May 22: Event for Emmanuel Bove’s MY FRIENDS

NYRB is reprinting Emmanuel Bove’s beautiful first novel, which has arguably the best title ever: MY FRIENDS.

Revisiting French Classics: Emmanuel Bove’s My Friends. With Donald Breckenridge, Eugene Lim, Jonathon Sturgeon, and John Yau.


https://www.albertine.com/events/revisiting-a-french-classic-emmanuel-boves-my-friends/

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 20196:30 PM

IN ENGLISH. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. NO RSVP NECESSARY.ALBERTINE
972 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK, UNITED STATES

My Friends is Emmanuel Bove’s first and most famous book. Its narrator, Victor Baton, is a classic little man, of no talent or distinction or importance and with no illusions that he has any of those things. All Victor wants is to be loved, all he wants is a friend, and as he strays through the streets of Paris in search of love or friendship or some fleeting connection, we laugh both at Victor’s meekness and at his odd pride, but we feel with him, too.

With Victor, Bove has created a kind of everyman, an archetypal, indomitable knight of human fragility who invests the back streets of the city and the unsorted moments of daily life with a weird and unforgettable clarity.

On Wednesday, May 22 at 6:30pm, join Donald Breckenridge, Eugene Lim, Jonathon Sturgeon, and John Yau as they discuss Emmanuel Bove’s masterpiece.

In English. Free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.


https://www.albertine.com/events/revisiting-a-french-classic-emmanuel-boves-my-friends/

May 19: Reading at the Queens Museum with N.K. Jemisin, and Sabrina Vourvoulias, followed by a discussion moderated by scholar Joy Sanchez-Taylor.

https://queensmuseum.org/events/spring-exhibitions-public-programs

I’ll be reading at 5PM on May 19th at the Queens Museum along with writers N.K. Jemisin and Sabrina Vourvoulias, followed by a discussion moderated by scholar Joy Sanchez-Taylor.

Part of a bold and dreamy series of events put on by the Queens Library’s Science Fiction Festival and the Queens Museum’s Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas.

More info here:
https://queensmuseum.org/events/spring-exhibitions-public-programs


interviewed by John Madera for the Big Other podcast

“This episode features writer Eugene Lim reading from and discussing his short fiction, his novel Dear Cyborgs, and his novel-in-progress.

Among the many things we talk about are writing, literature, reading, books, editing, editors, libraries, librarians, experimental fiction, Jorge Luis Borges, publishing, Ellipsis Press, Third Space Theory, Renee Gladman, Miranda Mellis, Joanna Ruocco, Evelyn Hampton, Tom Whalen, dialogue, monologue, Karen An-hwei Lee, Jean Echenoz, Jonas Mekas, Tehching Hsieh, Adrian Tomine, and more.”

https://bigother.com/2019/05/02/jamming-their-transmission-episode-12-eugene-lim/

“C. ’81” by Alice Notley

C. ’81
by Alice Notley

People with more money than us
don’t seem to
trust us (not strictly true)
We have hardly any, ever
Maybe they shouldn’t trust us
we’re always looking to borrow
five ten or twenty dollars
we only want to have
just enough money, today
they think it all “goes for pills”
how much do they think pills cost
we have no
expensive habits I mean as in
other people’s worlds
clothes, travel, decor, enter-
tainment we do buy books we don’t have a
phone for seven years, no checking account

Of course I’m not being objective it was my life
As a matter of fact I feel positively defiant about it
I liked our economics they were transparent
I understood money thoroughly
I had guilt from borrowing
but never the guilt of having something
the only thing that suffered was Ted’s
health it suffered considerably

I can’t get at the poem of this
I think of ’81, ’82 as rather ugly years
casting cold shadows black
against the sky of a sun disappearing
but back to economics
nobody trusts the poor
the poor are more interesting than others
almost uniformly
they’re crazed resentful struggling paranoid excessive
anxious about their faded rickety possessions
and their stoops
their patches of sunlight or shade on stoops
their children going wrong
and all the disorder of the garbage cans
everyone else boringly has
clean cold spaces new things
private schools self-filled conversations
rooms full of shadow where rage should be
and the voices
of people subject to the fits of demonic radios in their heads
well I’ve had my radio implant at times
and known people with louder ones
everything the voices scream about
relates to money one
way or another

I’m being self-righteous so
I can own my own past again
and so my present, no bondage or confinement
of shame of not making money
it’s a talent people are born with–poetry isn’t it’s
life’s condition poetry’s so common hardly anyone
can find it
money’s common but much more cornerable
poetry’s air and money’s ore–a certain mineral
that slides across distances into hands it fits
born with a hand shaped like money they say, that
cute clean white hand

I can’t get to the poem of this
though I choke with it again being there
in another decade being here’s not much different
the rage of unremunerated work —
can’t you hear the voice in my head
can’t you hear this fucking voice in my head
of course I’m not right I’m never right
I’m fucking lazy unskilled and you deserve your money

from MYSTERIES OF SMALL HOUSES by Alice Notley

hear the poet read it and
learn about the financial lives of certain poets
in this profile of Bernadette Mayer here:
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/the-organist/give-everybody-everything-the-financial-life-of-bernadette-mayer

MUSIC TO WRITE TO

sometimes one’s white (/brown) noise app gets boring, no? buh-buh-billions of testing hours — some of them sad, most of them sleepy — went into the production of this playlist [spotify, youtube], which is what I’ve been writing to… poetaster tested, scribbler approved.

also: i’m reading this saturday afternoon with Caleb Beckwith and Alan Davies. come by?

https://www.seguefoundation.com/calendar.htm | FB EVENT LINK
APRIL 6

AT THE ZINC BAR
82 WEST 3rd STREET, BETWEEN THOMPSON AND SULLIVAN STS.
NEW YORK CITY
SATURDAYS FROM 4:30 – 6:30 PM

CALEB BECKWITH, EUGENE LIM & ALAN DAVIES

Caleb Beckwith is a writer and editor living in Oakland, CA; work includes Political Subject (ROOF), and Heat Win (Gauss PDF).

Eugene Lim is the author of the novels Fog & Car (Ellipsis Press), The Strangers (Black Square Editions), and Dear Cyborgs (FSG). He works as a high school librarian, runs Ellipsis Press, and lives in Queens, NY. http://www.eugenelim.com.

Alan Davies‘s books include Name/ Signage/ Rave/ Candor/ Raw War / Odes & fragments. In addition to his poetry / Alan is known for his book reviews / critical theory / aphorisms / essays. Long a resident of NYC / Alan can be contacted at idonot@mail.com.

https://www.seguefoundation.com/calendar.htm

 

Interview with Tehching Hsieh in The Believer

tehching hsieh interview in the believer2

Lisa Chen and Anelise Chen and i got to visit the studio of someone who frequently gets called the grandfather of performance art, Tehching Hsieh. the resulting interview has just been published in the Believer magazine — and should be available online soon is available online here.

to talk to hsieh was really an honor. here’s my favorite part of the interview:

_________

Tehching Hsieh: In the beginning I couldn’t meet your kind of people. Your kind of people would say, “What is this guy, a stranger, an illegal?” Because your kind of people—this is the first time I’ve been interviewed by your kind of people in 42 years.

BLVR: Really? Wait, what do you mean, us “kind of people”?

TH: Asian American. [Laughter.] You get it! This is the first time. I’m not trying to make it an issue.

BLVR: You say this is the first time Asian Americans are interviewing you, which I find both surprising and not, but, you should know, for us, you are a very important precedent, a groundbreaker.

TH: I just wanted to say that it’s come late. Forty-two years late.

Read the whole interview here.

 

New work in latest issue of Cagibi

cagibi-with-dandelion-poster-530-x-280

a lot of pitfalls when writing about the immigrant generation. or, to be particular and personal, i find it very difficult to write directly with any honesty about my parents, who i know worked harder and persisted in ways it’s not even in my constitution to comprehend. as, one assumes, was partly the goal. but from which a division is necessarily born.

anyway. this is to say i wrote a thing about my mom. below is a photo of her as a girl (in the darker clothes) circa 1955. many thanks to the editors of Cagibi.

N E S T S

I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie.
—Joe Brainard, I Remember

I remember my mother remembering her father.

I remember walking with my mother through the woods near her home. She points out a small purple flower. She says they called these “ring-flowers,” and in her childhood they would pluck these flowers and make from their stalks a kind of ring. I remember she didn’t stoop to pluck one but mimed the act… [Read the rest here.]

KHL
.
.
.

new story about THE LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE in Wired

dearest library land—

i nostradamussed the future library keeping
our tart hearts in mind. spoiler :
ranganathan and readers advisory still rule, but
no makerspaces.

yours in allegiance,

 

 

The Branch by Eugene Lim

The library of the future is more or less the same. That is, the branch is an actual and metaphoric Faraday cage. You enter, a node and a target, streamed at and pushed and yanked, penetrated by and extruding information, sloppy with it. And then your implants are cut off. Your watch, your glasses, jacket, underwear, your lenses, tablet, chips, your nanos—all go dry…

read the rest here along with the other authors in Wired’s “Future of Work” series including fiction by Laurie Penny, Charles Yu, Charlie Jane Anders, Nisi Shawl, Adam Rogers, Martha Wells, and a great one on smart contracts and crypto by Ken Liu.

“Search History” makes Entropy magazine’s list of BEST OF 2018: FAVORITE ONLINE FICTION & SHORT STORIES

Stoked that “Search History,” originally published on AAWW’s The Margins by editor Jyothi Natarajan, makes Entropy Magazine’s list of best online fiction for 2018!

 

“No Machine Could Do It” in Granta magazine

 Granta 145

very happy to have new fiction called “No Machine Could Do It” in latest Granta magazine.

I’d become friends with a Public Intellectual. He handled everything: scandal, sex, politics, political sex scandals, racism, weather, the racism of weather, Japanese cartoons. Everything was under his purview, but his specialty was the Future. He was a much more successful colleague at the university where I would occasionally adjunct. Several years ago entirely by accident, when collecting some papers from our department’s office, not knowing who he was, I saw him standing next to the faculty mailboxes with a copy of a book I’d just read. I was younger and new to the place and excitable – and so I started up a brief conversation about the book…

Read the rest at Granta (behind a paywall) at: https://granta.com/no-machine-could-do-it/

Some fiction in the beautifully designed 2018 Short Story Advent Calendar

The 2018 Short Story Advent Calendar

Fourth time’s the charm. We’re back with another deluxe box set of 24 individually bound short stories to get you into the yuletide spirit.

The 2018 edition of the Short Story Advent Calendar might be our most ambitious yet, with stories from eight different countries and three different originating languages (don’t worry, we got the English versions). Plus, we set a new personal best for all-new material.

Contributors to the 2018 Short Story Advent Calendar include:

  • Kevin Barry (Beatlebone, City of Bohane)
  • Ben Greenman (What He’s Poised to Do, Don Quixotic)
  • Etgar Keret (Suddenly, a Knock on the Door)
  • R. O. Kwon (The Incendiaries)
  • Sara Levine (Treasure Island!!!)
  • and [REDACTED x 19]!

More info here: https://www.hingstonandolsen.com/store/the-2018-short-story-advent-calendar

INSURRECTO by Gina Apostol

insurrecto

you say you want a.

here’s a line: “He’s not a bad man, just an unconscious one.”

In Insurrecto, a polymath’s lyricism is woven with post-colonial tristesse. A deft and labyrinthine depiction of our helpless condition of ever-revolving insurrection, Gina Apostol has created an elegant mise en abyme wherein the colonizer and the colonized reflect themselves over and over and yet over again.

pre-order!

Apostol-Gina_credit-Margarita-Corporan_773x555

_________________

i found these pages quite helpful :

https://www.praxino.org/chapters-in-numerical-order
and
https://www.praxino.org/album-of-stereo-cards

_______________

GUN DEALERS' DAUGHTER

post scriptum & nota bene : found this following passage in apostol’s also excellent GUN DEALERS’ DAUGHTER (which i read after INSURRECTO and which i think serves as good intro/sequel/commentary to the later novel) :

I discovered that our books of history were invariably in the voice of the colonist, the one who misrecognized us. We were inscrutable apes engaging in implausible insurrections against gun-wielding epic heroes who disdained our culture but wanted our land. The simplicity and rapacity of their reductions were consistent, and as counterpoint to Soli’s version of the past, these books provided, as I admitted to Soli, the ballast for my tardy revolt. Soli reproved me. Why do history books persuade you but not the world around you? You live in a puppet totalitarian regime, propped up by guns from America, so that we are no sovereign country but a mere outpost of foreign interests in the Far East. She said this with such conviction, I could barely reply. But, I countered, the military-industrial complex, as you call it, does it not suggest not only an economic order but also a psychiatric disorder? It occurred to me that it was a system of oppression that spurred both of our delusions—hers (to save the nation) and mine (to save myself). Soli nodded, disarmed at the thought, but in the end she disagreed. Obscurantism, she said, does not serve change. The therapeutic couch may be necessary—at least for some, she said pointedly. But it is not the place for action. Next time you drive home to Makati, she said, look around: all you need is to look out your limousine’s window to know that it is a problem to be living the good life in such bad times.

sometimes apostol is e.m. forster or edith wharton — i.e. a proto-modern who can linger over a scene’s details with almost victorian pacing. simultaneously she’s a wit and an experimentalist à la calvino or cortázar and her novels become a penrose staircase of amnesiac memoirists or an erasing documentarian, mazes of duplicitous memory.

in GUN DEALER’S DAUGHTER there are passages that are downright society farce — until they open into truly darker territory, exposing class relations and imperial power-clutching so that the farce turns into a horrorshow version of upstairs downstairs — a cold and hot class war. the bringing-it-back-around structure was brilliantly executed… a fantastic book!

OREO by fran ross

oreo fran ross

so far ahead of its time it’s painful to think about. funnier than ulysses. smarter than your smart shelf. both the danzy senna foreword and the harryette mullen afterword are great to have in the new directions edition. the afterword has a good deal of originally researched biographic detail and mullen’s scholarship was what brought the book back from obscurity for the Northeastern University Press reprint in 2000.

some links:

the Danzy Senna foreword as it appeared in NYer:

By the nineteen-eighties, black literature was a dark male symphony no longer. Black women writers had come into vogue. And yet, in the nineteen-nineties, as I read “Oreo” in my apartment in Fort Greene, the birthplace of post-soul black bohemia, Ross felt to me like part of some future that had yet to arrive.

•paul beatty shouting it out in a piece on black humor from 2006

darryl pinckney review in nyrb. behind a paywall but pinckney lists other co-contemporary african american novels, arguing: “It took a while for the militancy that had overtaken much work by black poets and black playwrights in the 1960s to find expression in fiction, because it was difficult for black writers to free themselves from the narrative traditions of double-consciousness. In fiction, the movement took the form of escapes from realism, from the pieties of the black condition.” His list includes: William Demby’s The Catacombs (1965), Charles Wright’s The Wig (1966), William Melvin Kelley’s dem (1967) and Dunfords Travels Everywheres (1970), Clarence Major’s Emergency Exit (1979), John Oliver Killens’s The Cotillion (1970), Bill Gunn’s Black Picture Show (1978) and Rhinestone Sharecropping (1981), and Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972).

tisa bryant’s review, which has this intriguing note: “Fran Ross skewers racism, sexism, homophobia in terms that are prescient for 1974, and still in play in today’s continued push for social transformation. She takes so many risks here, proving the point poet/writer R. Erica Doyle made in a recent conversation: capitalism co-opted fiction, and killed the experimental novel. The experimental novel by a Black writer, then, is more of a rarity now than then.” (bryant, an experimental novelist, also points to xam wilson cartier‘s overlooked status.)

• harryette mullen‘s afterword speaks a great deal to the question of authenticity, especially the question of the authenticity of, and audience for, an experimental fiction writer of color. here are two passages that struck me, the first placing OREO in a historical context and the second particularly good during our moment’s struggle with concepts of appropriation/acculturation/assimilation/cultural exchange:

Paradoxically, as much as it was concerned with defining the cultural distinctiveness of African Americans, the Black Arts movement also helped to create unprecedented opportunities for the creative expression of African Americans to enter and influence “mainstream” American culture. Sometimes the more “black rage” was vented in the work, the more the writer was celebrated in the mainstream culture. In addition to this tense interaction of political, aesthetic, and commercial impulses, another contradiction that the Black Arts movement posed for authors was the idea that black Americans possessed no authentic literature or language of their own. Writers wrestled with the dilemma that they were severed from the spoken languages and oral traditions of their African ancestors, and had no intrinsic connection to the language and literature of their historical oppressors. The English language itself was perceived by some as a tool of oppression. The more fluent in standard English, or other European languages, the more immersed in established literary culture, the more likely one might be accused of forsaking one’s own traditions, or abandoning the black community — by writing works it could not comprehend, or enjoy, or draw upon for inspiration in the coming revolution that radical activists envisioned.

Fran Ross’s novel, Oreo, was published in 1974, when the Black Arts movement had reached the height of its influence. Yet, as its title signals, Oreo does not claim to represent any singularly authentic black experience. More eccentric than Afrocentric, Ross’s novel calls attention to the hybridity rather than the racial or cultural purity of African Americans…

& later:

In Oreo’s interactions with members of both sides of her family, as well as with neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and strangers, Ross’s novel suggests that acculturation is not a one-way street, but is more like a subway system with graffiti-tagged cars that travel uptown as well as downtown, or even more like an interconnected network of multi-lane freeways. Particularly in racially diverse and integrated settings, immigrants of various races and national origins, on their way to becoming American, may emulate the cultural styles of black Americans, since African Americans, though a minority, are as much the founders of American culture as Anglo Americans. Anglos themselves are a minority of white Americans. Oreo’s biracial and bicultural heritage is not so exceptional when one considers that most native-born Americans, regardless of skin color, are products of racial hybridity, just as American culture and language are products of cultural and linguistic hybridity…

Fran Ross, from the frontispiece to her novel Oreo

 

…and last bit, cuz it’s enough to make you laugh so you don’t cry. from the 1975 library journal review: “This novel is experimental, intelligent, and even funny in places. The dialogue, however, is a strange mixture of Uncle Remus and Lenny Bruce, and quite often unintelligible.”

story called “Search History” up at AAWW

i’ve a story up on wherein we’re all reincarnated as a plastic bags and robots.

It was no longer possible to understand being poor or defeated. Which meant she could no longer imagine it. This worried her because it meant if it were ever to happen she would then feel like a fool and this might somehow be more painful than the destitution but, more importantly, this realization worried her because it meant she no longer felt human.

The dysthemic artificial intelligence scientist took a book of poetry off the shelf and sat on her couch… [Read the rest here.]

i’m part of SOUNDTRACK, produced by DJ / rupture

grateful to Jace Clayton aka DJ /rupture for including me in this sound art piece called SOUNDTRACK, which is part of Mel Chin’s current NYC show.
 ­⋅
furthermore: i recently read — and highly recommend — clayton’s book UPROOT, an incredibly integrated overview, from rupture’s polymath perspective, of the interlocking movements of tech and global music.

________________________

Presented by Queens Museum and No Longer Empty as part of Mel Chin: All Over the Place, Soundtrack is a new work of collaborative sound art initiated by Chin with project curator Jace Clayton (aka DJ /rupture).Local artists, including L’Rain, DJ Aaron, DJ Ushka and Atropolis, and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe have transformed field recordings from the routes of the 1, 5, 7, E and F trains into compositions that bridge the mechanical and the human. From Eastchester in the Bronx to Brooklyn’s Coney Island, the far West Side of Manhattan to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the commissioned works will use the sounds of the city’s transit system. However, the artists’ interpretations capture more than sounds of the city. They weave its ethos and creative potential into one of the most practical components of daily life: the commute. An average commute in New York City is 40 minutes long. The commissioned works are woven into a single mix that extends the entire length of this daily route. The mix also features novelists Jennifer Marie Brissett and Eugene Lim reading from their works.

To continue the spirit of experimentation, recordings from above and below ground will be available for the public to use in their own mixes under the Creative Commons License. This aspect of the project offers an opportunity for commuters to creatively consider every clack, rush of oncoming air, squeal and swoosh, door-closing announcement, and overheard conversation, perhaps even transforming the sounds into their own creative output. For Soundtrack, the subway map becomes a sound palette, and commuters, potential creators.

Soundtrack is produced by DJ /rupture, featuring (in order of appearance):
1. DJ /rupture in conversation with Mel Chin
2. DJ Aaron
3. L’Rain (with engineer and co-producer Chris Connors)
4. Reading from Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett
5. DJ /rupture in conversation with Mel Chin
6. DJ Ushka and Atropolis
7. Reading from Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim
8. DJ /rupture in conversation with Mel Chin
9. Reading from Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett
10. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe
11. Reading from Dear Cyborgs by Eugene Lim
12. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe

HOW TO MAKE A FRENCH EXIT in The Believer

119-Cover

in the latest issue of The Believer (which has a dope cover by Zeke Peña inspired by a photograph of Jesús Manuel Mena Garza) i’ve a bit of instructional prose :

This is how you leave a party without saying goodbye—also known, with differing connotations, as the Gypsy fade, the Irish leave, or filer à l’anglaise. It’s easy. It’s like Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. You can’t give a précis for enchantment, but here’s my paraphrase of Carr’s method: stop smoking… [read more]

__________

Jesús Manuel Mena Garza
Zeke Peña

 

THE SOLITARY TWIN by harry mathews

solitary twin cover

THE SOLITARY TWIN is on one level a fantastic tale about the denizens of an odd fishing town (but who more resemble the quirky ensemble cast of a three-act set in an upper-west-side drawing room) but by the end, mathews’ language, which feels at times like disembodied style itself, snaps the constellation of fantasy together into a truly oedipal lightning strike of anger and grief, artificially constructed and yet real… it’s a stunning novel and you should feed it to your mind.

one doesn’t read harry mathews for his perspective on labor. there are several economic fables in this work from a barely ironized, capitalist pov (michael bloomberg even makes a cameo). and yet i forgive entirely this near total lack of evolved class consciousness. that’s not to say this doesn’t muck things up at times — for example, here, in an oddly flat and sometimes ridiculous section about May ’68. and yet this unworldly worldliness also gifts mathews with extraordinary ability to punctuate narrative habits and be singularly voluptuous with language. stories are baroque with interwoven details, astonishingly placed, and with deep zings of psychological observation.

no doubt there are hidden machinations behind the scenes, oulipian blackbox hijinks. how else can you manifest a patina of defamiliarized idioms like “I remember the whole beginning — it was a seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong” (105). and yet i prefer to remain generally ignorant of the work’s constraints and simply ride the thrill of the normalized unexpected to its deracinating conclusions… ashbery called THE SOLITARY TWIN harry mathews’ finest novel — and it and CIGARETTES are def my personal contenders for the title.

__________________

Harry Mathews obituary in the New York Times.
Daniel Levin Becker’s appreciation in the San Francisco Chronicle.
2007 interview with Mathews in the Paris Review.

 

 

AAWW podcast: Patty Yumi Cottrell, Anelise Chen, Eugene Lim, & Lisa Chen

AAWW radio episode 20

On this episode of our AAWW podcast, we’re featuring Patty Yumi Cottrell, Eugene Lim, and Anelise Chen, three thrilling experimental novelists whose books are about pushing forward against life-killing forces, whether it’s capitalism, the political status quo, or more existential threats like grief and suicide. After reading from their work, poet Lisa Chen moderates a conversation about survival strategies, self-awareness, and the balance of tension in the books. Listen below:

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/…/aaww-radio-new-asi…/id1297736720…

Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Ivrhmd2kann66vbbqahjtqi5wwe

Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=154895

TuneIn Radio: http://tun.in/piGyv

second person

this piece on grief and friendship was with and for shannon steneck and ning li.

read the piece here.

the rules for 7×7 are below.

The game is a variation on the Surrealist game of exquisite corpse, designed to guide a writer and artist into an improvised collaboration.

Once the participants are “paired,” the participants determine a convenient date to begin.

The participants decide amongst themselves who starts the exchange: the artist creates a picture, or the writer begins a new composition.

The following day, the other collaborator responds according to his discipline, with words or an image.

In this fashion, the two participants alternate turns, interpreting and elaborating on what has come previously in the spirit of “Yes, and…” No narrative swerving is off-limits; it is likely and encouraged that the collaborative process move the collaboration into territories neither participant would have conceived on his own. The participants need not follow traditional storytelling conventions as long as the collaboration moves “forward.”

Contributions should not take more than 2 hours to complete. The visual artist is limited to one image per turn. A writing contribution should not be longer than a single double-spaced page or 300 words.

The game is ended upon completion of 7 image-text pairings.

 

In the Brooklyn Rail | The Nameable : on experimental writing

WEB_BrooklynRail_APRIL_COVERS-1

My essay on experimental fiction appears in the latest Brooklyn Rail. It was first published in Something On Paper #5 and is based on a talk given at Naropa University on October 4th, 2016.

The traditional novel is like a car whose purpose is to deliver the reader from point A, through an emotional Freytag path, to point B. But the experimental writer here, too clever for her own good, has taken apart and reassembled the auto, repurposed its chassis, catalytic converter, spark plugs, etc., in order to make a sculpture, which she displays proudly and dedicates — so says the plinth on which it is placed — to revolution. Or maybe The Revolution. Erickson et al. complain upon seeing it: Phooie, now we’ll have to hitchhike.

Read the rest here.

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