Party In Your Eye-Socket!

CALLING ALL WRITERS: please reblog and help get the word around about this exciting new project.

More information HERE

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Shenanigans! Advance Review Copy

Today it happened. I received an otherwise wholly unassuming little black book in the mail today: my advance review copy (ARC) of my upcoming ‘collectio[novella]‘ Shenanigans! Of course, after opening the envelope, I felt compelled to snap a few quick iPhone photos to share with friends and a seemingly infinite number of Internet denizens! For whatever number of likely capricious and inconsequential reasons, I feel a great deal more–I dunno–authorial today than, say, for instance, yesterday, or really any day that came before that. Anyway, the pictures suck but you get the point.

1) Cracking the cover, 2) The cover itself, 3) First page of the TOC, 4) Officially official writerly–type-stuff like ISBN and Library of Congress #s

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I Hate When I Realize I’ve Been A Lit Snob

I felt a sense of relief when I opened up to the T.O.C. of the latest issue of The New Yorker and saw—under Fiction—Roberto Bolaño’s name. The previous two issues featured Saïd Sayrafiezadeh and John Lanchester (and before them, upon taking a second look at my back issues: Etgar Keret, Margaret Atwood, Nathan Englander, César Aira and Alice Munro).

I’d never heard of Sayrafiezadeh or Lanchester. (I’m probably late to the party here; it’d be par for the course, etc.) As a consequence, I had a strong, capricious kneejerk feeling that The New Yorker was tending toward the, well, underwhelming. How about another story from George Saunders? (Even though he just had one published recently.) How about Sam Lipsyte? (See George Saunders comment.)

And then it hit me and I became sad.

Not because the writers I seem to like reading most weren’t in the two most recent issues—for that, I simply began to feel childish and, honestly, a little dumb. I felt sad because I realized I’d just been guilty of being both a literary snob and a hypocrite. I felt sad also because I’d quickly dismissed two writers I’d (honestly and apologetically) never heard of. I felt like a hypocrite because I’m usually among the first critics of The New Yorker for never printing fresh new voices [like Joseph Michael Owens(?)].

Truth be told, there are very few things I wouldn’t do to be published in The New Yorker. I say “very few” only because there might be things I’m not willing to do, but I simply can’t think of any right now. And who would any of us be kidding, really? Few people outside of Amy Hempel would pass on a chance to see their name in that famous typeface.

Because here’s the (oh so very obvious) thing I realized: the stories I dismissed out of hand must be pretty darn good to even have made it into the magazine in the first place. The other thing I realized is that I can be kind of an asshole reader some times.

Perhaps I give myself too much credit for checking out as many indie lit. magazines as I do. I mean, there are plenty of fresh voices in in those, right!? But, similarly, I’m guilty of many times doing the same thing with the indie lit. mags as I am with the more prominent publications. I tend toward automatically seeking out the writers I know and, oftentimes, skip over writers I’ve never read before. And that bothers me.

Continue reading

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My dream library | 01.19.12

Just sayin’

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Oppose SOPA/PIPA With Some Rage Against the Machine!

Bulls on Parade

“…just feed the war cannibal animal I /

walk tha corner to tha rubble that used to be a library line /

up to the mind cemetery now…

What we don’t know keeps tha contracts alive an movin’ /

They don’t gotta burn tha books they just remove ‘em!!”

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Let’s not forget about PIPA!

A friend of mine, Colin McCarthy, and I, along with Michael J. Seidlinger, were talking about the ramifications of a potential SOPA/PIPA (not to be confused with Pippa) debacle. I’ll transcribe some of our thoughts:

Joseph Michael Owens
This is one aspect of SOPA This means that YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Gmail, Dropbox and millions of other sites would be “Internet sites…dedicated to theft of U.S. property,” under SOPA’s definition. Simply providing a feature that would make it possible for someone to commit copyright infringement or circumvention (see: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0) is enough to get your entire site branded as an infringing site. (quote provided by Celeste Duckworth)

Michael J Seidlinger
Wikipedia’s blackout should do some damage.

Colin McCarthy
Blackouts of websites will do nothing. Also SOPA will likely fail and PIPA will pass which is about 75% identical and most of that is specifying what penalties will be given if existing laws are broken.

Joseph Michael Owens
They both need to be shot down.

Michael J Seidlinger
I agree. PIPA is just as bad. Why would PIPA pass but SOPA fail?

Colin McCarthy
Oh I agree.

Colin McCarthy
PIPA is a senate bill and SOPA is house bill.

Joseph Michael Owens
PIPA is the new SOPA

Michael J Seidlinger
I’ve been way too afraid of these bills to really read into them. What are the chances PIPA will pass?

Colin McCarthy
SOPA seemed more like a smokescreen for PIPA to pass cause it hasn’t had as much scrutiny therefore it’s “better”

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SOPA is on some bullshit!

We’ve addressed this before, but SOPA is some serious bullshit you should NOT be OK with.
Read on (via Mashable):

This is one aspect of SOPA This means that YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Gmail, Dropbox and millions of other sites would be “Internet sites…dedicated to theft of U.S. property,” under SOPA’s definition. Simply providing a feature that would make it possible for someone to commit copyright infringement or circumvention (see: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0) is enough to get your entire site branded as an infringing site.

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Infinite Jest As Sierpiński Gasket

David Foster Wallace’s INFINITE JEST was written (according to DFW) almost as a Sierpiński Gasket. The Sierpiński Gasket is a fractal and attractive fixed set named after the Polish mathematician Wacław Sierpiński who described it in 1915. However, similar patterns appear already in the 13th-century Cosmati mosaics in the cathedral of Anagni, Italy and other places, such as in the nave of the roman Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. Originally constructed as a curve, this is one of the basic examples of self-similar sets, i.e. it is a mathematically generated pattern that can be reproducible at any magnification or reduction.

Download an mp3 version of the interview Michael Silverblatt did with DFW where he [DFW] talks about the novel as a sort of crumbling Sierpiński Gasket here:

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The End of the World

This is, of course, a mostly accurate estimation of how we can expect the world to end.

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