October 30, 2010

New Fiction at Lamination Colony



Lamination Colony 2010 is up, a throat-in-rags death rattle of a final issue, featuring 46 writers. Go and read it, especially if throat-in-rags and death rattle strike you as a contradiction in terms. My bit is in there, too, "Valley of the Dolls." Thanks to the editor for being cool with the formatting issues and getting it just right.


October 27, 2010

New Fiction at wigleaf





Isn't it one of the best-designed sites ever for very short fiction?




October 17, 2010

Dead Markets





Markets Updated
(since last newsletter):

1.
New York Times Book Review: Has closed.
2.
Atlantic Monthly: Project cancelled.
3.
The New Yorker: Website has not been functioning for over a month; emails to the editor bounce; we are declaring this a "dead" market.
4.
The New Republic: Website hasn't been updated in over a year; editor has not responded to our inquiries; we are declaring this a "dead" market.
5.
Paris Review: Website has not been functioning for over a month; emails to the editor bounce; we are declaring this a "dead" market.
6.
Ploughshares: Website has not been functioning for over a month; editor has not responded to us; we are declaring this a "dead" market.
7.
Missouri Review: Website has not been updated in quite a while; editor has not responsed to us; we are declaring this a "dead" market.
8.
Iowa Review: Website has not been updated in quite a while; editor has not responsed to us; we are declaring this a "dead" market.
9. Esquire: Project cancelled.

October 10, 2010

"No Story and No Sin"

Pierre Guyotat

Roland Barthes on Pierre Guyotat’s Eden Eden Eden:

Eden Eden Eden is a free text: free of all subjects, of all objects, of all symbols, written in the space (the abyss or blind-spot) where the traditional constituents of discourse (the one who speaks, the events recounted, the way they are expressed) would be superfluous. The primary consequence is that criticism, unable to discuss the author, his subject, or his style, can find no way of taking hold of this text: Guyotat’s language must be “entered,” not by believing it, becoming party to an illusion, participating in a fantasy, but by writing the language with him in his place, singing it along with him.

Getting in on the language, in the sense of “getting in on the act,” is possible because Guyotat produces not a manner, a genre, a literary object, but a new element (which might even be added to the four Elements of cosmogony); this element is the phrase: substance of speech with the qualities of a fine cloth or a foodstuff, a single sentence which never ends, whose beauty comes not from what it refers to (the reality towards which it is supposed to point) but from its breath, cut short, repeated, as if the author were trying to show us not a series of imaginary scenes, but the scene of language, so that the model of this new mimesis is no longer the adventure of some hero, but the adventure of the signifier itself: what becomes of it.

Eden Eden Eden constitutes (or ought to constitute) a sort of eruption, a historical shock: the whole of an earlier evolution of writing, seemingly double but coinciding in ways we can now see more and more clearly, from Sade to Genet, from Mallarmé to Artaud, is gathered up, displaced, purified of its historical circumstances: no Story and no Sin (surely the same thing), we are left simply with language and lust, not the former expressing the latter, but the two bound together in a reciprocal metonymy, indissoluble.

The strength of this metonymy, sovereign in Guyotat’s text, might presage a strong censure, which will find here its two favorite pastures, language and sex, united; but any such censure, which may take many forms, will be unmasked by its own vehemence: condemned to being excessive if it claims to censure simply the subject and not the form, or vice versa: in either case condemned to reveal its own essence as censorship.

Yet whatever the institutional peripeteia, the publication of this text is important: a whole body of critical and theoretical work will be carried forward, without the text ever losing its power of seduction: outside all categories and yet of an importance beyond any doubt, a new landmark and a starting-point for new writing.

********

Also:

Stephen Barber on Guyotat's Coma.

John Taylor's "Reading Pierre Guyotat" at Context.


October 7, 2010

New Fiction at A cappella Zoo



I now have a triptych of stories about encounters with artists and art, a third panel to go with "The Scythian Idol" and "An Affair." This one's called "The Collector of Van de Voys," and since I consider it one of my best pieces so far, I'm especially pleased that it's found a home in the latest issue of A cappella Zoo, alongside work by Nancy Gold, Hayes Greenwood Moore, David Misialowski, Kate Riedel, Mike Meginnes, Alex Myers, Benjamin Robinson Jason Jordan, Phillip Neel, Theodore Carter, Melissa Ross, Tania Hershman, Catherine Sharpe, and Naoko Awa, and more. The entire contents of the issue will be published online by the end of October, but I hope that you'll order a print copy of Issue 5 of the Zoo -- or better yet, subscribe.

Update: "The Collector of Van de Voys" has now been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.


October 1, 2010

Introducing SOUS LES PAVÉS


»SOUS LES PAVÉS«

. . . is a bi-monthly newsletter of poetry, prose, ideas & opinions, reviews, photo documentaries, b/w artwork and letters of all kinds. It is conceived in the spirit & tradition of THE FLOATING BEAR, FUCK YOU, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, ROLLING STOCK, THE REALIST, THE DIGGER PAPERS, INTERNATIONALE SITUATIONNISTE, THE BLACK PANTHER INTERCOMMUNAL NEWS SERVICE, PROFANE EXISTENCE and any number of lo-fi no-frills PUNK ZINES & COMMUNITY PAPERS. At a time when much discourse circulates amid the instantaneous push-n-pull of the blogosphere – some of which is sharp, but much of which is soggy pulp – we seek to slow down, pause, and cultivate thoughtful responses to our collective troubles before delivering a polemical flux of ideation via the hands & feet of the world’s postal workers

in perpetuity

However, to do so, and do so with regularity, we need your financial support. If you receive this newsletter and understand its value, please consider donating some small funds to our effort. All moneys will be used to produce and ship the newsletter to what will no doubt prove to be a growing number of recipients. As things stand at the time of the first issue, our mailing list consists of approx. 300 people, all of who will receive this newsletter gratis.

To donate, go the SOUS LES PAVÉS page at Interbirth Books

To get on the mailing list, write to Micah Robbins at: editor@interbirthbooks.org

And while you're at it, read contributor David Hadbawnik's post on the newsletter, "Print: Why Bother?"