Landscape art in a virtual world; thoughts on the latest album from The Pastels; musings on literary kleptomaniacs; and news of an upcoming zine fair are all part of what we're reading this afternoon.

Mortifyingly, I haven’t actually read the current edition of Granta. I have a copy of it in my living room; I’ve thumbed through it a little bit: checked out some of the portraits; noted that Stephen Hall’s contribution seems to involve an interesting layout. But still: haven’t gotten to it yet. But that didn’t stop me from reading novels by three of the writers featured in said issue.

Two of the writers whose work I read this week, I’d encountered before: I read Sarah Hall’s collection The Beautiful Indifference a few months ago, and Helen Oyeyemi’s novel The Icarus Girl when it was first out in hardcover, in….2004, maybe? I’m newer to Ned Beauman’s work — though admittedly, he has less of it out. (Dude was also born in 1985, which does not exactly make me feel young. Obligatory “get off my lawn” comment to come.) I liked Hall’s collection considerably; I was more lukewarm on Oyeyemi’s novel, though I also recognize that this is not a widely held opinion.

And, based on Mr. Fox — which came highly recommended — I’m going to want to read a lot more of Ms. Oyeyemi’s work, because this one was impressive indeed. The setup: a writer named Mr. Fox is visited by his muse, Mary Foxe, who has seemingly come to life in order to criticize his penchant for killing his female characters. What ensues is a duel of narratives within narratives, sometimes oblique and sometimes very literal. (Mr. Fox’s wife Daphne shows up as well, and turns out to have her own literary gifts.) The three main characters are all fascinating, and the narratives range from folktales to epistolary narratives. It’s Calvino-style metafiction bound up in feminist literary critique; smart and compelling all the way through.

Ned Beauman’s Boxer, Beetle is a more realistic narrative, juxtaposing a contemporary plotline with one set in the mid-1930s. But there are narrative games played here as well, including a nod to the slightly metafictional elements of Martin Amis’s Money. Amis in his bleak-comic mode is probably as good a reference point as any: Beauman’s novel features dueling groups of British fascists, a hard-living; nine-toed boxer; and a geneticist professing some appalling theories of race and society. There’s also a collector of Nazi memorabilia who suffers from trimethylaminuria; his discovery of a letter to the geneticist from Hitler [...]]]>

Mortifyingly, I haven’t actually read the current edition of Granta. I have a copy of it in my living room; I’ve thumbed through it a little bit: checked out some of the portraits; noted that Stephen Hall’s contribution seems to involve an interesting layout. But still: haven’t gotten to it yet. But that didn’t stop me from reading novels by three of the writers featured in said issue.

Two of the writers whose work I read this week, I’d encountered before: I read Sarah Hall’s collection The Beautiful Indifference a few months ago, and Helen Oyeyemi’s novel The Icarus Girl when it was first out in hardcover, in….2004, maybe? I’m newer to Ned Beauman’s work — though admittedly, he has less of it out. (Dude was also born in 1985, which does not exactly make me feel young. Obligatory “get off my lawn” comment to come.) I liked Hall’s collection considerably; I was more lukewarm on Oyeyemi’s novel, though I also recognize that this is not a widely held opinion.

And, based on Mr. Fox — which came highly recommended — I’m going to want to read a lot more of Ms. Oyeyemi’s work, because this one was impressive indeed. The setup: a writer named Mr. Fox is visited by his muse, Mary Foxe, who has seemingly come to life in order to criticize his penchant for killing his female characters. What ensues is a duel of narratives within narratives, sometimes oblique and sometimes very literal. (Mr. Fox’s wife Daphne shows up as well, and turns out to have her own literary gifts.) The three main characters are all fascinating, and the narratives range from folktales to epistolary narratives. It’s Calvino-style metafiction bound up in feminist literary critique; smart and compelling all the way through.

Ned Beauman’s Boxer, Beetle is a more realistic narrative, juxtaposing a contemporary plotline with one set in the mid-1930s. But there are narrative games played here as well, including a nod to the slightly metafictional elements of Martin Amis’s Money. Amis in his bleak-comic mode is probably as good a reference point as any: Beauman’s novel features dueling groups of British fascists, a hard-living; nine-toed boxer; and a geneticist professing some appalling theories of race and society. There’s also a collector of Nazi memorabilia who suffers from trimethylaminuria; his discovery of a letter to the geneticist from Hitler kicks off a generally demented take on the private-detective narrative. Throughout, Beauman dodges narrative expectations, all the while supplying a heady dose of grim humor.

Compared with these two works, Sarah Hall’s Daughters of the North — a novel of a near-future England where climate change and a series of ongoing wars have prompted a coldly oppressive regime to take power — look traditional, narratively speaking. And yet even here, the structure, in which the novel is presented as a series of transcripts, some intact and some not, is more stylized that one would expect. Our narrator, known only as Sister, abandons her life in a city to seek out a utopian community. What she discovers there — and what that means for her society as a whole — forms the core of this novel. And that fractured narrative approach that gradually reveals itself makes more sense as the book goes on, and the role of testimonials begins to become more clear. Smart, inspiring, and chilling all at once, this is not an easy novel to forget.

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I think it’s safe to say that we’re longtime admirers of novelist Steve Erickson, from Arc d’X, his phantasmagorical take on historical change, to Zeroville, his novel of Hollywood in the 70s. His latest book, These Dreams of You (as well as his ebooks available from Open Road Media), abounds with everything from musings on art to economic anxiety to David Bowie.

So this short video on Erickson, in which he speaks about his writing process, is instructive — and, in its own way, very telling about the abstract ways in which his plots unfold. “I don’t find perfection especially interesting,” he says — and that, as much as anything, neatly describe the appeal of his work. His novels aren’t seamlessly plotted; rather, the dreamlike pull of their plots has its own impeccable allure.

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The Spring edition of the Virginia Quarterly Review contains a gob of unrelenting lit crit about the business of literature. The following are 9 great quotes from Richard Nash’s lead essay that comprehensively covers the history of book publishing and where it’s all going. Currently, Nash is doing great work with Small Demons and Red Lemon.ade. The full VQR essay can be read here.

“What we have right now is a system that produces great literature in spite of itself.”

“The universe of knowledge we have about books, literature, and publishing excludes that universe of books that were never published.”

“It’s quite clear that while we do our best, our output is as much proof of the awfulness of the system as it is of its strengths.”

“Is there a compelling reason to doubt that once again the book and the business of literature will be at the heart of disruption, as much perpetrator as victim?”

“The lack of video, the lack of audio, the lack of ways to change the forking outcomes of plot (what is rather crudely referred to as ‘interactivity’) is a feature of literature, not a bug. And as it turns out, books are interactive. They’re recipes for the imagination.”

“The skill that is commonly associated with the pinnacle of editorial talent–picking the right book–is frankly, nonsense.”

“Publishers offer the world a massive discount on what should be the true mark-up on manufacturing and distribution in order to persuade us to try something out, to gamble. To get us to risk wasting our time, they try to minimize the risk that we might be wasting our money.”

“As the pressure to have the physical book be the primary conduit through which literature reaches its audience begins to fade, the pressure to produce them as cheaply as possible also diminishes. Simultaneously the character of the retailers engaged in the business of retailing literature shifts away from one where price and breadth of selection are central toward ones that function as a hybrid of culture hub, concierge, and gallery…”

“Book culture is in far less peril than many choose to assume, for the notion of an imperiled book culture assumes that book culture is a beast far more refined, rarified, and fragile than it actually is.”

Okay, that was great, but really you should read the [...]]]>

The Spring edition of the Virginia Quarterly Review contains a gob of unrelenting lit crit about the business of literature. The following are 9 great quotes from Richard Nash’s lead essay that comprehensively covers the history of book publishing and where it’s all going. Currently, Nash is doing great work with Small Demons and Red Lemon.ade. The full VQR essay can be read here.

“What we have right now is a system that produces great literature in spite of itself.”

“The universe of knowledge we have about books, literature, and publishing excludes that universe of books that were never published.”

“It’s quite clear that while we do our best, our output is as much proof of the awfulness of the system as it is of its strengths.”

“Is there a compelling reason to doubt that once again the book and the business of literature will be at the heart of disruption, as much perpetrator as victim?”

“The lack of video, the lack of audio, the lack of ways to change the forking outcomes of plot (what is rather crudely referred to as ‘interactivity’) is a feature of literature, not a bug. And as it turns out, books are interactive. They’re recipes for the imagination.”

“The skill that is commonly associated with the pinnacle of editorial talent–picking the right book–is frankly, nonsense.”

“Publishers offer the world a massive discount on what should be the true mark-up on manufacturing and distribution in order to persuade us to try something out, to gamble. To get us to risk wasting our time, they try to minimize the risk that we might be wasting our money.”

“As the pressure to have the physical book be the primary conduit through which literature reaches its audience begins to fade, the pressure to produce them as cheaply as possible also diminishes. Simultaneously the character of the retailers engaged in the business of retailing literature shifts away from one where price and breadth of selection are central toward ones that function as a hybrid of culture hub, concierge, and gallery…”

“Book culture is in far less peril than many choose to assume, for the notion of an imperiled book culture assumes that book culture is a beast far more refined, rarified, and fragile than it actually is.”

Okay, that was great, but really you should read the whole issue (or buy it!). It’s got more of this stuff including a conversation with people from Electric Literature, Byliner, and Atavist, plus a full-on dissection of the “memoir” genre by Kevin Young.

No, this isn’t a “sponsored” post or anything–it’s just that awesome.

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In the spirit of the short & fast songs made by Seattle’s Iron Lung, I’ll keep the banter here abbreviated. Their  sound? All grit and fury and tense waves of feedback. Is there a new album? Indeed! Called White Glove Test. An interview with Jensen Ward: what you’re seeing here. Discussed? Books! And noise. And a compilation called Sub Pop 1000. Enjoy!

The CD version of White Glove Test features an additional disc of noise, designed to work either in tandem with the album or as a standalone work. How did you conceive this?

Since the early time of the band we’ve been obsessed with what the skull contains, be it a brain, a synapse or a sinus. The symmetry is wild and provocative. We wanted to explore the idea of making an album that would appeal to all the parts inside our heads with a specific focus on the inner ear. Obviously, that is where the aural journey begins and we wanted to make a good impression.

What was the process like of making this second album?

We wanted to include as many organic sounds as possible so we took a lot of field samples with a fancy ‘Blow Out’ recording device and used a lot of common objects found around the Oakland streets where we recorded. There are knives, bricks, piano innards, tin foil, elevator doors, drum pedals, glass and much much more in there. We took all those sounds, processed with studio trickery, and matched them to an already finished music album with the goal being 3 separate co-linear musical experiences: music album, noise album and a merged version that is free for experimentation. It is the most interactive album we’ve made and we strongly encourage people to get their hands (and ears) dirty with it.

Do you feel that this makes the album, in each of its formats, a distinct work?

Absolutely. In an increasingly saturated music world there needs to be something unique about an album or it will just get forgotten straight away. The battle for attention is arduous but not impossible to win. You just gotta be creative.

Has your appearance on Sub Pop 1000 pointed any new listeners in your direction?

We know Courtney Love listened to it and she did not enjoy our genius. Hahaha.

Since Vol.1 focuses on literature, [...]]]>