tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-355022582024-03-05T00:37:53.494-05:00The Angry HugWilliam Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.comBlogger86125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-18084492041651854362012-02-12T23:51:00.003-05:002012-02-12T23:59:09.080-05:00On Fiction: An Overlooked ReminderNot that the reminder is overlooked, but that the thing I am reminding you of is overlooked I find more than a drop of coffee passes the lips of your's truly: a thing has to be itself. <br /><br />Case 1: If you write about an artist, that person should art. They should make something. They should make something arty. If you spend half a novel having an artist running around and never once at least comment on the shape of a piece laying in the trash you might as well be writing about a politician.<br /><br />Case 2: A Comedian should be funny. Even melancholy comedians should at least have been funny at one time, or they need to so mammothly depressing that they play it up for laughs. If you sum up the past of a comic writer in 3.5 pages and there isn't a joke on the page I don't believe that person was actually a comedian.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-23446509115252331112011-11-30T08:31:00.000-05:002011-11-30T08:32:09.859-05:00Reading Cohorts - Robin Richardson<font size="2">You are so super close now. You are no more days, now only hours from it. Its gonna blow your hair back. Its going to slap you hard on the ass where it is both painful and pleasurable. It's <a href="https://mentalmarginalia.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/november-30th-taggart-richardson-slaughter-kanownik-owen/">Mental Marginalia</a>. It's tonight. It's at the West Cafe, 379 Union Ave. It's at 8 PM. It's free. It's got <a href="http://robinrichardson.squarespace.com/">Robin Richardson</a></font> <font size="2">cohorting with us</font><br /><br /><br /><font size="4">Temiscaming</font><br />A hornet drums the lamp, red<br />clay, dead moth, pike smiling<br />from the skillet. Jin’s what I’m drinking,<br />I was raised on robbery. Henri taps<br />a yellowed thumb against the table<br />off time. His eyes are closed, legs<br />crossed, he shakes as he brings<br />the plastic cup of homebrew<br />to his lips, says he loves Joni Mitchell.<br /><br /><font size="2">So will you won't you, will you won't you, won't you join us. Cheer </font>William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-17444602580263960032011-11-13T16:11:00.004-05:002011-11-24T10:22:11.721-05:00Reading Cohorts - Chris SlaughterHere we are again ready to passeth all understanding! Keep your hearts and minds multiplied through the knowledge that Mental Marginalia is happening in UNO WEEKO as <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/elbloombito">El Bloombito</a> would say. That's right my perfect brethren of good comfort, we five marginals are offering you benediction next Wednesday's night at the West Cafe for the price of free, so adorn your sacred selves and come join us.<br /><br />In the meaning whiles, preview Chris Slaughter and let the peace and glory be forever and ever<br /><br /><iframe width="460" height="264" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zNWtFsjx51o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-11538956410851239172011-11-13T16:10:00.005-05:002011-11-21T07:08:52.580-05:00Reading Cohorts - Paige TaggartWe're on the Gravy Train. The Turkey Gravy Train, but that should not stop you from remembering, marking the calendar, creating an entire memory castle just for storing this one important fact - <a href="https://mentalmarginalia.wordpress.com/">MENTAL MARGINALIA</a> on 11/30/11, or if you are a Sodurinian, 11/333/IH8^3. You will have a good time. I will <span style="font-style: italic;">make</span> you have a good time. A cheesy flip flips good time. Until then, here is impending cohort <a href="http://mactaggartjewelry.blogspot.com/">Paige Taggart</a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:130%;" ><strong>PRUDE FROG</strong><br /> <span style="font-size:78%;"><br /> We charted out these breath patterns on tape recorder.<br /> We ran around kicking and screaming, blue tooth, blue tooth!<br /> Then we swelled really low to the Earth, and impregnated it<br /> with little bomb sockets.<br /> Merely seconds before they were authenticated with a copyright seal.<br /> I kept going around with stickers to preserve my idea, and you, well<br /> you exploded with your own enthusiasm about what happens next.</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><br />You can read the rest at <a href="http://www.lapetitezine.org/Paige.Taggart.htm">La Petite Zine</a>William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-41288066041623787592011-11-13T15:52:00.003-05:002011-11-13T16:09:25.342-05:00Reading Cohorts - Christine KanownikHeeeeeeeey'all,<br /><br />Surmise quickly the <a href="http://theangryhug.blogspot.com/2011/11/comin-at-ya.html">11/30/11 happening at West Cafe</a> which shall put some hustle in your bustle and an apocalypse on your hips. Seriously, I expect dancing. Your call if you want it dirty. But we finally finished rigging up the new catalytic salt reactor on the roof this afternoon so the HYPE MACHINE is fully operational, and its already kicking out the buzz. First fist up: Christine Kanownik-<br /><br /><h1>How the West was won.</h1> <p class="byline"> by <a href="http://42opus.com/authors/christinekanownik">CHRISTINE KANOWNIK</a> </p> <p class="verseline">Tyra Banks is a cowboy.<br />She is in the desert.<br />When she stands on rocks<br />They become mountains.<br />And when she descends<br />They become canyons.<br />She spits a little when she talks<br />And the spit becomes rivers.</p><p class="verseline">You can read the <a href="http://42opus.com/v7n4/howthewestwaswon">rest of this piece at 42Opus<br /></a></p>William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-10629034370001203242011-11-08T16:07:00.005-05:002011-11-08T16:14:54.964-05:00Comin At Ya!<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Christine Kanownik</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paige Taggart </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chris Slaughter </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Robin Richardson</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">myself</span><br /><br />11/30/11<br />West Cafe<br />379 Union Ave<br />Brooklyn<br />Presented by <a href="http://mentalmarginalia.wordpress.com/">Mental Marginalia</a><br /></span>William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-47599496627741351852011-10-09T13:58:00.003-04:002011-10-09T14:18:14.808-04:00A Great Quote on the Future of Literature<blockquote>"You know, we've had this amazing oral tradition of poetry for nearly as long as anyone can remember. The entirety of our knowledge has been adapted to this tradition. It contains everything we know and have experienced as a civilization. It is the basis for our law, our commerce, our history, and our art. Now you have these Cuneiformists who want to start recording everything. They want to translate the vast beauty of our language, poetry, and culture into symbols, into children's drawings in the sand and claim this will preserve our way of life. Hell, they claim it will make life easier? How? How could the passion of Iklad Munnur's arguments during the Tell Fara inquiry be translated in physical form? How does one capture the richness of Sonitep's voice? Mark this time. The cuneiformist way is the unraveling of our literature."<br /></blockquote><br /><br />-Ensur Ugar, Mesopotamian Oral Translator and grump, 3386 B.C.<br />(what's amazing about this quote is that it was found via the painstaking research in 2011 by Orslo Bilgant into what he deemed Cyclical Bitching by Old Men About How Much Better the Past Was and How All of Literature Faces Imminent Finality Every 20 Odd Years. Orslo found the varied shards of Ugar's quote by reading between the lines of the frequent posts by old men about how terrible x (book, music, art) culture is today compared to the bygone Halcyon days they knew of from their youth)William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-65397940047210022832011-09-21T23:26:00.005-04:002011-10-10T10:32:39.557-04:00September 21, 2011 11:08pm ESTFuck Fucker buckets Fuck buckets of rum. The rum in the punch<br />or the punch and then the rum<br />to numb the cheek and letters to<br />Abraham fathering three religions, though<br />they were rejected by Albert Rosenfield who unbeknownst to you<br />until this instant<br />was in fact<br />the son of the Padishah Emperor<br />Shaddam Corrino IV (real life true story time<br />trials conducted entirely under the supervision<br />of his holiness the Dalai Lama and the Kwisatz Haderach<br />to induct the veracity of his claims under perjury of spice regarding<br />the origin of the twine used to bind Laura Palmer’s body<br />and the shells fired into Mark MacPhail), the art of war<br />scarring the face of Arrakis<br />your hands holding hands<br />touching the metal waiting<br />for the shock sure there will come rains<br />to test the faithful not in<br />vain appreciation of the tragedy<br />become innocent and martyred<br />on the ground outside a burger joint<br />or in the halls of doubt and recantation<br />justice served and justice denied<br />a stay of execution<br />appeals denied, rappers and Jimmy Carter<br />talk-boxing again around the signal<br />lights along the shore<br />shallow rocky spears upthrust<br />against Davis’ prow<br />the assassin’s needle<br />seeking Atreides' life<br />Muad’Dib bends like a reed in the wind<br />which I guess you cannot do when you are strapped to a table<br />the state has laid out and prepared for with body and the blood<br />the Shadout Mapes had her blood mixed by the hunter-seeker too<br />an ultra short acting bartiturate here<br />a chemical paralytic there<br />passed into law by a Reverend<br />which fact lends us only a greater question<br />of the irony all this culture<br />can bring to bear<br />which we cannot stand<br />to watch, put off thinking<br />of, sit quietly as we take in<br />the beauty of this life when<br />it turns toward the onset of terror<br />admired as it destroys<br />society’s angel with head bowed<br />the killing word silently spoken<br />Troy Davis and Mark MacPhail asleep<br />inside the bullet, cheek to cheek<br />rest now, in peace<br />dreaming no more of the heroes<br />who let you downWilliam Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-69947773013763576792011-06-29T13:58:00.004-04:002011-06-29T14:08:43.717-04:00One Wondersif employees at Marvel Comics and Marvel Entertainment and Marvel Under-roos Textile Concern are required by corporate mandate to consume this:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2011-06/62750387.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 299px; height: 400px;" src="http://www.chicagotribune.com/media/photo/2011-06/62750387.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Inspired by the upcoming movie. It's big, it's heavy, it's good, but um, yeah. Thankfully the Chicago Tribune was able to provide me with that picture. WHo only knows were they got it from, what murky alleys they skulked through and what manner of shiftless, broken shell of human misery PR rep sent it to them (I assume it was emailed, these sorts of rich, nuanced human interactions are becoming a thing of the past). Speaking of human interactions, this:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/donut-bath.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 580px; height: 383px;" src="http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/donut-bath.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />We are, after all, only human.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-41061496454172908332011-03-01T12:58:00.002-05:002011-03-01T14:58:14.096-05:00Wise Man's Fear<a href="http://ecimages.kobobooks.com/Image.ashx?imageID=8BoJSFRCtkyQJ8zdbzGnCw&Type=Full"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://ecimages.kobobooks.com/Image.ashx?imageID=8BoJSFRCtkyQJ8zdbzGnCw&Type=Full"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 220px; height: 356px;" src="http://ecimages.kobobooks.com/Image.ashx?imageID=8BoJSFRCtkyQJ8zdbzGnCw&Type=Full" border="0" alt="" /></a></a><br /><br />So this was released today, the sequel to The Name of the Wind. You can buy it right now. You should. If you have an ipad or a kindle or a nook, you can literally be reading this in a matter of minutes. <br /><br />I was loaned the Name of the Wind a couple of months after its release by a member of the D&D group I played with. It was good times. We were all professionals, we drank coffee or beer while we played, as opposed to the little debbie snack cakes (strawberry shortcake rolls were my particularly insidious vice) and mountain dew of those summer days of AD&D youth. Activists and teachers and publishing people living in the fading dream of the Brooklyn renaissance that our too-slowly rising salaries afforded us in Greenpoint. I never got that book back to the owner unfortunately. He stopped being able to make the games. Then he moved.<br /><br />But man am I happy I still have that copy. I've had 4 or 5 other copies over the years as well, Rothfuss joining Tolkien and Vonnegut and Winterson in the pantheon of writers who I can't help but pick up multiple copies of. And the book was a stunner. Literally, like One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, when I finished The Name of the Wind I have only the vaguest recollection of where I was, as if I had been shot through with light and separated from my mind while the vast, sleepy realms of thought and the deepest reaches of my awareness churned far from my waking consciousness. It was like a magic spell. <br /><br />It was as if the book had channeled a wormhall into my brain that I could only access by separating from myself. I am convinced Grant Morrison does this kind of thing, implanting alien thought into your mind through language, and Warren Ellis is very forward in putting his disease textually.<br /><br />And of course, it all feels as good as it sounds, hence the allure. A book like this is a drug. It takes root in you, and begins to change you from the inside out.<br /><br />Rush out, rush out now, and get your fixWilliam Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-78339918850069624032011-01-13T12:03:00.002-05:002011-01-13T23:20:37.738-05:00Beavis and Butthead. Jersey Shore. Politics. Sherbet.Beavis and Butthead. Jersey Shore. Politics. Sherbet.<br /><br />Somewhere there is a thought in all of that. Threads to be tied together. Understanding and appreciation to be gained. <br /><br />Sherbet is really more about the appreciation. Its just yummy. I've cultivated an appreciation for earl grey lately, but I still prefer, and am currently out of, oolong. Oolong is the tea of memory, of The Dragon House, which was THE treat of early childhood. The egg noodles, the oolong tea in the little cups, and the fried rice.<br /><br />Quite tired, too tired of late. The damned weather. And much work to do. Much to try and finish, much to achieve. Only one thing stands in the way.<br /><br />Me.<br /><br />Let's go work on that.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-7249050905851356212011-01-03T11:57:00.002-05:002011-01-03T13:36:54.515-05:00Be OF the Fiction, not just ABOUT itBy going here: <a href="http://postcardfictioncollaborative.blogspot.com/2010/11/rudolph-ii.html">http://postcardfictioncollaborative.blogspot.com/2010/11/rudolph-ii.html</a><br /><br />It is the capstone to our first full year of PFCing, and we've PFCed the hell out of it, so go ahead, check us out, browse yourself some archives, and give us that ooey gooey rich and chewy love in the comments section.<br /><br />Kablammo, we're off in 2011 like a shot, with guest writer <a href="http://www.emster.com/BarbaraDeCesare/">Barbara DeCesare</a>William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-79759062287504877242010-12-15T21:39:00.003-05:002010-12-15T21:45:57.467-05:00EditingEditors are wacky people, and they have been, since time immemorial, or 1863, whichever is more your cup of tea.<br /><br />I have edited Kyle Minor's list below to acknowledge what I have knocked off already, and plan to read the rest by the middle of next year. Thankfully I've got a healthy start on the McCarthy, and planned to polish off his bibliography by the thaw regardless. 2666 is a another I am glad is out of the way (for immensity's sake). I've also read a lot of Tolstoy and most of Tolkien, so there's that.<br /><br />I have comics I have to review and no fucking time to review them, hence why I am blogging right?<br /><br />Trying to deduce, over the next few weeks, how to make AWP conference a reality. Anyone who wants to help out, let me know.<br /><br />Does this seem true to you: <br /><blockquote>"You have to let the people surround you, and you have to listen, because you’ll never be able to hear the sound of your voice until you can pick it out of the crowd. They will temper your heart because you will never burn as brightly for yourself as you will for them."</blockquote>William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-27456995310674118022010-12-10T10:44:00.004-05:002010-12-15T21:48:06.781-05:00A Suggested Reading ListPosted in its entirety for sheer, overwhelming awesomeness from <a href="http://htmlgiant.com/random/suggested-reading-list-for-my-spring-2011-fiction-workshop/#more-51689">Kyle Minor's post</a> on <a href="http://htmlgiant.com/">HTML Giant</a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Suggested Reading List for My Spring 2011 Fiction Workshop</span><br /><br />(Because if you’re going to make a writer of yourself, you must read your brains out.) * (Updated: to note what has been read, and what remains to be read)<br /><br /><br />All Things, All at Once, Lee K. Abbott<br />The Box Man, Kobo Abe<br />Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe<br />The Children’s Hospital, Chris Adrian<br />A Death in the Family, James Agee<br />Man In His Time, Brian W. Aldiss<br />The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie<br />Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison<br />My Life in Heavy Metal, Steve Almond<br />Telegrams of the Soul, Peter Altenburg<br />Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson<br />Dora Flor and Her Two Husbands, Jorge Amado<br />Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World, Donald Antrim<br /><strike>The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood</strike><br />The Rector of Justin, Louis Auchincloss<br />Obabakoak, Bernardo Axtaga<br /><strike>The Music of Chance, Paul Auster</strike><br />Red Cavalry Stories, Isaac Babel<br /><strike>The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker</strike><br />Going to Meet the Man, James Baldwin<br />The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks<br />The Smallest People in the World, Keith Banner<br /><strike>Nightwood, Djuna Barnes</strike><br />A History of the World in 8 1/2 Chapters, Julian Barnes<br />60 Stories, Donald Barthelme<br />The Lives of Rocks, Rick Bass<br />The Stories of Richard Bausch<br />First Light, Charles Baxter<br />The Lost Ones, Samuel Beckett<br />The Collectors, Matt Bell<br />Mr Sammler’s Planet, Saul Bellow<br />Town Smokes, Pinckney Benedict<br />25th Hour, David Benioff<br />Correction, Thomas Bernhard<br /><strike>2666, Roberto Bolano</strike><br />Labyrinths, Borges<br />The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles<br />After the Plague, TC Boyle<br />Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury<br />On the Yard, Malcolm Braly<br />Rumors of Rain, Andre Brink<br />Things That Fall from the Sky, Kevin Brockmeier<br />Fay, Larry Brown<br /><strike>A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess</strike><br />Scorch Atlas, Blake Butler<br />The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M Cain<br />Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell<br /><strike>If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino</strike><br />American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell<br />The Palace Thief, Ethan Canin<br />Hard Rain Falling, Don Carpenter<br />The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter<br />Where I’m Calling From, Raymond Carver<br />Spartina, John Casey<br />The Professor’s House, Willa Cather<br /><strike>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon</strike><br />The Big SLeep, Raymond Chandler<br />Collected Stories, Eileen Chang<br />Among the Missing, Dan Chaon<br />Farewell I’m Bound to Leave You, Fred Chappell<br />The Stories of John Cheever<br />Falconer, John Cheever<br />Awakening, Kate Chopin<br />“Gusev,” Anton Chekhov<br />Oh Baby, Kim Chinquee<br />House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros<br />We’re in Trouble, Christopher Coake<br /><strike>Disgrace, J M Coetzee</strike><br />Witz, Joshua Cohen<br />Diary of a Rapist, Evan S Connell<br />Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad<br />Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar<br />Bargains in the Real World, Elizabeth Cox<br />The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane<br />A Feast of Snakes, Harry Crews<br />The Passage, Justin Cronin<br />Flesh and Blood, Michael Cunningham<br />The Green Age of Asher Witherow, M Allen Cunningham<br />House of Leaves, Mark Danieliewski<br />The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat<br />In the Gloaming, Alice Elliott Dark<br />The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis<br />The Circus in Winter, Cathy Day<br />Great Jones Street, Don DeLillo<br />Mao II, Don DeLillo<br />Underworld, Don DeLillo<br /><strike>Drown, Junot Diaz</strike><br />The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick<br />Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion<br />Interstate, Stephen Dixon<br />I. and End of I., Stephen Dixon<br />City of God, E L Doctorow<br />The Shell Collector, Anthony Doerr<br />The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky<br />Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky<br />Clown Girl, Monica Drake<br />Selected Stories, Andre Dubus<br />House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III<br /><strike>Geek Love, Katherine Dunn</strike><br />The Lover, Marguerite Duras<br />Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco<br />Permutation City, Greg Egan<br />How the Water Feels, Paul Eggers<br />The Magic Kingdom, Stanley Elkin<br />Happy Baby, Stephen Elliott<br />Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison<br />The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy<br />Silence, Shusaku Endo<br />For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander<br />The Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich<br />Altmann’s Tongue, Brian Evenson<br />The Wavering Knife, Brian Evenson<br />Erasure, Percival Everett<br />Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides<br />A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley<br />Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha, Edward Falco<br />As I Lay Dying, Faulkner<br />Absalom! Absalom!, Faulkner<br />The Short Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald<br /><strike>The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald</strike><br />The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford<br />The Sportswriter, Richard Ford<br />Independence Day, Richard Ford<br />The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles<br />Poachers, Tom Franklin<br />The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen<br /><strike>The Recognitions, Wm. Gaddis</strike><br />Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill<br />The Stories of Mavis Gallant<br />as much Gabriel Garcia-Marquez as possible, starting with Chronicle of a Death Foretold<br /><strike>Grendel, John Gardner</strike><br />In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Wm Gass<br />Welding with Children, Tim Gautreaux<br />I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, Wm. Gay<br />Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol<br /><strike>The House of Breath, Wm Goyen</strike><br />Museum of the Weird, Amelia Gray<br />The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene<br />Hunger, Knut Hamsun<br />Adverbs, Daniel Handler<br />Airships, Barry Hannah<br />Bats Out of Hell, Barry Hannah<br />Legends of the Fall, Jim Harrison<br />“Rollerball Murder,” Wm Harrison<br />The Lime Twig, John Hawkes<br /><strike>The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne</strike><br />Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein<br />The Pacific, Mark Helprin<br /><strike>some stories from Hemingway</strike><br />The Complete Works of Marvin K Mooney, Christopher Higgs<br />High Fidelity, Nick Hornby<br />The Cider House Rules, John Irving<br />The Lottery, Shirley Jackson<br />Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson<br />All Aunt Hagar’s Children, Edward P Jones<br />all of Kafka<br />The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata<br />The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis<br />all of Imre Kertesz’s novellas<br />Pacazo, Roy Kesey<br />Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid<br /><strike>Different Seasons, Stephen King</strike><br />Carrie, Stephen King<br />Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen King<br />The Stand, Stephen King<br /><strike>The Shining, Stephen King</strike><br />Steps, Jerzy Koszinski<br />The Orange Eats Creeps, Grace Krilanovich<br />The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera<br />The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera<br />From Old Notebooks, Evan Lavender-Smith<br />Independent People, Halldor Laxness<br />Mystic River, Dennis Lehane<br />Rum Punch, Elmore Leonard<br />a couple of J T LeRoy books<br />The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing<br />The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem<br />Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem<br />The Year of A Thousand Good Prayers, Yiyun Li<br />Richard Yates, Tao Lin<br />Stories in the Worst Way, Gary Lutz<br />Cairo Trilogy, Naghub Mahfouz<br />some Bernard Malamud novels<br />A Death in Venice, Thomas Mann<br />In Country, Bobbie Ann Mason<br />My Life in CIA, Harry Mathews<br />All of Cormac McCarthy, starting with Child of God<br />The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan<br />The Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels<br />at least one novel from James A. Michener<br />“Lust,” Susan Minot<br />about three weeks in Mishima<br />Hue and Cry, James Alan McPherson<br />The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven, Rick Moody<br />“People Like That,” Lorrie Moore<br />Beloved, Toni Morrison<br />Friend of My Youth, Alice Munro<br />Open Secrets, Alice Munro<br />Hateship, Loveship, Alice Munro<br />The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami<br />Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami<br />The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil<br />A House for Mr Biswas, Naipaul<br />Pale Fire, Nabokov<br />Lolita, Nabokov<br />The Assignation, Joyce Carol Oates<br />In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien<br />The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor<br />Kentucky Straight, Chris Offutt<br />“I Stand Here Ironing,” Tillie Olsen<br />The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick<br /><strike>Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk</strike><br />The Collected Stories of Grace Paley<br />The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake<br />Refresh, Refresh, Benjamin Percy<br />The Devil in the Hills, Cesare Pevase<br />Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter<br /><strike>at least one Charles Portis novel [3]</strike><br />Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock<br />The Collected Stories of J F Powers<br />Clockers, Richard Price<br />Close Range, Annie Proulx<br />Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon<br />An Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice<br />Charity, Mark Richard<br />Sabbath’s Theater, Philip Roth<br />American Pastoral, Philip Roth<br />Mating, Norman Rush<br />The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie<br /><strike>some Salinger</strike><br />A Sport and a Pastime, James Salter<br /><strike>some Saramago</strike><br />The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, George Saunders<br />The Reader, Bernhard Schlink<br />all of Christine Schutt except the newest novel<br />a couple of Sebald novels<br />Collected Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer<br /><strike>A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn</strike><br />Sophie’s Choice, Wm. Styron<br />“The Old Forest,” Peter Taylor<br />Girls in the Grass, Melanie Rae Thon<br /><strike>some Tolstoy and Tolkien</strike><br />A Bit on the Side, Wm Trevor<br />at least one Anne Tyler novel, swear to god<br /><strike>Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut</strike><br /><strike>Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut</strike><br />The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, Brady Udall<br />some Deb Olin Unferth stories<br />Rabbit Tetralogy, John Updike<br />What the World . . ., Laura van den Berg<br />The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, Brad Vice<br />The William T. Vollman Reader<br />Oblivion, David Foster Wallace<br /><strike>Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace</strike><br />All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren<br />“Against Specificity,” Douglas Watson<br />some Eudora Welty stories<br />The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead<br />Exciteability, Diane Williams<br />The Quick & the Dead, Joy Williams<br />Stoner, John Williams<br />“The Farmer’s Daughters,” Wm Carlos Williams<br />“Bullet in the Brain, ” Tobias Wolff<br />some Virginia Woolf novels<br />some Daniel Woodrell<br />Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates<br />*I’ve left out 98% of the important books you should read, but this should get you started on the fiction.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-49061088349020369222010-11-30T22:02:00.003-05:002010-12-02T09:18:48.121-05:00Our Penultimate Word Slough<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh2XtCw44iONXMsfPdHY3OjtoUHWK2kv4KfZ7dxEZqheBRMnoqpPsuYLjJilL4TUbjWXCKBSgFnw1MR081dBFUnlsvU-HT8WmijrZcKrrOcNPJ_oL8wdcxt6GuzsDyaEKlba1xzg/s200/Santa+Barbara.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh2XtCw44iONXMsfPdHY3OjtoUHWK2kv4KfZ7dxEZqheBRMnoqpPsuYLjJilL4TUbjWXCKBSgFnw1MR081dBFUnlsvU-HT8WmijrZcKrrOcNPJ_oL8wdcxt6GuzsDyaEKlba1xzg/s200/Santa+Barbara.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />Our latest PFC, chock full of sloughy fiction, with special guest sloughing by <a href="http://www.leafscape.org/aang/">Arlene Ang</a> is now <a href="http://postcardfictioncollaborative.blogspot.com">AVAILABLE</a>. We'll be doing this all once more before the year is out.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-10463530537386850002010-11-30T10:59:00.001-05:002010-11-30T11:01:01.716-05:00It's Happening Again, For the First Time<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfKbzn5lzpdQbCWDP2auW708jP_kWFHqmza6tyClC429M_viyjHs76W7BH537_zp_Oe3UsnZbg1ammPzP285p4xZS6TThNnfbWc__Q4B986Q33RcSxHZujYgQ8k8APn8ng9iS/s1600/pizzaparty.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 247px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibfKbzn5lzpdQbCWDP2auW708jP_kWFHqmza6tyClC429M_viyjHs76W7BH537_zp_Oe3UsnZbg1ammPzP285p4xZS6TThNnfbWc__Q4B986Q33RcSxHZujYgQ8k8APn8ng9iS/s320/pizzaparty.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5545373201373325442" /></a>William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-85709846406314676562010-11-23T21:57:00.006-05:002010-11-23T22:18:12.046-05:00fence books reading at The Kitchen twitter reviewSo <a href="http://www.fenceportal.org/">Fence Books</a>, evermore publishers of always the most amazing, most interesting work, held a reading last night showcasing their fall catalog authors: Nick Demske, Martin Corless-Smith, and Jena Osman. Martin I've seen read before, though I forget where. Jena was/is co-publisher of Chain/<a href="http://www.chainarts.org/chainlinks.htm">Chain Links</a>. Nick's name I'd seen here and there, but I'd not run up on his work before.<br /><br />Here is my condensed soup of a review of the reading via twitter:<br />The Fence Books reading at the Kitchen was quite spectacular. Jena Osman had an awesome, Flash (the superhero) infused presentation...to go along with her reading of the poem "Mercury Rising".<br /><br />I really hope she finds a way to post that online someplace. Martin Corless-Smith remains one of the best reading poets I've seen. <br /><br />And Nick Demske's reading seems a little much at first, but he wins you over with sincerity, humor, and energy.<br /><br />Bought all three books. I never buy all three books.<br /><br />If any of you are thinking, "hey, I just don't have enough BOOK on my holiday gift list": http://fencebooks.fenceportal.org/new_titles<br /><br /><br />Not my past glory of Year of the Hug reviews (The Year of the Hug was dedicated to reviews of live poetry readings), which maybe I'll just try to import all over here at some point, but still something, and the reading was a good place to extricate some peace after what was, in many way, a BIT of a day.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-33136242435142299452010-11-08T13:28:00.003-05:002010-11-08T13:31:19.024-05:00Shades of Howard Zinn: It's Okay If It's ImpossibleReposting this from <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/02-2">CommonDream.org</a>. It's long, but every word here is pristine, transformative, and it will have made you a better person by the time you are done.<br /><br />It's Okay If It's Impossible<br /><br />By Bill Moyers<br /><br />The following remarks were prepared for delivery on October 29, 2010<br />as part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series at Boston University:<br /><br />I was honored when you asked me to join in celebrating Howard Zinn's<br />life and legacy. I was also surprised. I am a journalist, not a<br />historian. The difference between a journalist and an historian is<br />that the historian knows the difference. George Bernard Shaw once<br />complained that journalists are seemingly unable to discriminate<br />between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization. In fact,<br />some epic history can start out as a minor incident. A young man named<br />Paris ran off with a beautiful woman who was married to someone else,<br />and the civilization of Troy began to unwind. A middle-aged black<br />seamstress, riding in a Montgomery bus, had tired feet, and an ugly<br />social order began to collapse. A night guard at an office complex in<br />Washington D.C. found masking tape on a doorjamb, and the presidency<br />of Richard Nixon began to unwind. What journalist, writing on<br />deadline, could have imagined the walloping kick that Rosa Park's<br />tired feet would give to Jim Crow? What pundit could have fantasized<br />that a third-rate burglary on a dark night could change the course of<br />politics? The historian's work is to help us disentangle the wreck of<br />the Schwinn from cataclysm. Howard famously helped us see how big<br />change can start with small acts.<br /><br />We honor his memory. We honor him, for Howard championed grassroots<br />social change and famously chronicled its story as played out over the<br />course of our nation's history. More, those stirring sagas have<br />inspired and continue to inspire countless people to go out and make a<br />difference. The last time we met, I told him that the stories in A<br />People's History of the United States remind me of the fellow who<br />turned the corner just as a big fight broke out down the block.<br />Rushing up to an onlooker he shouted, "Is this a private fight, or can<br />anyone get in it?" For Howard, democracy was one big public fight and<br />everyone should plunge into it. That's the only way, he said, for<br />everyday folks to get justice - by fighting for it.<br /><br />I have in my desk at home a copy of the commencement address Howard<br />gave at Spelman College in 2005. He was chairman of the history<br />department there when he was fired in 1963 over his involvement in<br />civil rights. He had not been back for 43 years, and he seemed<br />delighted to return for commencement. He spoke poignantly of his<br />friendship with one of his former students, Alice Walker, the daughter<br />of tenant farmers in Georgia who made her way to Spelman and went on<br />to become the famous writer. Howard delighted in quoting one of her<br />first published poems that had touched his own life:<br /><br />It is true<br />I've always loved<br />the daring ones<br />like the black young man<br />who tried to crash<br />all barriers<br />at once,<br />wanted to swim<br />at a white beach (in Alabama)<br />Nude.<br /><br />That was Howard Zinn; he loved the daring ones, and was daring himself.<br /><br />One month before his death he finished his last book, "The Bomb." Once<br />again he was wrestling with his experience as a B-17 bombardier during<br />World War II, especially his last mission in 1945 on a raid to take<br />out German garrisons in the French town of Royan. For the first time<br />the Eighth Air Force used napalm, which burst into liquid fire on the<br />ground, killing hundreds of civilians. He wrote, "I remember<br />distinctly seeing the bombs explode in the town, flaring like matches<br />struck in the fog. I was completely unaware of the human chaos below."<br />Twenty years later he returned to Royan to study the effects of the<br />raid and concluded there had been no military necessity for the<br />bombing; everyone knew the war was almost over (it ended three weeks<br />later) and this attack did nothing to affect the outcome. He wrote<br />"The Bomb" to remind himself and us that sometimes we have to throw a<br />wrench into the machine.<br /><br />He believed in small acts of rebellion, as his long-time friend and<br />colleague Gregg Ruggerio recalls, which means - and these are Howard's<br />final words in the book, "acting on what we feel and think, here, now,<br />for human flesh and sense, against the abstractions of duty and<br />obedience."<br /><br />Howard never forget what it was like growing up poor in a working<br />class immigrant family, which is probably why, as Gregg Ruggerio also<br />reminds us, "Shifting historical focus from the wealthy and powerful<br />to the ordinary person was perhaps his greatest act of rebellion and<br />incitement." Let's begin, then, with some everyday people.<br /><br />***<br /><br />When she heard the news, Connie Brasel cried like a baby.<br /><br />For years she had worked at minimum-wage jobs, until 17 years ago,<br />when she was hired by the Whirlpool refrigerator factory in<br />Evansville, Indiana. She was making $ 18.44 an hour when Whirlpool<br />announced earlier this year that it was closing the operation and<br />moving it to Mexico. She wept. I'm sure many of the other eleven<br />hundred workers who lost their jobs wept too; they had seen their<br />ticket to the middle class snatched from their hands. The company<br />defended its decision by claiming high costs, underused capacity, and<br />the need to stay competitive. Those excuses didn't console Connie<br />Brasel. "I was becoming part of something bigger than me," she told<br />Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times. "Whirlpool was the best thing<br />that ever happened to me."<br /><br />She was not only sad, she was mad. "They didn't get world-class<br />quality because they had the best managers. They got world-class<br />quality because of the United States and because of their workers."<br /><br />Among those workers were Natalie Ford, her husband and her son; all<br />three lost their jobs. "It's devastating," she told the Times. Her<br />father had worked at Whirlpool before them. Now, "There aren't any<br />jobs here. How is this community going to survive?"<br /><br />And what about the country? Between 2001 and 2008, about 40,000 US<br />manufacturing plants closed. Six million factory jobs have disappeared<br />over the past dozen years, representing one in three manufacturing<br />jobs. Natalie Ford said to theTimes what many of us are wondering: "I<br />don't know how without any good-paying jobs here in the United States<br />people are going to pay for their health care, put their children<br />through school."<br /><br />Now, if Connie Brasel and Natalie Ford lived in South Carolina, they<br />might have been lucky enough to get a job with the new BMW plant that<br />recently opened there and advertised that the company would hire one<br />thousand workers. Among the applicants? According to the Washington<br />Post; "a former manager of a major distribution center for Target; a<br />consultant who oversaw construction projects in four western states; a<br />supervisor at a plastics recycling firm. Some held college degrees and<br />resumes in other fields where they made more money." They will be paid<br />$15 an hour - about half of what BMW workers earn in Germany<br /><br />In polite circles, among our political and financial classes, this is<br />known as "the free market at work." No, it's "wage repression," and<br />it's been happening in our country since around 1980. I must invoke<br />some statistics here, knowing that statistics can glaze the eyes; but<br />if indeed it's the mark of a truly educated person to be deeply moved<br />by statistics, as I once read, this truly educated audience, then I am<br />sure you will be moved by the recent analysis of tax data by the<br />economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. They found that from 1950<br />through 1980, the share of all income in America going to everyone but<br />the rich increased from 64 percent to 65 percent. Because the nation's<br />economy was growing handsomely, the average income for 9 out of l0<br />Americans was growing, too - from $17,719 to $30,941. That's a 75<br />percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.<br /><br />But then it stopped. Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow<br />handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefitted. The line<br />flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from<br />that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average<br />income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years.<br /><br />That's wage repression.<br /><br />Another story in the Times caught my eye a few weeks after the one<br />about Connie Brasel and Natalie Ford. The headline read: "Industries<br />Find Surging Profits in Deeper Cuts." Nelson Schwartz reported that<br />despite falling motorcycle sales, Harley-Davidson profits are soaring<br />- with a second quarter profit of $71 million, more than triple what<br />it earned the previous year. Yet Harley-Davidson has announced plans<br />to cut fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred more jobs by the end of<br />next year; this on top of the 2000 job cut last year.<br /><br />The story noted: "This seeming contradiction - falling sales and<br />rising profits - is one reason the mood on Wall Street is so much more<br />buoyant than in households, where pessimism runs deep and unemployment<br />shows few signs of easing."<br /><br />There you see the two Americas. A buoyant Wall Street; a doleful Main<br />Street. The Connie Brasels and Natalie Fords - left to sink or swim on<br />their own. There were no bailouts for them.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Matt Krantz reports in USA TODAY that "Cash is gushing into<br />company's coffers as they report what's shaping up to be a<br />third-consecutive quarter of sharp earning increases. But instead of<br />spending on the typical things, such as expanding and hiring people,<br />companies are mostly pocketing the money or stuffing it under their<br />mattresses." And what are their plans for this money? Again,<br />theWashington Post<br /><br />.... Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are<br />buying back their own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have<br />announced they will purchase $273 billion of their own shares, more<br />than five times as much compared with this time last year... But the<br />rise in buybacks signals that many companies are still hesitant to<br />spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could produce<br />economic growth.<br /><br />That's how "capitalism" works today: Conserving cash rather than<br />bolstering hiring and production. Investing in their own shares to<br />prop up their share prices and make their stock more attractive to<br />Wall Street. To hell with everyone else.<br /><br />Hear the chief economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Ethan<br />Harris, who told the Times: "There's no question that there is an<br />income shift going on in the economy. Companies are squeezing their<br />labor costs to build profits."<br /><br />Or the chief economist for Credit Suisse in New York, Neal Soss: As<br />companies have wrung more savings out of their work forces, causing<br />wages and salaries barely to budge from recession lows, "profits have<br />staged a vigorous recovery, jumping 40 percent between late 2008 and<br />the first quarter of 2010."<br /><br />Just this morning the New York Times reports that the private equity<br />business is roaring back: "While it remains difficult to get a<br />mortgage to buy a home or to get a loan to fund a small business,<br />yield-starved investors are creating a robust market for corporate<br />bonds and loans."<br /><br />You get that, I'm sure: Capitalism should be helping everyday<br />Americans and businesses get the mortgages and loans - the capital -<br />they need to keep going; they're not, even as the financiers are<br />reaping robust awards.<br /><br />Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But he's run off with all the toys.<br /><br />Late in August I clipped another story from the Wall Street Journal.<br />Above an op-ed piece by Robert Frank the headline asked: "Do the Rich<br />Need the Rest of America?" The author didn't seem ambivalent about the<br />answer. He wrote that as stocks have boomed,<br /><br />"the wealthy bounced back. And while the Main Street economy" [where<br />the Connie Brasels and Natalie Fords and most Americans live] "was<br />wracked by high unemployment and the real-estate crash, the wealthy -<br />whose financial fates were more tied to capital markets than jobs and<br />houses - picked themselves up, brushed themselves off, and started<br />buying luxury goods again."<br /><br />Citing the work of Michael Lind, at the Economic Growth Program of the<br />New American Foundation, the article went on to describe how the<br />super-rich earn their fortunes with overseas labor, selling to<br />overseas consumers and managing financial transactions that have<br />little to do with the rest of America, "while relying entirely or<br />almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around<br />the country."<br /><br />Right at that point I remembered another story I had filed away, also<br />from the Wall Street Journal, from three years ago. The reporter<br />Ianthe Jeanne Dugan described how the private equity firm Blackstone<br />Group swooped down on a travel reservation company in Colorado, bought<br />it, laid off 841 employees, and recouped its entire investment in just<br />seven months, one of the quickest returns on capital ever for such a<br />deal. Blackstone made a killing while those workers were left to sift<br />through the debris. They sold their homes, took part-time jobs making<br />sandwiches and coffee, and lost their health insurance.<br /><br />That fall, Blackstone's chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman,<br />reportedly worth over $5 billion, rented a luxurious resort in Jamaica<br />to celebrate the marriage of his son. According to the Guardian News,<br />the Montego Bay facility alone cost $50,000, plus thousands more to<br />sleep 130 guests. There were drinks on the beach, dancers and a steel<br />band, marshmallows around the fire, and then, the following day, an<br />opulent wedding banquet with champagne and a jazz band and fireworks<br />display that alone cost $12,500. Earlier in the year Schwarzman had<br />rented out the Park Avenue Armory in New York (near his 35-room<br />apartment) to celebrate his 60th birthday at a cost of $3 million. So?<br />It's his money, isn't it? Yes, but consider this: The stratospheric<br />income of private-equity partners is taxed at only 15 percent - less<br />than the rate paid, say, by a middle class family. When Congress<br />considered raising the rate on their Midas-like compensation, the<br />financial titans flooded Washington with armed mercenaries - armed,<br />that is, with hard, cold cash - and brought the "debate" to an end<br />faster than it had taken Schwartzman to fire 841 workers. The<br />financial class had won another round in the exploitation of working<br />people who, if they are lucky enough to have jobs, are paying a higher<br />tax rate than the super-rich.<br /><br />So the answer to the question: "Do the Rich Need the Rest of America?"<br />is as stark as it is ominous: Many don't. As they form their own<br />financial culture increasingly separated from the fate of everyone<br />else, "it is hardly surprising," as Frank and Lind concluded, "that so<br />many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the<br />infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the<br />American people."<br /><br />You would think the rich might care, if not from empathy, then from<br />reading history. Ultimately gross inequality can be fatal to<br />civilization. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or<br />Succeed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Jared Diamond<br />writes about how governing elites throughout history isolate and<br />delude themselves until it is too late. He reminds us that the change<br />people inflict on their environment is one of the main factors in the<br />decline of earlier societies. For example: the Mayan natives on the<br />Yucatan peninsula who suffered as their forest disappeared, their soil<br />eroded, and their water supply deteriorated. Chronic warfare further<br />exhausted dwindling resources. Although Mayan kings could see their<br />forests vanishing and their hills eroding, they were able to insulate<br />themselves from the rest of society. By extracting wealth from<br />commoners, they could remain well-fed while everyone else was slowly<br />starving. Realizing too late that they could not reverse their<br />deteriorating environment, they became casualties of their own<br />privilege. Any society contains a built-in blueprint for failure,<br />Diamond warns, if elites insulate themselves from the consequences of<br />their decisions, separated from the common life of the country.<br /><br />They seem to relish the separation. When Howard came down to New York<br />last December for what would be my last interview with him, I showed<br />him this document published in the spring of 2005 by the Wall Street<br />giant Citigroup, setting forth an "Equity Strategy" under the title<br />(I'm not making this up) "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting<br />Richer."<br /><br />Now, most people know what plutocracy is: the rule of the rich,<br />political power controlled by the wealthy. Plutocracy is not an<br />American word and wasn't meant to become an American phenomenon - some<br />of our founders deplored what they called "the veneration of wealth."<br />But plutocracy is here, and a pumped up Citigroup even boasted of<br />coining a variation on the word- "plutonomy", which describes an<br />economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer<br />and that government helps them do it. Five years ago Citigroup decided<br />the time had come to "bang the drum on plutonomy."<br /><br />And bang they did. Here are some excerpts from the document<br />"Revisiting Plutonomy;"<br /><br />"Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by<br />market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper... [and]<br />take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years."<br /><br />"...the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the United States - the<br />plutonomists in our parlance - have benefitted disproportionately from<br />the recent productivity surged in the US... [and] from globalization<br />and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor."<br /><br />"... [and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years.<br />Because the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact."<br /><br />I'll repeat that: "The dynamics of plutonomy are still intact." That<br />was the casebefore the Great Collapse of 2008, and it's the case<br />today, two years after the catastrophe. But the plutonomists are doing<br />just fine. Even better in some cases, thanks to our bailout of the big<br />banks.<br /><br />As for the rest of the country: Listen to this summary in The Economist<br /><br />- no Marxist journal but one of the most influential business<br />publications in the world - of a study by Pew Research:<br /><br />More than half of all workers today have experienced a spell of<br />unemployment, taken a cut in pay or hours or been forced to go<br />part-time. The typical unemployed worker has been jobless for nearly<br />six months. Collapsing share and house prices have destroyed a fifth<br />of the wealth of the average household. Nearly six in ten Americans<br />have cancelled or cut back on holidays. About a fifth say their<br />mortgages are underwater. One in four of those between 18 and 29 have<br />moved back in with their parents. Fewer than half of all adults expect<br />their children to have a higher standard of living than theirs, and<br />more than a quarter say it will be lower. For many Americans the great<br />recession has been the sharpest trauma since The Second World War,<br />wiping out jobs, wealth and hope itself.<br /><br />Hold on that for a minute. Let it sink in: For millions of<br />garden-variety Americans, the audacity of hope has been replaced by a<br />paucity of hope.<br /><br />Time for a confession. The legendary correspondent Edward R. Murrow<br />told his generation of journalists that bias is okay as long as you<br />don't try to hide it. Here is mine: Plutocracy and democracy don't<br />mix. Plutocracy too long tolerated leaves democracy on the auction<br />block, subject to the highest bidder.<br /><br />Socrates said to understand a thing you must first name it. The name<br />for what's happening to our political system is corruption - a deep,<br />systemic corruption. I urge you this weekend to read the recent<br />edition of Harper's Magazine. The former editor Roger D. Hodge<br /><br />brilliantly dissects how democracy has gone on sale in America.<br />Ideally, he writes, our ballots purport to be expressions of political<br />will, which we hope and pray will be translated into legislative and<br />executive action by our pretended representatives. But voting is the<br />beginning of civil virtue, not its end, and the focus of real power is<br />elsewhere. Voters still "matter" of course, but only as raw material<br />to be shaped by the actual form of political influence - money.<br /><br />The article is excerpted from Hodge's new book, "The Mendacity of<br />Hope." In it he describes how America's founding generation feared<br />this kind of corruption - the kind that occurs when the private ends<br />of a narrow faction succeed in capturing the engines of government.<br />James Madison and many of his contemporaries knew this to be the<br />corruption that could consume the republic. Looking at history through<br />a tragic lens, they thought the life cycle of republics - their<br />degeneration into anarchy, monarchy, or oligarchy - was inescapable.<br />And they attempted to erect safeguards against it, hoping to prevent<br />private and narrow personal interests from overriding those of the<br />general public.<br /><br />They failed. Hardly a century passed after the ringing propositions of<br />1776 when America was engulfed in the gross materialism and political<br />corruption of the First Gilded Age, when Big Money bought the<br />government right out from under the voters. In their magisterial work<br />on The Growth of the American Republic, the historians Morison,<br />Commager, and Leuchtenberg describe how in that era "privilege<br />controlled politics," and "the purchase of votes, the corruption of<br />election officials, the bribing of legislatures, the lobbying of<br />special bills, and the flagrant disregard of laws" threatened the very<br />foundations of the country.<br /><br />I doubt you'll be surprised to learn that this "degenerate and<br />unlovely age" - as one historian described it - served to inspire Karl<br />Rove, the man said to be George W. Bush's brain and now a mover and<br />shaker of the money tree for the corporate-conservative complex (more<br />on that later.) The extraordinary coupling of private and political<br />power toward the close of the 19th century - the First Gilded Age -<br />captured Rove's interest, especially the role of Mark Hanna, the Ohio<br />operative who became the first modern political fund-raiser. "There<br />are two things that are important in politics," Hanna said. "The first<br />is money and I can't remember what the second one is."<br /><br />He didn't need to remember. Hanna tapped the banks, the insurance<br />companies, the railroads and the other industrial trusts of the late<br />1800s for all the money it took to make William McKinley governor of<br />Ohio and then President of the United States. McKinley was the perfect<br />conduit for Hanna's connivance and their largesse - one of those<br />politicians with a talent for emitting banalities as though they were<br />recently discovered truth. His opponent in the 1896 election was the<br />Democrat-Populist candidate, William Jennings Bryan, whose base<br />consisted of aroused populists - the remnant of the People's Party -<br />who outraged at the rapacity and shenanigans of the monopolies,<br />trusts, and corporations that were running roughshod over ordinary<br />Americans. Because Bryan threatened those big economic interests he<br />was able to raise only one-tenth the money that Mark Hanna raised for<br />McKinley, and he lost: Money in politics is an old story.<br /><br />Karl Rove would have learned from his study of Hanna the principles of<br />plutonomy. For Hanna believed "the state of Ohio existed for property.<br />It had no other function...Great wealth was to be gained through<br />monopoly, through using the State for private ends; it was axiomatic<br />therefore that businessmen should run the government and run it for<br />personal profit."<br /><br />He and McKinley therefore saw to it that first Ohio and then<br />Washington were "ruled by business...by bankers, railroads, and public<br />utility corporations." The United States Senate was infamous as "a<br />millionaire's club." City halls, state houses and even courtrooms were<br />bought and sold like baubles. Instead of enforcing the rules of fair<br />play, government served as valet to the plutocrats. The young<br />journalist Henry George had written that "an immense wedge" was being<br />forced through American society by "the maldistribution of wealth,<br />status, and opportunity." Now inequality exploded into what the<br />historian Clinton Rossiter described as "the great train robbery of<br />American intellectual history." Conservatives of the day -<br />pro-corporate apologists - hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian<br />liberalism and turned words like "progress," "opportunity,"<br /><br />and "individualism" into tools for making the plunder of America sound<br />like divine right. Laissez faire ideologues and neo-cons of the day -<br />lovers of empire even then - hijacked Charles Darwin's theory of<br />evolution and so distorted it that politicians, judges, and publicists<br />gleefully embraced the notion that progress emerges from the<br />elimination of the weak and the "survival of the fittest." As one of<br />the plutocrats crowed: "We are rich. We own America. We got it, God<br />knows how, but we intend to keep it."<br /><br />And they have never given up. Today the Gilded Age has returned with a<br />vengeance. It slipped in quietly at first, back in the early 1980s,<br />when Ronald Reagan began a "massive decades-long transfer of national<br />wealth to the rich." As Roger Hodge makes clear, under Bill Clinton<br />the transfer was even more dramatic, as the top 10 percent captured an<br />ever-growing share of national income. The trend continued under<br />George W. Bush - those huge tax cuts for the rich, remember, which are<br />now about to be extended because both parties have been bought off by<br />the wealthy - and by 2007 the wealthiest 10% of Americans were taking<br />in 50% of the national income. Today, a fraction of people at the top<br />today earn more than the bottom 120 million Americans.<br /><br />You will hear it said, "Come on, this is the way the world works." No,<br />it's the way the world is made to work. This vast inequality is not<br />the result of Adam Smith's invisible hand; it did not just happen; it<br />was no accident. As Hodge drives home, it is the result of a long<br />series of policy decisions "about industry and trade, taxation and<br />military spending, by flesh-and-blood humans sitting in<br />concrete-and-steel buildings." And those policy decisions were paid<br />for by the less than one percent who participate in our capitalist<br />democracy political contributions. Over the past 30 years, with the<br />complicity of Republicans and Democrats alike, the plutocrats, or<br />plutonomists (choose your own poison) have used their vastly increased<br />wealth to assure that government does their bidding. Remember that<br />grateful reference in the Citigroup's document to "market-friendly<br />governments" on the side of plutonomy? We had a story down in Texas<br />for that, about the poker game in which the dealer says, "Now play the<br />cards fairly, Reuben; I know what I dealt you."(To see just how our<br />system was rigged by the financial and political class and how that<br />collusion produced the Great Collapse of 2008, run, don't walk, this<br />weekend to the theatre nearest you showing Charles Ferguson's new<br />film, "Inside Job." Take a handkerchief because you'll weep for the<br />republic.)<br /><br />Looking back, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have<br />ignored the warning signs at the time. One of the few journalists who<br />did see it coming - Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post - reported<br />that "business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging<br />competitive instincts in favour of joint, cooperative action in the<br />legislative arena." Big business political action committees flooded<br />the political arena with a deluge of dollars. They funded think tanks<br />that churned out study after study with results skewed to their<br />ideology and interests. And their political allies in the conservative<br />movement cleverly built alliances with the religious right - Jerry<br />Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition - who<br />zealously waged a cultural holy war that camouflaged the economic<br />assault on working people and the middle class.<br /><br />Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan also tried to warn us. He said<br />President Reagan's real strategy was to force the government to cut<br />domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic<br />dimensions. Senator Moynihan was gone before the financial catastrophe<br />that occurred on George W. Bush's watch that paradoxically could yet<br />fulfill Reagan's dream. The plutocrats who soaked up all the money now<br />say the deficits require putting Social Security and other public<br />services on the chopping block. You might think that Mr. Bush today<br />would regret having invaded Iraq on false pretences at a cost of more<br />than a trillion dollars and counting, but no, just last week he said<br />that his biggest regret was his failure to privatize Social Security.<br />With over l00 Republicans of the House having signed a pledge to do<br />just that when the new Congress convenes, Mr. Bush's dream may yet be<br />realized.<br /><br />Daniel Altman also saw what was coming. In his book Neoconomy he<br />described a place without taxes or a social safety net, where rich and<br />poor live in different financial worlds. "It's coming to America," he<br />wrote. Most likely he would not have been surprised when recently<br />firefighters in rural Tennessee would let a home burn to the ground<br />because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee.<br /><br />That's the kind of world our prevailing ideology is producing.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Here we are now, on the verge of the biggest commercial transaction in<br />the history of American elections. Once again the plutocracy is buying<br />off the system. Nearly $4 billion is being spent on the congressional<br />races that will be decided next week, much of it coming from secret<br />slush funds. The organization Public Citizen reports that just 10<br />groups are responsible for the bulk of the spending by independent<br />groups: "A tiny number of organizations, relying on a tiny number of<br />corporate and fat cat contributors, are spending most of the money on<br />the vicious attack ads dominating the airwaves" - those are the words<br />of Public Citizen's president, Robert Wiessman. The Federal Election<br />Commission says that two years ago 97% of groups paying for election<br />ads disclosed the names of their donors. This year it's only 32%.<br /><br />Donors are laundering their cash through front groups with<br />high-falutin' names like American Crossroads. That's one of the two<br />slush funds controlled by Karl Rove in his ambition to revive the era<br />of the robber barons. Promise me you won't laugh when I tell you that<br />although Rove and the powerful Washington lobbyist who is his<br />accomplice described the first organization as "grassroots," 97% of<br />its initial contributions came from four billionaires. Yes: The grass<br />grows mighty high when the roots are fertilized with gold.<br /><br />Rove, other conservative groups and the Chamber of Commerce have in<br />fact created a "shadow party" determined to be the real power in<br />Washington just like Rome's Opus Dei in Dan Brown's "The DaVinci<br />Code." In this "shadow party" the plutocrats reign. We have reached<br />what the new chairman of Common Cause and former Labor Secretary<br />Robert Reich calls "the perfect storm that threatens American<br />democracy: an unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the<br />top; a record amount of secret money, flooding our democracy; and a<br />public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government<br />that's raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it<br />back to work. We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's<br />called plutocracy."<br /><br />That word again. But Reich is right. That fraction of one percent of<br />Americans who now earn as much as the bottom 120 million Americans<br />includes the top executives of giant corporations and those Wall<br />Street hedge funds and private equity managers who constitute<br />Citigroup's "plutonomy" are buying our democracy and they're doing it<br />in secret.<br /><br />That's because early this year the five reactionary members of the<br />Supreme Court ruled that corporations are "persons" with the right to<br />speak during elections by funding ads like those now flooding the<br />airwaves. It's hard for patriots to admit it, but the United States<br />Supreme Court has promulgated a Big Lie: Corporations are not people;<br />they are legal fictions, creatures of the state, born not of the womb,<br />of flesh and blood, but of the imagination of fabulists. They're not<br />permitted to vote. They don't bear arms (except for the nuclear bombs<br />they can now drop on a congressional race without anyone knowing where<br />it came from.) Yet five men in black robes have bestowed on them the<br />privilege of "personhood" to speak - and not in their own voice, mind<br />you, but as ventriloquists, through hired puppets.<br /><br />Does anyone - even them - really think that's what the authors of the<br />First Amendment had in mind? Horrified by such a profound perversion<br />of the First Amendment, the editor of the spunky Texas Observer, Bob<br />Moser, got it right with his headline: "So long, Democracy, it's been<br />good to know you."<br /><br />This is the work of fabulists or dupes. You'll remember that soon<br />after the Court's decision President Obama raised the matter during<br />his State of the Union speech in January. He said the decision would<br />unleash a torrent of corrupting corporate money into our political<br />system. Sitting a few feet in front of the president, Associate<br />Justice Samuel Alito defiantly mouthed the words: "Not true." It was a<br />remarkable revelation of the majority's mindset on the court. Alito<br />was either disingenuous, naïve, or deluded. He can't be in this world<br />without knowing he and his four fellow corporatists were giving big<br />donors the one thing they most want in their campaign against working<br />people: an unfair advantage.<br /><br />Alan Grayson, for one, got it. He's a member of Congress and knows how<br />the world is made to work. He recently said: "We're now in a situation<br />where a lobbyist can walk into my office...and say, "I've got five<br />million dollars to spend and I can spend it for you or against you.<br />Which do you prefer?"<br /><br />Just the other day my friend and colleague Michael Winship, the<br />columnist, told a story that illuminates the Court's coup de grace<br />against democracy. It seems the incorrigible George Bernard Shaw once<br />propositioned a fellow dinner guest, asking if she would go to bed<br />with him for a million pounds (today around $1,580,178 US dollars).<br />She agreed. Shaw then asked if she would do the same for ten<br />shillings.<br /><br />"What do you take me for?" she asked angrily. "A prostitute?" Shaw<br />responded: "We've established the principle, Madam. Now we're just<br />haggling over the price."<br /><br />With this one decision, the Supreme Court established once and for all<br />that Shaw's is the only principle left in politics, as long as the<br />price is right.<br /><br />Come now and let's visit Washington's red light district, the<br />headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the front group for the<br />plutocracy's prostitution of politics. The Chamber boasts it<br />represents more than three million businesses and approximately<br />300,000 members. But in reality it has almost nothing to do with the<br />shops and stores along your local streets. The Chamber's branding, as<br />the economics journalist Zach Carter recently wrote, "allows them to<br />disguise their political agenda as a coalition of local businesses<br />while it does dirty work for corporate titans." Carter found that when<br />the Supreme Court came down with its infamous ruling earlier this<br />year, the Chamber responded by announcing a 40% boost in its political<br />spending operations. After the money started flowing in, the Chamber<br />boosted its budget again by 50%.<br /><br />After digging into corporate foundation tax filings and other public<br />records, theNew York Times found that the Chamber of Commerce has<br />"increasingly relied on a relatively small collection of big corporate<br />donors" - the plutocracy's senior ranks - "to finance much of its<br />legislative and political agenda." Furthermore, the chamber<br /><br />"makes no apologies for its policy of not identifying its donors."<br />Indeed, "It has vigorously opposed legislation in Congress that would<br />require groups like it to identify their biggest contributors when<br />they spend money on campaign ads."<br /><br />Now connect some dots: When the House of Representatives recently<br />passed a bill that would require that the names of all such donors be<br />publicly disclosed, every Republican in the Senate opposed it, and<br />there it died. This, despite the fact that Senate Republican Leader<br />Mitch McConnell had actually claimed that "sunshine" laws would make<br />everything okay by letting people see who was buying their elections.<br />Hardly had the public begun to sing "Let the Sunshine In" than<br />McConnell lined up every Republican in the Senate to black out the<br />windows. When the chief lobbyist for the Chamber of Commerce was asked<br />by an interviewer, "Are you guys eventually going to disclose?" the<br />answer was a brisk: "No." Together, the chamber and the Republicans in<br />the Senate are determined not to reveal the corporate sources of their<br />slush funds. Why? Because those very corporations are afraid of a<br />public backlash. Doesn't that tell us something about the nature of<br />what they're doing? In the words of one of the characters in Tom<br />Stoppard's play Night and Day:"People do terrible things to each<br />other, but it's worse in places where everything is kept in the dark."<br /><br />That's true in politics, too. Thus it turns out that many of the ads<br />being paid for secretly by anonymous donors are "false, grossly<br />misleading, or marred with distortions," as Greg Sargent reports in<br />his website The Plum Line. Go there and you'll see a partial list of<br />ads that illustrate the scope of the intellectual and political fraud<br />being perpetrated in front of our eyes. Money from secret sources is<br />poisoning the public mind with toxic information in order to dupe<br />voters into giving even more power to the powerful.<br /><br />On another site -thinkprogress.com - you can find out how the<br />multibillionaire Koch brothers - also big oil polluters and Tea Party<br />supporters - are recruiting "captains of industry" to fund the<br />right-wing infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think<br />tanks and media outlets. Now, hold on to your seats, because this just<br />might blow you away: Among the right-wing luminaries who showed up<br />among Koch's ‘secretive network of Republican donors' were two Supreme<br />Court Justices, both right-wingers: Antonin Scalia and Clarence<br />Thomas. That's right: 2 of the 5 votes for corporate slush funds came<br />from justices who were present as members of the plutocracy schemed to<br />take over our government.<br /><br />Something else is going on here, too. The Koch brothers have<br />contributed significantly to efforts to stop the Affordable Care Act -<br />the health care reforms - from taking effect. Justice Clarence<br />Thomas's wife Virginia claims those reforms are "unconstitutional,"<br />and has founded an organization to fight to repeal them. Think about<br />it: Her own husband on the Supreme Court may one day be ruling on<br />whether she's right or not ("Play the cards fair, Reuben; I know what<br />I dealt you.") There's more: The organization Virginia Thomas founded<br />to kill those health care reforms, also a goal of the Koch brothers,<br />got its start with a gift of half a million dollars from an unnamed<br />source. It's still being funded from secret sources. You have to<br />wonder if some of them are corporations that stand to benefit from<br />favorable decisions by the Supreme Court.<br /><br />This truly puzzles me. It's what I can't figure out about the<br />conservative mindset. The Kochs I can understand: messianic Daddy<br />Warbucks who can't imagine what life is like for people who aren't<br />worth 21 billion dollars. But whatever happened to "compassionate<br />conservatism?" I mean, the Affordable Care Act - whatever its flaws -<br />extends health care coverage to over 40 million deprived Americans who<br />would otherwise be uncovered? What is it about these people - the<br />Clarence and Virginia Thomases, the secret donors, the privileged<br />plutocrats on their side - that they can't embrace a little social<br />justice where it counts - among everyday people struggling to get by<br />in a dog-eat-dog world? Mrs. Thomas is obviously doing okay; she no<br />doubts takes at least a modest salary from that private slush fund<br />working to undermine the health care reforms; her own husband is a<br />government employee covered by a federal plan. Why wouldn't she want<br />people less fortunate than her to have a little security, too? She<br />based her organization at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, a<br />reportedly Christian school aligned with Falwell's Moral Majority. How<br />is it she's only about "Live and Let Live?" Have they never heard<br />there the Old Time Religion of "Live and help live?" Why would this<br />cushioned, comfortable crowd resort to such despicable tactics as<br />using secret money to try to turn public policy against their less<br />fortunate neighbors, and in the promise compromise the already<br />tattered integrity of the United States Supreme Court?<br /><br />Time to close the circle: Everyone knows millions of Americans are in<br />trouble. As Robert Reich recently summed it up: They've lost their<br />jobs, their homes, and their savings. Their grown children have moved<br />back in with them. Their state and local taxes are rising. Teachers<br />and firefighters are being laid off. The roads and bridges they count<br />on are crumbling, pipelines are leaking, schools are dilapidated, and<br />public libraries are being shut.<br /><br />Why isn't government working for them? Because it's been bought off.<br />It's as simple as that. And until we get clean money we're not going<br />to get clean elections, and until we get clean elections, you can kiss<br />goodbye government of, by, and for the people. Welcome to the<br />plutocracy.<br /><br />Obviously Howard Zinn would not have us leave it there. Defeat was<br />never his counsel. Look at this headline above one of his essays<br />published posthumously this fall by The Progressive magazine: DON'T<br />DESPAIR ABOUT THE SUPREME COURT. The Court was lost long ago, he said<br />- don't go there looking for justice. "The Constitution gave no rights<br />to working people; no right to work less than l2 hours a day, no right<br />to a living wage, no right to safe working conditions. Workers had to<br />organize, go on strike, defy the law, the courts, the police, create a<br />great movement which won the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion<br />that Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and Social<br />Security, and unemployment insurance....Those rights only come alive<br />when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel<br />and violate the law in order to uphold justice."<br /><br />So what are we to do about Big Money in politics buying off democracy?<br />I can almost hear him throwing that question back at us: "What are we<br />to do? ORGANIZE! Yes, organize-and don't count the costs."<br /><br />Some people already are. They're mobilizing. There's a rumbling in the<br />land. The corporate media may not pick it up, but despite the odds,<br />folks are organizing, on various fronts, against money in politics and<br />the secrecy that surrounds it. Veteran public interest groups like<br />Common Cause and Public Citizen are aroused. There are the rising<br />voices, from web-based initiatives such as freespeechforpeople.org to<br />grassroots initiatives such as "Democracy Matters" on campuses across<br />the country, including a chapter here at BU. Moveon.org is looking for<br />a million people to fight back in a variety of ways against the<br />Supreme Court decision.<br /><br />What's promising in all this is that in taking on Big Money we're<br />talking about something more than a single issue. We're talking about<br />a broad-based coalition to restore American democracy. There's plenty<br />of outrage to fuel it. Fed-up Democrats. Disillusioned Republicans.<br />Independents. Greens. Even Tea Partiers, once they wake up and realize<br />they've been sucker punched by the very people who are bankrolling<br />them.<br /><br />We should be smart about the nuts-and-bolts of building a coalition,<br />remembering that it has a lot to do with human nature. Some will want<br />to march. Some will want to petition. Some will want to engage through<br />the Web. Some will want to go door-to-door: many gifts, but the same<br />spirit. A fighting spirit. As Howard Zinn would tell us, no fight, no<br />fun, no results. But here's the key: If you're fighting for a living<br />wage, or peace, or immigration reform, or gender equality, or the<br />environment, or a safe neighborhood, you are, of necessity, strongly<br />opposed to a handful of moneyed-interests controlling how decisions<br />get made and policy set. All across the spectrum people oppose the<br />escalating power of money in politics. It's because most Americans are<br />attuned to the issue of fair play, of not favoring Big Money at the<br />expense of the little guy - at the expense of the country they love.<br />The legendary community organizer Ernesto Cortes talks about the<br />"power to protect what we value." That's what we want for Americans -<br />the power to preserve what we value, both for ourselves and on behalf<br />of our democracy.<br /><br />But let's be clear: Even with most Americans on our side, the odds are<br />long. Money fights hard, and it fights dirty. Think Rove. The Chamber.<br />The Kochs. We may lose. It all may be impossible. But it's OK if it's<br />impossible. You heard me right. I've learned something about this from<br />the former farmworker and labor organizer Baldemar Velasquez. The<br />members of his Farm Labor Organizing Committee are a long way from the<br />world of K Street lobbyists. But they took on the Campbell Soup<br />Company - and won. They took on North Carolina growers - and won,<br />using transnational organizing tactics that helped win Velasquez a<br />"genius" award from the MacArthur Foundation. And now they're taking<br />on no less than R. J. Reynolds Tobacco and one of its principle<br />financial sponsors, JPMorgan-Chase. Some people question the wisdom of<br />taking on such powerful interests, but here's what Velasquez says:<br />"It's OK if it's impossible; it's OK! Now I'm going to speak to you as<br />organizers. Listen carefully. The object is not to win. That's not the<br />objective. The object is to do the right and good thing. If you decide<br />not to do anything, because it's too hard or too impossible, then<br />nothing will be done, and when you're on your death bed, you're gonna<br />say, ‘I wish I had done something.' But if you go and do the right<br />thing NOW, and you do it long enough good things will<br />happen-something's gonna happen."<br /><br />Shades of Howard Zinn!<br />_______<br /><br />ABOUT AUTHOR<br /><br />Bill Moyers is managing editor of the weekly public affairs program<br />Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local<br />airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-66537023567420338632010-10-12T21:14:00.002-04:002010-10-12T21:32:55.947-04:00Herein I Give You a History of New York Comic ConIts the history as I see it. Its the history as you love it.<br /><br />The first NYCC isn't really even comparable. The show was limited to a single hall, with exhibitors lining the central area and artist alley encircling them. You didn't even have the dignity of choosing not to dry-hump the cosplayers. It happened and there was nothing you could do about it. If you were talking with Colleen Doran while she was awesomely sketching a bust of Morpheus in your book, and you tried to get over to talk with Peter David, you were gonna get real personal with an Earth X Wolverine (who is not the best at what he does, and doesn't shampoo well). <br /><br />'07 was for me the best so far. Crowd size had grown by almost 60%, but Reed suddenly had 2/3 of Javits. Loads of fun, tons of room, no con crud. I know Artist Alley was relegated to a sort of backwater that year, something which got repeated this year, but that is both good and bad. I like to talk to people about their work, about my work, about the need for free floating jello cups. Possibly free floating Jello shots!<br /><br />Interveeners '08 and '09 were steadily sweatier, rotundier variations. '08 was a lovely spring con, but that meant it was hotter than many people reasonably plan for when packing for New York, and instead of bringing an extra t-shirt instead of the thermal they just bring an extra 100 count box of comics for Bendis to sign.<br /><br />96K this year? Largest year over year (well, logistically speaking anyway it was 20 months) increase, quite possibly tipping 100k. I've vowed to stop the three day pedestrian excursions once it tips 100K. Next year I might be looking at a Friday only dash into Artist Alley, a single joint through Sensory Assault Land, and the Weepy World of Empty Party Dance-card.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-238237111022639182010-09-07T22:28:00.004-04:002010-09-07T23:00:28.718-04:00I Will Never Watch Pirahna 3DEver. Nothing could ever make me watch that movie. I would drive a flaming shard of welding slag into my eyes if I had to choose between that or watching Pirahna 3D. But in light of this choice, my Top 10 Movies. <br /><br />The favorites, the 1-10, committed to the intractable impermanence of the internet:<br /><br /> Sans Soleil<br /> Kill Bill<br /> Yojimbo<br /> Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead<br /> Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<br /> Fight Club<br /> The Royal Tenenbaums<br /> In Bruges<br /> Empire Strikes Back <br /> Grosse Point Blank <br /><br />And a few honorable mentions: Being There, A Life Less Ordinary, Five Easy Pieces, Groundhog Day, and Apocalypse Now<br /><br />Also vaguely topical (actually just nominal), go read Alan Moore, Gene Ha, and Zander Cannon's Top 10, and the miniseries Smax (from Moore and Cannon).William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-85485853488830354252010-09-04T15:01:00.003-04:002010-09-04T15:48:02.226-04:00The Who and The WhatDid anyone ever see the old Ghostbusters cartoon, which had to be called The Real Ghostbusters because there was this weird ass cartoon already called Ghost Busters? Anyway, there was an episode where this little old woman was actually a demon named What, and confusion did ensue.<br /><br />Hence, this. My name is William Owen, and you are reading the Angry Hug. There is spewing fiction here, and some ranting. I am not the 17th Century Welsh pirate. I vaguely resemble a yeti.<br /><br />Shot Stars is the other places where I try or have tried to build artifacts on the web. Postcard Fiction Collaborative was started by a fellow classmate from Goddard and features monthly short writings derived from contemplations of an image. I need to add in another item here soon for links to the stories I've published as I have been lax.<br /><br />Brain Churner is a handy way for me to keep links and people whose work I frequently enjoy and want to know more about what they are doing since I am lost in the sea of NYC and don't mingle well without alcohol. Everything else is fairly self-explanatory.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-5415205655011991182010-09-03T11:39:00.002-04:002010-09-03T11:55:26.933-04:00It Took Me 30 Years to RealizeSenate Legal now. I plan on building my campaign platform as a thinly veiled allusion to Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon's <a href="http://www.dccomics.com/wildstorm/comics/?cm=13282">The Winter Men</a>. <br /><br />I'm fairly pleased with being on Stay-cation this week. It is a glorious endeavor. I am typing this from the kitchen table, since it offers a modicum of coolness and hosts a fan. I moved in a bin and put it on the table so that I am typing all Stan Lee style (there is a picture of him standing in a backyard way back when he was doing the plotting on all the Marvel books and the story went he typed standing up). Also, standing while you work burns more calories, not the least of which is due my pull-up breaks in between bits and pieces.<br /><br />It takes a little getting used to, but so far I dig it. I have my coffee. I have bagel. I have bananas. I am writing. 30 is the new 11. Double down.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-26035639837398135692010-08-21T15:00:00.002-04:002010-08-21T15:06:17.807-04:00What Old Tamber Had to Say“They say she lives alone out there.”<br /><br />“What, like out in the woods?”<br /><br />“Not like way back in a cabin or anything, but in a little house out there off the road. I'm not even sure she has a car.”<br /><br />“What, does she walk in here every day? Seems a long way. And not really safe is it, or doesn't seem safe. Anyone come along on someone looks like her, well if they ain't a good sort that'd turn around pretty bad.”<br /><br />“They say she speaks in a funny tongue, some weird, old accent. Old Tamber said she spoke with all manner of things too. That when you'd go up by the place she'd be outside, out in back of the place or over on the side nearer to the stream and the marsh near that fork in the road.”<br /><br />“The one that leads over to Dalton.”<br /><br />“Or over towards Hume yeah.”<br /><br />“Hm, didn't realize the place was up that far. I'm not out that way too much.”<br /><br />“Tamber says she'll be out there talking with the plants, sometimes treating them to a congregation.”<br /><br />“The hell does that mean?”<br /><br />“A sermon.”<br /><br />“Like a preacher?”<br /><br />“Yeah. Holding forth on all those plants and anything else there she might be seeing. What kind of virtue to you suppose you'd extol to a plant.”<br /><br />“Hahaha, hmm. Constancy.”<br /><br />“How about a venus fly trap?”<br /><br />“Sort of have to condone murder on that one don't you.”<br /><br />“Either that, or you and Tamber just having on, right?”<br /><br />“I'm not, I'm telling you what Tamber said.”<br /><br />“That old broad knows just about everyone, and doesn't strike me as to like to make up a story like that.”<br /><br />“No, s'why I kind of went on with it. It's out there sure, but don't fall off the edge.”<br /><br />“Still, even if she is sort of odd, she's still a beauty and there are still all kinds out there up on the hills. That one guy, the one they say takes off anytime he gets wind of the FBI after him, he lives out there. He's not someone I'd put anything past. Even if I didn't know him twice as well as I'd like to I'd've heard in a year more than half what I need to know he isn't any sort.”<br /><br />“Yeah. I don't know. Makes a mystery though doesn't it. She's only lived here for what, five years. Opens this little store, always standing there in the doorway. But it's gotta be good for the town, having a curio shop that sells flowers.”<br /><br />“Sure. You think you're ever gonna talk to her.”<br /><br />“Me? No.”<br /><br />“Why not?”<br /><br />“I get tongue tied and stammerin' just thinking about talking to her.”<br /><br />“You'd maybe do alright.”<br /><br />“No, carpenters don't talk to pretty florists.”<br /><br /><br />-One of the 10% Stories I wrote during the triathlon. Got too caught up at the end with training to post this properly out side of its home at <a href="http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/william-owen/what-old-tamber-had-to-say">Fictionaut</a>.<br /><br />We're sitting a coffee shop now, trying to see if there isn't more to say upstairs in the old idea box at the moment. Re-reading Grendel at the moment, and have an idea for a thing and the artist I wouldn't mind talking to about it, so that might be a thing in and of itself. Fun, sort of.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-15094177572182117002010-08-02T20:07:00.002-04:002010-08-02T22:45:54.329-04:00Horn to Lips<a href="http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z23/bookhouse_comics/AH%20Images/?action=view¤t=splitsville.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z23/bookhouse_comics/AH%20Images/splitsville.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br /><br />Elegiac sense, the voice quivering near the clearest pitch touching near to monday hearts, lolling head on the shoulder. A son born late into the light. No more impression gongs sounding, weighing down the air, keeping it close to the mouths. Calling back to a dead line to fall down through that empty-tone pit at the bottom of it all, crawling up into the middle of it imaging the silence in its place like darkness, not void of light, but hoarding the images of everything that can be seen. The quiet where you can hear every sound.<br /><br /><a href="http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z23/bookhouse_comics/AH%20Images/?action=view¤t=splitsville_a.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z23/bookhouse_comics/AH%20Images/splitsville_a.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br />No actual sex, but lots of amoramity. Not a place for dreams. Instead she sits against the railing on the steps of the gazebo in the center of the park. She feels protected by the topiary of a dog behind her. The heat drags her out and maybe she'll sleep on a bench near the fountain tonight, not far from the leafy mutt.<br /><br /><a href="http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z23/bookhouse_comics/AH%20Images/?action=view¤t=splitsville1.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i194.photobucket.com/albums/z23/bookhouse_comics/AH%20Images/splitsville1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a><br /><br />Lingering voices in the sun, awaiting a reason to stand up and walk away from the park in the bright and heat, staring like the lost at boys dressed in the bodies of men coming home from their lives to homes full of steam. Your juice for free. Nothing devoured like the mind dejected. Lost song lyrics locked away, replaced people looking, unheard and unregistered.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35502258.post-1153426326270487612010-07-30T07:02:00.005-04:002010-07-30T19:54:39.508-04:00Charybdis - The Death SpiralNow the destroyer of the establishment in me used to read revelatory and go rampaging on into the night on the wings of furious indignation, upbraiding the lords of culture, power and influence for their callousness, for their machinations, for their inhumanity. I wanted to infiltrate Wal-Mart and expose anti-union activity. Break into nursing homes and expose abuse.<br /><br />Because that is what you have to do right, you fight back? Because at the heart of every Complex - military, education, fast food - is a blackened heart of avarice and greed, of the kind Steve Albini was talking about when he told us about <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070928182458/http://www.negativland.com/albini.html">The Problem with Music</a>. We must battle with that and overcome. Right?<br /><br />So too then must it be with publishing books, an aged, long-toothed institution older and even more nefarious than brash young corporate music. And so we have our enemy now, and it is the <a href="http://normanspinradatlarge.blogspot.com/2010/07/publishing-death-spiral-part-one-cold.html">The Death Spiral</a>! *Cue ominous bum bum baaaa music*<br /><br />*deep sigh*<br /><br />Oh, another article about another way in which PUBLISHING IS DEAD/DYING/LYING IN THE DESERT BEING EATEN ALIVE BY ANTS<br /><br />Sorry, knee-jerk reaction to seeing the word "death" associated with "publishing". So let's read,<br /><blockquote>How, you may well ask, can these buyers read and pass judgement on, for example, the over 1000 SF titles published in a year?<br /><br />Of course the answer is they can’t. Instead, an equation makes the buys of most of the books on the racks or blackballs the ones that don’t make it that far. It’s called “order to net.”</blockquote>Oh. Really!? That does sound less than good. Personally, as a bibliophile, I think books should be valued more highly than anything (I didn't say cost!), I think librarians and teachers should make six-figures. Publishing is a business, though I think at end of day a business where you have a lot of underpaid people working passionately on making available something they really believe in: books. Onward Norman,<br /><blockquote>Let’s say that some chain has ordered 10,000 copies of a novel, sold 8000 copies, and returned 2000, a really excellent sell-through of 80%. So they order to net on the author’s next novel, meaning 8000 copies. And let’s even say they still have an 80% sell-through of 6400 books, so they order 6400 copies of the next book, and sell 5120....<br /><blockquote> </blockquote></blockquote><blockquote>You see where this mathematical regression is going, don’t you? Sooner or later right down the willy-hole to an unpublishablity that has nothing at all to do with the literary quality of a writer’s work, or the loyalty of a reasonable body of would-be readers, or even the passionate support of an editor below the very top of the corporate pyramid.</blockquote>That sucks. It really does. It is a terrible way for the efforts of a person seeking to create and tell stories to end up, but I really just don't get it. Something is missing here. These numbers cannot just fall precipitously unchecked can they? Why are only 6400 people buying the second book? Shouldn't the second book do better than the first? What happened to all that editorial passion? Where was that editor when the promo-person from B&N came in to talk about tabling and end-caps for the next season when the book was coming out? Was she out sick that day? Did he sleep with promo-person's sister and never called? Did the ARCs going out to the bloggers and the indie store owners fall in the river? What happened?<br /><br />Where are the fans in all of this, the people who <span style="font-style: italic;">fucking loved</span> the first book? How come only a fraction of the people who found the first book find the second? What happened to the channels whereby the first book was found? Why were those channels not functioning on the second book? What happens when the second book wins an award?<br /><br />Where is the demand?<br /><br />WHY can't the voice of a passionate editor overcome the mechanical deliberations of publishing's Livia, spiteful grandmother that she is to our poor Claudius? WHY can't the desire of devoted fans overcome?<br /><br />Now maybe this is me being a sort of devotee of Richard Nash - I count myself in his debt for publishing books on Bill Hicks and Martin Millar's Good Fairies of New York - but demand is key, demand is word of mouth and it takes a lot of forms. I myself have induced the sale of Good Fairies, The Name of the Wind, and Wolf Hall because I cannot shut up about those books. I have easily driven 10 sales for each of those books just being a schmo. This happens because a great book makes a fan of its readers, and fans are crazy. Being nearly driven doubly insane waiting or the sequel to Name of the Wind (March 2011 by the gods!), I can vouch that this is true.<br /><br />Now an editor, they can be dangerous. This is someone who thinks an author's second book is catnip growing in a cat-quarium (like an aquarium, but for cats), can put on the working cap, show up at that tabling meeting, and fight tooth and nail to get that book on endcaps on both coasts. How many copies does that sell? How much higher does that fight raise the pre-orders for the title?<br /><br />Wait, maybe Norman and I missed a step here. He's going on about supply. I'm railing about demand.<br /><br />Maybe this is my false assumption: that the editor loves the book enough to be willing to fight for it. That the second book got published because the editor thought it was in fact better than the first book?<br /><br />Is the problem here really that the editor DOESN'T love the book? Doesn't LIKE the book?<br /><br />Let's reexamine this. The second book comes out, without the love of an editor, without crazy-ass fans like me rooting for it, without the love a couple independent bookstore owners who blog and can chat up a couple hundred other indie stores at BEA. Why? Well, hard fact...<br /><br />...the first book just wasn't that good.<br /><br />The second book isn't any better. Maybe #2 was published because it would do well enough to just about break even, and offer up a couple of paychecks along the way. Is that maybe what Normie and I missed, that maybe the 2nd or 3rd doesn't deserve to be published? The first book was the editor taking a chance after having a surprise hit in quarter-life memoir "Spitting in the Wind", but it failed to light a fire among the readers.<br /><br />If you follow Norman's example of the spiral, the hard fact becomes a hard lesson: that long-term success for a writer remains tied to the quality of their books and their appeal in the market.<br /><br />What Norman's article inadvertantly demonstrates is not the cruel grinding up of a writer in the gears of commerce. Instead it reveals the hidden truth that authors will not continue in perpetuity, once they have published, to receive all the blessings of the system and the fruits of the institution of publishing. They must remain viable in order to bask in the light of Zeus's favor. They must push themselves forward, their writing forward, and skate the ever narrowing razor's edge of being critically objective of their work while letting loose the energies of their imagining every time they push themselves out into the market.<br /><br />Writers can get published writing a book that is just good enough can get a writer inside of the wall, but like most things, being "just good enough" isn't enough to keep you there.William Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18380003794402258523noreply@blogger.com2