheim the Illusionist." Lorrie Moore's "You're Ugly, Too" "Typical" by the amazing Padgett Powell. "The Reverse Bug" by Lore Segal. Joy Williams.
Now
Same one. The one from 1990 is a hell of an anthology.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Then
Toss up between New York Tyrant and NOON right now. But I also am obscenely loyal to my friends at Hobart.
Now
I am now just loyal to Hobart. I set up a swear jar in an effort to not be so obscene. And it worked!
best thing you’ve read online recently
Then
The fake Steve Buscemi and Christopher Walken twitter feeds.
Now
Michael Martone's 4foraQuarter twitter feed.
most anticipated upcoming release
Then
Amelia Gray's upcoming FC2 book Museum of the Weird.
Now
Also, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell. Kevin Sampsell's A Common Pornography. Everything here is the best thing ever by Justin Taylor. Reality Hunger by David Shields. Aaron Burch just won that Pank contest. Molly Gaudry's novella. Blake Butler's next two books.
I'd also like to see my friend Amy Minton finish the edits on her book of short stories so it can get out there and find a publisher. She's good, that one.
recommended reading list:
Holy Smokes 2009 Has Had Some Good Books
- Ablutions by Patrick deWitt
- AM/PM by Amelia Gray
- Fever Chart by Bill Cotter
- Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
- God's Hazard by Nicholas Mosley
- Everything Matters! by Ron Currie
- Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler
- Last Days and Fugue State by Brian Evenson
- Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper
- On the Winding Stair by Joanna Howard
- Big World by Mary Miller
- MLKNG SCKLS by Justin Sirois
- Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch
- That Summertime Sound by Matthew Specktor
- Forecast by Shya Scanlon
- Misconception by Ryan Boudinot
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few. Mike Young's chapbook, MC Oroville's Answering Machine. Brandon Gorrell's Muu Muu House book. Tao's new book. Too many, really.
26.10.09
Kevin Sampsell
Kevin Sampsell has run Future Tense Books, a micropress in Portland, Oregon since 1990 (latest release: Put Your Head In My Lap by Claudia Smith). He has worked at Powell's City of Books, the largest bookstore in the country, since 1997. He has written book reviews and essays for Associated Press. His short fiction has appeared widely and is collected in the books, Beautiful Blemish and Creamy Bullets. His memoir, A Common Pornography, is due out in January 2010.
what are you reading now
I usually juggle two or three books at a time. Right now, it's The Impostor's Daughter, a graphic memoir by Laurie Sandell, Scary, No Scary, a poetry collection by Zachary Schomburg, and More of This World or Maybe Another, a debut story collection by Barb Johnson.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Kind of a forgotten classic maybe, but I have Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell in my to-read stack. I read a bunch of stories by him a few years ago and have always meant to go back.
most treasured book in your collection
My favorite book ever is Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz and I have a signed hardcover of the Knopf edition, which I think is hard to come by. I'm lucky to count Gary as a friend as well as an author I've published on my press.
book you borrowed and never returned
Um, if you mean "borrowed" as in stolen, I borrowed a copy of the 1990 Poet's Market from a Spokane bookstore because it was expensive and I was a young starving poet wannabe looking to get published. I highlighted about forty places to send my stuff to (back in the days when you ONLY mailed submissions). I think I did okay with it. Landed some poems in about ten places.
favorite book from childhood
I don't remember having many books around at all when I was a kid. I don't remember my parents reading to me at all and, probably because of that, I definitely wasn't interested in reading when I was young. I do have an odd memory of joining some sci-fi book club where you order ten books for a dollar or something like that. I liked the cover art on those Dune books but never even opened them. Around the time I was in 8th grade, I do remember reading Brian's Song for some reason. I read it very quickly and it made me cry.
secret crush on a writer or literary character
It's not too secret--Miriam Toews knows I have a big crush on her, thanks to her novel, A Complicated Kindness (and its equally crush-worthy main character, Nomi Nickel). My real-life mega-crush is Frayn Masters!
last reading you attended
I go to readings all the time. Part of my job is to host readings at the store. I just introduced Jonathan Lethem. The last non-Powell's reading I went to was at Wordstock, the big lit festival here. I saw Blake Nelson, who wowed a crowd of teens.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I think it's fun to have weird reference books around for people to look at. Back when I actually had a coffee table, I think I had this The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers on it. Maybe not to impress someone, but maybe to unsettle them. Hahaha.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Probably NOON, which only comes out once a year but is consistently daring and interesting. I also really enjoy Keyhole and McSweeney's.
best thing you’ve read online recently
I regularly read HTMLGIANT, which is a great literary/culture blog. As far as fiction goes, I really liked Brandi Wells's controversial "Instructional" and "What Happened" by Elizabeth Ellen.
most anticipated upcoming release
I'm lucky that I get review copies of books at Powell's, so I'm always reading books that aren't even out yet. The other day I opened an unassuming package that had a copy of Sam Lipsyte's The Ask in it and I audibly said, "Oh my God" in a shocked voice. I'm so excited to read that.
recommended reading list:
Favorite Memoirs
Because I was working on my memoir so much the past several months and I hadn't really read that many, I started reading more of them, just to see if I was doing it right and to see what worked and didn't work. These are my favorite ones:
- Things the Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett
- Stop-Time by Frank Conroy
- Rock On by Dan Kennedy
- Boy with Loaded Gun by Lewis Nordan
- The Film Club by David Gilmour
- Are You There, God? It's Me. Kevin. by Kevin Keck
- The Sky Isn't Visible From Here by Felicia Sullivan
- Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
what are you reading now
I usually juggle two or three books at a time. Right now, it's The Impostor's Daughter, a graphic memoir by Laurie Sandell, Scary, No Scary, a poetry collection by Zachary Schomburg, and More of This World or Maybe Another, a debut story collection by Barb Johnson.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Kind of a forgotten classic maybe, but I have Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell in my to-read stack. I read a bunch of stories by him a few years ago and have always meant to go back.
most treasured book in your collection
My favorite book ever is Stories in the Worst Way by Gary Lutz and I have a signed hardcover of the Knopf edition, which I think is hard to come by. I'm lucky to count Gary as a friend as well as an author I've published on my press.
book you borrowed and never returned
Um, if you mean "borrowed" as in stolen, I borrowed a copy of the 1990 Poet's Market from a Spokane bookstore because it was expensive and I was a young starving poet wannabe looking to get published. I highlighted about forty places to send my stuff to (back in the days when you ONLY mailed submissions). I think I did okay with it. Landed some poems in about ten places.
favorite book from childhood
I don't remember having many books around at all when I was a kid. I don't remember my parents reading to me at all and, probably because of that, I definitely wasn't interested in reading when I was young. I do have an odd memory of joining some sci-fi book club where you order ten books for a dollar or something like that. I liked the cover art on those Dune books but never even opened them. Around the time I was in 8th grade, I do remember reading Brian's Song for some reason. I read it very quickly and it made me cry.
secret crush on a writer or literary character
It's not too secret--Miriam Toews knows I have a big crush on her, thanks to her novel, A Complicated Kindness (and its equally crush-worthy main character, Nomi Nickel). My real-life mega-crush is Frayn Masters!
last reading you attended
I go to readings all the time. Part of my job is to host readings at the store. I just introduced Jonathan Lethem. The last non-Powell's reading I went to was at Wordstock, the big lit festival here. I saw Blake Nelson, who wowed a crowd of teens.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I think it's fun to have weird reference books around for people to look at. Back when I actually had a coffee table, I think I had this The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers on it. Maybe not to impress someone, but maybe to unsettle them. Hahaha.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Probably NOON, which only comes out once a year but is consistently daring and interesting. I also really enjoy Keyhole and McSweeney's.
best thing you’ve read online recently
I regularly read HTMLGIANT, which is a great literary/culture blog. As far as fiction goes, I really liked Brandi Wells's controversial "Instructional" and "What Happened" by Elizabeth Ellen.
most anticipated upcoming release
I'm lucky that I get review copies of books at Powell's, so I'm always reading books that aren't even out yet. The other day I opened an unassuming package that had a copy of Sam Lipsyte's The Ask in it and I audibly said, "Oh my God" in a shocked voice. I'm so excited to read that.
recommended reading list:
Favorite Memoirs
Because I was working on my memoir so much the past several months and I hadn't really read that many, I started reading more of them, just to see if I was doing it right and to see what worked and didn't work. These are my favorite ones:
- Things the Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett
- Stop-Time by Frank Conroy
- Rock On by Dan Kennedy
- Boy with Loaded Gun by Lewis Nordan
- The Film Club by David Gilmour
- Are You There, God? It's Me. Kevin. by Kevin Keck
- The Sky Isn't Visible From Here by Felicia Sullivan
- Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn
10.10.09
Joseph Young
Joseph Young lives in Baltimore, MD. His book of microfictions, Easter Rabbit, is available now for preorder from Publishing Genius, with wide release December 15, 2009. His microfiction has appeared most recently in Keyhole, Caketrain, FRiGG, SmokeLong Quarterly, Grey Sparrow, Lamination Colony, and Wigleaf. E-mail him at youngjoseph21@hotmail.com and visit www.easterrabbit.blogspot.com.
what are you reading now
AM/PM by Amelia Gray. It’s a book of interrelated microfictions (several interrelations going on at once) that’s just beautifully well done. Funny and earnest and smart.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I’d love to get back to Anna Karenina. I started reading it a few years ago and got sidetracked. Problem is, I’d have to start over, I think. Too many names there to just jump back in!
last book you finished in a single sitting
Not sure of any book I’ve read in a single session, none that I can remember. I finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in a couple days, a few years ago. It was like living in a waking nightmare, one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read. There’s pretty much no plot, just the man and his son trying to get to the ocean, but it’s intensely gripping. I read A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons in a couple sittings not too long ago. A very moving book.
most treasured book in your collection
A Passage to India killed me. The last 30 pages or so are so incredible, nearly a religious experience. I actually gave it away, though, at a book exchange that was part of a friend’s art opening. But that it exists in another person’s collection makes me feel like I have it even more, somehow.
book you borrowed and never returned
This Is Not a Novel by David Markson. One of the most fascinating books I never finished. And never returned. I don’t think it requires finishing to be good. Or returning.
weirdest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character
I dreamt about Kurt Vonnegut once. We were somehow both involved in a flood, a little seaside town being overtaken by a tsunami. The whole town was covered in beautiful yellow sand. Not sure what Vonnegut had to do with the whole thing, but I know he put in an appearance.
most challenging book you’ve ever read
Probably The Sound and the Fury. It was a challenge worth the effort. By the time I got to Dilsey’s section I thought I’d never read something so impressive.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Hmm, I don’t have a coffee table. I might have strewn books on the floor to impress a girl or something but I don’t remember what the books might have been. “Look at my impressive mess” was probably more what I was after.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I subscribe to the Internet, does that count? So many good online journals. I feel too bad picking just one out, whether online or print. Is that a cop out?
best thing you’ve read online recently
Well, this is hard too, just because there’s so much. But I’ll pick one of the very most recent things, Mark Leidner’s poem “Lily Pad” at ACTION YES.
most anticipated upcoming release
This will probably sound like nepotism, but I’m really looking forward to Adam Robinson’s book of poetry, Adam Robison and Other Poems, coming out from Narrow House. These poems are just so effective, and affective. Funny, sincere, and heady all at the same time.
recommended reading list:
Judge a Book: Good Books with Good Art (On the Cover)
- Big World by Mary Miller
what are you reading now
AM/PM by Amelia Gray. It’s a book of interrelated microfictions (several interrelations going on at once) that’s just beautifully well done. Funny and earnest and smart.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I’d love to get back to Anna Karenina. I started reading it a few years ago and got sidetracked. Problem is, I’d have to start over, I think. Too many names there to just jump back in!
last book you finished in a single sitting
Not sure of any book I’ve read in a single session, none that I can remember. I finished Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in a couple days, a few years ago. It was like living in a waking nightmare, one of the most compelling books I’ve ever read. There’s pretty much no plot, just the man and his son trying to get to the ocean, but it’s intensely gripping. I read A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons in a couple sittings not too long ago. A very moving book.
most treasured book in your collection
A Passage to India killed me. The last 30 pages or so are so incredible, nearly a religious experience. I actually gave it away, though, at a book exchange that was part of a friend’s art opening. But that it exists in another person’s collection makes me feel like I have it even more, somehow.
book you borrowed and never returned
This Is Not a Novel by David Markson. One of the most fascinating books I never finished. And never returned. I don’t think it requires finishing to be good. Or returning.
weirdest dream involving a book, writer, or literary character
I dreamt about Kurt Vonnegut once. We were somehow both involved in a flood, a little seaside town being overtaken by a tsunami. The whole town was covered in beautiful yellow sand. Not sure what Vonnegut had to do with the whole thing, but I know he put in an appearance.
most challenging book you’ve ever read
Probably The Sound and the Fury. It was a challenge worth the effort. By the time I got to Dilsey’s section I thought I’d never read something so impressive.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Hmm, I don’t have a coffee table. I might have strewn books on the floor to impress a girl or something but I don’t remember what the books might have been. “Look at my impressive mess” was probably more what I was after.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I subscribe to the Internet, does that count? So many good online journals. I feel too bad picking just one out, whether online or print. Is that a cop out?
best thing you’ve read online recently
Well, this is hard too, just because there’s so much. But I’ll pick one of the very most recent things, Mark Leidner’s poem “Lily Pad” at ACTION YES.
most anticipated upcoming release
This will probably sound like nepotism, but I’m really looking forward to Adam Robinson’s book of poetry, Adam Robison and Other Poems, coming out from Narrow House. These poems are just so effective, and affective. Funny, sincere, and heady all at the same time.
recommended reading list:
Judge a Book: Good Books with Good Art (On the Cover)
- Big World by Mary Miller
- Fences by Ben Brooks
- The Contemporary Art of the Novella series, various books by Melville House
- The Drunk Sonnets by Daniel Bailey
- You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
- Less Shiny by Mary Miller
- Poemland by Chelsey Minnis
- How Some People Like Their Eggs by Sean Lovelace
- The Complete Collection of people, places, & things by John Dermot Woods
- I. by Stephen Dixon
29.9.09
Tim Horvath
Tim Horvath is the author of Circulation, released by Sunnyoutside Press in 2009, and stories out or forthcoming in Conjunctions, Fiction, Puerto del Sol, Sleepingfish, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. His story "The Understory" was selected by Bill Henderson for the 2006 Raymond Carver Short Story Award, and he has received a Yaddo Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at Chester College of New England and Boston's Grub Street Writers, and will be an Associate Prose Editor for a new print journal of prose and photography, Camera Obscura, which opens for submissions in mid-October. His website is http://www.timhorvath.com/.
what are you reading now
I’m reading Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist and Bolaño’s 2666 and Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia.
last book to make you laugh out loud
I’m not a guffawer by temperament and by no means would call myself a giggler, but The Anthologist keeps making me snort with a slight undulation like I’m being tickled.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Anna Karenina. I really wish there was a theme park based on Russian novels and someone had lined up vacation plans for me there. That would force me to read it. It would be like a height requirement—you’d have to have read a certain number of pages. I could ride on the Dostoyevsky-coaster and the Turgenev carousel, but I’d be shit out of luck at the Tunnel of Tolstoy. I suppose there’s always a trip to St. Petersburg.
book you borrowed and never returned
I’m a terrible borrower of books. For someone who’s written a novella from the standpoint of a librarian, I have a pretty wretched track record when it comes to bringing things back. I think there’s something really profound about human nature that’s revealed in my propensity for taking things out and my not bringing them back. But I’m not sure what it is. It has something to do with dopamine. Taking away, the dopamine’s spurting out of my ears. Bringing back, it’s like a deficit. Why does my daughter like pulling stuff out but not cleaning it up? The objects weigh the same.
But to answer your question, I have the Betwixt and Between issue of Conjunctions borrowed from Donna. Sorry, Donna.
all-time favorite novella
Hmmm, maybe Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Or Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata. Hey, I have read some Tolstoy.…
last reading you attended
I saw Nicholson Baker read from The Anthologist. It was exciting in that I roadtripped it with my fiction class and we held workshop for a student story on the highway, successfully I might add. A surly toll-booth operator snarled “Take yer quarter!” and on the return trip she was waiting for us on the southbound side in a classic Seinfeld symmetry, this time cashing out. This context enhanced the reading somehow, the sort of marginalia Baker himself would’ve been attuned to, the drive intrinsic to the experience. Also, we sat right under hulking Baker, his voice dipping and thrumming like a singer of scat. Only afterward, seeing the text, did I realize how much shorter and more intimate his sentences have grown since The Mezzanine. I kind of feel like I’ve grown up with Baker, since my dad handed me The Mezz when it first came out, and I can remember identifying with it because I worked in one of those soulless offices down near Wall Street where there was naught to do but attend to every non-obvious detail of that alien landscape, how guys carried themselves while urinating and so forth, though hardly with Baker’s genius eye. Introducing myself to him after the reading, I made the mistake of saying, “Hey, I was down on Wall Street too, probably reading your book on my lunch hour.” So he signed my copy, “To a fellow Wall Streeter.” Ah, well.
weirdest dream involving a book or literary character
Okay, straight out of el dream journal:
I’m about to meet Jonathan Franzen. He’s got this device that lets him know how nervous the person meeting him is, like those radar signs that tell you your speed. He knows I’m shitting the proverbial pants. But he’s ready for me and has suggestions. One is that I could become “orthodox.” I nod. Another is that I could become better versed in history, and feel more grounded. I have no clue what he means, but I am relaxing. The third is that I could research people who are locked out of their houses and talk to them about what they are doing while locked out, and could sell this to The New Yorker. Now I’m holding up the line, and there’s a woman behind me. She tells me she likes my sneakers, and I look down and see that they’re subpar, really not fit to wear out, and then I realize she’s just trying to get me to haul my ass along so she can get her face-time with Franzen. I start to take off my sneakers just to stall and at this point Franzen raises his voice and yells, “That wasn’t one of my suggestions. WERE MY SUGGESTIONS NOT GOOD ENOUGH?” My urge is to say, “You’re not my dad,” but then I’m not so sure. I turn around to see if the woman is my mom, but she’s gone. Pan out and the whole thing has been at Sea World and the jellyfish are petitioning for brains and Franzen’s like, “Was this happening all along?” That’s it.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Coffee table? Planting a book on a coffee table is like painting a bison on your walls to dazzle someone. Today’s coffee table is the book-based social networking site, like Goodreads. My Goodreads shelf is pretty authentic, but if I had a sub-shelf that was Books That I Put Out There To Maybe Just A Little Bit Try To Impress Someone, I’d fess up that maybe I’m not really reading Tournier’s The Ogre right now, even though it says I am. But I started it. Hence. Have I shown you my rendition of a bison?
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Conjunctions, sans doubt.
best thing you’ve read online recently
That would have to be Joshua Cohen’s “North Vain, Bluff” at Harp & Altar. It’s from a thing that I believe is finished—not sure when the whole thing’ll be released— called Two Great Russian Novels (there we go, back to that theme), all of which is to marvel at. If you know Cohen’s amazing Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, you already know him as an avalanche, but one of language and history and humor; here he is literal wintry action scenes in Alaska. Plus there’s a helicopter. I’m way more into it than, say, Michael Chabon’s Sitka Jewish homeland-relocation-noir.
most anticipated upcoming release
The English translation of Macedonio Fernández’s The Museum of Eterna’s Novel, slated for next year—a series of prologues to a book never written. He was Borges’s secret influence/foil/double/_____. He sounds as if he was less responsible than Borges, maybe, and thus got his work out into the world less and didn’t develop a career (Borges always considered himself a lucky imposter as went his own success; maybe he was thinking of Macedonio).
recommended reading list:
Peak Bagging the Mighty Montages
Even though the word “montage” derives etymologically from “mounting,” I’d like to take it a step back further and think of mountains, that when a story feels more like a collage than a straightforward narrative, it gives you that sense of adrenaline and liberation and perspective you might get leaping from mountain to mountain. So, here are books that make a few, but not too many, concessions to linearity or to consecutiveness, that squeeze white valleys onto the page in order to disrupt the reading experience—but also to propel you forward, and thus make it more like memory, more like the way I, at least, experience daily life/thought/the past.
- Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
- Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
- The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser
- Speedboat by Renata Adler
- The Atlas by William T. Vollmann
- Doctor of Silence by Robert Kelly
- Mating by Norman Rush
- The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Representative stories: Rick Moody’s “Demonology,” Heidi Julavits’s “Marry the One Who Gets There First,” David Means’s “Coitus,” Matt Bell’s “Ten Scenes from a Movie Called Mercy.”
what are you reading now
I’m reading Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist and Bolaño’s 2666 and Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia.
last book to make you laugh out loud
I’m not a guffawer by temperament and by no means would call myself a giggler, but The Anthologist keeps making me snort with a slight undulation like I’m being tickled.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Anna Karenina. I really wish there was a theme park based on Russian novels and someone had lined up vacation plans for me there. That would force me to read it. It would be like a height requirement—you’d have to have read a certain number of pages. I could ride on the Dostoyevsky-coaster and the Turgenev carousel, but I’d be shit out of luck at the Tunnel of Tolstoy. I suppose there’s always a trip to St. Petersburg.
book you borrowed and never returned
I’m a terrible borrower of books. For someone who’s written a novella from the standpoint of a librarian, I have a pretty wretched track record when it comes to bringing things back. I think there’s something really profound about human nature that’s revealed in my propensity for taking things out and my not bringing them back. But I’m not sure what it is. It has something to do with dopamine. Taking away, the dopamine’s spurting out of my ears. Bringing back, it’s like a deficit. Why does my daughter like pulling stuff out but not cleaning it up? The objects weigh the same.
But to answer your question, I have the Betwixt and Between issue of Conjunctions borrowed from Donna. Sorry, Donna.
all-time favorite novella
Hmmm, maybe Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Or Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata. Hey, I have read some Tolstoy.…
last reading you attended
I saw Nicholson Baker read from The Anthologist. It was exciting in that I roadtripped it with my fiction class and we held workshop for a student story on the highway, successfully I might add. A surly toll-booth operator snarled “Take yer quarter!” and on the return trip she was waiting for us on the southbound side in a classic Seinfeld symmetry, this time cashing out. This context enhanced the reading somehow, the sort of marginalia Baker himself would’ve been attuned to, the drive intrinsic to the experience. Also, we sat right under hulking Baker, his voice dipping and thrumming like a singer of scat. Only afterward, seeing the text, did I realize how much shorter and more intimate his sentences have grown since The Mezzanine. I kind of feel like I’ve grown up with Baker, since my dad handed me The Mezz when it first came out, and I can remember identifying with it because I worked in one of those soulless offices down near Wall Street where there was naught to do but attend to every non-obvious detail of that alien landscape, how guys carried themselves while urinating and so forth, though hardly with Baker’s genius eye. Introducing myself to him after the reading, I made the mistake of saying, “Hey, I was down on Wall Street too, probably reading your book on my lunch hour.” So he signed my copy, “To a fellow Wall Streeter.” Ah, well.
weirdest dream involving a book or literary character
Okay, straight out of el dream journal:
I’m about to meet Jonathan Franzen. He’s got this device that lets him know how nervous the person meeting him is, like those radar signs that tell you your speed. He knows I’m shitting the proverbial pants. But he’s ready for me and has suggestions. One is that I could become “orthodox.” I nod. Another is that I could become better versed in history, and feel more grounded. I have no clue what he means, but I am relaxing. The third is that I could research people who are locked out of their houses and talk to them about what they are doing while locked out, and could sell this to The New Yorker. Now I’m holding up the line, and there’s a woman behind me. She tells me she likes my sneakers, and I look down and see that they’re subpar, really not fit to wear out, and then I realize she’s just trying to get me to haul my ass along so she can get her face-time with Franzen. I start to take off my sneakers just to stall and at this point Franzen raises his voice and yells, “That wasn’t one of my suggestions. WERE MY SUGGESTIONS NOT GOOD ENOUGH?” My urge is to say, “You’re not my dad,” but then I’m not so sure. I turn around to see if the woman is my mom, but she’s gone. Pan out and the whole thing has been at Sea World and the jellyfish are petitioning for brains and Franzen’s like, “Was this happening all along?” That’s it.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Coffee table? Planting a book on a coffee table is like painting a bison on your walls to dazzle someone. Today’s coffee table is the book-based social networking site, like Goodreads. My Goodreads shelf is pretty authentic, but if I had a sub-shelf that was Books That I Put Out There To Maybe Just A Little Bit Try To Impress Someone, I’d fess up that maybe I’m not really reading Tournier’s The Ogre right now, even though it says I am. But I started it. Hence. Have I shown you my rendition of a bison?
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Conjunctions, sans doubt.
best thing you’ve read online recently
That would have to be Joshua Cohen’s “North Vain, Bluff” at Harp & Altar. It’s from a thing that I believe is finished—not sure when the whole thing’ll be released— called Two Great Russian Novels (there we go, back to that theme), all of which is to marvel at. If you know Cohen’s amazing Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, you already know him as an avalanche, but one of language and history and humor; here he is literal wintry action scenes in Alaska. Plus there’s a helicopter. I’m way more into it than, say, Michael Chabon’s Sitka Jewish homeland-relocation-noir.
most anticipated upcoming release
The English translation of Macedonio Fernández’s The Museum of Eterna’s Novel, slated for next year—a series of prologues to a book never written. He was Borges’s secret influence/foil/double/_____. He sounds as if he was less responsible than Borges, maybe, and thus got his work out into the world less and didn’t develop a career (Borges always considered himself a lucky imposter as went his own success; maybe he was thinking of Macedonio).
recommended reading list:
Peak Bagging the Mighty Montages
Even though the word “montage” derives etymologically from “mounting,” I’d like to take it a step back further and think of mountains, that when a story feels more like a collage than a straightforward narrative, it gives you that sense of adrenaline and liberation and perspective you might get leaping from mountain to mountain. So, here are books that make a few, but not too many, concessions to linearity or to consecutiveness, that squeeze white valleys onto the page in order to disrupt the reading experience—but also to propel you forward, and thus make it more like memory, more like the way I, at least, experience daily life/thought/the past.
- Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje
- Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein
- The Barnum Museum by Steven Millhauser
- Speedboat by Renata Adler
- The Atlas by William T. Vollmann
- Doctor of Silence by Robert Kelly
- Mating by Norman Rush
- The Bathroom by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Representative stories: Rick Moody’s “Demonology,” Heidi Julavits’s “Marry the One Who Gets There First,” David Means’s “Coitus,” Matt Bell’s “Ten Scenes from a Movie Called Mercy.”
17.9.09
John Dermot Woods
John Dermot Woods is the author of the novel The Complete Collection of people, places & things and the forthcoming comic chapbook The Remains (Doublecross). He writes stories and draws comics in Brooklyn, NY. His work has appeared in The Indiana Review, Hobart, 3rd Bed, Salt Hill, American Letters & Commentary, No Colony, Lamination Colony, and many other places. He edits the arts quarterly Action,Yes and organizes the online reading series Apostrophe Cast. He is a professor in the English Department at Nassau Community College on Long Island.
what are you reading now
Acme Novelty Library #19 by Chris Ware, Moby Dick by Melville, re-reading Seiichi Hayashi's Red Colored Elegy, Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales by Kurt Schwitters (with my daughter)
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Moby Dick
last book to make you laugh out loud
The Schwitters book is pretty hilarious.
book you borrowed and never returned
Nails by Lenny Dykstra (it's about his time on the Mets not as a stock trader)
if you could write yourself into any novel
Not really a novel, but I'd love to get into a Calvin and Hobbes strip.
favorite book cover design
I have a lot: Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware, Nadja by Breton (the Grove English translation), those new Penguin editions done by comics artists are pretty amazing; Adrian Tomine's best work is on covers.
most challenging book you’ve ever read
Excluding volumes of theory, Finnegan's Wake – doing it with a team and guide
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
American Letters & Commentary (but that could change each day – because there's a bunch I love – Hobart, Sleepingfish, No Colony, etc.)
best thing you’ve read online recently
"Summer of the Raccoon" by Rachel Yoder in the last Action,Yes – just reread it and it's even better than I remember when I published it a couple of months ago.
most anticipated upcoming release
Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (it might be available already)
recommended reading list:
Literary Highlights of the New York Mets
– The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (Auster's dedication to the Mets is apparent in a lot of his work)
– The Curious Case of Sidd Finch by George Plimpton (April Fool's joke turned novel)
– Believeniks! by Jonathan Lethem and Christopher Sorrentino (this book is so esoteric, it took a name like Lethem's to get it published)
– If at First by Keith Hernandez (the most distinguished writer on the list)
– Samuel Beckett's attendance at a Mets doubleheader in 1964 during his one trip to America (they won both games)
– "How's that, Umpire?" by P.G. Wodehouse (actually a cricket story, but when he wrote this, Wodehouse had moved to Long Island and had become an avid Mets fan)
what are you reading now
Acme Novelty Library #19 by Chris Ware, Moby Dick by Melville, re-reading Seiichi Hayashi's Red Colored Elegy, Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales by Kurt Schwitters (with my daughter)
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Moby Dick
last book to make you laugh out loud
The Schwitters book is pretty hilarious.
book you borrowed and never returned
Nails by Lenny Dykstra (it's about his time on the Mets not as a stock trader)
if you could write yourself into any novel
Not really a novel, but I'd love to get into a Calvin and Hobbes strip.
favorite book cover design
I have a lot: Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware, Nadja by Breton (the Grove English translation), those new Penguin editions done by comics artists are pretty amazing; Adrian Tomine's best work is on covers.
most challenging book you’ve ever read
Excluding volumes of theory, Finnegan's Wake – doing it with a team and guide
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
American Letters & Commentary (but that could change each day – because there's a bunch I love – Hobart, Sleepingfish, No Colony, etc.)
best thing you’ve read online recently
"Summer of the Raccoon" by Rachel Yoder in the last Action,Yes – just reread it and it's even better than I remember when I published it a couple of months ago.
most anticipated upcoming release
Tsim Tsum by Sabrina Orah Mark (it might be available already)
recommended reading list:
Literary Highlights of the New York Mets
– The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster (Auster's dedication to the Mets is apparent in a lot of his work)
– The Curious Case of Sidd Finch by George Plimpton (April Fool's joke turned novel)
– Believeniks! by Jonathan Lethem and Christopher Sorrentino (this book is so esoteric, it took a name like Lethem's to get it published)
– If at First by Keith Hernandez (the most distinguished writer on the list)
– Samuel Beckett's attendance at a Mets doubleheader in 1964 during his one trip to America (they won both games)
– "How's that, Umpire?" by P.G. Wodehouse (actually a cricket story, but when he wrote this, Wodehouse had moved to Long Island and had become an avid Mets fan)
9.9.09
Stefanie Freele
Stefanie Freele's short story collection Feeding Strays was just released by Lost Horse Press. She also has a new chapbook available through Bannock Street Books titled MOTEL. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in wonderful literary magazines like Glimmer Train, American Literary Review, Wigleaf, Night Train, Literary Mama, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, FRiGG, Dogzplot, and Hobart online. Stefanie has an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts: Whidbey Writers Workshop. She is on the editorial staff of SmokeLong Quarterly and is also the Fiction Editor for the Los Angeles Review.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
War and Peace – Will I read it? Maybe. Who knows. Perhaps when the world stands still and gives me a week or two off. And when it does, no, I won't do your laundry.
last book to make you laugh out loud
I think Russell Edson's The Song of Percival Peacock – which I'm not yet done with. It has made me laugh so many times I just can't believe it.
book you borrowed and never returned
Can't think of any. But, whoever borrowed Scott Poole's Hiding From Salesmen wouldja please give it back?
most treasured book in your collection
There isn't one. I have a "favorites shelf.” The left hand side of the shelf is most likely the most treasured bunch because they are fabulous books by authors I either know well, have met or have sent an e-mail to two to: Ray Vukcevich's Meet Me In the Moon Room, Barry Yourgrau's Wearing Dad's Head, Randall Brown's Mad to Live, Tania Hershman's The White Road, several by David Wagoner, Bruce Holland Rogers, Susan Zwinger.
There are also a bunch of authors I don't know personally, but would love to: Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn), Donald Barthelme (Sixty Stories), Cormac McCarthy (The Road). I need a bigger shelf.
secret crush on a writer or literary character
Some secrets are not meant to be told.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I don't have a coffee table nor do I want one. People are usually impressed by how I dress. My mother describes my personal style as "Eccentric Camper." I've been known to wear flannel shirts, hiking boots and even the occasional bandana.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Too hard and painful of a decision. I love lit mags and I want to subscribe to tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of them.
best thing you’ve read online recently
Best? Oh, there is so much! Starting with Wigleaf's Top 50 and on. There is some fabulous writing online these days. I can't keep up with all of it.
recommended reading list:
Cool Sounding Small Press Books That Haven’t Yet Come Out, But I Know the Authors’ Work And They Are Damn Good, So Therefore I Will Preorder And So Should You
- In an Uncharted Country by Cliff Garstang (Press 53)
- Beasts and Violins by Caleb Barber (Red Hen Press)
- Rattlesnakes and The Moon by Darlin Neal (Press 53)
- Now Playing by Shellie Zacharia (Keyhole Press)
- The Book of Want by Daniel Olivas (University of Arizona Press)
- The Mansion of Happiness by Robin Ekiss (University of Georgia Press)
classic you’ve been meaning to read
War and Peace – Will I read it? Maybe. Who knows. Perhaps when the world stands still and gives me a week or two off. And when it does, no, I won't do your laundry.
last book to make you laugh out loud
I think Russell Edson's The Song of Percival Peacock – which I'm not yet done with. It has made me laugh so many times I just can't believe it.
book you borrowed and never returned
Can't think of any. But, whoever borrowed Scott Poole's Hiding From Salesmen wouldja please give it back?
most treasured book in your collection
There isn't one. I have a "favorites shelf.” The left hand side of the shelf is most likely the most treasured bunch because they are fabulous books by authors I either know well, have met or have sent an e-mail to two to: Ray Vukcevich's Meet Me In the Moon Room, Barry Yourgrau's Wearing Dad's Head, Randall Brown's Mad to Live, Tania Hershman's The White Road, several by David Wagoner, Bruce Holland Rogers, Susan Zwinger.
There are also a bunch of authors I don't know personally, but would love to: Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn), Donald Barthelme (Sixty Stories), Cormac McCarthy (The Road). I need a bigger shelf.
secret crush on a writer or literary character
Some secrets are not meant to be told.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I don't have a coffee table nor do I want one. People are usually impressed by how I dress. My mother describes my personal style as "Eccentric Camper." I've been known to wear flannel shirts, hiking boots and even the occasional bandana.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Too hard and painful of a decision. I love lit mags and I want to subscribe to tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of them.
best thing you’ve read online recently
Best? Oh, there is so much! Starting with Wigleaf's Top 50 and on. There is some fabulous writing online these days. I can't keep up with all of it.
recommended reading list:
Cool Sounding Small Press Books That Haven’t Yet Come Out, But I Know the Authors’ Work And They Are Damn Good, So Therefore I Will Preorder And So Should You
- In an Uncharted Country by Cliff Garstang (Press 53)
- Beasts and Violins by Caleb Barber (Red Hen Press)
- Rattlesnakes and The Moon by Darlin Neal (Press 53)
- Now Playing by Shellie Zacharia (Keyhole Press)
- The Book of Want by Daniel Olivas (University of Arizona Press)
- The Mansion of Happiness by Robin Ekiss (University of Georgia Press)
3.9.09
Laird Hunt
Laird Hunt is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Currently on faculty at the University of Denver, he is the author, most recently, of Ray of the Star.
what are you reading now
The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño
Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong by Pierre Bayard
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Where Did You Sleep Last Night? by Danzy Senna
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I’m not entirely sure Don DeLillo’s Underworld counts as a classic – perhaps a contemporary classic. And it’s actually a book I’ve been reading for 5 years. Every summer I say I’m going to finish it and every summer I read another 100 or 200 pp and put it back down. So this is not necessarily a classic book that I’ve been meaning to read.
last book you finished in a single sitting
Eunoia by Christian Bök
book you borrowed and never returned
Madison Smartt Bell’s Waiting for the End of the World. Borrowed a decade ago from an old writing friend Chris Baer and then we lost touch and I haven’t yet had the opportunity to give it back to him. It still sits on my shelf. Awaiting its rightful owner.
most treasured book in your collection
There are two:
A first edition, sans dust jacket, of The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien and The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald – My first U.S. edition copy is signed and has, tucked into its pages, both sides of the brief correspondence we had.
if you could write yourself into any novel
I would love to appear as one of the melancholic obsessives Sebald visits in The Rings of Saturn. I could sit gazing out of one window and he could sit opposite me gazing out of the other. A tea kettle would be bubbling away in the background. There would perhaps be the smell of something burning. A draft coming in through a crack in the window. A child could be sitting in a quiet corner drawing pictures of women with tornadoes in place of hair.
Or
I would love to appear as one of the punctuation marks (maybe a semi-colon) in Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans.
Or
As a character in the expendable chapters section of Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch.
strangest book you’ve ever read
I believe that strangeness is the sine qua non of goodness in books. Life: A User’s Manual by Perec is a deeply strange book. So is Berg by Ann Quin. Moby Dick is extremely strange. It doesn’t get any weirder than Hamlet. Emily Dickinson’s selected poetry is really bizarre. Cane by Jean Toomer is strangeness squared.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I once planted a copy of a writer’s book on a coffee table to impress him/her when they came over. My wife, noticing, raised her eyebrow, scooped it up and put it away.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Brick Magazine
best thing you’ve read online recently
The opening pages of Robert Lopez’s second novel Kamby Bolongo Mean River.
most anticipated upcoming release
Joanna Howard’s On the Winding Stair
recommended reading list:
Books I Teach Every Year Because I Dig Them So Much
- Gargantua by François Rabelais
- The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje
- Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire
- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
- Persepolis (I) by Marjane Satrapi
- Cane by Jean Toomer
- Rose Mellie Rose, Hotel Splendid, or Forever Valley by Marie Redonnet
- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
what are you reading now
The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño
Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong by Pierre Bayard
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa
Where Did You Sleep Last Night? by Danzy Senna
classic you’ve been meaning to read
I’m not entirely sure Don DeLillo’s Underworld counts as a classic – perhaps a contemporary classic. And it’s actually a book I’ve been reading for 5 years. Every summer I say I’m going to finish it and every summer I read another 100 or 200 pp and put it back down. So this is not necessarily a classic book that I’ve been meaning to read.
last book you finished in a single sitting
Eunoia by Christian Bök
book you borrowed and never returned
Madison Smartt Bell’s Waiting for the End of the World. Borrowed a decade ago from an old writing friend Chris Baer and then we lost touch and I haven’t yet had the opportunity to give it back to him. It still sits on my shelf. Awaiting its rightful owner.
most treasured book in your collection
There are two:
A first edition, sans dust jacket, of The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien and The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald – My first U.S. edition copy is signed and has, tucked into its pages, both sides of the brief correspondence we had.
if you could write yourself into any novel
I would love to appear as one of the melancholic obsessives Sebald visits in The Rings of Saturn. I could sit gazing out of one window and he could sit opposite me gazing out of the other. A tea kettle would be bubbling away in the background. There would perhaps be the smell of something burning. A draft coming in through a crack in the window. A child could be sitting in a quiet corner drawing pictures of women with tornadoes in place of hair.
Or
I would love to appear as one of the punctuation marks (maybe a semi-colon) in Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans.
Or
As a character in the expendable chapters section of Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch.
strangest book you’ve ever read
I believe that strangeness is the sine qua non of goodness in books. Life: A User’s Manual by Perec is a deeply strange book. So is Berg by Ann Quin. Moby Dick is extremely strange. It doesn’t get any weirder than Hamlet. Emily Dickinson’s selected poetry is really bizarre. Cane by Jean Toomer is strangeness squared.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I once planted a copy of a writer’s book on a coffee table to impress him/her when they came over. My wife, noticing, raised her eyebrow, scooped it up and put it away.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Brick Magazine
best thing you’ve read online recently
The opening pages of Robert Lopez’s second novel Kamby Bolongo Mean River.
most anticipated upcoming release
Joanna Howard’s On the Winding Stair
recommended reading list:
Books I Teach Every Year Because I Dig Them So Much
- Gargantua by François Rabelais
- The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje
- Paris Spleen by Charles Baudelaire
- Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
- Persepolis (I) by Marjane Satrapi
- Cane by Jean Toomer
- Rose Mellie Rose, Hotel Splendid, or Forever Valley by Marie Redonnet
- Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar
28.8.09
Owen King
Owen King is the author of We're All in This Together: A Novella and Stories, and co-editor (with John McNally) of Who Can Save Us Now?, an anthology of superhero fiction by literary writers. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in publications such as the Bellingham Review, One Story, Paste Magazine, and Subtropics. He has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and his story, “Nothing is in Bad Taste,” was cited in the 2009 Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories.
what are you reading now
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, and it’s brilliant. The premise is awesomely, wonderfully strange, and the prose is faultless, so crisp and so rich at the same time.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.
last book to bring you to tears
I definitely welled up a few times while reading Little Dorrit this spring. The part where Little Dorrit tells Maggy the story of the tiny woman who keeps a secret shadow – a hopeless love – is the sort of moment that earns Dickens the opprobrium of hard ass academics, but it gets me in the gut.
favorite neglected book by a celebrated writer
My sense is that a lot of people find Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers over-the-top. It’s a gory little yarn about a married couple on vacation in Venice who fall into the company of a pair of malevolent charmers. (Probably all you need to know is that Christopher Walken plays the male charmer in Paul Schrader’s film adaptation, and he brings all of his considerable powers of weirdness to bear on the part.) To me, the book has that combination of the profoundly eccentric and the totally awful that makes Grimm's Fairy Tales so undeniable even now, however many years after they were written.
most treasured book in your collection
My favorite book is the copy of an anthology I co-edited that I've been obsessively trying to get all the contributing writers to sign.
If there was a fire, I would, of course, rush the family out before I worried about any of our possessions. Which is why I have drilled our three cats in an elaborate evacuation procedure for the book. (It’s pretty cute.)
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I can’t recall having done this, but recently, I moved my Baseball Encyclopedia off the coffee table, where it had been living for three months, and I’m pretty sure that impressed my wife.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I’m a One Story devotee. The combination of the back-pocket format and the consistent high quality of the work is tough to top.
most anticipated upcoming release
The new novel by my old classmate Jessica Shattuck, Perfect Life. Her first novel, The Hazards of Good Breeding, was a favorite.
recommended reading list:
Ten Stories That Are Ready For Their Close-Up
In the Bedroom (from Dubus’s “Killings”) and Brokeback Mountain (from the Annie Proulx story) are great examples of why, in general, most short stories probably make more sense as subjects of film adaptation than most novels. I’m not sure that the reason for this is all that complex. Turning a novel into a film usually requires a screenwriter to do lots of paring down, whereas a short story adaptation usually asks for rounding out. Neither thing can be easy, but I feel like the former needs a ruthless attitude that’s especially rare.
Anyway, here are ten short stories that have a sort of wonderful “roominess” – full, terrific characterizations, and narratives extended enough to bear the weight of elaboration – that makes them ripe for the motion pictures! (Come to think of it, for the same reasons, all these stories could be enlarged into novels…)
- “Death Defier” by Tom Bissell
- “The Man Who Knew Dylan” by William Gay
- “Flower Garden” by Shirley Jackson
- “Aerogrammes” by Tania James
- “The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link
- “Intervention” by Jill McCorkle
- “Gators” by Mark Poirier
- “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” by George Saunders
- “Batting Against Castro” by Jim Shepard
- “Blue Yodel” by Scott Snyder
what are you reading now
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, and it’s brilliant. The premise is awesomely, wonderfully strange, and the prose is faultless, so crisp and so rich at the same time.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Fathers and Sons by Turgenev.
last book to bring you to tears
I definitely welled up a few times while reading Little Dorrit this spring. The part where Little Dorrit tells Maggy the story of the tiny woman who keeps a secret shadow – a hopeless love – is the sort of moment that earns Dickens the opprobrium of hard ass academics, but it gets me in the gut.
favorite neglected book by a celebrated writer
My sense is that a lot of people find Ian McEwan’s The Comfort of Strangers over-the-top. It’s a gory little yarn about a married couple on vacation in Venice who fall into the company of a pair of malevolent charmers. (Probably all you need to know is that Christopher Walken plays the male charmer in Paul Schrader’s film adaptation, and he brings all of his considerable powers of weirdness to bear on the part.) To me, the book has that combination of the profoundly eccentric and the totally awful that makes Grimm's Fairy Tales so undeniable even now, however many years after they were written.
most treasured book in your collection
My favorite book is the copy of an anthology I co-edited that I've been obsessively trying to get all the contributing writers to sign.
If there was a fire, I would, of course, rush the family out before I worried about any of our possessions. Which is why I have drilled our three cats in an elaborate evacuation procedure for the book. (It’s pretty cute.)
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
I can’t recall having done this, but recently, I moved my Baseball Encyclopedia off the coffee table, where it had been living for three months, and I’m pretty sure that impressed my wife.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I’m a One Story devotee. The combination of the back-pocket format and the consistent high quality of the work is tough to top.
most anticipated upcoming release
The new novel by my old classmate Jessica Shattuck, Perfect Life. Her first novel, The Hazards of Good Breeding, was a favorite.
recommended reading list:
Ten Stories That Are Ready For Their Close-Up
In the Bedroom (from Dubus’s “Killings”) and Brokeback Mountain (from the Annie Proulx story) are great examples of why, in general, most short stories probably make more sense as subjects of film adaptation than most novels. I’m not sure that the reason for this is all that complex. Turning a novel into a film usually requires a screenwriter to do lots of paring down, whereas a short story adaptation usually asks for rounding out. Neither thing can be easy, but I feel like the former needs a ruthless attitude that’s especially rare.
Anyway, here are ten short stories that have a sort of wonderful “roominess” – full, terrific characterizations, and narratives extended enough to bear the weight of elaboration – that makes them ripe for the motion pictures! (Come to think of it, for the same reasons, all these stories could be enlarged into novels…)
- “Death Defier” by Tom Bissell
- “The Man Who Knew Dylan” by William Gay
- “Flower Garden” by Shirley Jackson
- “Aerogrammes” by Tania James
- “The Specialist’s Hat” by Kelly Link
- “Intervention” by Jill McCorkle
- “Gators” by Mark Poirier
- “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” by George Saunders
- “Batting Against Castro” by Jim Shepard
- “Blue Yodel” by Scott Snyder
24.8.09
Caitlin Horrocks
Caitlin Horrocks’ fiction has appeared in The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2009, The Paris Review, Tin House, Prairie Schooner, Epoch and elsewhere. Her stories have been short-listed in Best American Short Stories and won awards from the Atlantic Monthly and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and online at www.caitlinhorrocks.com.
what are you reading now
I staggered home from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference this summer with a suitcase full of wonderful fiction that I’m slowly making my way through. Currently in the stack: Things That Pass for Love by Allison Amend, The New Valley by Josh Weil, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson, What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn, Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi, and more. It’s a big stack.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. It’s one of those books I know enough about to occasionally reference: “forerunner of post-modernism etc. etc. etc.” But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to talk about books I haven’t actually read, so I’m hoping to get to it soon and replace the taste of fraud with the taste of delicious 18th century narrative innovation.
most treasured book in your collection
I really treasure the various half-remembered children’s books I’ve been able to hunt down online. I spent years ransacking my parents’ attic for The Little Monster’s Bedtime Book by Mercer Mayer, because I remembered tiny creatures hidden in the illustrations saying, “We’re rock cooties. Count us!*” Then the internet made it possible to order an out of print copy.
I also hunted down Jack Prelutsky’s Nightmares, which I’d listened to only once on a borrowed audiotape. My parents had given me permission to spend the night in a tent in our backyard, and listening to this tape outside, in the dark, gave me such nightmares I erased the book’s title from my memory. Turns out I was right to be terrified. Sample stanza: “He cracks their bones and snaps their backs/and squeezes out their lungs,/he chews their thumbs like candy snacks/and pulls apart their tongues.”
* There are nine.
book you borrowed and never returned
My mother is a librarian: I always return my books. But I got into a ridiculous argument with a friend once over a copy of Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I was moving away and calling in the books I’d lent. Our phone plans made it cheaper to send text messages than call, so we traded a series of increasingly ridiculous texts. There are only so many polite, mature ways to write: “You have my book,” “No I don’t,” “You have my book,” “No I don’t.” By the end of it I was questioning the whole friendship; how had I once associated with a bald-faced liar who was now trying to steal a book that I loved? Then finally he typed, “oh! thought bel canto was CD. gave yr CDs back weeks ago. book right here will bring it.” Which made me feel like a moron incapable of speaking on a phone and resolving basic interpersonal conflicts via actual words.
strangest book you’ve ever read
Possibly The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot, written in 1584. Sample chapter title: “Certeine popish and magicall cures, for them that are bewitched in their privities.”
collected stories of
Flannery O’Connor. No question.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Hayden’s Ferry Review. I used to be an editor there, so I’m completely biased, but it’s a great journal. There’s a consistently interesting blog, too.
best thing you’ve read online recently
Forrest Anderson’s wonderful short story “Hey Bubba” in Blackbird. It’s heartbreaking. Go read it.
recommended reading list:
Smörgåsbord Short Story Collections
There are a lot of story collections I enjoy while I’m in the midst of reading them, but then look back on later and find the stories have blurred together in my mind. I have an especial love for collections that offer up a lot of distinct pleasures, whether the author is consciously working with different subjects and styles, or just producing a selection of really kick-ass stories.
- The Hotel Eden by Ron Carlson
- Equal Love by Peter Ho Davies
- Here We Are in Paradise by Tony Earley
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- The Good Life by Erin McGraw
- Permanent Visitors by Kevin Moffett
- The Train to Lo Wu by Jess Row
- Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (I know, it’s a novel, and I know, everybody already knows it’s great. But it’s the book that taught me what a short story is, so I can’t let it go unmentioned.)
what are you reading now
I staggered home from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference this summer with a suitcase full of wonderful fiction that I’m slowly making my way through. Currently in the stack: Things That Pass for Love by Allison Amend, The New Valley by Josh Weil, Tunneling to the Center of the Earth by Kevin Wilson, What Happened to Anna K. by Irina Reyn, Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi, and more. It’s a big stack.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. It’s one of those books I know enough about to occasionally reference: “forerunner of post-modernism etc. etc. etc.” But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to talk about books I haven’t actually read, so I’m hoping to get to it soon and replace the taste of fraud with the taste of delicious 18th century narrative innovation.
most treasured book in your collection
I really treasure the various half-remembered children’s books I’ve been able to hunt down online. I spent years ransacking my parents’ attic for The Little Monster’s Bedtime Book by Mercer Mayer, because I remembered tiny creatures hidden in the illustrations saying, “We’re rock cooties. Count us!*” Then the internet made it possible to order an out of print copy.
I also hunted down Jack Prelutsky’s Nightmares, which I’d listened to only once on a borrowed audiotape. My parents had given me permission to spend the night in a tent in our backyard, and listening to this tape outside, in the dark, gave me such nightmares I erased the book’s title from my memory. Turns out I was right to be terrified. Sample stanza: “He cracks their bones and snaps their backs/and squeezes out their lungs,/he chews their thumbs like candy snacks/and pulls apart their tongues.”
* There are nine.
book you borrowed and never returned
My mother is a librarian: I always return my books. But I got into a ridiculous argument with a friend once over a copy of Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I was moving away and calling in the books I’d lent. Our phone plans made it cheaper to send text messages than call, so we traded a series of increasingly ridiculous texts. There are only so many polite, mature ways to write: “You have my book,” “No I don’t,” “You have my book,” “No I don’t.” By the end of it I was questioning the whole friendship; how had I once associated with a bald-faced liar who was now trying to steal a book that I loved? Then finally he typed, “oh! thought bel canto was CD. gave yr CDs back weeks ago. book right here will bring it.” Which made me feel like a moron incapable of speaking on a phone and resolving basic interpersonal conflicts via actual words.
strangest book you’ve ever read
Possibly The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot, written in 1584. Sample chapter title: “Certeine popish and magicall cures, for them that are bewitched in their privities.”
collected stories of
Flannery O’Connor. No question.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Hayden’s Ferry Review. I used to be an editor there, so I’m completely biased, but it’s a great journal. There’s a consistently interesting blog, too.
best thing you’ve read online recently
Forrest Anderson’s wonderful short story “Hey Bubba” in Blackbird. It’s heartbreaking. Go read it.
recommended reading list:
Smörgåsbord Short Story Collections
There are a lot of story collections I enjoy while I’m in the midst of reading them, but then look back on later and find the stories have blurred together in my mind. I have an especial love for collections that offer up a lot of distinct pleasures, whether the author is consciously working with different subjects and styles, or just producing a selection of really kick-ass stories.
- The Hotel Eden by Ron Carlson
- Equal Love by Peter Ho Davies
- Here We Are in Paradise by Tony Earley
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- The Good Life by Erin McGraw
- Permanent Visitors by Kevin Moffett
- The Train to Lo Wu by Jess Row
- Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (I know, it’s a novel, and I know, everybody already knows it’s great. But it’s the book that taught me what a short story is, so I can’t let it go unmentioned.)
17.8.09
Clifford Garstang
Clifford Garstang’s short story collection, In an Uncharted Country, will be published in September 2009 by Press 53 and is now available for pre-order at http://CliffordGarstang.com and www.Press53.com. His stories have appeared in Cream City Review, Wisconsin Review, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. A former international lawyer specializing in Asia, he has an MA in English from Indiana University and an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte.
what are you reading now
The New Valley by Josh Weil, published earlier this year. It’s unique—a collection of three novellas set in Southwest Virginia—and disturbing, which is about all I can ask of fiction. Josh is a friend from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and we’re doing a joint reading at the New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville, Virginia, in September.
Because I usually have both a fiction and a non-fiction book going at the same time, I’m also reading Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. It’s about the Buddhist spiritual path and is a sequel to his A Path With Heart, which I recently finished.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
There are several, I’m sorry to say, but the one classic I wish I could say that I’ve read is Remembrance of Things Past. Not sure when that’s going to happen, but it’s on my shelf, waiting.
last book to bring you to tears
That doesn’t happen very often, but I recently re-read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and that book is a killer. And it doesn’t help that I’ve heard O’Brien read from it and he gets emotional in the reading, so how can I not do the same?
book you borrowed and never returned
Who, me?
if you could write yourself into any book or story
I’ve always been interested in reincarnation, so maybe that would be The Sea of Fertility, the amazing tetralogy by Yukio Mishima, which follows a single “character” through successive lives.
best book-to-film adaptation
I don’t see a lot of films, but when I see an adaptation I’m often disturbed by what’s been left out, although I know the best books are much bigger in scope than a typical film. So I think Brokeback Mountain would be my choice here since it was based on a story rather than a novel, and I thought did an excellent job of capturing the whole work, even improving on the story in some ways.
favorite neglected book by a celebrated writer
I don’t think my reading has had the depth to do justice to this question, but Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion is an amazing book, and I think most people only know One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
This is maybe not quite what you mean, but for a while I had a couple of very nice books about Angkor Wat on my coffee table and wouldn’t have minded if someone had asked me about my trip there.
best american short stories, pen/o. henry prizes, or the pushcart prize anthology
Pushcart. I like both of the other anthologies, too, but I use the Pushcart Prize volume each year to update my rankings of literary magazines (which I post on my blog in early December), and for that purpose I like their somewhat more democratic approach.
collected stories of
Grace Paley. But really, there are so many short story writers I admire and whose collected stories I either own or would like to own: Russell Banks, Richard Yates, William Trevor, Flannery O’Connor. It’s a very long list.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Ploughshares. And you didn’t ask for a reason, but I’d choose Ploughshares because it has more Pushcart Prize winners and Special Mentions than any other magazine this decade. By far.
most anticipated upcoming release
I’ve heard very good things about Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply, which is coming out later this month, but I know that both John Casey and Tim O’Brien have new books that they’ve been working on for some time and I’m looking forward to seeing both of those.
recommended reading list:
Chinese Novels in Translation
(Because I’ve spent so much time in Asia, I’m drawn to work set anywhere in the region, and Chinese literature offers a treasure of new settings and ideas.)
- Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
- Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
- The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan
- To Live by Yu Hua
- Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua
- Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong
- Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong
- Rice by Su Tong
- Farewell My Concubine by Lilian Lee
- Half of Man is Woman by Zhang Xianliang
what are you reading now
The New Valley by Josh Weil, published earlier this year. It’s unique—a collection of three novellas set in Southwest Virginia—and disturbing, which is about all I can ask of fiction. Josh is a friend from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and we’re doing a joint reading at the New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville, Virginia, in September.
Because I usually have both a fiction and a non-fiction book going at the same time, I’m also reading Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. It’s about the Buddhist spiritual path and is a sequel to his A Path With Heart, which I recently finished.
classic you’ve been meaning to read
There are several, I’m sorry to say, but the one classic I wish I could say that I’ve read is Remembrance of Things Past. Not sure when that’s going to happen, but it’s on my shelf, waiting.
last book to bring you to tears
That doesn’t happen very often, but I recently re-read Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and that book is a killer. And it doesn’t help that I’ve heard O’Brien read from it and he gets emotional in the reading, so how can I not do the same?
book you borrowed and never returned
Who, me?
if you could write yourself into any book or story
I’ve always been interested in reincarnation, so maybe that would be The Sea of Fertility, the amazing tetralogy by Yukio Mishima, which follows a single “character” through successive lives.
best book-to-film adaptation
I don’t see a lot of films, but when I see an adaptation I’m often disturbed by what’s been left out, although I know the best books are much bigger in scope than a typical film. So I think Brokeback Mountain would be my choice here since it was based on a story rather than a novel, and I thought did an excellent job of capturing the whole work, even improving on the story in some ways.
favorite neglected book by a celebrated writer
I don’t think my reading has had the depth to do justice to this question, but Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion is an amazing book, and I think most people only know One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
This is maybe not quite what you mean, but for a while I had a couple of very nice books about Angkor Wat on my coffee table and wouldn’t have minded if someone had asked me about my trip there.
best american short stories, pen/o. henry prizes, or the pushcart prize anthology
Pushcart. I like both of the other anthologies, too, but I use the Pushcart Prize volume each year to update my rankings of literary magazines (which I post on my blog in early December), and for that purpose I like their somewhat more democratic approach.
collected stories of
Grace Paley. But really, there are so many short story writers I admire and whose collected stories I either own or would like to own: Russell Banks, Richard Yates, William Trevor, Flannery O’Connor. It’s a very long list.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
Ploughshares. And you didn’t ask for a reason, but I’d choose Ploughshares because it has more Pushcart Prize winners and Special Mentions than any other magazine this decade. By far.
most anticipated upcoming release
I’ve heard very good things about Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply, which is coming out later this month, but I know that both John Casey and Tim O’Brien have new books that they’ve been working on for some time and I’m looking forward to seeing both of those.
recommended reading list:
Chinese Novels in Translation
(Because I’ve spent so much time in Asia, I’m drawn to work set anywhere in the region, and Chinese literature offers a treasure of new settings and ideas.)
- Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
- Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
- The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan
- To Live by Yu Hua
- Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua
- Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong
- Raise the Red Lantern by Su Tong
- Rice by Su Tong
- Farewell My Concubine by Lilian Lee
- Half of Man is Woman by Zhang Xianliang
13.8.09
Shya Scanlon
Shya Scanlon’s fiction and poetry have appeared in Mississippi Review, Literary Review, New York Quarterly, and elsewhere. His novel FORECAST is being serialized across 42 online journals and blogs. His prose poetry collection In This Alone Impulse will be published by Noemi Press in 2009. He received his MFA from Brown University in 2008, where he won the John Hawkes Prize in Fiction. Visit him online at www.shyascanlon.com.
what are you reading now
Right now I’m juggling a number of different books. I can’t tell if this is because none of them have grabbed me entirely, or whether my mood has been fluctuating, or perhaps that my attention span is a victim of the amount of time I spend online. Likely it’s a combination of all these. At any rate, I’ve got bookmarks in:
Driftless by David Rhodes
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
Ninety-two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane
Tumble Home by Amy Hempel
Vermeer in Bosnia by Lawrence Weschler
… and a variety of journals, including the new Fence, the new Puerto del Sol, and the first issue of Dewclaw
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Well, to answer that honestly would be a long list. I never really got a classical education, even in high school, and I didn’t study English in college, so I simply haven’t read all the books most of my peers consider essential. So let this thought experiment suffice for an answer: think of ten canonical classics. Chances are, I’ve probably read no more than one of them. Huh. Not much of an experiment, is it.
last book you finished in a single sitting
I never finish a book in one sitting.
book you borrowed and never returned
Oh, I’ve done this a lot. And it’s been done to me a lot, too. Frankly, I don’t really keep good track of books, whose are whose, etc. It’s all part of a big book continuum, for me. I have books for a while, then I don’t. But because I’ve avoided your last two questions, I’ll get specific here and tell you the last book I think I’ve failed to return: Mayordomo by Stanley Crawford.
favorite book from childhood
I suppose I can determine what stage of childhood we’re talking about here. One of my all-time favorite picture books is The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher by Molly Bang. Just beautiful and giddy. Makes me think of growing up in Maine. Running naked through the woods.
longest book you’ve ever read
Huh. I don’t know. I don’t really think about that. I’ll tell you the longest book I’ve ever started and stopped reading: The Runaway Soul by Brodkey. I really wanted to be captivated by this book, and maybe that was the problem. The reading was so slow that every page I turned made me painfully aware of how many more there were to go. It was like being stuck in time. I don’t think I made it past 50. I’ll probably pick it up again when I’m old and crave that slowness.
secret crush on a writer or literary character
I think Lorrie Moore’s women are sexy as hell. They’re all broken yet strong and brilliant and hilarious. I don’t really picture them in my mind, though—in fact, I rarely picture characters in my mind unless the author drives it home (and even then I try to forget about it if possible). I like characters to remain nebulous, shifting word-arrangements. Though this doesn’t mean I like characters to be abstract. In fact, I’ve been increasingly disinterested in “abstract” fiction these days. I like characters, I find. Characters that seem real. I like plot, though it doesn’t have to be the driving force of the book. Action, then. I like things to “happen.” I want to write some Lorrie Moore fan fiction with long, elaborate sex scenes.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Hopefully, someday, my own.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I don’t subscribe to literary journals. I prefer to browse and buy from the rack. But I think I might use this opportunity to plug Monkeybicycle, which has kind of against all odds found a way to not only survive, but thrive, and which is dear to my heart for a variety of reasons. I look forward to each issue Steven Seighman creates.
best thing you’ve read online recently
How about this: I’ve recently been invited to join the online non-fiction site The Nervous Breakdown, and I’ve really been enjoying the memoir-type personal essays there. There’s a great variety of voices, experiences and perspectives, and it’s been kind of a nice reprieve from the dense, language-focused writing prevalent on many of the online journals I’m familiar with (and enjoy).
most anticipated upcoming release
Man, we’ve had a pretty good year so far, right? There are a number of books recently out that I haven’t read, so maybe I’ll list those instead. Inherent Vice, of course. How to Sell by Clancy Martin. Lowboy by John Wray. Okay, I’ll say this: I want to read Happy Rock by Matthew Simmons, when it comes out. It has yet to find a publisher, though, as far as I know, so I might have to wait a while. Any takers? Contact Matthew at http://themanwhocouldntblog.blogspot.com/.
recommended reading list:
Adult Books to Read to Your Child
My criteria: these books all use very simple language, and in most cases, very simple syntax, to create wildly imaginative fictions. I think in some cases a child might even have an easier time understanding it than most adults.
- Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall by Ken Sparling
- The End of The Story by Lydia Davis
- Stories and Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett
- Return to the City of White Donkeys by James Tate
- Vanishing Point by David Markson
- The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka (especially the really short ones)
- The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt by Wilhelm Genazino
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
what are you reading now
Right now I’m juggling a number of different books. I can’t tell if this is because none of them have grabbed me entirely, or whether my mood has been fluctuating, or perhaps that my attention span is a victim of the amount of time I spend online. Likely it’s a combination of all these. At any rate, I’ve got bookmarks in:
Driftless by David Rhodes
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte
Ninety-two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane
Tumble Home by Amy Hempel
Vermeer in Bosnia by Lawrence Weschler
… and a variety of journals, including the new Fence, the new Puerto del Sol, and the first issue of Dewclaw
classic you’ve been meaning to read
Well, to answer that honestly would be a long list. I never really got a classical education, even in high school, and I didn’t study English in college, so I simply haven’t read all the books most of my peers consider essential. So let this thought experiment suffice for an answer: think of ten canonical classics. Chances are, I’ve probably read no more than one of them. Huh. Not much of an experiment, is it.
last book you finished in a single sitting
I never finish a book in one sitting.
book you borrowed and never returned
Oh, I’ve done this a lot. And it’s been done to me a lot, too. Frankly, I don’t really keep good track of books, whose are whose, etc. It’s all part of a big book continuum, for me. I have books for a while, then I don’t. But because I’ve avoided your last two questions, I’ll get specific here and tell you the last book I think I’ve failed to return: Mayordomo by Stanley Crawford.
favorite book from childhood
I suppose I can determine what stage of childhood we’re talking about here. One of my all-time favorite picture books is The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher by Molly Bang. Just beautiful and giddy. Makes me think of growing up in Maine. Running naked through the woods.
longest book you’ve ever read
Huh. I don’t know. I don’t really think about that. I’ll tell you the longest book I’ve ever started and stopped reading: The Runaway Soul by Brodkey. I really wanted to be captivated by this book, and maybe that was the problem. The reading was so slow that every page I turned made me painfully aware of how many more there were to go. It was like being stuck in time. I don’t think I made it past 50. I’ll probably pick it up again when I’m old and crave that slowness.
secret crush on a writer or literary character
I think Lorrie Moore’s women are sexy as hell. They’re all broken yet strong and brilliant and hilarious. I don’t really picture them in my mind, though—in fact, I rarely picture characters in my mind unless the author drives it home (and even then I try to forget about it if possible). I like characters to remain nebulous, shifting word-arrangements. Though this doesn’t mean I like characters to be abstract. In fact, I’ve been increasingly disinterested in “abstract” fiction these days. I like characters, I find. Characters that seem real. I like plot, though it doesn’t have to be the driving force of the book. Action, then. I like things to “happen.” I want to write some Lorrie Moore fan fiction with long, elaborate sex scenes.
book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone
Hopefully, someday, my own.
if you could subscribe to only one literary journal
I don’t subscribe to literary journals. I prefer to browse and buy from the rack. But I think I might use this opportunity to plug Monkeybicycle, which has kind of against all odds found a way to not only survive, but thrive, and which is dear to my heart for a variety of reasons. I look forward to each issue Steven Seighman creates.
best thing you’ve read online recently
How about this: I’ve recently been invited to join the online non-fiction site The Nervous Breakdown, and I’ve really been enjoying the memoir-type personal essays there. There’s a great variety of voices, experiences and perspectives, and it’s been kind of a nice reprieve from the dense, language-focused writing prevalent on many of the online journals I’m familiar with (and enjoy).
most anticipated upcoming release
Man, we’ve had a pretty good year so far, right? There are a number of books recently out that I haven’t read, so maybe I’ll list those instead. Inherent Vice, of course. How to Sell by Clancy Martin. Lowboy by John Wray. Okay, I’ll say this: I want to read Happy Rock by Matthew Simmons, when it comes out. It has yet to find a publisher, though, as far as I know, so I might have to wait a while. Any takers? Contact Matthew at http://themanwhocouldntblog.blogspot.com/.
recommended reading list:
Adult Books to Read to Your Child
My criteria: these books all use very simple language, and in most cases, very simple syntax, to create wildly imaginative fictions. I think in some cases a child might even have an easier time understanding it than most adults.
- Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall by Ken Sparling
- The End of The Story by Lydia Davis
- Stories and Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett
- Return to the City of White Donkeys by James Tate
- Vanishing Point by David Markson
- The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka (especially the really short ones)
- The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt by Wilhelm Genazino
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
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