Upper-body workouts

La Manguso on Teddy Wayne's Kapitoil vs. Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, for the Tournament of Books:

Postmodernism seems to have let the blood out of half of the bad contemporary American novels, and sentiment masquerades as depth of feeling in the other half—in a naughty moment, Patty and Walter’s son refers to the latter sort of book’s reliance on “descriptions of rooms and plantings.” Franzen gets away with that crack, though, for what Freedom attempts is more ambitious than mere sentiment or mere intellection. It asks us to empathize with its lily-white characters, despite their Volvos and organic gardens and upper-body workouts, despite their chosen confinement in such banal surroundings.

Glimmer of uptick

Kirkus Reviews:

David Shields: “The forthcoming book that I am most excited about is Sarah Manguso’s The Guardians (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, date TBD). I’ve been reading a lot of Emily Dickinson of late, and The Guardians feels to me not only extremely congruent with her work, but also easily able to exist side-by-side with it and not blush. It’s my new favorite book of Manguso’s and her best in my view. The depth of feeling and thought is extraordinary. It’s briefing for a descent into hell. The book goes to hell and back, just barely back, and ends with a tiny glimmer of uptick—not too much, but not too little either. It’s the only affirmation that anyone can offer—astonishingly, we’re here.” David Shields made our Best Nonfiction of 2010 list with Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.

Disambiguations™ for June 3, 2010

New Believer is out! It's really good: Hillary Chute interviews Phoebe Gloeckner...Robert Hass on the new Chinese poetry...Realistically hungry David Shields in conversation with La Manguso...particularly excellent Nick Hornby column and Tom Gauld comic...Bookworm mastermind Michael Silverblatt interviewed by Sarah Fay...Elizabeth Gumport on Elaine Dundy...columnly goodness from J. Pendarvis, G. Marcus, Rose McGowan (!?), reviews by Stephen Burt, Gary Lutz (!?)...much more!

* * *

I think when it was May I said to myself, "How is it already May?" Yesterday I said, "How is it already June?"

* * *

Last night on 2 train from 14th St...

You: Reading at random from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, after having just done a reading with LD herself!
Me: Alarmed but happy to hear Rush's "Fly By Night" pop up on the iPod!

Wait—we are actually the same person!

[File under "Missed Connections" (ed4ed edition)]

Brainwash

I. "She said, only half joking, that she washed her hair a dozen times in the course of reading it: overwhelmed again and again, that was the only way she could clear her head enough to allow her to return to Ishiguro’s world. The novel does have that sort of effect." —Levi Stahl on The Unconsoled (at The Quarterly Conversation)

II. Sarah Manguso's Bookforum syllabus: Writing about not writing.

III. Ed-clone, please go see Destroyer, Locsil, JACK Quartet at Miller Theater tonight come on it's in the friggin' neighborhood no I'm too busy I can't I can't do anything right now I'm burning the candle at both ends, I'm buying more candles, burning 'em, it's candles night and day here but wait Ed (is this Ed or Ed-clone I'm talking to?) you love Destroyer you're always QUOTING IT ON THIS BLOG—

Sittin' on the floor of the bay

From Dzyd Mnglz, some of the most beautiful prose of the day:

Human-sized heart found at the Paw Paw car wash

PAW PAW, Mich. (AP) - A human-sized heart found at a southwestern Michigan car wash has investigators wondering whether it came from a person or an animal. The organ was discovered in a corner of a manual wash bay at Soapy's Car Wash, Paw Paw police said. The owner of the business found it Monday on the floor of the bay, according to WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids and WWMT-TV in Kalamazoo...

Navel academy

At the Louisville Courier-Journal, my former coworker-turned-geniusy-novelist Samantha Hunt has nice things to say about Personal Days.

Other Dzys faves also weigh in, and I get all mysterious about something called Bottomless Belly Button.

"Speaking of": The greatest transition ever? (aka your Weekend Table-Talk)

I. Jenny's mention of Munchman led to me e-mailing video-game expert Ed, who through a series of mental associations then unearthed the Mighty Mouth copyright infringement case:

This 1983 judgment of the District Court of Nebraska found the defendants liable for copyright and trademark infringement of three Midway coin-operated arcade games: “Pac-Man”, “Galaxian”, and “Rally-X.” Midway sold their games to regional distributors, who then sold them to operators, such as arcade owners. The defendants, who were previous operators of Midway games, purchased 10 “copy games” and 3 “conversion kits” and sold them to other retailers. They called the “Pac-Man” imitator “Mighty Mouth,” the Galaxian imitator “Galactic Invaders,” and did not bother to change the name of their copied “Rally-X” game.

(I like the laziness in that last line.)

II. Speaking of Dzyd Ed, here he is on Jerry Lewis's The Total Filmmaker.

III. Dept. of What Am I Talking About?: Yesterday I thundered/joshed—

“I've been on a mild anti-Doors/JM kick for the last, oh, 15 years or so—amazing that in seven short paragraphs, Klinkenborg can make me interested again.”

—and yet also posted at The Millions on Lewis Shiner's Glimpses, which includes some great sequences involving Jim Morrison! This blog is not to be trusted!

IV. Speaking of The Millions: Just noticed that Dzyd/Envelope Sarah's Millions picks went up right after mine: Bonfiglio's books (which for some odd reason I never cottoned to, I should try again) and on James Laughlin's memoir-dossier-thingie (which I've only longed for in bookstores), of which she writes, "It's a made thing, a crafted thing. It's a rescue from the tedium of what happened."

[V. Speaking of Psychic Envelopes/Sarah/"what happened": "Something Happened" and other PE originals are back up at the Myspace page, complete with an annoying "click" starting off two tracks...not part of the recording, but the work of some Myspace gremlin.]

VI. Speaking of Best Reads of the Year, Rivka (Dzyd status: unknown) at Granta feels the same way I do about James Lasdun's The Horned Man:

I’m trying to overcome the grade school favourite band instinct that makes me not want to let any but the truly ‘deserving’ know about James Lasdun’s 2002 novel, The Horned Man. (I feel I don't deserve to know about it, simply because I didn’t already know about it.) Lasdun’s prose is, well: dappled, counter, spare, original, strange. Narrated by an awkward expat literature professor, one who remains steadfastly unaware of being himself the origins of the very mystery bedevilling him, The Horned Man is the descendent of both Saint Augustine and Buster Keaton. It’s odd, unfathomably beautiful, very (very, very, very) funny, charismatic and a shade miraculous.

Saint Augustine and Buster Keaton—together in one sentence at last!

Minimal Table-Talk

If I had a clone and a time machine...

I would send Ed1 back to Saturay to attend the New School's Lolita conference, take a "disco nap," and then go to this FSG Lit Crawl event, which featured multigenre wizard/Psychic Envelope Sarah Mangoozles, my reading twin Rivka Galchen, ex-Buffalonian John Wray, and Wells Tower—a towering talent!

But there is no clone, and there is no time machine...

This Song Is Great

It just popped up on the iPod on Friday and I didn't know what it was (I have a shuffle) and I rewound (?) it about five times...

(I'm not sure about the video...)

Listen for Duran Duran cleverness at 1:25.

Parenthesis of the Day

A group of three "Islamic extremists" put a firebomb in the North London home of Gibson Square publisher Martin Rynja late Saturday night, and were promptly arrested by Scotland Yard in "a preplanned intelligence-led operation," according to a police spokesperson. (The company's offices are in the same building.) —Publisher's Lunch

Dizzies News Service for September 6, 2008

1. Sarah Mangoozles talks to Leonard Lopate about The Two Kinds of Decay—very nice! I'm going to try to embed it right onto The Dizzies!


2. More audio: Dzyd Paul is on NPR today, talking about the spelling reform movement—jumping off his epic "Buzzkill" piece in the current Believer—you can read it all online, but you'll want to have a bound copy or two for further perusal!

3. Dzyd Dennis has a long profile of Michelle Williams in the NYT.

At a low point last year she signed up for night classes in bookbinding and calligraphy. “I was prouder of my little foldout book than of some movies that I’ve made,” she said.

4. And the Dennis-masterminded Moving Image Source featuring the return of the manly Mark Holcomb, plus pieces by Dzyds Rob and Benno (also manly in their way).

5. Dzyd Alex on pollster John Zogby in The Nation. And Wyatt Mason at the Harper's blog picks the latest Triple Canopy (of which Alex is a driving force) as your weekend read.

6. Levi Stahl on John Wyndham. Also: New additions to The Invisible Library, including more titles only found in the books of Nabokov, Powell, Frank Herbert, and more!

7. And in my continuing bid to become the Pierre Menard of the Internet, I have discovered (thanks to a reader) that my "Blogs That Only Lasted for One Post" feature has already been done! But I am not going to look at it...

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for August 14, 2008

I. Your next desktop pattern?

II. Your favorite president—rendered in hair. Is Franklin "Pelano" Roosevelt a beautiful typo?! (Via MUG)

III. Poetry update:

A) Dzyd Carla on memoirs by Manguso and Lavinia Greenlaw.

B) BoingBoing picks up on R. Kikuo Johnson's "Poem as Comic Strip" take on A.E. Stalling's "Recitative"—perfect for summer! Although it's actually not that hot out here these days...

IV. Terry Teachout on Richard Stark, in Commentary—Stark is being republished by University of Chicago Press:

The Hunter” (208 pp., $14 paper), “The Man with the Getaway Face” (224 pp., $14 paper) and “The Outfit” (224 pp., $14 paper) can and should be read in sequence as a trilogy–I would have published them in an omnibus volume–rather than separately.

I read "The Outfit" first, not knowing these three were linked, and there was a chapter of recapping that made me think I'd made the wrong decision...but then it was on with the show!

As I read on in admiration, I formed some mental connections....reading "outfit" in a clothing sense...this was one well-fitting outfit...which reminded me of Sasha Frere-Jones's New Yorker piece on Spoon, and their song "Fitted Shirt"...Though I slightly misremembered SFJ's conclusion ("Daniel is not about to tell jokes or put on a lampshade, and if this makes the band’s performances predictable the effect is balanced by the dignity that comes from self-control")—the dignity/self-control part is certainly true, though The Outfit is pretty unpredictable, especially the rather radical (and exciting!) messing with chronology...a precursor to Pulp Fiction...

Where's the beef?

I. Headline of the day: "Beef dispute confronts Rice on Korean visit." —AP
(From Cousin Jane)

II. Unprecedented? Two weeks, two NYT reviews of books by Psychic Envelopes members!

III. Nomen-omening? "Actor Charles Ogle" appears on Weekend Stubble.

IV. Are Tiger Woods and Roger Federer...Ourobori?

We are talking about a powerful, almost violent swing that puts inordinate stress on a left knee that is about to undergo a third operation within five years....Woods is 32, comfortably in a golfer’s prime. It is nonetheless time to acknowledge that the singular rival he has lacked over the past decade has finally emerged. It is himself.

V. Personal Days = menswear forecaster?

All those symptoms of decay

Is this an Ouroboros? Yesterday, Jenny D e-mailed me to rave about Dzyd/Psychic Envelope Sarah Manguso's forthcoming memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay; later, she posted on Light Reading her reaction to TTKOD—and included the e-mail she sent me. And now I am linking to the post.

How's this for high praise?

I will eat my hat if this book does not win a lot of prizes and sell a lot of copies, it should be on writing class syllabi and on medical school syllabi and generally just pressed into the hands of everyone I know!

Table-talk of Parkus Grammaticus for April 13-14

I. The _________: Dzs Linksmeister-General Thomas sends in Martijn Hendriks's Give Us Today Our Daily Terror, an "[e]xact copy of Hitchcock’s 1963 film The Birds from which all birds have been removed."



II. In the NYT: Going by Marily Stasio's review, a Henry Darger–like character figures in a new crime novel:

The object of unhealthy devotion in THE GENIUS (Putnam, $24.95) isn’t a person, it’s a monumental work of art — some 135,000 drawings comprising a singular vision of a surreal world — discovered when Victor Cracke, the reclusive artist, disappears from the slum apartment where he has spent decades drawing his insane masterpiece and stashing it away in cardboard boxes.

Also: Dzyd/Psychic E. crooner Sarah's "The Cure" is in the magazine's "Lives" section today (an excerpt from her forthcoming book, The Two Kinds of Decay)...The droll Jeff Byles (in last week's City section): "The idea of blocking off streets so children can play rousing games of skelly and the like dates to at least 1916, when worried city officials called for shutting 100 streets in congested areas during certain times of day." (Skelly!)...Also from last week:

The bizarre-looking assemblage, which was once known as Float Bridge No. 4 and which dates to 1911, offers a sharp contrast to the park’s pathways and ornamental grasses, and its presence has not gone unnoticed by local residents.

“It’s junk, and it ought to be removed,” said Jeff Jadin, a retiree who lives in Trump Place, not far from the park, and was staring at the machinery the other day from a bench near the waterfront.... —Martin Pollak, "Hope Floats"

(My Blogger "profile" was taken just up the river...)

III. I'll be doing a pre-publication reading from Personal Days this Wednesday (April 16) at that Keeler-friendly place known as the Mercantile Library, 17 E. 47th St., with Jane F. Kotapish...(I'll be announcing more reading dates shortly—both here and on the soon-to-be unveiled official site, ed-park.com.) ¶ I just got the first copies of the U.K. edition, delightful design!

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...

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for Tuesday, September 25—how is it the last week of September?!

Friend Leland sends in this new bit of one-word poetry, "Lion-eating poet in the stone den," to give "Buffalo buffalo..." a run for its money...New Psychic Envelopes activity—no, not the mega-single "Berlin Wall," but a double cover of Team Knucklehead and some unknown band out of Liverpool!...Finally saw Once, and I concur with Atkinson and the Termites—loved this movie! Termite Matt points out that a version of "Falling Slowly" that stars Glen Hansard (of the Frames) and Marketa Irglova played on The Tonight Show "doesn't have the same heat, the same exhilarating release of energy as the version in Once." The song gets embedded in your head—I was humming it as I walked home—and I think part of the reason is the very canny way it's presented in the film: We watch and listen as Hansard teaches the song to Irglova (they are nameless in the movie), at the back of the music store where she sometimes goes to practice piano; he sings out the parts for her before he starts playing the song proper, and this makes our encounter with the song as fresh as hers (as theirs, really, since this is the first time they've played it together)—we're learning it at the same time...Once opens on Hansard playing Van Morrison's "And the Healing Has Begun"; here's footage of him singing VM's "Astral Weeks"...Dizzyhead L. muses on post-apocalyptic lit—and film—and TV—and music...Dizzyhead Thomas has a blog..."Things I Learned in 2002," a short prose piece by Dizzyhead/Psychic E. chanteuse Sarah is the basis for this terrific short film...She looks Asian!...I have a Dizzyhead meme/contest in the works...STAY TUNED...

The year 1988 was kind of a blur for me

Hot of the presses—in the Times, Dizzies Team Member Hua (has the blog stopped?!) listens to Top Shelf 8/8/88, a hip-hop CD of dubious provenance.

Afrika Baby Bam of the Jungle Brothers, who contributed the track “Back in the Jungle,” which he said was recorded in 2003, dismissed concerns about the authenticity of the project. “We still remember the culture and tradition,” he said. “How much more do you need, outside of the actual date, to make a record as authentic as you would have made on Aug. 8, 1988?”

Other Dizzies Newsfeeds™: Vocabulary via Edmund Gosse via Levi: jobation is "a lengthy and tedious rebuke"...quinduncs are "gossips or busybodies"...Levi's also got some delightful posts on Ring Lardner and Proust via Powell...Am excited for these 145 short-shorts from McSweeney's, three books by Dave Eggers, Deb Olin Unferth, and (Psychic E. singer!) Sarah Manguso....I don't play a lot of video/computer games, but this Fancy Pants adventure is simple and cheering...A new New-York Ghost is out, the nearly one-year-anniversary edition...How long will it last?!...Press release/reminder, I'll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival tomorrow—here is the official listing...it's at "Mainstage (Borough Hall Plaza)":

5:00 p.m. EVERYONE'S A (FORMER) CRITIC.
Three music and arts critics known for their humor discuss what it means to be a critic and the art of writing beyond the review. Featuring popular essayist, memoirist, critic and soon-to-be novelist Chuck Klosterman, Rolling Stone music critic and new memoirist Rob Sheffield, and Believer editor and former Village Voice editor/critic Ed Park whose comic novel Personal Days will be released in 2008.

Dizzies Newsfeeds™ for September 4

1. Today's timewaster, courtesy the Poetry Foundation: Dizzyhead Jessica's roundup of "where poets go online" (including Dizzies faves Cathy Park Hong and Sampson Starkweather, and new Psychic Envelopes vocalist Sarah!)...

2. In the NYT: A delightful review (?) of the new Rolls-Royce (price: $400,000).

Should you be lucky enough to obtain one, would you like it? I found it sublime, although the glovebox is too small for most sizes of the finer mustards.

(I like this sort of wit—the joke that doesn't connect all the dots for you instantly...)

3. Dizzies Team Member R. Emmet Sweeney fondly remembers the Buffalo Drive-In, which closed over the weekend. Another paper also covered the closing—Sweeney's got some issues with it!

A man, a plan, a canal: Avatar

That's Arlo Ogg's Simpsons avatar (as a kid). She also redid mine for me—the hair is more realistic.



Here's Dizzyhead Sarah:



Potterwatch: Only one person spotted with HP&TDH today.

"Of Memory and Distance" — Hou are you?

The third installment of "The Poem as Comic Strip" is up at the Poetry Foundation site. Jeffrey Brown (Clumsy, AEIOU, et al.) does something amazing with a piece by (the already amazing) Russell Edson.

(For more on Edson, read Dizzyhead Sarah's excellent Believer piece, "Why the Reader of Good Prose Poems Is Never Sad.")

* * *

In Cannes news, the Limster weighs in on new films from Assayas and Hou.

Labyrinths, bakeries, and more

1. William Gibson on Borges's Labyrinths (via Ed of the Ranting)—definitely my pick if I could only take one Borges book to a desert island.

Speaking of which, I figured out what I would say if I were allowed only one book, period, to take to a desert island. I would ask for a ukelele (or guitar) chord book, if I were also able to take a uke or guitar as well.

(Wait—why am I thinking I'm about to be marooned on a desert island?)

2. Dizzyhead Mollie's on a roll over at Restricted View: How one publisher mangled Middlemarch.

3. UPDATE: Time to check out the latest issue of Cinema Scope, featuring B. Kite on Rivette, Jessica Winter on Idiocracy . . . (Alas, these pieces aren't available online.)

* * *

4. Brit in Brooklyn was on the scene yesterday after the collapse of Ward Bakery. (Visit the site for more photos.)

* * *

5. Congrats to Dizzyhead Sarah—recipient of the 2007–8 Rome Prize!

6. Have you seen The Norman Rockwell Code?

7. Tomorrow there's a Believer Nighttime Event at the New School. It's part of the PEN World Voices—participants include Miranda July, Uzodinma Iweala, and John Hodgman. (Eric Bogosian is MCing.)

8. Any Humbert Wolfe fans out there?

9. This article about ravens is great!

Their skills when it comes to tricking and cheating, for example, have not been thoroughly explored. Ravens are cunning enough to set up mock hiding places in order to distract their thievish fellows from their real food stores. They're generally very inventive when it comes to tricking those who would snatch away their food. But how much truth is there to reports according to which ravens play dead next to carcasses in order to simulate a case of food poisoning?

(Via Arts & Letters Daily)