Too Many Books In The Kitchen
15 hours ago
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Harlan Ellison with some excellent, timely, and profanity-laden advice: pay the writer. Pay the writer! Pay the writer.

(I love how you can tell these re-enacted conversations are in no way hypothetical. “You don’t have to get so mean about it” is so obviously plucked straight from real life.)

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4 days ago
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

cameronr:

Miley Cyrus - “Party in the U.S.A.”

channel-z:

The tires of the landing gear hit tarmac with a jolt and squeal.  The girl wakes up from a fitful sleep.  This is it:  LAX.  Stepping out of the airplane into the open smog, the sunny air beating down on her, the girl wonders if she is still dreaming.  She’s not that far from everyone she left behind in Nahsville, but feels further than she ever thought she could possibly ever be.

In a cab:  driving past the Hollywood sign,  the capitol records building, Mann’s Chinese.  The beauty of the rich and powerful, the pathos of the lost and destitute present themselves across her eyes like a macabre film strip as the taxi continues it’s journey.

The girl’s pulse quickens.  She feels incredibly trapped and overpowered.  Will this work out?  Has she done the right thing by making this move?  There is nothing but potential success and failure and it all starts right here.  She could cut her losses and buy a plane ticket back to Nashville tomorrow.  No harm done.  She’d just have to go home and tell everyone that she couldn’t hack it,  the pressure was too much for her.

Her thoughts become cyclical and she can’t deal.  She needs to get out of the cab, run away, but to where?  Why did she leave her old life behind?  How could she be such a stupid idiot to think she could deal with an entirely new way to exist in the world?

There is a click from the front seat and the cab’s radio starts playing.  Jay-Z.

The girl is no longer in the cab but above it.  She speeds across the sky an infinite number of miles-per-hour.  In her mind, or maybe in reality (who knows and is it important?) she sees the entire city sprawled out in front of her.  Butterflies fly away.  She’s back in the cab.  She’s nodding her head.  Her hips jiggle slightly in her seat.  For three and a half minutes, she is everywhere and nowhere.  She thinks to herself that whatever the outcome of this new journey, she will be OK.

Later.  A Club.  A Party.  Her first one in this new city.  All eyes on the girl.  Judgment everywhere.  The girl feels ashamed of everything that makes her comfortable, her loose jeans, the chuck taylors she wears with the laces too long.  She once again misses her friends, her family, her boyfriend.  She remembers Nashville house parties that seem so long ago, before she tried to transform herself into a brand that can be sold, a product that no household can be without.  Will anyone ever think that she is the person that she sees herself to be in her mind?

Then the DJ slides the fader on his turntable.  The beats start matching to Britney.  The girl is 12 again, in her room with her best friend making up a dance routine and lip syncing.  She jumps up and down on her bed and uses a hairbrush for a microphone.

All at once she is twelve and she is eighteen.  She puts her hands up, nods her head, moves her hips.  She dances like she’s not being stared at by everyone and with reckless abandon.  She is in her bedroom, she is in the club.  She closes her eyes and sees bright colors.  She brings her tongue to her lips and tastes her peach-flavored lip gloss.  Her arms wrap around her body, hugging herself.  She knows she’ll survive this change in her life.  She will be strong.  She will carry herself through three-and-a-half minutes at a time, with her strength, her memories, her music.  She’ll deal.  It’s a party in the U.S.A.

// I could cry this is so perfect.

This is a books blog, right? As long as I call this a short story, it’ll all make sense.

Good. Thought so.

Cite Arrow via cameronr
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6 days ago
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Believing this too vehemently would, we must surely agree, be catastrophic, but harnessing the little monster in our chests which taunts and derides us can mean that we keep on tinkering and correcting beyond the point at which we might otherwise despair, or surrender, or worry feebly about the bleeding from our ears. »

Scottish novelist (and general cyclone of prose) A.L. Kennedy has been keeping a blog about writing for the Guardian that’s a total delight.

Now’s the perfect time to come aboard: she’s just started a new book, and hates it!

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1 week ago
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In Vienna it was raining. But we’re not sugar cubes! »Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives (again)
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1 week ago
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On "genre-transcending"

In this month’s Slate Audio Book Club, three critics look at Mary Karr’s memoir Lit, which details her struggle with alcoholism, her mother, and, eventually, God.

One of them (Troy Patterson) didn’t like it all that much, but the other two (Meghan O’Rourke and Katie Roiphe) did, and to make their case for the book they use an argument that’s all too familiar at this point: they say that Lit is a recovery memoir, yes, but it’s also much more than that. It’s better than that. It deconstructs itself as it goes. It transcends the genre.

This is something I’ve wondered about for a long time. How often is this line of reasoning used by people who aren’t overly familiar with the genre supposedly being transcended? If not the vast majority of the time, then it’s at least a clean one. And isn’t the appeal of books like Lit (full disclosure: I haven’t read it) to a lot of people precisely that kind of snobbish voyeurism: that they apply a literary varnish to a type of writing that’s otherwise considered gauche and unpalatable? This way bibliophiles get to have it both ways. They can enjoy the pulpy, roller-coastery emotional turmoil stuff, and at the same time retain their ‘serious reader’ credibility; they can dip their toes in the water without getting their bathing suits wet.

Read More

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1 week ago
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The problem with literature, like life, said Don Crispin, is that in the end people always turn into bastards. »Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives
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TROUBLESHOOTING

magicmolly:

Friends! I am very pleased to announce the publication of TROUBLESHOOTING, an 80-page book of stories and art which is the result of a collaboration between me and the talented Christopher Luxton. The cover is in full color, and there is a pretty pink-lilac ombré back page.

The text is written by me and it is all brand new. Christopher Luxton’s art attaches to each story a concise, mystical nugget of visual meaning.

The book is printed in an edition of 500, and it will soon be available from Urban Outfitters for $16. You can also buy it from me, for $12!

I’m so happy with this object and I think you will be too. It would make a good Valentine’s Day present.

Click below if you would like to order a copy. Shipping is $1.50 within the United States; if you live outside the US please click on the second button below to order with international shipping.

Here is the button for international orders:

Totally just ordered a copy. I wonder if it’ll have that limited edition numbering that the comic-book-hoarding part of my brain loves so much.

Cite Arrow via magicmolly
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