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.

PERSONAL DAYS IS HERE!

I. Publication day for Personal Days! See if your local bookstore has it! If not, ask to talk to the manager!

U.S. shoppers, this is the cover you'll be looking for (a paperback original that slips easily into satchel or purse for maximum commute/boring-meeting accessibility):



And U.K. shoppers, get ready to lay down some "quid" for this riot of color...excuse me, "colour"!:


(It's a nice thumpable hardback.)

II. Self-promotion day continues!

The second installment of "The Oblivion Arms" is up at Five Chapters. Here's the introduction by editor Dave Daley:

Dear friends,

This week on FiveChapters.com we'll serialize a new story—actually more like a novella—by Ed Park, "The Oblivion Arms." I could describe it as being about two parents who write Broadway musicals searching for their child-actor son, but that would hardly capture this wild and imaginative story or the insane genius of musicals based on Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Ed's take on TV culture, the crazy front desk clerks, agents who start their phone calls with an ad for the cell phone company in exchange for a discount...

I could go on, but part one is on the site now and you can read for yourself. Hope you enjoy it.

You may know Ed as one of the editors of The Believer, the mind behind New-York Ghost and an esteemed book critic. He's also the author of a very funny new novel, "Personal Days" (Random House). We'll give five of them away this week; drop a note [to editor@fivechapters.com] if you'd like one.

Thanks again for reading, David

(So: You can win a copy of Personal Days! You can also buy it, online or in a store.)

III. Over at ed-park.com, more quotes from recent reviews—including another blazingly smart one from Stop Smiling, the esteemed "magazine for highminded lowlifes."

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!