Rachel Aviv tops "20 Top Nonfiction Writers Under 40"!

Yes, I know, the list (at the New Haven Review) is in alphabetical order, but still! (Hold onto your hats—R.A. could qualify for the top 20 under thirty.) Here are some Avivian Blvr. pieces.

The list also includes Ta-Nehisi Coates, Josh Glenn who turned 42 yesterday, Lindy West (whom I started reading this year, hilarious), Brendan Koerner, and many authors who have written for The Believer, some of whom I've edited: Tom Bissell, Eula Biss, Chuck Bissterman I mean Chuck Klosterman, Joshua "Witz" Cohen, John D'Agata, Touré...Gideon Lewis-Kraus...I am probably missing some...

...the writer behind the list, NHR editor Mark Oppenheimer, is also a Believer contributor—check out his great piece on Evan Connell from 2005.

Yes!

Rachel Aviv has won a Rona Jaffe award!

Isn't she great?! Here is her superminimalist new website, with a selection of her stories (some of which appeared in The Believer and the PTSNBN and at the Poetry Foundation website).

(Here she is interviewing me.)(Wow, I'm just sort of skimming it now, I forgot I talked so much about Julian Jaynes!)(This is a wide-ranging interview! Thanks to Rachel.)

True love revolution.

I like how Rachel Aviv's new website looks like the cover (front and back) of a retrospective album, Stories and Essays, by an austere synth-and-guitar corps (cryptically named "Rachel Aviv"), ca. 1986–1991.

This essential album includes Listening to Braille," "Toastmaster," "Enter Sandman," and "Nightmare on Orchard Street," plus other legendary tracks.

Avoid homonyms

Rachel Aviv in this month's Harper's (subscription required):

Last summer, forty Christian missionaries, members of the Child Evangelism Fellowship, roamed the housing projects of Connecticut telling children the condensed and colorful story of Jesus’ life. The goal was salvation, but the missionaries rarely used that long word. They employed monosyllabic language and avoided abstract concepts and homonyms. “Holy” was a problem, the missionaries said, as children thought it meant “full of holes.” “Christ rose from the dead” was also tricky because children mistook the verb for a flower.

(Rachel has just been named a recipient of a Carter Center fellowship for mental health journalism.)

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for January 6, 2008

I. Dzyd Dennis on David Fincher:

There is also the matter of his technical virtuosity, which tends to inspire both admiration and suspicion. A teenage apprentice at George Lucas’s effects house, Industrial Light and Magic, and then a hotshot director of commercials and music videos (including a brace of enormously influential ones for Madonna, at the height of her image-making powers), Mr. Fincher has always been in the business of expensive illusion and manufactured beauty. To call him a superficial stylist misses the point; in many of his films the surface is the substance. It is easy to get lost in — and perhaps as a result, to underestimate — the sheer sensory pleasures of his movies: their dynamic compositions and kinetic rhythms, sinuous camera movements and seamless digital wizardry. —NYT

II. The NYT's Education Life features pieces by PTSNBN EdSupp mainstays Rachel and Christine...niiiice....

III. My sources tell me that new New-York Ghosts have been sighted...

IV. The smell is back! (Via Jane)

V. Forthcoming from Knopf—what if it had been about the drink?

APR 1: Three Hundred Tang Poems.
A new translation of a beloved anthology of poems
from the golden age of of Chinese culture.
Edited and translated by Peter Harris.
An Everyman's Library title.
256 pages. $13.50 ISBN 978-0-307-26973-7

Monday warmup

I. Another nice mention of PD from Moonlight Ambulette (with bonus clip from 9 to 5!).

II. Dzyd Rachel has a...blog? More like a gathering of all (or most) of her excellent pieces from the last few years, many of which (for the Blvr., V.V., and TPF) I've had the pleasure of editing...Quick picks: Russell Hobson, high-IQ societies, the mysterious "Footprints" author, and the perils and pleasures of public speaking...amazing!

III. In The Stranger, Paul Constant reports on the return of L. Ron Hubbard's early fiction: "Many reviewers—myself included—have extolled the glories of pulp fiction, and this series provides a good opportunity to make something perfectly clear: Most pulp fiction is awful crap that was cranked out in order to make a fast buck. Hubbard's fiction is the worst of that dreck."

IV.

Roth says he spent most of his time at Sony working on his own projects, sketching logos on the company stationery and making long-distance phone calls from his desk. One day, someone from personnel called him into the office. Roth was sure he’d be fired. When he sat down, the executive complimented him on his productivity and offered him a full-time position. “I was just floored,” Roth told me. “I couldn’t imagine anybody doing less than I was doing.” Not only did Roth turn down the promotion, he quit his job. —Saki Knafo (a/k/a the Greatest Journalist in the World), "Soul Reviver," NYT Magazine

V. At the LAT, Dzyd Carolyn remembers the late Forrest Ackerman...She also links to the Book Design Review's rundown of the year's best covers...It's perhaps not inappropriate for me to say that the Personal Days cover should have been on that list?!



It's even more eye-popping as an actual object...Perhaps it's time to get a few copies for gifts? (Click here for wild PD contest info!) Buy the book of which the aformentioned Paul Constant writes, "Every word belongs exactly where it is."

Kite — Hell — Doubles — Footprints

Williamsburghers! You have a rare chance to catch the elusive "B. Kite" in action!

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About how many things can it be said: “It came out of the gate finished”? —NYT

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Alan Gilbert vs. Alan Gilbert—who would win???

(The latter is blogging up a storm at Harriet, along with new Harrieteers Travis Nichols and Buffalo native Mark Nowak. Exciting!)

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Emily Warn: Can we think of "Footprints" as Christian conceptual poetry? (See Dzyd Rachel's original piece.)

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I am a stub. (UPDATE: No longer?!)

TONIGHT! "Personal Days" at Happy Ending — TRIPLE CANOPY MEGA-SIZED INTERVIEW

I. Tonight! I'll be reading from Personal Days at Happy Ending, which is at 302 Broome St. @ Forsyth — you take the B/D to Grand, or the F/J/M/Z to Delancey. (Wait—there's a Z train?!)

Doors at 7! (Not these kinds.) Event at 8! I'm reading with Rivka Galchen and Craig Morgan Teicher! (Rumors have been floating that a ukulele will be wielded, that voices will be lifted plaintively to the rafters. I cannot confirm these rumors at this time.)

II. Rachel Aviv! Is great! Our longish e-mail dialogue, which she masterfully directed, is in the latest issue of Triple Canopy, an excellent new web publication (of which she is an editor).

It was a very different experience from being interviewed by phone or in person; many of my responses were typed out late at night, and I found myself thinking in ways that might not have been possible in the bright light of day...a different sort of clarity, an insomniac's clarity. (I am more emphatic when I type than when I speak.) In "Only Connect," Rachel and I talk—er, type—about process, metaphor, Keeler, Julian Jaynes, my abandoned oeuvre, the web, "bad art," and more. (Plus: SATURNHEAD!)

Happy Ending/Ouroboric twist: This issue of Triple Canopy also features Rivka's "Case Notes of a Medical Student, East Harlem Psychiatric ER, Winter 2002."

Table-talk for March 14, 2008

I.
The Other Ed organized a bloggers' roundtable on Nicholson Baker's latest book, Human Smoke, which ran on his site this week. Lots of interesting dialogue (and a small contribution from this Ed)...and today, Baker himself concludes the discussion!

II.
On Hey Dullblog—which is anything but dull!—Euge finally answers the trivia question that's had Beatlemaniacs stumped for weeks. You remember:

Over the decades, each of the Beatles worked on a musical collaboration that included a member of Black Sabbath (there have been 29). Name at least one such project for each of the four Beatles. Hint: Don't fear the snot running down the reaper's nose.

Eh?!

Click here for the answers.

III.
As soon as we touched down, guy on plane was on his cellphone or rather his Blackberryish device, saying EVERYTHING THREE TIMES: "Brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant." "See you, buddy...See you soon, buddy....see you, buddy." "Great. Great. Great."

IV.
DVDs brought on trip: Rules of the Game, The Power of Nightmares (disc 2), Gilmore Girls Season Four Disc Four.
DVDs watched on trip: Gilmore Girls Season Four Disc Four (first two episodes)

V.
Up at the Poetry Foundation, Dizzyhead Rachel looks at Grace Paley's poetry career:

Paley often spoke of her own indolence (“I laze. I mean really hang out”) and was rarely able to write pieces longer than five or six pages. She blamed it on her temperament: she was fairly happy.

Dinosaur Jr. — The Empire never ended — Menashe vs. Roth

Musical Dino

Feb. 12, 2008 -- A massive beach-dwelling, plant-eating dinosaur in Mexico might have produced music, according to the international research team that analyzed its fossils and identified it as a new species from south of the border. —Discovery News

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Dadistan goes sci-fi.

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Over at Nextbook, Dizzyhead Rachel talks to Samuel Menashe:

About thirty years ago, I met Philip Roth. I stepped out of a gallery on Madison Avenue, and he was walking on the sidewalk so I boomed off, “There goes Philip Roth, enemy of the Jews!”

Line drive

Dizzyhead Rachel is in the running for lede of the week:

"Sixteen students sat around a table in the Manhattan cafeteria of the New School discussing where commas should go." (NYT, Education Life, "One Generation Got Old, One Generation Got Soul")

Nice! And this deadpan reporting is pure Aviv:

One student thought the phrase “we accept all persons” should be broadened to cover animals. Another worried that the word “delineation” was alienating because “it means drawing lines, and don’t we object to lines?” The only sentence everyone seemed to support wholeheartedly was the final one: “Power to the People!”

A near truth

Remember Dizzyhead Rachel's article on the disputed authorship of the poem "Footprints"?
Now two of the claimants have written comments. (One signs off with "Child Prodigy-World Renowned Faith Poet-Author.")

In related news: Who wrote "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"?

Dizzies Newsfeeds for November 21

What's the "best remunerated poem in history"? Dizzyhead Rachel sifts through the competing author theories for the Christian verselet "Footprints," with some fascinating excursions into the realm of cryptomnesia...Termite Artist Matt on Lust, Caution (smartly comparing it to Black Book) and...Ruthless People?! (invoking Roger Ebert's definition of "idiots")...Isn't it time you enjoyed an episode of Cavemen?...Best line in a recent e-mail: "I'm on my third Sam Adams in the Pittsburgh airport..."...Josh Glenn has a great slideshow on the possible cinematic influence of Winsor McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend...(For one more film reference and some literary ones, check out this piece by Parkus Grammaticus)...Look at how I persist in neither italicizing nor enquoting names of comic strips...J.G. also takes aim at a very specific fetish found in the oeuvre of certain Boston-based rock legends—including my beloved Modern Lovers:

(Bonus trivia: Did you know that David Lee Roth was from the Beantown area?)

Dizzies Newsfeeds for November 5

It's a Dizzyhead Ed-Supp ("Edlife"?!) in the Times: Christine answers your questions....Rachel: “These are the quietest classes you’ll ever be in."....Sweeney on a samurai movie, Love and Honor: "Emotions burble, framings are precise, katanas get polished, and the plot flows smoothly until the ritualized duel that may restore Shinnojo's dignity"...In music news: Psychic Envelopes have posted the track listing for Cryspace, available incrementally on their MySpace page. (The second installment has just gone up.)...The Spinster Aunt investigates old Nancy Drew adaptations....Jane Dark on Michael Clayton: "With his blocky size, his surfeit of charisma and screen gravitas, Clooney looks like something beyond the mere human, like he has swallowed every leading man in Hollywood and perhaps had Casey Affleck for a palate cleanser."...Someone remind me to return my library books....

Will the circle be unbroken?

Astral Weeks subject John Crowley reads Dizzyhead Rachel!

(Coming soon: Part 2 of my trip through Crowley's Aegypt.)

Multimedia Friday

For a Nosey Parker it's an interesting job: Ukuleles vs. recorders!

(Via Jenny D)

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"I drove down to Buffalo just to see it." —David Cronenberg, 1982

(Via Alterna-Ed)

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Seduction theory: Dizzyhead Rachel looks at Oliver Sacks's Musicophilia:

For others, music means nothing. William James called music totally "useless," a collection of "plinking noises," and Vladimir Nabokov wrote that concerts affected him "merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds." Sacks labels these two, as well as Darwin, Freud and Ulysses Grant, potential victims of "amusia." When discussing Freud's case, Sacks suggests that perhaps Freud, who wrote that he cannot be "moved by anything without knowing why I am thus affected," is "resisting" music's seduction.

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Monday, October 1

Time to pick up the October Believer, which features an interview with the great Adrian Tomine (whose graphic novel Shortcomings is just out; he'll be signing at that store in Brooklyn on Wednesday I think?), a conversation between Dizzyhead/Psychic E. singer/Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape author Sarah Manguso and short-short story wizard Amy Hempel, and Dizzyhead Rachel's fascinating piece on dream researcher Allan Hobson...oh and also a short review by me! (on Selah Saterstrom's The Meat and Spirit Plan)...and much, much more™...Levi on The Eustace Diamonds...No Image Available: my novel, Personal Days, has popped up on Amazon (it's not out till May)...For Beatles fans: Let it Be...Dissected! (via Mike Gerber)...Paul Hornschemeier has a blog...DizzyhEd Halter went to the Housing Works sale and unearthed a "gem from 1955: Keen Teens: 101 Ways to Make Money by Stookie Allen (including an early glimpse of SF writer Joanna Russ)...Keep those likes/dislikes coming...

Domino dancing

1. Memories of Pop With a Shotgun: Fab Four, Howard Stern, David Thomson, and more.

2. Great Onion piece: "Earthquake Sets Japan Back to 2147." Sample line: "The prime minister said that the greatest effort would be exerted on rebuilding the Procross Buster Quasigravitic Lensing Frame, the motive force behind Japan's automated network of roads, aerobuildings, and levitation canals."

3. Nice pic of a jar of rubber cement!

4. Levi weighs in on the ouroboros and more (NSFW!)...

5. Rachel in the Times on a two-person abstinence society at Harvard. The piece contains the classic line: "He redirects his attention toward his fajitas."

(Accidentally double-clicking that last word got me: "A dish consisting of strips of marinated meat, poultry, or vegetables that are grilled over an open fire and served in a tortilla, usually with spicy condiments. Often used in the plural.")

6. This NYT headline today led me to my first iTunes purchase in a while—does anyone remember this?

"April Wine" now appears right before "Arcade Fire" on my iTunes. There's a line in French toward the end of the song; what if all Canadian groups had to include a line in French in every song (or a song entirely in French, à la the Arcade Fire's "Une Année Sans Lumiére," on every album)?

"I know it’s tempting to stay and meet these blonde women"

Over at the Poetry Foundation, Dizzyhead Rachel looks into the strange success of Rumi.

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Atkinson: " I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see and read everything I already have."

Podium jitters — exquisite boredom — Sammy Davis Melville — new Believer sort of ROCKS

The new Believer is out, with some great stuff, including Dizzyhead Rachel's wonderful piece on public speaking and Dizzyhead Stubes's look at the "new" Philip K. Dick novel. (The rest of the stuff is by people who do not identify as Dizzyheads, but possibly wish they were Dizzyheads.) Don't miss Ghita Schwarz's boredom epic, John Freeman's personal take on Updike, Alec Michod's interview with Richard Powers...woah...lots of good stuff here. I tried reading Jack Pendarvis's take on Moby-Dick as written by Sammy Davis Jr. and had to stop three times because I kept laughing. Then I was able to control myself and finished it....also: Chris Bachelder, Steve Burt, David Byrne interviewing Olivia Judson (!), Carrie Brownstein (ex–Sleater-Kinney) interviewing Cheryl Hines (!!)...and more...Only a fraction of this stuff can be seen online, so you might as well subscribe!