News, publications and blog for the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books) and Museum of the Weird (FC2).
what sort of things would cause you to lose your temper?
Filling a bag with hot water and insisting it is your baby. Climbing onto the roof and refusing to come down. Picking your teeth with the key to my truck. Regicide.
Click here for the rest. Also see interviews with Sam Pink and Meg Pokrass and so many others that it kind of makes you feel sick to your stomach. Thanks Ryan.
Here’s a nice review of my story “There Will Be Sense” from DIAGRAM. I am most pleased to learn that there is someone out there blogging about stories they find online and in print. That’s one for the sidebar.
P. H. Madore wrote a very kind review of AM/PM on his site. I like the narrative bend on the review. I like it when people talk about what they were doing when they read a book or a story. I don’t remember where I was when I first read Wells Tower’s story “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” but I do remember looking up at the ceiling with tears in my eyes and saying “holy shit.”
On a related note, though my book didn’t bring P. H. Madore to tears, as far as I know: it’s rare that a book or a story makes me cry and I treasure that feeling. It first happened when I was ten with the YA novel There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom. (I can’t remember why. Perhaps I was sad about there being a boy in the girl’s bathroom.) It most recently happened when I read that Wells Tower story again last night.
Other notable weeping times include some point in the middle of The Remains of the Day, the last page of The Sun Also Rises, the last paragraph of “The Prophet from Jupiter” by Tony Earley, in the middle of a Barry Hannah story about Elvis’ mother (while Barry Hannah was reading it aloud; this one was a little embarrassing), last line of “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff (ditto, though it still gets me every time). I think that’s it.
My list of favorite novellas is up here on John Madera’s site, along with lists by Blake Butler, Matt Bell, Sean Lovelace (I considered JCO’s Zombie but decided it was too long), Bradley Sands, William Walsh, Michael Kimball, Gary Lutz, Molly Gaudry, Jac Jemc and more. John even provides a helpful list of everyone’s picks. Lots of people picked Blake’s EVER, which makes me glad it’s next on my reading list. Also on the list: In Watermelon Sugar (Kimball and Selgin and I represent Trout Fishing in America), The Age of Wire and String, which is on my bookshelf somewhere. Anyway reading these lists is a lot of fun. You go do that while I have a fitful sleep.
It started yesterday, when I saw a picture of Rob Lowe online. Then, I saw Rob Lowe on television. The other people in the room swore it was not actually Rob Lowe, that it was someone else. But it was Rob Lowe.
Today I see Rob Lowe in a coffee shop. He wears an gold onyx ring on the middle finger of his right hand. He wears dark-wash blue jeans and a crisp blue shirt. He is talking to an older man with a crew cut, like a coach. Rob Lowe crosses his legs at the knee and holds his hand to his neck as he listens. He looks very interested in what the coach is saying. A tan leather billfold peeks above his jean pocket.
Rob Lowe holds his hand like a spider on the table. He makes the spider walk across the table towards the coach. The coach’s elbow is on the table and he moves it away from Rob Lowe’s hand, which is a spider. The spider wears a gold onyx ring around one of its thick legs.
I look over again to see that Rob Lowe is standing! He has is back to me and both hands on the table. The onyx winks as people pass, oblivious to the fact that Rob Lowe is here. Rob Lowe’s back under the blue shirt is broad and strong. The shirt is cornflower blue. His skin is tanned light leather, the same color as his shoes. I am very interested in what Rob Lowe is wearing, more interested in what he is wearing than the fact that he is Rob Lowe, best known for his role as Sam Seaborn on The West Wing. It is three in the afternoon and Rob Lowe is drinking a Guiness.
On the way to the bathroom, I walk very slowly past Rob Lowe to listen to what he is saying. He says, “And your guy,” then something I can’t hear, then “otherwise.” He is writing on a slim notepad. On the return from the bathroom, I see the coach is wearing a Bluetooth headset. This means he could be talking to anyone, at any time. I wonder if Rob Lowe is uncomfortable with the power this gives the coach.
Rob Lowe shouldn’t be uncomfortable, because he has a power that others do not. Rob Lowe is really interested in a career in geology. Rob Lowe learns how to parasail in the Gulf of Mexico. Rob Lowe experiences your emotions before you experience them. Rob Lowe made you this cup of coffee. Rob Lowe says the kids are alright. Rob Lowe has the power to be Everywhere.
Something from Vice: a visit to North Korea, featuring 120,000 dancers and a massive synchronized card-flipping routine. For comparison, the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics featured a measly 15,000. The mind, it reels.
“Twelve percent of the population in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea suffered from severe hunger” in 2006, said Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Food. More from Amnesty International reports on human rights concerns here. Thanks to Julia for the video link.
I wrote up a long post about online education, reviewed it carefully, and decided that I ought to be careful about what I post on a public blog. I posted it as a note on Facebook instead; check it out if you are interested in my deep and conflicting thoughts on the subject.
It is hot as the everlasting dickens outside but I don’t want to turn on the A/C and admit that 1) it is summer in Texas and 2) my electric bill is about to express some strong desires on my long-term savings plan. Instead, I’m closing all the drapes. Eat it, sunshine.
The drapes in my office are light-blocking brown velvet-looking-but-actually-not-velvet drapes which I purchased two years ago from a little boutique shop called Overstock.com.
rated 5, would buy againI closed them a lot when I was writing the book. If you’ve read the book and are wondering about the velvet box that traps Charles and his friend Terrence for a while, this is that box. Inside, I’m eating trail mix and looking warily at my taxes.
