A Great Quote on the Future of Literature

"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."

-Ensur Ugar, Mesopotamian Oral Translator and grump, 3386 B.C.
(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)

Editing

Editors are wacky people, and they have been, since time immemorial, or 1863, whichever is more your cup of tea.

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.

I have comics I have to review and no fucking time to review them, hence why I am blogging right?

Trying to deduce, over the next few weeks, how to make AWP conference a reality. Anyone who wants to help out, let me know.

Does this seem true to you:

"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."

A Suggested Reading List

Posted in its entirety for sheer, overwhelming awesomeness from Kyle Minor's post on HTML Giant


Suggested Reading List for My Spring 2011 Fiction Workshop

(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)


All Things, All at Once, Lee K. Abbott
The Box Man, Kobo Abe
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
The Children’s Hospital, Chris Adrian
A Death in the Family, James Agee
Man In His Time, Brian W. Aldiss
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Sherman Alexie
Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison
My Life in Heavy Metal, Steve Almond
Telegrams of the Soul, Peter Altenburg
Winesburg, Ohio, Sherwood Anderson
Dora Flor and Her Two Husbands, Jorge Amado
Elect Mr Robinson for a Better World, Donald Antrim
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
The Rector of Justin, Louis Auchincloss
Obabakoak, Bernardo Axtaga
The Music of Chance, Paul Auster
Red Cavalry Stories, Isaac Babel
The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker
Going to Meet the Man, James Baldwin
The Sweet Hereafter, Russell Banks
The Smallest People in the World, Keith Banner
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes
A History of the World in 8 1/2 Chapters, Julian Barnes
60 Stories, Donald Barthelme
The Lives of Rocks, Rick Bass
The Stories of Richard Bausch
First Light, Charles Baxter
The Lost Ones, Samuel Beckett
The Collectors, Matt Bell
Mr Sammler’s Planet, Saul Bellow
Town Smokes, Pinckney Benedict
25th Hour, David Benioff
Correction, Thomas Bernhard
2666, Roberto Bolano
Labyrinths, Borges
The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles
After the Plague, TC Boyle
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
On the Yard, Malcolm Braly
Rumors of Rain, Andre Brink
Things That Fall from the Sky, Kevin Brockmeier
Fay, Larry Brown
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Scorch Atlas, Blake Butler
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M Cain
Tobacco Road, Erskine Caldwell
If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino
American Salvage, Bonnie Jo Campbell
The Palace Thief, Ethan Canin
Hard Rain Falling, Don Carpenter
The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Where I’m Calling From, Raymond Carver
Spartina, John Casey
The Professor’s House, Willa Cather
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
The Big SLeep, Raymond Chandler
Collected Stories, Eileen Chang
Among the Missing, Dan Chaon
Farewell I’m Bound to Leave You, Fred Chappell
The Stories of John Cheever
Falconer, John Cheever
Awakening, Kate Chopin
“Gusev,” Anton Chekhov
Oh Baby, Kim Chinquee
House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
We’re in Trouble, Christopher Coake
Disgrace, J M Coetzee
Witz, Joshua Cohen
Diary of a Rapist, Evan S Connell
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Hopscotch, Julio Cortazar
Bargains in the Real World, Elizabeth Cox
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
A Feast of Snakes, Harry Crews
The Passage, Justin Cronin
Flesh and Blood, Michael Cunningham
The Green Age of Asher Witherow, M Allen Cunningham
House of Leaves, Mark Danieliewski
The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticat
In the Gloaming, Alice Elliott Dark
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis
The Circus in Winter, Cathy Day
Great Jones Street, Don DeLillo
Mao II, Don DeLillo
Underworld, Don DeLillo
Drown, Junot Diaz
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick
Play It As It Lays, Joan Didion
Interstate, Stephen Dixon
I. and End of I., Stephen Dixon
City of God, E L Doctorow
The Shell Collector, Anthony Doerr
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Clown Girl, Monica Drake
Selected Stories, Andre Dubus
House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
The Lover, Marguerite Duras
Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco
Permutation City, Greg Egan
How the Water Feels, Paul Eggers
The Magic Kingdom, Stanley Elkin
Happy Baby, Stephen Elliott
Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy
Silence, Shusaku Endo
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, Nathan Englander
The Plague of Doves, Louise Erdrich
Altmann’s Tongue, Brian Evenson
The Wavering Knife, Brian Evenson
Erasure, Percival Everett
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley
Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha, Edward Falco
As I Lay Dying, Faulkner
Absalom! Absalom!, Faulkner
The Short Stories of F Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
Independence Day, Richard Ford
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles
Poachers, Tom Franklin
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
The Recognitions, Wm. Gaddis
Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
The Stories of Mavis Gallant
as much Gabriel Garcia-Marquez as possible, starting with Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Grendel, John Gardner
In the Heart of the Heart of the Country, Wm Gass
Welding with Children, Tim Gautreaux
I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, Wm. Gay
Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol
The House of Breath, Wm Goyen
Museum of the Weird, Amelia Gray
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
Hunger, Knut Hamsun
Adverbs, Daniel Handler
Airships, Barry Hannah
Bats Out of Hell, Barry Hannah
Legends of the Fall, Jim Harrison
“Rollerball Murder,” Wm Harrison
The Lime Twig, John Hawkes
The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne
Stranger in a Strange Land, Heinlein
The Pacific, Mark Helprin
some stories from Hemingway
The Complete Works of Marvin K Mooney, Christopher Higgs
High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
The Cider House Rules, John Irving
The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
All Aunt Hagar’s Children, Edward P Jones
all of Kafka
The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata
The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis
all of Imre Kertesz’s novellas
Pacazo, Roy Kesey
Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
Different Seasons, Stephen King
Carrie, Stephen King
Hearts in Atlantis, Stephen King
The Stand, Stephen King
The Shining, Stephen King
Steps, Jerzy Koszinski
The Orange Eats Creeps, Grace Krilanovich
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera
From Old Notebooks, Evan Lavender-Smith
Independent People, Halldor Laxness
Mystic River, Dennis Lehane
Rum Punch, Elmore Leonard
a couple of J T LeRoy books
The Fifth Child, Doris Lessing
The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem
The Year of A Thousand Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
Richard Yates, Tao Lin
Stories in the Worst Way, Gary Lutz
Cairo Trilogy, Naghub Mahfouz
some Bernard Malamud novels
A Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
In Country, Bobbie Ann Mason
My Life in CIA, Harry Mathews
All of Cormac McCarthy, starting with Child of God
The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan
The Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels
at least one novel from James A. Michener
“Lust,” Susan Minot
about three weeks in Mishima
Hue and Cry, James Alan McPherson
The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven, Rick Moody
“People Like That,” Lorrie Moore
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Friend of My Youth, Alice Munro
Open Secrets, Alice Munro
Hateship, Loveship, Alice Munro
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil
A House for Mr Biswas, Naipaul
Pale Fire, Nabokov
Lolita, Nabokov
The Assignation, Joyce Carol Oates
In the Lake of the Woods, Tim O’Brien
The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor
Kentucky Straight, Chris Offutt
“I Stand Here Ironing,” Tillie Olsen
The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
The Collected Stories of Grace Paley
The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake
Refresh, Refresh, Benjamin Percy
The Devil in the Hills, Cesare Pevase
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter
at least one Charles Portis novel [3]
Knockemstiff, Donald Ray Pollock
The Collected Stories of J F Powers
Clockers, Richard Price
Close Range, Annie Proulx
Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon
An Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
Charity, Mark Richard
Sabbath’s Theater, Philip Roth
American Pastoral, Philip Roth
Mating, Norman Rush
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
some Salinger
A Sport and a Pastime, James Salter
some Saramago
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, George Saunders
The Reader, Bernhard Schlink
all of Christine Schutt except the newest novel
a couple of Sebald novels
Collected Stories, Isaac Bashevis Singer
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Solzhenitsyn
Sophie’s Choice, Wm. Styron
“The Old Forest,” Peter Taylor
Girls in the Grass, Melanie Rae Thon
some Tolstoy and Tolkien
A Bit on the Side, Wm Trevor
at least one Anne Tyler novel, swear to god
Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut
Breakfast of Champions, Vonnegut
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, Brady Udall
some Deb Olin Unferth stories
Rabbit Tetralogy, John Updike
What the World . . ., Laura van den Berg
The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, Brad Vice
The William T. Vollman Reader
Oblivion, David Foster Wallace
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
“Against Specificity,” Douglas Watson
some Eudora Welty stories
The Intuitionist, Colson Whitehead
Exciteability, Diane Williams
The Quick & the Dead, Joy Williams
Stoner, John Williams
“The Farmer’s Daughters,” Wm Carlos Williams
“Bullet in the Brain, ” Tobias Wolff
some Virginia Woolf novels
some Daniel Woodrell
Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates
*I’ve left out 98% of the important books you should read, but this should get you started on the fiction.

On Promethea, and our need for Her

They posted this over on Newsarama today.

To say that Promethea sets me off is an understatement. When I write, I try to clip the very lowest edges of that story with my reaching, out-stretched hand. It is a mountain, like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, or Blood Meridian, which I have set for myself to cross when I approach a story.

The asshole in me regards anyone who is not suitably impressed by Promethea as a story and an artifact worthy of awe in a very poor light, and the more enumerated renderings of those comments said asshole makes are sentiments I keep to myself.

I truly and utterly love this story, and I'm very happy with the comments I wrote, so I wanted to post them here as well.

To tell you that I nearly cry every time I read issue 17, at the image of Christ on the cross, would compel you to take up immediately and read the entire series (if you had ever actually met me, such would be the impression you had of what strokes of evocation it would take to induce such a reaction in a person such as myself).

I am many things, mostly yeti, but surely not what any reasonable person would consider a christian and sure as hell never cry, but that scene, the evocation of that image, is the most pronounced rendering of Jesus I have ever encountered, and does more to reconcile the nature of Christ’s value as a figure worthy of the highest regard than any words ever uttered by a pastor asking for a tithe.

It IS a long, drawn out essay on magic done as a comic book series. But name anything even remotely like that? “Everything is magic" is entirely the point and has never been made so completely and with such applomb.

The storytelling weaves together Moore's musings on magic and the nature of imagination, and J. H. William's pages, his layouts and paneling, and José Villarrubia's coloring follow in richness the examples set by Eisner or Steranko. They break out of any commonplace ideals set for modern comics storytelling to create something singular, something that holds up a mirror to ourselves to show we are, in fact, capable of much more than we have ever been lead to believe. I for one appreciate that sentiment.

Promethea incorporates nearly all of existence into the story. It is not a mistake that Moore uses a significant portion of the text to mirror the content and ancient role of the tarot and the kabbalah, because both of those systems served to provide a cosmological framework for a time when science was not capable of doing so. They were structured schema organizing observable phenomena into a coherence with the unexplainable chaos of life.

That Moore was able to realign these elements with our modern understanding of time, evolution, and nature I think is actual magic, because he is able to use such admittedly esoteric quanta to the effect of compelling the reader further into a story which illustrates, again and again, how the value of humanity MUST rest not in our derisive contempt of the mistakes we have made, but in how we move forward from failure, in inches by the decade at times, towards being worthy of the time we have on this world.

The christ scene, and countless others, strike at the base of what I believe, and by projection (because I have never met him but I argue he believes the same), Moore believes: that humanity has, and will continue to, attack, destroy, and punish the people who have found through their own awareness, talents, and abilities the means to make of us a better people and a better world, but that through the suffering of fools and tyrants and despots upon those who seek to remove chains and hatred we find the road from darkness up into light.

Moore exults, and I freely admit and support this, writers, as well as artists, poets, philosophers, and teachers. He exults those who would bring us light, which should be pretty obvious from the title, and I am thankful that he does, because there is not nearly enough of that in this world.

On Pasts

"Ooooh you look so good, ooooh you looook so fiiine."


Who makes up the past anyway?

Was it you? I seem to remember you being there, like a detail in a movie that is very small and has to be mauled out in a flash, but that doesn't really fit. It's tight, it's a close-up, and it's in there, pressing it's untrimmed finger into your stomach. But I remember your name. And I remember when your Birthday is.

Because it's alive man, it's everywhere woman, the middle word in life, keeping itself inside your head even when everyone else is loosing their's and blaming you. "Are you going to travel through space on a fraction? What are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths?" Have you lived a third of you life? By 18, 22, 35 - do the math, and then tell me. It's the past man, your past man!

Or maybe, it's raining frogs, and the past, the past, we're through with the past, no, we're through the past, and we'll be back after this short commercial break, but the past ain't through with us.

And so maybe it's a weird night, a night that is happening again and again, always happening, like the restaurant at the end of the universe, a perennial blooming and blooming and maybe because time is a whole and doesn't come in slices. Maybe it's a Rolo, and you can tick off the bits of it and pop then in your mouth. But it's hard to say that it has been a weird night if it's still the same night - yet to become 'has been' - and it is the same night it has always been, when it is all kinds of full of the past and the future, and the past might be the future, and we maybe want the past and the future to meet so that we can feel like we are off the hook for a change.

So if I remember your name, what past can there be for someone who doesn't forget? And if "blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better of their blunders," well what then? Where do all blessings lie? Does this one in his time play many parts too, if his time curls up into a ball, the end always somewhere near the beginning, the feet always near the face. All the world staged in one act.

But then too, onto the last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, in second childishness and mere oblivion. Who is that we speak of in our legacy, whose legacy do we speak? What's left?

Am I having the past over for dinner? Is the past having me for dinner?

The Proust Questionaire

Cribbing a post from Snobber because I read an interview yesterday with Alan Moore which got me thinking I might be done for some self-analysis, a little self-reflection, since I have a lot of self-referential writing to worry as we enter the heavy grant and literary contest season.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A peaceful life surrounded by people I love, and a house on a lake somewhere to get away to.

What is your greatest fear?
Locusts, the biblical kinds. And being a burden on people.

What historical figure do you most identify with?
I am trying for the Buddha, but Gandhi is up there as well. Also a big fan of Einstein.

Which living person do you most admire?
My mom and Norman Borlaug. One raised two kids on her own, the other saved a billion people from starvation, and both of those feats seem herculean. My mom doesn't have a website so no link for you.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
My lack of follow-through.

What is the trait you most despise in others?
A lack of purpose.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Living in Brooklyn.

On what occasion do you lie?
When I don't know what the truth is.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
El guttock. Just can't strip that last 20 pounds.

Which living person do you most despise?
Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Verily. I've got a Wisconson in here. I'm comin' outta tha hoos!

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I wouldn't be in debt, or that I wouldn't feel I was so unlucky.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
I'd want to have the money to help them more.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My MFA.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?
A Bodhisattva.

Who are your favorite writers?
Kurt Vonnegut, Jeanette Winterson, Thomas Pynchon, Frank O'Hara, Flannery O'Connor, Italo Calvino, Alan Moore

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Constantine Levin (Anna Karenin)

What is your most treasured possession?
My Sandman Hardcovers and things my friends and family have given me over the years.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
To be unable to gaze in awe at the world around us -I think Einstein said it, and its pretty close to the mark.

Where would you like to live?
Somewhere on the New England or Pacific Northwest coast.

What is your most marked characteristic?
My devil's brow.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Having enough reason to realize life is very unreasonable and that happiness is made out of little balls of gas conjured out of the air.

What is your greatest regret?
That I did not find a way to be both a scientist and a writer. That I let myself be forced to make a choice of one or the other.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Good question.

If there is a Heaven what would you like to hear God say when you arrive?
Well if this isn't nice, what is?