Literary Chicago - Phillip Roth 'Portnoy's Complaint'

"I pledge allegiance to the twat of the United States of America - and to the republic for which it stands: Davenport, Iowa! Dayton, Ohio! Schenectady, New York, and neighboring Troy! Fort Myers, Florida! New Canaan, Connecticut! Chicago, Illinois! Albert Lea, Minnesota! Portland, Maine! Moundsville, West Virginia! Sweet land of skikse-tail, of thee I sing!"

Punk Rock Lit Month

There is a slough of lit events coming up involving or related to really cool music peoples. Not all are necessary punk rock, but it's a catchy title, innit?

Saturday November 21st - How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up book release at Quimby's.

Andy Slater, more well-known as Velcro Lewis, is a highly respected and recognizable musician in Chicago. I've seen him perform only once, as lead singer for the funky and psychedelic Velcro Lewis Group, but there was that one time he did a karaoke version of STP's 'Plush' at Cafe Mustache. Now the legally-blind musician has drafted Steve Krakow to draft a graphic novel about Lewis' experiences with visual impairment. Lewis will read from the book, share stories, and do a Q&A. Free, all ages, 7 PM, Quimby's 1854 W North Ave; for more info on the band go to Velcro Lewis Group's website.

Sunday November 29th - Empty Bottle Book Club: Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl
 
You don't need me to tell you who Carrie Brownstein is. If for some reason you've made your way to this blog and have never listened to Sleater-Kinney or Wild Flag, or have never seen Portlandia, then do those things now. Brownstein's new memoir has already received high praise and I can't wait to get my hands on it. Free, 21+, 4:30 PM, Empty Bottle 1035 N Western Ave.

Thursday December 3rd - My Kind of Sound: The Secret History of Chicago Music Compendium release party

Speaking of Steve Krakow and speaking of the Empty Bottle, Krakow has his own release show at this swell swill of a venue. You've no doubt seen his illustrations about little known bands in the Chicago Reader. Krakow's dedication to uncovering tunes that time and dirt have piled on top of is impressive and inspiring to every writer no one's read and musician no one's heard of. The compendium finds a home for 200 such columns. $8 or free w/RSVP, 21+, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N Western Ave. Bobby Conn, ONO, Athanor, and VCSR perform.

Saturday December 12th - Joe Carducci and Spot of SST in Conversation

Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Husker Du. All are canon when it comes to punk rock and you'd have no idea who they were if it weren't for these two guys. Carducci, co-owner of SST, and Spot, the label's house producer, both have books out. This afternoon, they'll read a bit from their respective works, interview each other, answer questions, "and lie only when absolutely necessary." Oh yeah, ONO, as you may recall, released their first two albums on Thermidor, also ran by Carducci. The more you know. Free, all ages, 3 PM, Permanent Records, 1914 W Chicago Ave.

Alrighty, now that you know what to do, go on and get out there. This is all assuming you've already read new books by Patti Smith and Richard Hell, right RIGHT ?!

A Passage from The Designated Mourner

Reprinted without permission. I believe this is an important passage, especially given recent events in the world, where people are quick to judge good vs. bad, good vs. evil.

JACK: Well, what Martin did was very cowardly. Tom spoke out, and Martin just kept quiet and tried to protect himself.
HOWARD: But you see, there you're judging another human being. Aren't you? Jack?
JACK: Well, yes, I'm -
HOWARD: That's the thing that doesn't make sense to me. Because you're saying in effect - you're saying, in effect, that Tom behaved the way he should have behaved, but Martin didn't. Martin ought to have behaved differently from the way he did behave. So you're implying - what? - that you think you'd have behaved differently if you had been Martin?
JACK: No, I don't say I would have - maybe I would have, I don't know - but that's not the point.
HOWARD: It isn't?
JACK: No - I -
JUDY: What he really means is -
JACK: I mean, I'm simply saying that Martin might have acted in a better way.
HOWARD: But you see, that's where I become incredibly confused. Because I mean, if you were Martin, or if someone were Martin, and they'd had Martin's life and Martin's experiences, then why wouldn't they perceive the whole situation around them in exactly the way that Martin did, and act accordingly? And in that case, what's the point of condemning Martin? Because he couldn't help being what he was - and since he was what he was, he saw things the way he saw them, and he did what he did.

This is all I should really post without diving too deep into copyright infringement. And I'm sure I could argue Wallace Shawn's own point about identity against him to say that the Wallace Shawn who wrote this play and the Wallace Shawn now are two entirely different, unrecognizable people (as he expanded on in a BOMB magazine interview). Either way, this is one of my favorite plays of all time. As poignant today as when it was written twenty years ago.

Asymptote Fall 2015 Issue

The newest issue of Asymptote Journal came out a couple weeks ago. I haven't made it through the whole issue yet. It can be hard to get through a full issue sometimes. I'm generally unfamiliar with many (read: all) of the author so I find myself reading a story (or poem or whatever else) and then falling into a blackhole of research about the author and if they have a twitter or what other works they've written and where they're from and who their translator is and if they have a twitter or what other works have they translated and...you get the point. And that point is these stories, these interviews, these essays, these are all great jumping off points to learn about new ideas, new works of art, new cultures, all around the world.

Take for instance, the poem 'Common Night' by Uyghur poet Merdan Ehet'éli. The Uyghurs are an ethnic group from Eastern and Central Asia, primarily in the far Western region of China called Xinjiang. Their culture isn't typical to what one normally thinks of Chinese as they are traditionally an Islamic group, and tend to have more in common culturally with neighboring countries (Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan) than with Beijingers and Shanghainese.

Merdan (born 1991) is already an accomplished writer and translator, having translated works from Chinese to Uygher (and vice versa). He's part of what's called the Nothingism school of Uygher poetry. Take the opening lines of the poem for example: "This is a night made from words" and contrast those with a later line: "This is a night that no elegy, ode, rain, or beam of light shall ever reach." This seeming contradiction is just another facet of a common night. The Xinjiang region that is home to Uyghers is fairly isolated from the rest of China, but as translator Joshua Freeman notes in an interview, "a lot of what’s really vibrant and interesting in Uyghur poetry right now is happening primarily on the web, and even on phone messaging apps."

David Sedaris - "Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls: Essays, Etc."

In the intro to this book, Sedaris explains what the "Etc." part of the subtitle means, which refers to the six monologues he wrote from other perspectives as a departure from his first-person essays. These etceteras typically expose the character for a bigoted, small- and/or close-minded, selfish, and foolish individual. These characters are quite disimilar from Sedaris himself, who although not without his readily admitted faults, fail to have a sense of objectivity about their own shortcomings.

We all know people like this and may sometimes recognize ourselves exhibiting these attributes from time to time. What makes Sedaris a generally adept writer is his ability to turn his faults into some sort of lesson or awakening, a cautionary tale, or at the very least, an interesting anecdote that keeps you turning pages and snickering, chuckling, and even, on occasion, laughing out loud.

Unfortunately in his essay about China, '#2 To Go' (originally titled 'Chicken Toenails, Anyone?') Sedaris comes across as one of these characters that he was originally making fun of; his view on the country comes off as ignorant as the comments of a Shanghaiist article. He admits never to liking the food, in Raleigh, in Chicago, in New York. So I won't fault him for hating the food in China (holding back from a "even though that opinion is wrong" comment...oh shit, there it goes!). But it's the way he talks about the people. How he compares them to the Japanese and how pure and virtuous they are, whereas the Chinese are just disgusting and weird and barbarous. And yet, he's the one who pissed in a children's sandbox at 35 years old and holed up in the women's room of an Amtrak after the bar closed to smoke pot and get wasted with a stranger.

Did You Like That Picture?

Did you like that picture? I sent it to you not to show off. I sent it to you to remind you of the god-damned man-made majestic beauty of our world. Of this perfectly primary-colored edge of our world, edge of our country. The perfect golden-red; the cocksure azure water, crisp as the air that breathes ocean mist onto my skin; the typical colored sand: because we no longer need to describe what color sand is (unless it's atypical), because I think about how much sharper writers of the past had to be with their words. But now, we all experience everything from the seats of our desks, and what we used to seek at the top of the world, we seek at the top of our laps. So: typical is what this sand remains. 

I remember being impressed by Kerouac for painting the entirety of America in one simple pamphlet-tome. Now I am the one, within a span of a few months, who has ventured from statues of freedom, arches of note, and finally this bridge, the summation of this country, the end and the beginning of this country, our country, our world. I've heard the blues in Memphis, I've heard the blues in Chicago, I've heard the blues in Austin. And I've seen the blues in all these cities and I see the blues before me: the sky, the waves, my shoes. And I hope this picture finds you back home to help you escape your blues. 

I am wearing a shirt that portrays a sketch of a sewer, a Chicago manhole cover. Our art is about the dirt, the filth, the overlooked, the dispirited, the dispossessed, the disposed, the disks that cover up our dirt, our filth, our waste. Our city works. Our workers make it work. Our civic pride is tied into the fabric of where we deposit our waste, our filth. We recognize the beauty of the sewer system and we're not ashamed to put our names on it. 

Albertine Sarrazin - 'L'Astragal'

Walking through City Lights in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I told myself: "don't over-do it." For one, new books require $$$. For two, I'd already purchased about a half dozen books at other bookstores and space was limited in my backpack. But being at the ground zero of Beat literature, I knew I had to purchase something here. My plan was to buy a book published by City Lights itself (which I did). But I didn't expect to find French writer Albertine Sarrazin's 1965 auto-biographical novel L'Astragal.

"The sky had lifted at least thirty feet." So the book begins, with our anti-heroine Anne escaping from prison, breaking her ankle (the astragal of the title) as she leaps from the prison wall. Sarrazin writes poetically. "The shock must have cracked the pavement" and she equates every passing second to that of a century in agony. The healing process lasts nearly the entire first half of the novel: "where the explosions in my toes are less frequent," and later: "my leg frozen into a painful rigidity."

Hopelessness and hope, fog, suffering, distrust, neglect. Waiting. Sleep that doesn't come. Restlessness and restiveness. Emerging themes and the ones that Patti Smith, who wrote the introduction for the 2013 edition of this translation, found so evocative to give her her own strength, boldness, and identity, wandering through the Greenwich Village in late 60s New York City. Smith's praise: "A female Genet? She is herself. She possesses a unique highbrow poet-detective deadpan style."

Coffee. Smoking. Drinking. Mascara. Anne's life on the lam. Our anti-heroine is almost glamorous. But she is still a criminal. Why are we so attracted to her? "When it comes to drinking, I'm always for it." She's troubled, this Anne, this Albertine (this Smith, this reader). We must remember: she's not to be idolized anyway. Not in the way most heroes are. But she can be in the way that the faults we see in her are the ones we see in ourselves. You don't have to smoke or drink or wear mascara to relate to her feelings about neglect, distrust, or hopelessness.

Literary Chicago - Jennifer Egan, 'Emerald City and Other Stories'

From 'Emerald City':

"So there it hung, golden, straight as paper, reminiscent of beaches he'd never seen, being as he was from Chicago (in Chicago there was the lake, but that didn't count)."

From 'The Watch Trick':

"They'd been hearing the story for years in various forms - from the Hawaiian tour guide Sonny fell in love with while gazing at the view from Kaala Peak, threatening to jump unless she agreed to come back to Chicago with him;"

"Sonny would squire them from one Chicago nightclub to the next, and each time they went inside she felt they were expected, that the party could really begin now that they had arrived."

From 'Puerto Vallarta:'

"While her father was in Australia, Ellen went with her friend Renata to Mama Santos, a Mexican restaurant in Glencoe. It was a train ride outside Chicago, but Renata's brother, Eric, was a bartender there and had promised to serve the alcohol."

"Her father explained that Ed had owned a company in Chicago that went bankrupt three years before. Now he was being sued by his former investors."

...For The Time Being

This phrase. "For the time being."

It's all over literature. I first noticed it from the book A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki a couple years ago. Ever since, I think I've come across this phrase in nearly every book I've read. I thought this was just a coincidence at first. But it's almost like the real version of Stranger Than Fiction's "little did he know." As Hoffman's character wrote papers and taught a class on "little did he know," so too will I conquest to create a tundra-like database of "for the time being." There's so much I've lost. But I might as well start now, if not never.

Martin Amis - The Information

"Her mother was still around for the time being, fat and falling apart and still mountainously pretty somehow, in a bed somewhere."

So. Much like my Literary Chicago project, I'm going to try to keep track of this phrase being used and how authors use it. Do they actually reference what their 'for the time being' foreshadows? Or is it a throw away? A red herring?

Speaking of that other project, this novel is ripe with Chicago references. For a taste:

"He reread:

To recap: The itinerary is New York, Washington, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Boston, New York.

Denver. Why Denver?"

Literary Chicago - Jesse Ball, 'The Way Through Doors'

(via Calumet 412)

"Her fame grew. Her drawings sat upon walls of the Metropolitan Museum, of the MoMA, of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Modern, the Musee d'Orsay, the National Gallery, the Museo Nactional del Prado, the Smithsonian."

Considering Mr. Ball teaches at this school, this feels a bit obligatory. But for a surreal tale that keeps settings and timelines and much else vague, it's nice to see this little bit thrown in here with such a prestigious crew. 

And on the different topic of coincidences: I recently read the short story 'Lush' by Bradford Morrow in the 2003 O Henry Prize Stories collection. The story is about an alcoholic couple. The woman in the couple is named Margaret. The man, James, nicknames her Margot, after one of their favorite reds, Chateau Margaux. At a restaurant in The Way Through Doors, two characters drink a bottle of wine from Chez Margot in a Tunisian restaurant. I read 'Lush' on the way to San Francisco last week, and bought Ball's novel at Alley Cat Books in the Mission. An interesting coincidence, I couldn't help but notice.

Now to find a bottle of the stuff for myself. 

STL : MEM : ATX

This is a few weeks overdue, but I (semi-)recently took a road trip from Chicago to Austin with my girlfriend. Along the way, we made a few stops, of various lengths, in various cities, for various reasons.

I didn't want to write a series of posts about how great Austin is or the freedom of being on the road and away from work. You already know these things. Austin is just as great as everyone says it is. I'd love to go back. At the same time, it's not quite correct to say this was a vacation. I had too much on my mind to call it a vacation. The trip was thought-provoking in ways I did and did not expect.

At nearly 17 hours of driving, it'd be damn near impossible, and unnecessarily exhausting to reach Austin from Chicago in a day. We decided to rent a room in Memphis, TN for a night; folks in Memphis seemed used to the fact that many visitors were "just passing through." Along the way we stopped in Springfield, IL for gas, coffee, and to take a selfie in front of the Capitol building; we stopped in St. Louis, MO, for a more important reason.

We stopped in St. Louis, MO because I wanted to go to a bookstore. 

On Writing, On Fiction

Here are a couple quotes I saw recently about writing and what makes fiction work.

The first is from Lauren Groff, the editor of the most recent edition of Ploughshares (which I wrote a bit about here already). She rehashes the age-old idea of the lonely, pain-filled writer, with a bit of twist in her words.

"Writers are perennially lonely, and a writer's longing to connect is what fills her work with urgency." 

Key words: longing, connect, urgency. Of course, the other side of the debate, and one I struggle with, is how much importance do I place on making a "connection?" Isn't it more about just getting the story out there that I believe needs to be told, and to express myself in the artful medium I chose (or chose me if you want to get all whimsical about it)? You can read more about Groff and her writing process on Ploughshares ("She writes early drafts by hand, on legal pads. Once she has a complete draft of a novel, she throws the pages away, and begins again, writing the new draft (again by hand) from memory.").

Literary Chicago: Ploughshares Summer 2015

Ploughshares, the collection of fiction and poetry put out three times a year by Emerson College (of which Denis Leary is a council member of the non-profit publication), was capaciously endowed with scenes from a Literary Chicago. Four stories mentioned this city, and at least three of the authors in the collection have called Chicago home at one point or another (Osama Alomar, Jesse Ball, Rebecca Makkai, and Alex Shakar). One story mentioning Chicago in a collection isn't particularly noticeable, but seeing the name of this city in four out of eighteen stories called for some attention, even if just a coincidence. Here's how a few contemporary writers fictionalized Chicago:

"That fall, she was starting graduate school at the Art Institute of Chicago. "Chicago," I said later that night, after our date. We were in bed; we'd just had sex. "You know, I've been a Cubs fan since I could stand on first base.""

"Later, we joked that the only reason I came to Chicago was because she needed someone to carry her paintings."

- Kevin A Gonzalez, Palau

"My racial color code as established by the Chicago Bank of Life is white...When I am donating to the Chicago Bank of Life, I do not think of her." 

- Fiona Maazel, Dad's Just a Number

Rachel Kushner - 'Telex From Cuba'

First thing I've read by Kushner. It was highly acclaimed in 2008 when it was released and a finalist for the National Book Award. Naturally, I was skeptical, but every bit of praise for this book is well deserved. The story follows multiple characters in Cuba leading up to the revolution of 1959 which found the US backed Batista overthrown by Fidel Castro. The book reveals tensions between the Cubans that worked in the sugar cane fields run by US expats...sorry, US *immigrants*. Much of the perspectives are through the children of these wealthy families, often having fled the US for various legal reasons, or have lived a life in limbo throughout various Latin and Central American countries.

Kushner's writing fulfills all of the senses. Not a scene passes without her describing the various smells and sounds of the country and its people, about the myriad colors that lend themselves to the landscape. There are lyrical flourishes on every page, such as "the wind gusted like a personality" or "it was an afternoon of time outside of time."

But these subtle flourishes don't allow themselves to dominate the story either. Each character, whether the naive children, drunk housewives, a cabaret dancer, Cuban militants, or a secretive French agitator, are fully formed with reflective, philosophical thoughts bubbling throughout the narrative. Of course, some characters are more receptive to these philosophical inquiries than others that would rather deny the painful truths, and the impending revolution about to take place.

Ear Relevant: 7.27 - 8.10

Been awhile since I've done one of these. I've bought an absurd amount of records lately (well, for me at least. It's been a particularly diverse group of records too. 

First off, things started with getting a little buzzed and heading over to Permanent. Picked up 60s French pop star Claudine Longet's self-titled debut, the reggae-filled soundtrack to "The Harder They Come" featuring plenty of Jimmy Cliff, soulman Syl Johnson's Dresses Too Short (my first Numero LP), and Ray Manzarek's hypersynth version of Carmina Burana produced by Phillip Glass. Yes, that's just as weird as it sounds.

The next week there was a release show for Vamos and Ego, two mainstays in Chicago's punk / garage / DIY scene. They each had LPs out on Maximum Pelt so I got both of them; each have some rad album art. The show was at the Empty Bottle and I forgot my ear plugs like a stupid fucking idiot. Think it was worth it though. Made sure to bring the plugs the following night for Twin Hits (Twin Peaks + Today's Hits), Heavy Times, and the Lemons. No music purchased that night.

Cyn Vargas 'On The Way' / Rey Andújar 'Saturnalia'

So.

First off.

There's not really too much of a reason to lump these two books together. Other than the fact that they are both collections of short stories written by authors living in Chicago, put out by Chicago presses, and I finished reading both on the same day. And the settings for both alternate between various locations in Latin America and the United States. Other than that, there's not much of a connection, and I'm writing about them together solely based on my timing of reading them. Let's start with On The Way.

I picked this book up at City Lit about a month ago. I'm always game to try anything Curbside Splendor puts out, even if the epigraph is a Radiohead lyric. But a blurb on the back from Bonnie Jo Campbell meant I would pick it up anyway.

Let's start with this: these stories are not uplifting. They're not always tragic, but they are often heartbreaking. It's not the fact that death always awaits us (it does sometimes), but that more often, bad things happen and the devastation permeates itself in its wake throughout a life; lucky are we who don't have to identify with many of these stories. The protagonists are generally women. They've been abused, they've been cheated on, they've been divorced, they've been abandoned in physical and existential ways. Vargas writes about women young and old, who've experienced a lot and who've experienced a lot of pain. Rarely do they find redemption. In an interview with Kati Heng, Vargas revealed her personal connection with some of these characters, how she identifies with them, and why they need their voices to be heard: "To appreciate the joy, you have to have the pain too. I think I am able to write bittersweet stories because I have lived through it."

Kathy Acker (Pt 2)

I'd put this book down for awhile and finally finished it the other week (part one here). Acker is...well, you probably already know about her reputation. Difficult is one word. Some call her problematic. The last piece in this book, Hannibal Lecter, My Father, is the testimony of The Federal Inspection Office for Publications Harmful to Minors in Germany and their reasons for banning the book Tough Girls Don't Cry. In addition to the hypersexual content and coarse language throughout, they cite the book as being difficult to follow, adopting too many styles, and for plagiarism.

I can't argue that this book should be read my minors. I've thought about this in the past when I first read Naked Lunch. Or first heard the Velvet Underground. I wonder if I have kids what kind of media I would expose them to, or what of mine they would find on their own. I'm all for the possibility of expansion of ideas especially in children and teenagers. But how does one determine when one can begin to handle such dark and surreal or evocative and cerebral texts? Making works taboo only makes them more attractive.

The disjointedness of Acker makes me think I won't read anything of hers again, or at least any non-non-fiction work (essays, interviews, etc). I like her thoughts but can't get into the prose. I think I could have appreciated this experimental writing style actually if I were still in high school or college. She eschews conventional tactics entirely. Of course, this is also a work of her earliest material, and maybe I need to find the Acker that's best for me.

I've thought a lot lately too about conventional texts and sounds. Music becomes more monotonous to me over time. Musicians have decided that one note must be followed by another of only two or three notes, or can be played simultaneously with a handful of notes. It's boring. Granted, I've heard much more music than I have read literature. But will we get to the point where writing too becomes so predictable? That any given word can only be followed by a handful of words? Are we already there?

Anyway, here's a now defunct website that put Kathy Acker lines into the comic Cathy.

Ron Currie Jr. - 'Everything Matters!'

I had high hopes for this book especially after how much I gushed about God is Dead. I don't know, even though I finished this book within 36 hours, I wasn't as blown away as I expected to be.

On the plus side, there was plenty of Literary Chicago, since one of the main characters plays for the Cubs.

"Partying means drinking. It also means playing records by Lou Reed and Chicago, which I thought was a city but is also a band it turns out. Uncle Rodney explained this to me. It's a band and a city and when I'm older he'll take me to Chicago to see Chicago play, he says."

"Chicago is not the ideal place to go to when you've recently lost your mind and plan to curl up in the bottom of a bottle and wait for the feeling of having your insides ripped repeatedly from your body to subside."

"...except this time you were not a toddler but a twenty-year-old man, lying on a bench near the Dearborn Street bridge, staring straight up to where the stars would have been were they not  obscured by the megawatt towers..."

Pitchfork Music Festival 2015

The following is a bit of notes I took on Saturday afternoon. An existential/Wallace Shawn style exploration on identity and creation. 

Attention. That's what's on my mind right now, sitting in the grass in Union Park at the Pitchfork Music Festival. What am I here to devote my attention to? How do I decide how to use my attention? Is attention the most important thing at an environment like this? Or is it best to have divided attention?

Are we here for art or diversion? Or other? (commerce)

Bully from Nashville starts. I'm still sitting. There's a decent crowd for the early side of the day on the smaller stage. Various forms of attention are around me. People totally focused, me with divided attention, as my attention is primarily on my thoughts. But I'm also processing the music.

If what and how we consume is dictated by marketing, is what and how we create also a product of that same marketing? Does the "I" ever have a say in creation? Is creation just an expression of consumption?, ie, what am I doing here? Is there an "I" here? Or is my "I" just someone else's creations that I've consumed? And if I've never decided what I've consumed, then how can I say I've created anything? And what have I consumed to have made me think these thoughts?

So why am I here? What's the difference between habit and ritual? There's supposed to be something sacred about ritual, right? (I may just be thinking that because a church is looking down at me) But what if you hold nothing sacred? Can that be true though, literature, the Clash, the simple act of helping someone up off the ground.

Reading list (1/2)'15

First half of 2015 is up. Been keeping busy this year. I'm a firm believer that you can't be a better writer without being a better reader. Here's what I read for the first half of the year. Bolded my favorites. Gonna try to devote the second half of the year to reading more 2015 stuff.

Uki Goni - The Real Odessa (2002)
Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go (2005)
James Tadd Adcox - Does Not Love (2014)
Jami Attenberg - The Melting Season (2011)
John Darnielle - Wolf in White Van (2014)
Leslie Jamison - The Empathy Exams (2014)
Aleksandar Hemon - Nowhere Man (2002)
Eugene Ionesco - Rhinoceros and Other Plays (1994 edition / originally written in 1959)
Louise Erdich - The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001)
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red (1998)
Ron Currie Jr - God is Dead (2007)
Albert Camus - The Rebel (1951)
Djuna Barnes - Nightwood (1936)
Wallace Shawn - the Fever (1990)
Italo Calvino - Marcovaldo (1963)
Jack Kerouac - The Dharma Bums (1958)
Jessica Hopper - The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic (2015)
Aleksandar Hemon - The Making of Zombie Wars (2015)
Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Ron Currie, Jr. - Everything Matters! (2009)

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - Slaughterhouse Five (1969) (reread) (just as good as it was in high school)
Wallace Shawn - The Designated Mourner (1996) (reread)

Apparently The Empathy Exams is my favorite book I've read recently I haven't written about. I think I was so surprised by how captivating it was that I didn't realize how much I was in love with it until much later on. Not to mention it's one of the few non-fiction books I've read this year. Anyway. That is all. On to the next ones...

Jessica Hopper - 'The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic'

There's been oodles of praise for this book. And not without reason. Hopper is a tremendous writer with a true voice of her own. She has an incredible ability to make connections between various artists that I would never associate with each other. She actually made me care about reading reviews of Pearl Jam and Lana Del Rey and Miley Cyrus and Van Morrison. The collection is short, sweet, and rightfully gives her interview with Jim DeRo re: R.Kelley a needed print copy for posterity. The gilded edges of the pages are a bonus snazzy touch.

There's no reason to review the book because everyone else has already harped so much praise about it. So why does this feel like this is me leading up to writing something negative? Because it is...

Jack Kerouac - 'The Dharma Bums'

I read this book even though I had no intention of doing so. It was sitting at my girlfriend's apartment. I'd just finished reading Italo Calvino's munchkin sized yarn Marcovaldo and needed something new. I started reading and just couldn't stop. The only other book I've read by Kerouac was On The Road, and that one is truly a masterpiece. To cover so much ground, the descriptions of so many settings in one narrative is quite impressive, and even though its primary focus on drugs and woman are certainly more appealing to an adolescent andhertz, they'd probably still resonate with a slightly older / still not fully matured andhertz. So maybe that's why I haven't read anything else by Kerouac, because I knew I would like it even though I didn't want to. Oh well. Pigeonholes be damned. I flew through this thing and found some great segments for Literary Chicago along the way. 

"That's Rhonda, my sister, I grew up with her in the woods in Oregon. She's gonna marry this rich jerk from Chicago, a real square."

"Japhy and I were sitting around in the shack in a drowsy afternoon and suddenly she was in the door, slim and blond and pretty, with her well-dressed Chicago fiance, a very handsome man."

Kathy Acker (Pt 1)

I've never read anything by Kathy Acker before today. I've seen her name all over the place, name-checked by everyone from Kathleen Hannah to Richard Hell to Kate Zambreno. But every time I venture into a book store, new or used, I fail to find any primary texts from the writer herself. While I'm sure I could have read (and probably have read short texts of) her work online, I've never immersed myself in a novel or collection of essays. I finally found a copy of work with her name on the cover, Hannibal Lecter, My Father, a collection of interviews, prose, dramatic work, essays, and more.

The first piece of the collection, and my introduction to her greater themes, was a couple of interviews from 1989-90 with French literary critic Sylvère Lotringer. The two discuss memory, identity, community, plagiarism, censorship, tattoos, and mythology. The part I really liked was about plagiarism and how we use other people's work. Acker recognizes it's impossible to create without experience in reality, and for her, words and text are just as much a staple of reality as material and experiences. She explains: "What I'm doing is simply taking text to be the same as the world, to be equal to non-text, in fact to be more real than non-text, and start representing text." Of course, I'm yet to read any examples of her doing this, but I hope to change that soon.

Wallace Shawn's 'The Fever'

One day last week, I woke up with one thing on my immediate to-do list: read The Fever by Wallace Shawn. So I did it. I bought the book at Open Books during their final weekend at the River North location. It was listed in the theater section (or was it dramatic literature?) but it's not a play in the conventional sense. There is no action, no dialogue, no characters really. Rather, it is a 67-page monologue about celebrating life and the inherent guilt that thrives in the awareness of living a privileged existence. The fever of the title strikes the narrator while traveling in a country in which they do not speak the language and in which they are forced to viscerally confront poverty and suffering, in a way which their cushy life never even thought to contemplate before hand.

I've read some of Shawn's essays in the past and the dramatic work The Designated Mourner is one of my favorite pieces of anything ever. The Fever, in fact, could be considered a precursor to The Designated Mourner, that although features three characters, they still depend on monologues and rarely interact with each other. I found The Designated Mourner to be more compelling and to go deeper than The Fever, though that may be because it came out seven years after, giving Shawn plenty of time to ruminate on identity, anxiety, man's relationship to the exterior world, and other themes that pop up in his work. In fact, I'll probably reread The Designated Mourner (soon) (again) and see if it's still as compelling (it will be).

Tony Fitzpatrick and Spring

Last night I attended part of a Words+Music event at the Empty Bottle. Unexpectedly, the event seemed to had started on time, so I missed readings by JR Nelson and Jim DeRogatis. But I did see Jessica Hopper read her review of Miley Cyrus's Bangerz, and manage to hear the illuminant Tony Fitzpatrick read some recent articles of his that will appear in the forthcoming book Dime Stories that collects his column from New City over the past few years.

I've seen Fitzpatrick read at one of these events before, and have seen him perform elsewhere. He is a Chicago writer through and through: Nelson Algren and Mike Royko have undeniably left their mark on Fitzpatrick. If, as Ernest Hemingway states, "you should not read [Algren] if you cannot take a punch," then know that Algren's protege is an even more formidable wielder of the written word. His vulgar wit and sardonic humor are instantly recognizable, and have little match in the ring of literature.

And yet, Fitzpatrick seemed a little off his game this evening, as if the gloves weren't on as tight as usual. True to form, he was conscious of this unlikely wavering in his reading. He reminded the audience of his heart surgery a few months ago before reading a post-surgery reflection on life (appropriately titled, It's Spring).

The piece he read aloud has been on my mind since I first read it a few weeks back. The main point of it is to not let the little bullshit of life stack up and distract you from what you want to accomplish. This doesn't mean over-worry yourself with work however. For Tony, it means going to more baseball games, spending more time with his family, going for more walks, enjoying every breeze, the flowers, the birds; "put your cell phone in a drawer." It's a transition for Tony, even so late in life, from hanging up the gloves to finding more poetic ways to reassert how necessary it is to stop and smell the cliche roses; a lover yet still a fighter.

For my part, I've been creating a list of new places - restaurants, art galleries, bars, cultural institutions, old buildings - that I want to explore in and around the city, in neighborhoods I'm already familiar with and ones I've never stepped foot in. It's easy to get comfortable going to the same bars, seeing the same bands, biking down the same boulevards and streets, seeing the same people, eating the same things. This easiness leads to routine, and routine will make your life pass by quicker than you intend to. I'm 27 and I already know that. You can't have new thoughts and new feelings if you don't go to new places.

Of course, here's the dilemma. Routine, repetition, schedules - these don't necessarily lead to stagnation of the mind. These can lead to strong community building, whether that community is in a neighborhood, in artistic, or business. But the best way to help strengthen that community is inevitably to get outside of it, to introduce an outside perspective, and perhaps even bond your own community to another one. This is called growth.

So this year, I'm going to new places and new spaces, to get to know this city even more outside of the bubble I've grown familiar in. Yesterday, this included: a visit to Open Books in River North before they move to the West Loop next week; a small tour of the Midwest Buddhist Temple in Old Town, hosted by Jesse; hanging out at Oz Park in Old Town listening to a trombonist practice his scales and dog-watching; buying even more books at Bookworks in Wrigleyville; hanging out on the patio at Sheffield's than catching the first half of Reading Under the Influence; and then not something new but something always enjoyable, the aforementioned Words+Music at the Empty Bottle.

Onward to spring, and to life.



(note: this wasn't my exact route, but changing things on Google can be such a pain in the ass)

Literary Chicago - Gabi Gliechmann, 'The Elixir of Immortality'

Literary Chicago is series where I try to capture the essence of the city by how it is described in fiction, primarily from books that don't take place in Chicago.

"Shortly after the death of my mother I traveled to the United States. While I was changing planes in Chicago I happened to catch sight of an article in the city's leading newspaper, The Morning Star:"

pg 174 The Elixir of Immortality by Gabi Gleichmann (2013)

Random notes from a trip to NYC / DC, February 2015

...except in a legible format. Words are unedited [save for clarity] but I did rearrange the order of things: 

Traveling alone. What a trip. Not literally. From everyone to no one to everyone again. 
I'm lost and not lost.

The parks here advertise wifi. Parks.

Everyone is talking. To each other. On the phone. To themselves. On the phone but looks like talking to themselves.

Seagulls dine on the garbage on 3rd avenue / sparrows dine on a fell pizza slice

Gay ketchup marriage.

I noticed your lipstick. You don't need lipstick.
 
I do feel less self-conscious here. Is it the city doing that? Is it me being a tourist anywhere? Is it a growing personality trait in general? Sorta sick of being alone and left to my own thoughts. At the same time, sick of talking about myself. I've never asked myself what am I doing here as much as when I'm in NYC.

Has being sarcastic fucked my life over? No, not being sarcastic has fucked other people over.

I'm way too aware of how I look for not caring how I look.

Whatever this state of mind is, I feel the opposite of present. I have to remind myself to exist. To be.

The Rothko Room

My experience at The Rothko Room at the Phillips Collection in Washington DC. You should go to there. 

"No more than eight people at a time. No strollers" a sign commands. A dampness pads the nostrils as you enter the room. You are introduced to four giant canvases on the white walls: red and orange; green, red, and blue; yellow, orange, and red; forest green and orange. Of course, these are not the only colors present. But they have the most presence.

A lattice of wooden floorboards creaks beneath your feet. Have a seat: a creakier bench feels like it may collapse beneath your weight, despite how weightless you feel in this room.

The room. It's quiet. It's calm. Are you calm? It's how Rothko's paintings make me feel. Forget that he's the posterboy for how silly abstract expressionism is represented in the mainstream (maybe behind Pollack). Rothko's paintings outrage many, but they are calming to me. To sit in the Rothko Room, alone, is as close as I've felt to a meditative experience in awhile.

I feel small but I don't feel insignificant. I feel free of desire, but not overwhelmed. I also feel a bit overwhelmed. There is me, four painted canvases, a sliver of a vertical window facing north, and I feel something that not a lot of people have the chance to feel. Does the fact that abstract expressionism creates a serene feeling in me add to my privilege? Should I just lean into my privilege at this point? Stop running away from what I am?

A man walks into the room. He takes one picture. He leaves.

A man walks into the room. He takes four pictures. He stands for a moment. He leaves.

Were these men even in the room?

I sat in this room for five minutes. I spent some time walking around the room, looking at the paintings up close and from afar. I took a selfie with each photo. I left the room. Was I any more present than the previous men? Was I ever even in the room?

Ear Relevant 4.10.15 - 4.17.15

You've probably seen that Chance the Rapper video for Sunday Candy by now but just in case you haven't...the choreography is beautiful.

Baltimore-via-Chicago keys and drums duo Wume announced a new album, Maintain, coming out May 19th on Ehse Records. Their bandcamp has a couple songs to tease ya.

I wrote about Liturgy's new album The Ark Work and why they're the only black metal band I like for Since I Left You. They played at Subterranean last week. Baltimore's Horse Lords opened who are just as worthy of your attention.

Strawberry Jacuzzi released a new song called 'Bitch Jam' on Midwest Action.

White Mystery made a film and it premiers at CIMM Fest on Monday. Check out the trailer below. The movie looks...it's...just watch the trailer.

Ron Currie Jr. - 'God is Dead'

My friend Keith Meatto loaned me this book while I was visiting New York a couple months ago. We swap books as often as two people who live in different cities can. Additionally, Keith was my editor while Frontier Psychiatrist existed, and it's safe to say he has a pretty good idea of what I like to read. Case in point, Ron Currie Jr.'s debut book from 2007 God is Dead.

Spoiler alert, God dies in the beginning. The Almighty takes the body of a woman caught in war-torn Darfur, who is killed, eaten by dogs, and leaves the world wondering what to do now that he doesn't exist. Teens fulfill a suicide pact, ideological wars breakout, children are worshipped, people are accused of theism, kids text too much with people who never respond...all this and more.

Despite what the title may suggest, Nietzsche is never mentioned once throughout. In fact, the book doesn't necessarily aim to be philosophical at all. It doesn't really concern the matters of which religion was "right," or about atheism vs. agnosticism. It instead investigates the sunken corners of Currie's imagination of the world the way it actually would be were it to be found out there was no God. It's a world where people realized "God had created the universe and set it spinning, but it would continue chugging along despite the fact that he was no longer around to keep things tidy." The world doesn't end. CNN and Magic Bullet still exist in a post-God world. Hypocritical wars and angsty teens still exist. People are loathed, people are loved. Not much has really changed. But yet, things are irrevocably, if intangibly, different. 

Runoff

Wrote the majority of this a week ago. Better late than never. Better luck next time, Chuy. 

The skies are spitting at us trying to deter us from voting today. I say us but I mean you. I voted when it was sunny a week ago. Early voting lasts for two weeks and we can still barely get one third of the city to vote.

So that's why the skies spit at us. Because we get the weather we deserve.

I'm sitting at the bar at the Hideout waiting for Mick Dumke and Ben Joravsky to woefully announce the imminent results of Chuy Garcia's loss in the mayoral runoff, the first in this city's history. It's only a matter of time. The bar being out of Daisy Cutter is a sign. That scattered laundry basket on Elston Ave. is a sign. My flat tire last night was a sign: Chuy won't win.

It sometimes feels like I live in a bubble. I saw exactly one (1) sign in someone's yard supporting Rahm Emanuel in my neighborhood. Logan Square is populated by Chuy. My social media is nothing by Chuy supporters. My hood has more 'Raht' stickers than 'Rahm' posters. Creative signs and wheat-pastes have sprouted on brick walls like buds on the trees along the boulevards are about to.

And he's still going to lose.

Finished

Finishing a book is like being in the shower for a year and a half. You hear this constant stream of rushing water, no sounds outside of it really seem to matter, even if you have other fleeting thoughts or hear sounds from the apartment above you.  The shower is your only reality.

And then you turn the shower off.

And it's silent.

And you wonder: "Why the fuck did I just take a shower for a year and a half?"

At least that's how it feels for me.

I just submitted my first ever novel to a publisher. Do I expect anything to come out of this? Of course not. Even right before I clicked submit, I hesitated, wondering if I should even bother. It's nerve-wracking. Worse than being rejected is being accepted, and then actually allowing people to read all of these inane thoughts that have been cultivating inside of my head, especially the real weird stuff within the past couple months. And hope that I was able turn these thoughts into a literary format at the same time.

Either way, it's done. When it's inevitably rejected, I get to submit and submit and submit again. Eventually, I'll start a new one and start the whole process over. Gee. Can't wait...

In the meantime, I'm glad to finally have enough time to read someone else's work. Maybe start posting on here a bit more again. I'm proud of what I accomplished, but I just read the same damn book four times in a row. From now on, instead of editing so much, I think I'll just do it correctly the first time. Makes sense, right?

And don't worry, when it's ready, you can read it. I won't shut up about it. I'll make sure this thing, in whatever final form it ends up in, will end up in the hands or tablets of every last one of you.

Size Doesn't Matter

You know what's fucked up? I've been working on this book for over a year and a half. I'm almost at 64,000 words. I entered super hibernation mode and ignored the entire world for three weeks to write the bulk of this. I've grown narcissistically insane thinking about what a great fucking writer I'm turning into and how this thing is going to change lives.

And this whole document, all of it, all of my random and twisted thoughts, all of the name-dropping and cultural references, all of my pseudo-philosophical meanderings on how technology is threatening (dismantling?!) free will, a fuckton of obscenities, all of it occupy an open office document of 175 KB.

That is such an incomprehensibly tiny speck of data on this machine that can hold 500 GB.

It's nothing.

Now that's what I call an ego killer.

I think I needed that.

Anyway.

Back to editing.

Jami Attenberg - 'The Melting Season'

I feel conflicted. Not about the book. I liked the book. Attenberg is a great writer and I was engaged in this story all throughout.

I'm conflicted because it was a good book and I don't know why. Which is a good and bad thing. It's good, for Attenberg, because it means she writes so naturally and effortlessly that its just second nature for her to create a unique work of narrative fiction (which is not to say this required no effort; I know that's not true for any writer). It's a bad thing, for Attenberg, because I wasn't stirred as much as I'd hoped to be.

It's a good thing, for the reader, because it's an effortless read. You can fly through this thing, not being able to turn the page fast enough. It's a bad thing, for the reader, because you're not sure how to describe why this is so good.

The story involves a woman, Catherine, who is running away from home in Nebraska. She took all her husband's money, over six figures, and is driving, and eventually hits Vegas. Her marriage was falling apart (not just because her husband has a really small dick), her life itself was falling apart. Her little sister, a teenager, is pregnant, and her alcoholic mother beats on her all the time. Sheltered Midwest people living sheltered Midwest lives (Catherine comments more than once about how her family is trailer trash). But they have complex feelings and complex relationships that inform their complex feelings and cannot be reduced to issues such as pregnancy, or alcoholism, or domestic abuse, without taking into consideration the whole story.

Aleksandar Hemon - 'Nowhere Man'

This was Hemon's first novel, published in 2002. It's the third book of his I've read but it's the first that has really showed me how brilliant of a writer he is. Within the first few pages I was hooked and didn't want to put it down. There are so many great lines. Here's a few that stick out from just the first few pages:

• "...listening to the mizzle in my pillow,"
• "The blinds gibbered..."
• "The toilet bowl was agape, with a dissolving piece of toilet paper in it throbbing like a jellyfish."
• "The faucet was sternly counting off droplets."
• "Smashing the boxes was my favorite part, the controlled, benign destruction."
• (about a cat, eating a mouse)..."patiently exposing its crimson essence."
• "...a grimace of perplexed horror..."
• "...despair was my loyal ally."
• "...on a steel beam high up above perched a jury of pigeons, cooing peevishly."

His use of similes, adverbs and other modifiers, particularly with smell, offer a unique perspective, often accompanied by a morbid Eastern European sense of humor. Even without context, his sentences spring to life.

Uki Goni - 'The Real Odessa'

Reading this book, and certainly writing about it, takes me a little bit out of my comfort zone. I'm used to reading and writing about fiction, yet this is non-fiction. The subtitle for the book is "How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina." Which tells you exactly what the book is about. And while it may not be fiction, I still have many thoughts about the book, not to mention having learned some of the more atrocious secrets of Juan Peron's regime and Argentina's shameful complicity with saving Nazi war criminal and the real Odessa*.

First off, this story is thoroughly well researched. It's an amazing story, hard to believe at points how various governments of the world (including the USA) were complacent in the transfer of Nazis from post-WWII Europe to South America. That said, I thought the writing was a bit stiff and hard to follow at points. To that point, the book may have been too well-researched for only being 326 pages (not including the Afterward added to the second edition).

Another issue I had was how little mention there was of Eva 'Evita' Peron. She is mentioned numerous times throughout the book, sure, but is barely mentioned in the index when trying to find references to her. But, to be fair, this book is meant to focus on the war criminals. The book leaves her sympathies ambiguous: she did stand up to a Nazi war criminal when she refused to fire a Jewish employee. Yet, she was very welcoming and apparently charmed by multiple Nazis that visited la Casa Rosada.

But enough about the issues. The story is fascinating and I recommend it to any history buffs out there. Here are some of my major takeaways from the book:

Kazuo Ishiguro - 'Never Let Me Go'

This book's been on my shelf for awhile. Finally got around to reading it. I think it's the fastest I've ever read a book that just made me go 'meh' at the end.

I'd been looking forward to reading something by Ishiguro for awhile. I see a lot of other authors I respect drop his name as a writer they appreciate. I can't quite put my finger on what it was but the book just didn't do it for me.

The story follows three main characters. Kathy is the narrator, retelling stories from the Hailsham, a vague prep school of sorts where she grew up with her friends Ruth and Tommy. Today, Kathy is a carer, while the other two are donors. It's ambiguous what this means, but as the book goes on, we learn it has to do with cloning (oh yeah, if you don't like spoilers, turn ye away now; probably don't watch the movie before reading the book either). These clones exist for the sole reason to be raised into healthy organ donors. Cancer and various diseases are a thing of the past in this world. So in this respect, I can understand the questions the book raises. Do clones have souls? Is it ethical to raise sentient beings for the purpose to save other sentient beings, without regards for the feelings of the former?

James Tadd Adcox - 'Does Not Love'

I read this book in less than a day. That itself doesn't mean it's a great book, but there are other reasons this is a great book.

Save for the fact that so much good stuff is coming out on Curbside Splendor and that apparently Adcox knows my fellow Front Psych warrior Keith Meatto, I was excited to read this book. Mostly because it got compared to Don DeLillo, whose White Noise I'd finally read a few months back and thought it was brilliant. This book does indeed carry a similar vein of storytelling, taking jabs at pharmaceutical corporations, contemporary domestic life, and is written with so many jumpcuts that Godard himself would get dizzy reading this book.

Most of the chapters are 1-3 pages, offering multiple glimpses into the two main characters lives, the married couple Viola and Robert. After their third miscarriage, their marriage is falling apart. While predictable Robert is accepting of the state of things, Viola wants change. And Robert isn't as predictable as Viola makes him out to be. And Viola may not be able to handle the change she so desires.

The pacing of this book is perfect. The brevity of the chapters make the book feel like a flash fiction collection of loosely related plots. There are bits of surreality, with ghosts and empty spaces that can talk back to Viola and Robert. Yet it's still rooted in just enough reality to make one think that pharmaceutical guinea pigs could be forming and underground society while an FBI agent is fucking the brains out of a woman with the intent to ruin one man's life.

Never convoluted, often funny, and always kept me wanting more. It's a shame this didn't end up on more year-end lists. A truly contemporary debut novel that shows a sharp, satirical wit that will hopefully only continue to cut.

Hibernation

Experiment: Take six weeks off of work. Start date: January 19th, 2015.

Objective: Write.

Hypothesis: Failure. Complete and utter failure (in the most optimistic way possible).

Tools: Laptop. Pen. Paper. Various works of already written fiction. Brain.

Procedure:

• Week One: Outside of any emergencies, avoid all social contact. Avoid the news. Sleep a lot. Sleep very little. Writing above all else, even eating. No entertainment, except reading fiction, which is still work. No Twitter. No Facebook. No Netflix. No Groupon. No Skype. No Instagram. No Grubhub. No Spotif...who am I kidding, I'm keeping Spotify, but rocking that private mode.
• Week Two: Keep writing.
• Week Three: Are you deaf? Just. Keep. Writing.
• Week Four: Escape To NYC aka "Where's Waldo" but in Brooklyn. All the museums. All the Chinatowns. All the coffee. All the beer.
• Week Five. Escape to DC.
• Week Six: Recover.
• Week Seven: Reality.

Outcome: ???

I've been thinking about doing this for awhile. The closer it came to actually pulling the plug, the more nervous I got to thinking that I made a really stupid decision. Now that it's finally here, I have to follow through and see what happens. Two recent tweets by two brilliant minds serendipitously boosted my confidence in my decision:

Repeat after me: "Thank you for the invite but I'm gonna stay home and write."

— Sherman Alexie (@Sherman_Alexie) January 5, 2015

It's better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing and criticise others. Play nice everyone. & have a great day :)

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) October 20, 2014

"I went to the woods becuase I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau (not currently on Twitter)

A couple people have compared this excursion of mine to Thoreau and Walden. It's not quite that intense (pretty sure he didn't have a laptop), and it's only a week as compared to two years. But a week without any human contact must seem pretty bizarre, unrealistic even, especially living in a city. But this is my woods. Sometimes, it's best to revert into oneself, especially for someone who makes it a point to explore these urban woods so entirely and enthusiastically. For now, I want to make writing the essential facts of life, to write deliberately, and to learn what it has to teach.

How does one define human contact? I will still probably keep up with the news. I'll still read books that others have written. I'll listen to music others have recorded. I might even send out an email or two. But as far as physically seeing, touching, or hearing the natural, unelectronically amplified vibrations of sound from another person's mouth, I'll have no contact with any of it.

I read advice for writers constantly. I read about the habits of famous writers. I read the tips from the woman who wrote 90,000 words in six weeks. Have a routine they say; don't have a routine say others. Have word goals. Don't have word goals. Frankly, I don't give a shit about any of it. There is no one way to write or to type. Even Henry Miller's advice is contradictory. I want to conflate writing and typing (Capote be damned). I want to type pages and pages of material that can eventually be sculpted into a final product. And there may never even be a final product. That's a risk I'm willing to take. That all of this could be for nothing.

I just quit working two jobs six days a week, but this will arguably be the hardest work I've ever had to do. Probably because I've told so damn many of you of my plans. Well, make no small plans right? So, bon nuit for now. Time to hibernate (and if you're still reading this far, you can probably bet on catching me at Yonatan Gat at the Empty Bottle on Feb 2nd).