An interview and a game

I. The mighty Ed Champion interviewed me last week for his Bat Segundo Show—and it's online now! We met at the Metro Diner on 100th Street, where I ate half a stack of blueberry pancakes. Ed had a bagel.

Topics discussed: Personal Days, my unpublished novels (The Diet of Worms and Dementia Americana!), B.S. Johnson, Harry Stephen Keeler, Mark Moskowitz, The PTSNBN, and much more!

II. The mighty Scott David Herman has devised a game using the cover of Personal Days!

The Anatomy of Squandermania

I. "The Oblivion Arms"—one of the long, long-lost tales in my longer, longer-loster novel Dementia Americana—comes to a conclusion over at Five Chapters. I've enjoyed seeing it out there, and hope to publish more of DA soon...

II. Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy plays a big role in the "Arms"...and I'm not the only one obsessed! My sage and deeply hilarious Poetry Foundation colleague Don Share's recent book of poems, Squandermania, is also Burtonized to the max. Check out Erin Belieu's take in Boston Review:

Much like its ancestor, Squandermania springs from a gigantic, nearly overwhelming frame of reference, moving relentlessly from arcane economic and scientific theories (“ontogeny // recapitulates phylogeny,” or Gary Becker’s Rotten Kid Theorem) to Greek colloquialisms (“ardzi, bourdzi, and loulas”) to lesser-known Latin phrases and popular films. Dr. Evil’s “Boo-fricking-hoo,” from the Austin Powers movies, shares a property line with a reference to signum prefixum. No borough of thought or culture is off the map in Share’s verse; the imagistically goofy, grand, and obscure are all put to his poems’ service.

III.
The other inspiration I can recall for "The Oblivion Arms" was Maurice Maeterlinck's Life of the White Ant.

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for May 15, 2008

I. Some diverse Dzyd writings! First off, Levi on the art of the poet's notebook, at the Poetry Foundation:

Despite the best intentions, poets cannot spend every waking moment writing poetry. Life and the stuff of the world are always conspiring against them, offering up laundry to be folded, garlic to be minced, blogs to be read, children to be dressed. But all the while, the mind races; what is one to do with its scattered, variegated fruits, what poet Gabriel Gudding calls “[m]y many many 5 minute ideas”?

II. And here's Jessica, on procrastination (part of a package at Slate)—specifically the "prolonged anticlimaxes" of Ralph Ellison and Truman Capote:

What is the difference between severe procrastination and writer's block? Are they part of one continuum, like a Möbius strip?

III. I'm still blogging at Powell's! My wrists are falling off! Sample mystifying sentence:

I'm so glad I went with what I'm going to call my "Darnielle opening," because there are so many ways I can go with it. I feel like (mandatory obscure sports reference) Joe Cribbs!

IV. The fourth installment of "The Oblivion Arms" is up at Five Chapters today—entitled, after Burton, "Act Three: The Third Partition: 'Love-Melancholy'"...It contains what might be my favorite part of the story, a sequence in which Murray Adipose watches an aerobics show on TV. Sample:

"And two. And three. And once more to the right and take it up. And down."

BONUS: It also contains an Ouroboros (I think I've pasted this here before):

Her finger, trailing across the wall, gathered a heap of dust that fell, with a dreamy slowness, to the floor. She found herself looking at a scrap of the underlying wallpaper, most of which had been painted over in a graying white. The paper was patterned with the hotel's emblem: embedded letters, an A within an O, the latter composed of three bolts of lightning, the former a serpent that looped to bite its own tail.

Chapter Three...

...of "The Oblivion Arms," my circa 1998 novella (let's call it a novella!), is up at Five Chapters! Excerpt:

There was a lot to watch that night. There was a special on Do Insects Sleep? There were, separately, specials on the coral snake, the narwhal, the bedbug, the ibex, the Siberian tiger, the narwhal again, the chameleon, a llama-like creature that shat heaps of perfectly round pellets, the tree frog, the stegosaurus, the hantavirus, the Bactrian camel, and the other kind of camel. There was a special on Micronesia, Japan, Turkey, Tierra del Fuego; there was a special on Windsor, Ontario....

UPDATE: I blog about "The Oblivion Arms"—and the Mountain Goats, Carl Wilson's Celine book, and more—at Powell's.

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for May 12, 2008

I. My story "The Oblivion Arms" (just a touch over a decade old) is being serialized at Five Chapters—read the first installment today! Sample line: "Murray came upon his wife in the nook, absorbed in her delectus." (I wonder why it was never published?)

You can register to win a free copy of Personal Days by e-mailing editor@fivechapters.com. Or you can just pre-order the thing!

II. Dzyd Martin on BASE Jumping! It sounds dangerous. I'll just watch.

III. Some good entries in the "Phonograph on the Wireless" contest over at Izzy's blog. I thought of some more:

Nattering Silhouettes
The Pony Express
Cuneiform

Any others???

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for May 11, 2008

I. Levi's on a roll...Among other things, he brings news of a possible Ouroboros sighting—from the files of Hard Case Crime:

[HCC mastermind Charles] Ardai is currently writing Hard Case's fiftieth book, Fifty-to-One, to be published under his own name at the end of the year. Unexpectedly, it's a comedy, written in fifty chapters, each named after a Hard Case Crime novel. That qualifies as Oulipean, if just barely . . . but--question for Ed--might it also count as an Ouroboros? Especially once you see that the cover features tiny versions of a bunch of the Hard Case covers?

II. James takes Oliver bowling.

III. I've been updating ed-park.com with the latest reviews...including this nice one from the Guardian.

IV. What am I going to blog about at Powell's?? This begins tomorrow. Also tomorrow, my longish story (or shortish novella) "The Oblivion Arms" goes up at Five Chapters...it is from the unpublished novel Dementia Americana. (Another bit of it, "T.H.C.," appeared in LIT #12 last year.) A very different sort of novel from Personal Days...or is it?

V. This plug required by law: Pre-order Personal Days!

Ouroboros: Juvenilia

"Her finger, trailing across the wall, gathered a heap of dust that fell, with a dreamy slowness, to the floor. She found herself looking at a scrap of the underlying wallpaper, most of which had been painted over in a graying white. The paper was patterned with the hotel’s emblem: embedded letters, an A within an O, the latter composed of three bolts of lightning, the former a serpent that looped to bite its own tail." —E. Park, "The Oblivion Arms" (ca. 1999)

"Three Junes"!

From the office of Dizzyhead ED—












Dear shareholders:

Over the upcoming BEA weekend, I'll be appearing (?!?) twice—

If you're wandering the convention floor on Saturday morning, swing by this panel featuring A Public Space's Brigid Hughes, Granta's Matt Weiland, and me.

If you're stumbling about the East Village on Sunday evening, ready to check out the remainder table at St. Mark's, save your $ and come to KGB (!!!!), where I'll be reading from my novel in progress (!?!), The Dizzies—in celebration of———the 100th (!) issue of BOMB magazine (!!!!!)————

It would be fun to see you...

And now—the details!

1.
BEA Panel: "The Leap to Debut: The Widening Transition Gap From Short Form Periodicals to First Fiction"
Saturday, June 2, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Javits 1E04
Moderated by Edward (!?) Nawotka

2.
Reading: "BOMB Magazine 100th Issue Celebration"
Sunday, June 3, 7 p.m.–9 p.m., KGB, 85 East 4th St.
With Rivka Galchen and Jill Bialosky

* * *

But wait—there's more.

A third date has just been added!

(The truth is it took me so long to compose the above message that I just heard I'll be reading again!)

I'll be joining Stephanie Anderson, Rebecca Wolff, Ishmael Beah, and Sampson Starkweather on Wednesday, June 13, from 6 to 10 p.m. at Wollman Hall (New School), 66 W 12th St. It's a pub party for the latest issue of LIT, which contains a story of mine (part of the unpublished epic Dementia Americana).

Take care,
Ed


Punctuation provided by Punk28on S2diozzz
Beverages provided by Jamba Juice Omnimedia Ltd.