Triple Canopy - "Invalid Format"

Triple Canopy, "How to print an Internet magazine" from triple canopy on Vimeo.

I'm in this!

*

Which reminds me, when am I going to update ed-park.com?

Lazy Literary Gleanings™

Levi comes right out and says it: "There's a reason this is my favorite book in the world, folks; I'll be reading and re-reading it for a long, long time to come."

Read his two posts on re-reading Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time.

*

Two excellent things from the new issue of Triple Canopy: David Levine's "Matter of Rothko" and Claire Barliant's "The Hanging at Mankato."

*

Wow: Stephen Burt has a great review of my old teacher Bruce Smith's latest book of poems, Devotions, in the NYT.

*

Not done with this yet, but Douglas Wolk's "Comic-Con Strikes Again" is really good. It's an Amazon Single. (Has anyone read the Vollmann Amazon Single?)(Does anyone read this blog anymore?)

Eat the Document

Sam Frank's great "The Document"—in the current issue of Triple Canopy*—is a must-read for any fan of David Markson, Thomas Bernhard, Saul Bellow, Anthony Powell, Dawn Powell...not to mention

Walter Abish, Kathy Acker, Max Apple, Paul Auster, John Barth, Frederick Barthelme, Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, Michael Chabon, Andrei Codrescu, Laurie Colwin, Evan Connell, Robert Coover, Coleman Dowell, Deborah Eisenberg, Stanley Elkin, Bret Easton Ellis, Mary Gaitskill, Kenneth Gangemi, William Gass, Donald Goines, Barry Hannah, Jim Harrison, Janet Hobhouse, William Kotzwinkle, Cormac McCarthy, Joseph McElroy, Jay McInerney, Leonard Michaels, Steven Millhauser, Kem Nunn, Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, Walker Percy, Richard Price, James Purdy, Ishmael Reed, Philip Roth, Gilbert Sorrentino, Richard Stern, James Wilcox, Joy Williams, Tobias Wolff, and Al Young...Waugh, Compton-Burnett, De Vries, Henry Green, Spackman, Colwin, Elkin, Colin MacInnes, Gaddis, Sorrentino... Hobhouse...Paley, Eric Kraft, Beckett...Donald Antrim, Mark Costello, Susan Daitch, Jeffrey Eugenides, A. M. Homes, Jonathan Lethem, Richard Powers, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead...Lorrie Moore...

An incredible piece of writing—it is its own thing. And Triple Canopy's presentation is amazing; I haven't found another site that presents articles in such a readable way for the screen. (Make sure you click on the footnote—two videos.) Shouldn't e-tablet companies be hiring 3C as consultants? Or I don't know, maybe they already are...

(March! This month I've already been blown away by Rebecca Taylor's "Virginia Mountain Scream Queen," in the new Believer—now this!)

(It's also a must for Richard Stern–o-philes—basically me and Jason McBride. "Dick" Stern has a nice cameo.)

(I had a few more reflective paragraphs here but I will stop now. Please read Sam's piece. It is one of the best things you'll read this year...and it also seems to me to be the Writing of the Future.)

_____

*and published in the new, "Failure" issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction, guest-edited by Joshua Cohen...whom I mentioned in my recent Jonathan Coe piece for Bookforum:

After several days of enforced and enjoyable reacquaintance with the Coe canon, I went to a party, where I tried to find someone with whom I could rave about Coevian greatness. One writer I met said, "I think I've heard of him . . . Palladio?" Ten minutes later, another narrowed his eyes as he searched for some connection, coming up with the hopeful "He wrote . . . Witz, right?"

Here's an exclusive bonus for readers of this lonely old blog (who BLOGS anymore??): About five minutes after the above episode, who should walk in but...Joshua Cohen himself! Who then regaled me and Alan Gilbert (not the NY Phil. maestro but the critic-poet whose first book of poems, Late in the Antenna Fields, is now out) with an account of distant relatives of his who were also writers.

Bonus #2: The party was for what turned out to be the final issue of Open City, as immortalized here and here.

Bonus #3: As I was about to leave the party, who should stumble in but...Sam Frank!

Aren't you glad you still read The Dizzies (er, Disambiguation)??

A: MAYBE.

The making of 177 Livingston

177 Livingston Construction from Gabriel Fries-Briggs on Vimeo.

Tonight! "Impossible Geometries"

Come to "Impossible Geometries" at 177 Livingston! Doors open at 8.

I'm up first—I'll be reading with Lynne Tillman...film by Lis Rhodes...music by Ambergris and Skeletons...other stuff! I think it goes on till late and I will probably need a nap at some point.

More at Time Out and at the 177 Livingston site.

And click on the tag below to check out the poster art.....This is a $5-$20 benefit; 177 Livingston is the big new home for Triple Canopy and Light Industry, also something called The Public School.

"The literary bash of the week"

We're all about THE BEST, so it's good to see that Time Out New York has chosen Saturday night's reading/event/free-for-all as one of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective — I mean SEVEN BEST THINGS to do this week:

The multidisciplinary benefit party Impossible Geometries, for the online journal Triple Canopy and the art-film space Light Industries, kicks off with readings by Ed Park and Lynne Tillman, follows with films and music, and promises to be the literary bash of the week.

More info here.

Also check out this poster:

"Impossible Geometries"

It's been a while since I last gave a reading, so I'm happy to be appearing at "Impossible Geometries," a Triple Canopy/Light Industry/Public School benefit party/screening/performance at 8 p.m. on Saturday, February 20. Lynne Tillman will also be reading; there's a film by Lis Rhodes; sets by Ambergris and Skeletons...DJs...

It's very exciting—the three groups are celebrating their gigantic new space at/called 177 Livingston St. in Brooklyn. (Click for more info.) I'm gonna hopstop it soon!

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for February 17, 2009

I. Last week I taught Wodehouse's Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, and now I see Wodehousean touches everywhere I turn....first in Cintra Wilson's column, then in Michael Lewis's great piece in the NYT Magazine, on the new basketball statistics....(I don't even like basketball! But this piece is amazing...)

I see two jokes in this paragraph. We see Wodehouse trademark #1, the unexpected simile, and #2, the unexpected exaggeration, fitted in seamlessly to complete an otherwise normal sequence.

[Kobe] Bryant is one of the great jawboners in the history of the N.B.A. A major-league baseball player once showed me a slow-motion replay of the Yankees’ third baseman Alex Rodriguez in the batter’s box. Glancing back to see where the catcher has set up is not strictly against baseball’s rules, but it violates the code. A hitter who does it is likely to find the next pitch aimed in the general direction of his eyes. A-Rod, the best hitter in baseball, mastered the art of glancing back by moving not his head, but his eyes, at just the right time. It was like watching a billionaire find some trivial and dubious deduction to take on his tax returns. Why bother? I thought, and then realized: this is the instinct that separates A-Rod from mere stars. Kobe Bryant has the same instinct. Tonight Bryant complained that Battier was grabbing his jersey, Battier was pushing when no one was looking, Battier was committing crimes against humanity.

This isn't really Wodehousean, but I like it:

Last July, as we sat in the library of the Detroit Country Day School, watching, or trying to watch, his March 2008 performance against Kobe Bryant, Battier was much happier instead talking about Obama, both of whose books he had read. (“The first was better than the second,” he said.) He said he hated watching himself play, then proved it by refusing to watch himself play. My every attempt to draw his attention to the action on the video monitor was met by some distraction.

Maybe things are less funny when I highlight them. (But then they become slightly funny again when I point this out.)

II. Gary Indiana—blogger!
(From Dzyd JMcB)

III. These poems are great.
(From Triple Canopy #2.)

IV.

Blackwater Worldwide is abandoning its tarnished brand name as it tries to shake a reputation battered by oft-criticised work in Iraq, renaming its family of two dozen businesses under the name Xe. The parent company's new name is pronounced like the letter z. —Guardian

(From Dzyd Kaela)

V. Happy birthday to my dad!

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for November 12, 2008

I. Everything and nothing: In Slate, Dzyd Jessica identifies a headline habit at the NYT:

Consider: "Bigger Is Better, Except When It's Not"—a 2007 article looking at body size in sports. "Smaller Can Be Better (Except When It's Not)"—a tech piece from 2004. "A Marriage Penalty, Except When It Isn't"—on couples and the tax code, 2003. This is the Times headline as koan, inviting readers to suspend in-the-box thinking and seek enlightenment below the fold. The style presents thesis and antithesis; it embraces binary thinking yet disavows it; it builds dichotomies and collapses them. There are good uses of this technique, except when there aren't, as a sampling from the last three months attests.

II. New Triple Canopy.

III. The return of Pinakothek—vintage Sante:

"Florence" has reached our couple two decades after its release through the medium of oldies radio--a medium of chattering middle-aged men, audibly overweight, short-sleeved even in the dead of winter, who are capable of putting on the spookiest sides without seeming to notice the weirdness as they jabber on about trivia before and after.

(Thanks to Levi for the nudge)

IV. Speaking of Sante: I'll be on an LWC panel with him and some others on 11/22 (Sat.) at 11:45 a.m. The topic? "From Blogs to Books and Back." Back—to what, blogs??? Then do I get to go back again, to books?

V. Speaking of Levi: More Bolaño material at I've Been Reading Lately. And here he imagines Maud Newton's flight, via Anthony Powell.

VI. Annnnnd...one last time: Me + Heidi + Alec Baldwin + Will Eno + more = tonight.

Beans and ancestors

[Typed out this morning to Levi Stahl, after finishing Richard Stark's partly-Buffalo-set The Outfit, luxuriously reading late into the night]

Just woke up from a dream in which a letter from Roberto Bolaño (to one of his translators) mentions Buffalo....The letter appears in the latest Triple Canopy.* The translator's letter mentions Buffalo and Niagara Falls, saying, "Of course, since you had only been in the country two days, I can't expect you to have visited either of these places," and mentions how nice it was to have him over for dinner. [He had apparently been in the U.S. recently, for the first time.]

Bolaño's letter is a marvel. He begins by saying, "Believe it or not, I had to travel to Buffalo as soon as I arrived, and had the opportunity to visit the famous Falls," and mentions a few local details that make it clear he did make the trip. Then he digresses on the wonderful dinner salad she prepared, writing that, curiously enough, every ingredient in the salad had some connection to a place in his life. The beans were from Venezuela, as were some of his ancestors; he lived for a time in Mexico, where the cheese was from, etc.




_______
*I must have been thinking of this.

The Connections: Yin-Yang Edition

Jon Pareles on Jarvis Cocker:

Between songs Mr. Cocker chatted about how shifting exchange rates made it hard to keep songs realistic, and of his disdain for experiencing a concert through a cellphone screen. He explained what he had been reading lately in philosophy: that it was possible to hold two opposing ideas at the same time, opening up gray areas between virtue and evil. —NYT

EP in Triple Canopy:

I always show my students these two quotes—a warning against referential mania, or perhaps just notes toward an aesthetic:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
—H. P. Lovecraft

Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for June 14–15: West Coast Tour Preparatory Edition

I. From Monday to Friday next week, I'll be hopping down the West Coast to read from and talk about Personal Days. Hope to see some of you! (Thank you, Bostonians, for coming out to the reading on Thursday! And thank you Newtonville Books! And: So great to see people at Happy Ending on Wednesday! That was a lot of fun.)

Thumbnail schedule—more info at the website.

MONDAY: Seattle, Elliott Bay Books, 7:30 [TIME CORRECTED]
TUESDAY: Portland, Powell's Books (Burnside), 7:30
WEDNESDAY: San Francisco—Google in the a.m.; then Booksmith at 7
THURSDAY: Berkeley, Pegasus Books, 7:30
FRIDAY: Los Angeles, Book Soup, 7

II. My latest Astral Weeks column is up at the L.A. Times site—a meditation on Charles Fort, prompted by Jim Steinmeyer's new biography.

Following up on Dzyd Rachel's Triple Canopy interview with me*, I meditate some more on metaphor. Here's the first graf of this month's column:

What are metaphors for? Before finding fame as the 20th century's greatest compiler and theorist of weird news, not to mention one of its most audacious and influential autodidacts, Charles Fort (1849-1932) was a journalist and pulp-story writer who amassed inventive ways to describe one thing in terms of something else. Among the few to glimpse these scraps was no less a literary titan than Theodore Dreiser, who was Fort's early magazine editor and steadfast champion. Bowled over, Dreiser offered to buy the odd collection from Fort. "They are better than any thesaurus," he raved, "a new help to letters."

III. Digression 1: A line in Janet Maslin's review of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle made me raise an eyebrow:

Its voice is so natural and unfettered, so free of metaphor or other baggage, that even the simplest moments can have extraordinary grace.

So metaphor is "baggage," rather than that which makes us human???

IV. Digression 2: "Is [Rivka] Galchen a modern day Charles Fort?" —New York Observer

V. Digression 3: A hilarious example of interior dialogue as practiced by Fort (spinning off accounts of people awaking from fugue states, nude and in public):

Don't cats and horses and dogs go around without clothes on?
But they are clothed with natural, furry protections.
Well, Mexican dogs, then.

...which brought to mind this demented trailer (via Jenny D).

VI. Sukie Park (no relation!) of the Joongang Daily profiled me—we also had a fascinating conversation (not reflected here) about various Korean directors....


_________
*Rachel e-mailed me this link, from the new Atlantic: "The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived, people began thinking of their brains as operating "like clockwork." Today, in the age of software, we have come to think of them as operating "like computers." But the changes, neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain's plasticity, the adaptation occurs also at a biological level."