writing

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]

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Jesús Manuel Mena Garza
Zeke Peña

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.

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.

I have some fiction in the latest Portland Review, available here.

flash fiction published in the UK’s Roman Road Journal. 

which, come to think of it, is revisiting this yesteryear blurt.

In Oct 2016 I gave a talk at Naropa on experimental writing defined as an integral / lower limit WCW / upper limit Audre Lorde. An essay based on it just published in their Something-on-Paper #5.

“Our current condition of ambient despair gets an excellent portraiture in Evelyn Hampton’s The Aleatory Abyss. It’s an obscure book about being obscure—or at least it is a book about occupying forgotten interstitial spaces and about being of and among technological detritus. In Hampton’s world we live our lives not in streets, schools, libraries, parks, or other public commons but online and in Barnes & Nobles, Starbucks, malls, parking lots, and other privatized spaces; that is, Hampton shows us a familiar world. Personhood and agency here in the Anthropocene are moribund concepts, if not already vestigial, and great creatures called multinationals and state actors roam the terrain while we endure like plankton or parasites below and beside their decisions. This short book also pays homage to and is haunted by Hampton’s friend, the activist and writer Mark Baumer, who died in the middle of a mythic project that found him walking barefoot across America. Both artists are turned helplessly into elegists. Baumer’s work was part durational performance piece, part environmental fundraiser, part quixotic publicity stunt, and part personal protest. He kept record of his walk through a series of videos and blog posts, many of them heartbreakingly prescient, especially his final video, posted the day after the Trump inauguration, the day he died when struck by an SUV. Hampton’s work transmutes Baumer’s extroverted dissent, his syncopated poetic voice, and his manic video edits into its twinned flip: an equally clear-eyed but introverted analysis, a quieter but no less fierce objection. The Aleatory Abyss is a beautiful work, and profits from sales will go to the charity Mark Baumer was walking for: the FANG collective…”

Read the rest at: https://themillions.com/2017/12/year-reading-eugene-lim.html

I’ve some new work (an essay-poem-fiction smoosh) just up at the Brooklyn Rail. With great thanks to Donald Breckenridge.

It’s not true I didn’t remember. I did remember some things. I remembered the city. Big avenues and parks and terminals and plazas. Crowds going to and from work. People strolling. A Chinese writer I’d read said it’s impossible to say if a person is good or bad when they’re walking the street. They may be coming from evil or good, or on their way to committing evil or good, but in their moment of walking they are neither. Thus they are most human at that moment. Blankly human. The Chinese writer had been in prison when he wrote that.

Read the rest at http://brooklynrail.org/2017/07/fiction/Returning-to-the-Problem

Library of America’s series of guest posts by contemporary American writers returns with the following contribution from Eugene Lim, whose novel Dear Cyborgs has just been published by FSG Originals.

In a concise 176 pages, Dear Cyborgs interweaves two narratives: one about two isolated Asian American boys in the Midwest who bond over a mutual love of comics, and the other about a group of disaffected superheroes pondering resistance strategies in the era of late capitalism.

Novelist Jonathan Lethem, who just edited the anthology Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z for Library of America, is already a vocal fan of the novel, telling The Chicago Review of Books that it “blew me away with its deceptively blithe mixture of cryptic humor, philosophical ingenuity, and genuine political yearning… . I hope it makes a splash out there in this overcrowded world.”

Below, Lim pulls the curtain back on the literary and extra–literary influences that went into his new book.

Read the list at the Library of America blog.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/being-in-the-art-world-sucks-and-then-you-die

A state power co-opts the intense, ingroup binding, herding force of social media with agents who incrementally steer comment strings toward desired perceptions. The protagonists begin by having racist but also anti-business views. However, through the subtle messaging of agent provocateurs, these come to sublimate their racism into anti-government stances, which not coincidentally happen to be pro-business. Or, anti-racist activists and white socialists are encouraged to radicalize rather than form a coalition. Or, less fantastically, a cyborg who falls in love with a robot is brainwashed into thinking Planet X19 will be haven for their illicit romance. The book is called THE NETWORK ENTANGLES or TWO PLUS TWO IS FINE.

[one of three]

Little Star #6 (2015) is here! Already on shelves at Greenlight and Book Culture, on the way to St. Mark’s, McNally Jackson, Porter Square, Powell’s, more. Order here littlestarjournal.com/issues

Thanks to editors Lincoln Michel and James Yeh, I’ve a short piece called “Normcore” in the upcoming Gigantic. The issue is available now for pre-order for a mere eight bucks — includes shipping!

Launch party on 10/18: https://www.facebook.com/events/1473548316257710

Our forthcoming issue complicating and, in some cases, demolishing understandings of comedy and jokes features new or newly translated fiction by Franz Kafka, Jincy Willett,Amelia Gray, Daniil Kharms, Osama Alomar, and Mike Topp; a special fold-out “New Gigantic-er” poster featuring cartoons by Roz Chast, Carolita Johnson, Drew Dernavich, Michael Crawford, and Corey Pandolph; interviews with comic book artist Gabrielle Bell and writer J. Robert Lennon; the latest installment of Joe Wenderoth’s Seizure State; the winner of our first-ever Penny-a-Word contest; illustrations by Andrew Bulger; and much, much more—all in a unique, uniquely Gigantic“grab-bag” format designed by Erin Grey West. 
Arriving at bookstores in October, pre-order available now for the special price of $8 (save $4! including shipping and handling).

Great thanks to Keith Newton for including an excerpt from my novel THE STRANGERS in the 2nd issue of Secret Behavior magazine.
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The second issue of Secret Behavior will launch at the New York Art Book Fair at PS1 in Queens. If you are local or visiting NYC please stop by our booth, the fair opens Thurs evening Sept 25th, and it is all day Fri 26th- Sun 28th.

Featured in Secret Behavior Issue 02: Kostas Anagnopoulos, Tom Andes, Morton Bartlett, Lisa Blair, James Brett, Nicola Canavan, John Clang, Victor Cobo, Marilène Coolens & Lisa De Boeck, Jonathan Durbin, TR Ericsson, Farrah Field, Jason Glasser, Nicolai Howalt, Susanna Howe, Rachel Kash, Brian Kenny, Erik Kessels, Eugene Lim, Malerie Marder, Myriam Meloni, Keith Newton, Jason Porter, Jana Romanova, Amanda Ross Ho, Juliana Sabinson, Mathias Svalina, André Viking, Jack Webb, Eric White

Order the issue here: http://secretbehavior.bigcartel.com/product/secret-behavior-issue-02-family

Thanks to Dennis Cooper, my story “Ursula’s Curse” (originally published in The Coming Envelope #9) is up at Dazed Digital as part of their summer long #dazedstates series on American fiction. There’s also an interview with DC and great work by Joyelle McSweeney, Darby Larson, and Frank Hinton.

Just received thanks to Malcolm Sutton the latest issue of THE COMING ENVELOPE. I’ve work in it along with Kilby Smith-McGregor, S. D. Chrostowska, Thomas Phillips and Jonathan Pappo. My bit, called “Ursula’s Curse,” is an excerpt of a novel-in-slow-progress  in which intergalactic arena combat is imminent and a painter writes the following on her works:

This painting cannot be bought or sold for more than the total wages of three months full-time employment at the minimum wage as determined by the state of New York. If this painting should be sold for greater than this amount, may both the buyer and seller be considered shit by the entire world and by themselves, and may they spend the afterlife sad and angry and hungry and hopeless as poverty makes.

i’m happy to have a new story called “Booster Rockets” in the latest issue of FENCE magazine. here’s how it starts:

I was coming from a haircut and I was upset. I had just spent a lot of money on the haircut but I didn’t have a lot of money. It’s not because I’m vain but looking good is important to me. Anyway I was walking across Washington Square Park and I was not happy. I was pissed off. I wasn’t crying or raving or anything like that, just cranky, because I’d taken a chance on a new hair cutter and just then I thought she’d fucked it all up, not done what I wanted her to do, what I’d told her to do. A little bit later, a few days later or even the very next day, I realized it was actually a very nice haircut, that I liked what she’d done, and I kept going back to her for several more years…

pick up a copy here why not.

Thanks to Douglas Messerli for publishing an excerpt from a novel-in-slow-progress currently called STRANGE TWINS at his EXPLORINGfictions:

How I got the job is an interesting story. Like all her hires, I was recruited. It was when my twin brother invited me to a party.

A self-help book my brother had secretly ghost-written was having a launch party in the old-fashioned pomp and gilt of the Hotel Europa downtown. Its publisher was projecting tremendous sales so had spared no expense. I’d no idea what I was walking into (my brother had called a few days prior, surprising me with an invite), and so when I arrived and saw that I’d misjudged the event’s size and glitter by several orders of magnitude, I realized it was going to be difficult to get any time at all with my brother, the epicenter of the maelstrom, whose tuxedo’d point from the mezzanine balcony I could amusedly observe drawing the aim of scheming vectors and incurring trails of vaporous gossip. Also, I was painfully underdressed. So I was both relieved and delighted when, twenty minutes later, he spotted me and instead of waving or just blowing me a kiss, immediately made his way over.

read more…

i’m happy to have an excerpt from a novel-in-progress (tentatively titled STRANGE TWINS) in the current Denver Quarterly

Μu’nisah drove us on her motorcycle where the city met the water and down the concrete and synthetic coastline, finally stopping by the ports. She got off and led me to the docks where a very large but somehow familiar-looking ship was moored.

“Do you recognize it? “Mu’nisah asked.

“Yes, but I can’t quite place it.”

“It’s the one where your sister works.”

“Ah ha! Yes, that’s it. But. How do you know about that?”

“Your sister and I are good friends. She’s never mentioned me?”

Embarrassed I had to admit, “The truth is, my sister and I are no longer very close. We used to be. But since we moved to the city, I hardly see her. For some reason we’ve begun to stay out of each other’s way, as if we don’t want to know too much about the other.”

“I see,” Mu’nisah said. “Well, your sister got permission for us to come on board tonight. You’ll have to thank her next time you see her.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’ll remember to do that.”

To read the rest  …why not find a copy at your local library?

i’ve a story in an anthology put out by mudluscious press, collecting its first year of excellent chapbooks. includes ken baumann, shane jones, jimmy chen, brandi wells, blake butler, nick antosca, sam pink, james chapman, colin bassett, michael kimball, jac jemc, kim chinquee, kim parko, norman lock, randall brown, brian evenson, michael stewart, peter markus, ken sparling, aaron burch, david ohle, matthew savoca, p. h. madore, johannes göransson, charles lennox, ryan call, elizabeth ellen, molly gaudry, kevin wilson, mary hamilton, craig davis, kendra grant malone, lavie tidhar, lily hoang, mark baumer, ben tanzer, krammer abrahams, joshua cohen, c. l. bledsoe, joanna ruocco, josh maday, & michael martone.

pick it up from mlp.

I’ve a bit in the new Sleepingfish — edited by Derek White & Gary Lutz — along with Ryan Call, Anna DeForest, Sasha Fletcher, Nina Shope, Rachel May, David McLendon, The Brothers Goat, Lito Elio Porto, Adam Weinstein, Diane Williams, Dennis Cooper, Elliott Stevens, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Alec Niedenthal, Amelia Gray, Matt Bell, Eduardo Recife, David Ohle, Evelyn Hampton, Émilie Notéris, Ottessa Moshfegh, Cooper Renner, Christine Schutt, M. T. Fallon, Daniel Grandbois, Julie Doxsee, Terese Svoboda, Blake Butler, Stephen Gropp-Hess & Ali Aktan Aşkın.

Buy it from Calamari Press.

including shipping, only $3! …it and other fine heads-in-the-clouds on the MLP site here.