Win and Win

Want to win 100 books from the Dalkey Archive (the 100 books for $500 special) and get your work published on HTMLGIANT? Enter the So Many Books Contest. The deadline is Midnight, Sunday, March 21st, 2010. 3,500 max words in any assemblage. Theme to interpret: love stories. Must include the numbers 100 and 500. More details here.

Not Your Grandmother's Sunday

I spent my Sunday reading Kevin Sampsell's A Common Pornography and watching Taxi Driver--while I don't necessarily recommend that particular combination to everyone, I do recommend you read A Common Pornography. Sampsell is a local Portland writer, long-time Powell's employee, and small press publisher (Future Tense Books). (Basically I want to be him.) His latest book, A Common Pornography, is a memoir told in snippets of prose--mostly linear--but each one also reads as complete short story.

It's an entirely fascinating way to tell a story--especially a memoir. Our memories work much more like snapshots than film reels, and we have to do a little connect-the-dots in between. But Sampsell's narrative still flows smoothly from one incident to the next, taking us from the complex pornography stash in his ceiling to the complicated relationship with his father in one swift bound. The leap frog narrative works for Sampsell, largely due to his consistent voice--it's reflective, subtle, and honest. He doesn't always explain his actions or try to psychoanalyze the past, but he gives small observations that lend a weight to even the lightest anecdotes and make you feel the need to re-read each one more closely.

Did I mention it's striking, hilarious, heartbreaking, and left me wanting more?

Want to know more about Sampsell, Future Tense, and A Common Pornography? Check out HTMLGIANT's seven day exposé, or click any of the links above.

Rainy Afternoon Read

Okay, so it may not be rainy everywhere, but the rain has returned to Portland (shocking) and it's a perfect excuse to curl up on the couch with a book, or perhaps your laptop. So here you go: Justin Taylor's Tennessee (a la' Fifty-Two Stories) from his collection Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever. Which I'm going to go buy as soon as I get off the couch. (Fifty-Two Stories also links to more Taylor at The Outlet, if you're jonesing for more.)

New Love: Best American Non-required Reading 2009

If you haven't picked a copy up yet, do it now. Dave Eggers (and his coalition of student helpers) has put together a smashingly quirky collection of essays, comics, short fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, etc. The letters to President Obama from school children are both hilarious and surprisingly philosophical, like the boy who writes:

Dear President Obama,

I want to tell you hi. Do you work with Santa Claus? Can I meet you in your house? Can I say bye to you after I meet you? And then can I meet you again? And then again after that?

Sergio Magana, age 5

San Francisco

I want to turn that into a song.

My next favorite so far is "Everything I Know About My Family on My Mother's Side" by Nathan Englander--beautifully written and told in short numbered snippets--which, admittedly, confused me at first, but wowed me by the end. On top of all this, the intro is written (and illustrated) by Marjane Satrapi. Oh, it all gives me tingles.

Slush Town

An article on HTMLGIANT yesterday spoke to something that's been bothering me for a while. As someone who works with the slush pile and attends editorial meetings at a well known lit mag, it's frustrating to see the ratio of slush to solicited/lit agent pieces that make it into the magazine. Sadly, slush has a terribly slim chance at making it even beyond the first or second round of readers, let alone into the magazine--at least in my experience.

From the trenches of Slush Town, the outlook is bleak, and yea, it's discouraged me from submitting to many of the better known mags. It takes the stars aligning, some serious karma (and/or determined interns) and damn good writing to get a piece from the slush into the top editors' hands. But when one of those shows up in the magazine, it feels friggin' good. I suppose the point of a slush pile at this kind of high rep magazine is to give the little guys a chance to appear next to the big names... even if it's only once in a while.

A Wild Ride Through the Night

If you've never read A Wild Ride Through the Night by Walter Moers, go do it now. I mean it. Right now. It's giants and wicked naked damsels and dragons and forests of ghosts and the time pig and philosophy and death. Moers wove the tail using twenty-one amazing woodcuts by Gustave Dore.

A teaser: 'What!' Gustave cried. 'You mean you're servants of Death?'

The bird raised its beaker in salute. A few other forest demons followed suit. 'Aren't we all?' they chorused.

Mini Post: The Book

The New Republic just launched a new online book review, The Book. Want to know why? Click here--it's too long to repeat. The real question is, will it be any good? My guess is yes--mostly because I usually like TNR articles--but also because I'm currently enjoying the poetry review by Rosanna Warren of Louis Glück's new book, The Expanse. Not only will TNR review books of such wonderful subjects as poetry, but they also have non-conventional "book" reviews, like Tom Bissell's review of Playboy magazine--"The Bunny Revolution". 

Some Words from Wilde

A few Oscar Wilde quotes to ponder on a lazy Sunday:

"The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure." (from Mr. Pater's Last Volume)

"It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious."

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

Tuesday; An Art Project

Since my brain hasn't fully recovered from vacation I thought I'd just give a shout out to one of my favorite literary mags: Tuesday; An Art Project--a highly thoughtful and well crafted publication that consists of poetry, photographs, and prints. Tuesday letterpresses (oh, and what a fine letter press!) their poems and prints onto postcard sized (and thick) paper, allowing you to rearrange the contents at will or send off a piece to a friend (hence postcard sized). On top of all this, I just really like their selections.

Poor Claudia, a relatively new Portland literary mag, did something similar with their most recent publication. Yay unconventional printing!