Will Break Barry Graham [Stop] Must [Stop]

AWP is rolling into Chicago come the end of February. At its commencement we'll be having a big arm wrestling tournament among writers and whatnot. What precipitated this? I challenged Barry Graham, DOGZPLOT Emperor-in-Chief, to an arm wrestling match. He then decided the tournament was a good idea (it is) and the thing has taken something of a life of its own. Worst case scenario? I lose and have to buy Barry Graham pizza and beer and kiss his ass literally and publicly. As you might imagine, I have no intention of losing. We'll see if strength and endurance on my side February 29th, though. I've been hitting the gym hard in the meantime. I expect this will pay dividends come arm wrastlin' time.

Also, Ben Tanzer is a traitorous ratfink who made one mistake when he double crossed me: he left me alive!

TEAM POWERBEEF!!! (That's my arm wrestling team. There's me, the wrestler, and there's the people I've conscripted to shout invective at my opponents / cheer me on (mostly the former, though).)

***

In other news, Jon Mau and I have concocted a template for further plans should Plan A and Plan B run afoul. You're free to use said template in your day-to-day lives as well, whenever the same happens to you.

Plan U - Try yelling at it from a seated position. Moving as little as possible. Saying something like, "I'm feeling too lethargic to respond to this physically."

Plan V - Sobbing quietly, hands resting on your face, cradling it as you're bent over yourself. Probably, you've moved little since Plan U, most likely not at all.

Plan W - Take a hostage. Then you release said hostage immediately, asking or pleading (most likely pleading) with them for assistance. You've been under a lot of pressure lately, is one big thing you might say to your erstwhile hostage.

Plan X - MELEE!!! (pronounced Mel-E)

***

New Untoward and Red Lightbulbs things in the world. Mark Jordan Manner, a really talented young writer, being a common thread between our two publications, as coincidence would have it. 

I too have a publication on elimae that's up and at them now on elimae!

Things Which Will On Occasion Elicit Nothing

Tao Lin. He's a fascinating figure/fixture in the world of contemporary indie lit. He's definitely hitting on something -- he has the ardent following to prove it. Gawker, even if sardonically, posts about his exploits often -- even going so far as to offer him a forum for posting of his exploits himself at least once. I consider myself neither a fan nor a hater. I'm an interested bystander. I was interested when discussion of Marie Calloway and Lin's role in publishing "Adrien Brody" and corresponding with its author broke a week or two ago. Then, despite its circular tendencies and refusal to take a specific position without contradicting that position, I quite enjoyed Janey Smith's reaction on Big Other.

Tao Lin is a curiosity, and as Janey Smtih notes in greater depth than I plan to go in here, he seems to deftly understand the importance of being great at getting attention. Everything else can be viewed as subjective in the marketplace, other than the plan fact of what sells. Tao Lin and Muumuu House sell, and much as I'm loath to admit it, Jordan Castro and the rest of the young Muumuuvian disciples are wise to get on board with this promotional machine. I'm sure it could be counted on one hand those people who know who Amelia Gray is or who Michael Kimball is or Blake Butler, even, but don't know of Tao Lin. If it's a shame that this is the case the best you'll be able to argue is for something subjective.

Of course it's crass to say because Lin has followers he also has merit. Fine, it's crass. So what? It's no less true. And even though I didn't much care for the substance of "Shoplifting From American Apparel," the first of Lin's books I've been able to get a copy of and read. It is fairly straightforward. It follows characters who are undoubtedly stand-ins for Tao and his gang, a fact all but revealed expressly in his Gawker piece cited above. He's simultaneously aware of the kind of "movement oriented" nature of his position in this place in history, having characters remark to one another that they'll be no doubt referred to as the "blogniks," or some such media-driven expression to place them in the popular imagination of whatever discrete realm of pop culture they fit into. In so saying, he also has a hand in sort of positioning himself in this categorization, while also removing himself from it somewhat, by having his characters play aloof and dismissive of the idea.

So to the subjective, then, what can I make of "Shoplifting From American Apparel"? It's unlike anything I've ever seen only because of the discussion that surrounds it. But that's kind of fitting, in this day and age. When "reality" is yoked to television shows that are only real to the extent that their characters are marketable it's fitting that a major alt lit hero / pillar would be more worthy of praise for the things he elicits outside of his work and not from the work itself. Besides, he doesn't have time to entertain you with the outmoded medium of reading. I mean, there's just enough in there to keep you in it to the end, but the payoff there is minimal. Satire isn't part of it. Embracing a certain kind of commercialism certainly is, a certain commercialism lifestyle filled with iced coffees and vegan smoothies. All of this is to say Tao Lin knows what he's doing.

I think it's fitting I read Sam Pink just prior to reading Lin. They share many affinities but where Pink seeks if nothing else than to explore through his stories Lin is comfortable leaving the exploration tangential, as a reactionary aside to his life outside of writing or any art form whatsoever. Fair is fair, though, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention his literary forebears. No doubt the Beatniks were of a similar mind, Kerouac and Neal Cassady on the road.  The blogniks pun is extremely apt if a little on the nose. Certainly, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. And last, but perhaps most apt of all, the literary Brat Pack of Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInierney renown. I can't help feeling, given their tendency to stay put and write about what was around them, the urban jungle of the 1980s, that there is more than a slight connection. Tao Lin's contemporary version of commercial culture is only slightly more terrifying and only because his characters seem to so earnestly and unthinkingly embrace it (and maybe that's the point). Reading about them left me feeling nothing, emoting nothing, empty of feeling, which might be where Lin diverges from all the other literary groups I mention. There's a catatonic quality to everything there, which to his credit freaks me out. If his goal was to freak me out with his emotionless writing he did accomplish that.

That's not to say it didn't have parts I thought were really strong. I liked the lockup scene, after Sam is arrested for shoplifting from American Apparel. I thought that was where some of the most heft of the story was found, in the visceral reaction of the inmates to one another and to their eventual pugnacious lockup partner, a man who was locked up for fighting in a Starbucks. He'd apparently gone there to go to the bathroom after a more verbal altercation with his assailant at the Bar he'd been at. It reeks of something true and honest, even if it's totally made up. Sam seems to understand that this is an important moment for him but he can't seem to understand how or why. The lack of serious introspection is further horrifying.

There's much to be horrified by in the works of Tao Lin.

And maybe it's good or maybe it's bad.

But those are pretty subjective things. after all.

First Read On E-Reader: "Person" by Sam Pink

All right, before you judge me for having a kindle fire manufactured by the evil Amazon.com corporation, you should know that I'm very happy with its performance and that that should somehow make up for the terrible things Amazon.com does to competition in the arena of the free market.

Don't be evil and try your best not to be complicit. I will try harder.

No more questions!

***

(Brief parenthetical aside: I still like and plan to purchase paper books, often from used bookstores. This is what I tell myself and I know it to be true! Besides it's too hard for me to highlight passages and annotate margins on the e-reader. Paper books beat 'em where that's concerned.) 

***

I read "Person" by Sam Pink. It's an unusual tale that reminds me somewhat of Daniil Kharms' disjointedness. Absurdity coupled with vague sense of the tragedy inherent in things being what they are and not necessarily logical. It's still funny, yes, but there's melancholy, too. Nobody can avoid the melancholy. You'd better learn how to cope with melancholy. It's a part of this. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, either.

A line I can imagine being in "Person" would go something like, "I met a student who was pre-med. He looked like he would be my doctor someday. He would always be the same way, and I might be a little bit different."

Here's another handful of lines actually from the novel and not just put upon it:

There's an advertisement for junior college along the inside of the train.

The ad features a smiling man holding books.

He looks nice.

One day I will figure out which stop the junior college is at and then I will go there and meet this man and we will help each other through life.  

Pink seems concerned with the various superficiality of everyday life, and more to the point, the ephemerality that defines the superficial. The people you meet on the street aren't always going to be there. In fact, they'll be a part of your life far less time than the people you know, the difference between a year and a millennium. Those fleeting, superficial interactions tend to be the real and true microcosm of life and living. They constitute the people you knew in high school, say, and now only know on Facebook, if you know them at all. If you ever knew them at all.

Also, everything in the novel is February. A nice and cold month devoid of feeling. January might've also worked were it not too closely removed from Christmas and obviously New Year's (despite familial issues, unless something very negative happened to you at this time of year it's generally pretty positive, energy wise). Nobody cares about Valentine's Day. It's either too commercial or too lonely or both. Those things make it a sad holiday foisted on the public, and accordingly, it tends to be an afterthought -- even to those who enjoy it. It does not come up in "Person," which whether intentional or not, I agree with.

There's one epitomizing moment in which the unnamed narrator is confronted by his overly extroverted landlord, a landlord who wants all the building's tenants to be like family, and the landlord shows off a Halloween decoration she got at a discount because of its being so completely out of season. It does the thing it's supposed to do, this werewolf statue thing, apparently wiggling its arms staccato-like. More interestingly, the unnamed narrator does what he's supposed to, which is feign a kind of interest. He is a person enough to understand this nuance of human interaction.

There's also the sense of David Markson I felt in Pink's novel. In particular "Wittgenstein's Mistress" is very much felt. Take the plot of "Wittgenstein's Mistress" and put it in a world populated by other people, with a male narrator, and you have a nice, different sort of post-apocalyptic narrative. This is what I think Sam Pink fairly deftly achieves. The language is often terse and never overly florid, but it has this way of expressing a great deal. It makes you think and feel in a different way, a way that's purposely uncomfortable but, as you move through the narrative, you begin to find a kind of comfort, call it making do, with the lifestyle of the narrator, his nomadic existence. It's troubling but pleasing. It doesn't seem so bad. It seems like you don't always have complete control over your own fate, but you have some control over it, and with that you make what you will.

It's a fun read in the way that coming to terms with yourself and yourself in the grand scheme of things can be fun, when looked at from a certain kind of angle. 

rowan university

Peterbd gave me a little history lesson re: the history of the fine educational institution Rowan University. All of this is the god's honest truth. "Merry Christmas to you." - Frank Sinatra

i met a guy yesterday who graduated from rowan university.

he was like "wanna here how rowan university came to be?"

and i was like "no"

and he was like "listen anyway"

and i was like "ok"

and he was like:


jerome rowan was a billionaire from somewhere in europe and was incredibly tired of living in europe.

so jerome left europe in 1921 and decided to come to america. "america doesn't have stoopid

poopy head people like in europe" said jerome aloud. when jerome arrived in new york,

he decided to move to new jersey because the rent in williamsburg was high even for the 1920s.

"i'm a fucking billionaire" said jerome. "i'm gonna conquer new jersey and show those 

williamsburg hipsters who's boss." "but how you gonna do that big daddy" said jerome's lover (at

the time). "you don't know a damn thing about academics." "get outta my house!" said jerome.

"anybody who doesn't believe in my abilities and doesn't love everything about me, needs to 

get out of my life. so get out!" jerome's lover (at the time) later moved to the west coast

and had a tragic end as the black dahlia. 


then i was like "so what's the point of this story. how did rowan university come to be?"

and the guy was like "hush up. i'm just gettin to the good part"


jerome unfortunately became addicted to crack in 1923 and blew all his billions. crack was 

expensive in the 1920's so this was an extremely possible outcome. "what am i gonna do?"

said jerome. "i blew all my billions and can no longer give the middle finger to those hipsters

by building a university in new jersey". but just then, someone heard him. this someone was 

craig rowan. craig was so inspired by jerome's sermon that he vowed to help him build the university

of his dreams. "just stay off the rock dude" said craig. "can do" said jerome. "but what's the catch?"

"there's no catch" said craig. "just make sure to name it rowan university". "my 1st girlfriend's

name was rowan and i loved her alot." "can do" said jerome. the end 


then i was like "so what's the moral of this story? what's so great about rowan university?"

and the guy was like "matt rowan is part of the rowan lineage"

and i was like "but who's lineage? jerome's, craig's or craig's 1st girlfriend whom he loved dearly?"

and the guy was like "that's the thing. nobody knows."

and i was like "interesting. that's hella crazy"

and the guy was like "yup. bye"

and i was like "bye"

Too Friendly, Detailed Form Rejection

So this is what passes as a form rejection down at Eclectica Magazine:
UPDATE: Given Ellen's considered response in the comments I feel it's useful to point out here and now that while I disapprove of the following I don't mean to indict Eclectica for it in specific -- just offer my opinion for why I disagree with this practice and using Eclectica's as an example of the practice in action. Certainly Eclectica is a fine publication and they are also not the only publication to reject in this fashion.)

Dear Matt, 

Thank you for your submission to Eclectica Magazine.  After careful consideration, I have decided not to select it for publication. There are many possible reasons for why a particular piece isn't selected, and I regret that I am unable, given time constraints, to offer further explanation as to which of those reasons applied to your work. I will say that you're in good company; as always, there were many authors and many pieces that I would have liked to include. 

Best of luck with your writing and in finding a home for this work. I appreciate your support of online literature in general and Eclectica in particular, and I hope you'll try us again in the future. 

Sincerely,
Tom // Eclectica

Don't get me wrong. I understand the good intent here. Or I think I do. But it's still misguided / misplaced if you ask me. If you decide to reject someone in a form way make it a form. Don't attempt being personal because that makes you seem like those dishonest salespeople who pretend they're all about good relations and honest sales practice but then find ways to subtly lose your confidence, allusions to things that suggest their inventory is limited and demand has been high, and sort of disingenuously pressuring you to buy. It's like either you be cold and streamlined, literary publication, or you legitimately put the legwork into actually being warm and friendly. This "happy medium" is unsettling and perplexing and makes me want to ralph on you, on one of you.

Want Your Interest for a Minute

I'm just gonna fire right into this one. Went to Ear Eater for the first time yesterday. Apparently it's a reading usually held in a house and not a bar such as the Uptown Lounge, where it was held yesterday. But not this time, because it WAS held at the Uptown Lounge and it was hosted by Colin Winnette, who could quite possibly be the nicest person in the world. He should be in the running for that prize. And I don't mean that in some proto-Nietzschean (in which goodness is weakness), backhanded compliment sort of way. I mean that while I wish I were the nicest person in the world, Colin Winnette actually IS the nicest person in the world. So read his book! (read that also because he's a really good, up-and-coming writer.)

But also, at Ear Eater, some great writers. No surprise that Zach Dodson and A D Jameson were great. Love those guys. Zach Dodson read of England and bacon-ey chocolates to be had therein and Jameson read of a "great" friend whom he felt the need to disparage ad nauseam poetically.

It was Sara Levine who was my wild card, slated as the third reader in the group. But wow! She read a chapter from her forthcoming novel, "Treasure Island!!!" and WOW. Wow, I can't wait for this book. I need it and will have it. As will my girlfriend. We will each get copies. I will get one for her and then I will get one for me.

Meanwhile,

I had a few stories published, HERE and HERE.

Some items

A few things, though it is exhausting to have to bother with actually typing these posts and then getting to the "publish post" button, a button I want to call "click post" for some reason I can't explain.

1.) Untoward Magazine will be having its one-year anniversary reading on December 14th at the Beauty Bar in Chicago, IL. So save that date! Or be square.

2.) Mason Johnson is up to his old tricks with P. Fanatics, and I will be a part of this next one. Ben Tanzer and I plan to team up to do something potentially real nice. I know with B-Tanz involved, at least half of what we do will be good. The other half will be me, which is sort of a mixed bag as that goes. Anyway that happens at Cole's Bar on Milwaukee, November 13th. Be there, or sadly don't. Its start time is always approximately 7:30pm.

3.) I story of mine was published on Red Fez this month! I've included a link in my sidebar of publications there, but I'll post one here too! This is to the issue in total. Read other people's great work. Red Fez has too much great writing. It'd almost be a problem if it wasn't great. http://www.redfez.net/

4.) I will have several more stories coming out in the very near future, which I will tell you about as they happen. Thanks for reading.