News, publications and blog for the author of AM/PM (Featherproof Books) and Museum of the Weird (FC2).
I’m in Chicago. Last night there was a storm that shook the house and flooded the streets. This afternoon, Zach and I went to yoga and balanced it out by eating a box of shells and cheese with a can of chili in about 45 seconds. I want to barf, but instead I’m going to go to a party at the Poetry Foundation.
well anyway later
At Big Other, Amber Sparks has a review of Museum of the Weird that I really like because it’s got a good insight that I haven’t seen anyone have yet into how all the characters have a hard time existing. I like thinking about that as I round the bend on this novel. Thank you, Amber.
There is appliance delivery truck outside my window with its ramp down. At the base of the ramp is a cardboard box the size of a dishwasher. Five feet away, in the road, there is a dishwasher lying door-side-up. It looks like the dishwasher tried to escape and fell on its back. I took a picture of it but now that I’ve described it I feel I don’t need to post the picture. A picture might ruin it. Maybe just imagine it, you know?
Yesterday I guest-taught my friend Jack’s high school creative writing class. I don’t teach anymore so I went all out. I said it was time to rap real about creative writing. I showed them one of my favorite Kathy Fish stories. I addressed them as Birds and Dear Students and Dear Birds. One of the girls said that her mother calls her Dove. We did a writing exercise where they picked five words and we were to write about them. They picked basket, funny, dragon, pretentious, hand, bonus word love, and extra bonus title word, unique. They wrote cool stories. I wrote a funny little one:
The man’s hand was resting on the railroad track. It looked like he was gripping the wooden supports between the rails, but the remainder of his body was nowhere to be found. It looked funny to Suzanne, who had never felt love for the man but missed him now that only his hand remained. She picked it up and placed it in her basket. She decided on giving it as a gift to the museum curator she was going on a date with later that night. He was pretentious, and carried a pocket guide referencing dragon sightings in mythological culture, and she did not love him either, but she would try.
I called mine “nothing unique in the world” because the title had to have the word “unique” in it. Their stories were all different — which seems obvious but it notable because the last time I did this exercise with the same age group, many strange elements of their stories were the same, images of fenceposts, for example, unrelated to prompt — and some were about dragons and some were conversations people were having, or titles, and one was about a girl who meets an angel of death. I liked hearing their stories. We talked about how some words are heavy and some words are light, and how it’s fun to make the light words heavy and the heavy words light.
I put water on to boil and added salt to the pot. When the water boiled, I added spaghetti and set the timer for ten minutes. Some people don’t time pasta and I think that’s a fool’s move. After seven minutes, I put olive oil in a small pan and set it on low. I cut three pieces of garlic into thin slices and dropped it in the pan. I let them cook for a minute, then cracked two eggs over and covered the pan. By then, the pasta was done and I poured it into the strainer and then into a bowl. The whites on the eggs were almost set and I turned off the burner and put the eggs on top of the pasta. I mixed it all up and sprinkled salt and pepper on top. The days go by, don’t they?
Museum of the Weird got a starred review at Publishers Weekly:
Cannibalism, serial killing, a snake farm, and medical oddities are among the topics covered in Gray’s (AM/PM) award-winning second collection. Resisting conventional advice as to what should serve as legitimate fuel for fiction, Gray allows taboos and curiosities (including animals conversing in a bar) to hold court with viscerally affecting scenarios that rival Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not. A delicious taste for the absurd (a man who marries a bag of frozen tilapia; a woman who births a child per day over the course of several days) results in an accomplished take on the increasingly popular flash fiction form. Gray’s 24 tales go well beyond the amuse-bouche, presenting eclectic personas with a macabre wit, challenging readers to suspend their disbelief, and mining deep emotional reserves beneath initially eye-catching material. What could be mistaken for sameness is instead a purposeful vision, relentless in its inquisitive march along the fringes of human solitude. A veteran of the small presses (having published stories in American Short Fiction, McSweeney’s online, Guernica, and many others), Gray deserves greater recognition. (Sept.)
It’s going to be 77 degrees today in Austin. All writers should come here and drink wine with me on my invisible porch. All non-writers too. Let’s clasp hands.
Some good news comes in from the internet today, starting with a kind review of Museum of the Weird
from The Collagist.Austin often tops the allergy lists. When I first moved to the area, I couldn’t go running without developing what felt like a blood-cough but in hindsight was likely something about athsma, I don’t know, my health insurance sucked at the time. I’m at an allergy center today, six years later, getting my first allergy shots. My insurance sucks in a way that benefits me today, so we’re packing six months of buildup shots into two days of 18 shots each day in order to avoid massive copays. I am on all manner of drugs so I don’t die swollen. My eyes feel suspended in a fluid. It’s possible I’ve forgotten how to read and I’m typing this from muscle memory. I’m allergic to cockroaches, dust mites, cedar, ragweeds, grasses, mold, marsh elder, pigweed, red berry juniper, house dust, cats, dogs, feathers, oak. If I was a horse, there is not a rancher in this land who would think twice before putting me down.
long story short I'm just happy to be here
Links: 1) Nik Korpon’s kind review of Museum of the Weird at Outsider Writers Collective supposes that I will find him to be a javelina if we meet. Nonsense, Nik! You are far more like a porcupine. 2) Jesús Ángel García offers his take on the book next to Lindsay Hunter’s Daddy’s at Vol. 1 Brooklyn. I sat next to Hunter on a curb in Brooklyn last week. 3) Meanwhile, at Impose Magazine I’m all talking about Meredith Martinez, Guatamala, the Jonestown tape transcript, Infinite Jest and the Amityville horror.
The New York Times reviewed Museum of the Weird
Please find my recommends for exciting online reads at the NYLON blog, including links to excellent pieces by Meredith Martinez, Lindsay Hunter, Christopher Higgs, Athena Nilssen, and Jamie Iredell.
Also find an interview with Richard Thomas at The Nervous Breakdown in list form, and learn what I really think about Farmville, Rob Lowe, and the Chevy Camaro Iroc-Z.
New story “Ghost” at Shattered Wig Press, a sneak preview of their Issue 29.
Kyle Beachy reviews Museum of the Weird
I’m happy to say that Dennis Cooper read and loved Museum of the Weird: Check out his blog for excerpts and more. Thanks, Dennis.
Also check out Jac Jemc’s review of the book on the Big Other, paired like a fine jug of Fresca with the whompers Daddy’s.
Another double-dance with Daddy’s from Eugenia Williamson at The Boston Phoenix. “Museum of the Weird lives up to its name: it’s super freaking weird. It’s so weird, its blurbs don’t even make sense.“
New fiction up at The Owls. Also check out Greg Koehler’s rad “RIP The Foundry” and more to come by Matt Stuart, Giuseppe Taurino, Mark Sutz, Stacy Muszynski, Michael Wolfe, and more.
At The Faster Times, please find Kyle Minor’s astounding essay on ambiguity in narrative, bigness, potential realities in Lydia Davis’s “Example of the Continuing Past Tense in a Hotel Room,” and Museum of the Weird. I’m so pleased to be included in such a piece. Thank you, Kyle.
Also check out Tobias Carroll’s “Bucking Tradition: 10 Interesting Takes on Pulp” at Flavorwire, featuring The Orange Eats Creeps, a book I’m very excited to buy and have, plus Tony O’Neill’s Sick City, Matt Bell’s How They Were Found, and more and more indeed, and me. Thanks Tobias.
Part of the reason why I’ve never won a game of chess, despite being in the chess club at Ranson Middle School, go Raiders, is that I sometimes have a hard time imagining alternative realities to the one I’ve created, particularly when it’s based on some flawed sense of probability. When the alternative reality comes to pass, as it does more often than not based on some non-flawed sense of probability, I’m left with a wiped brain, future courses of action utterly blanked.
Playing this online Sudoku on its easiest setting feels a lot more satisfying, probably because there are fewer potentials for reality, but it still gives me good practice in recognizing and leaving my mind open to alternatives. It is helping me in art and life. I’ve also learned I’m about two minutes faster in the morning than at any other time of day, before my brain starts to collapse in on itself, ultimately affording me the power only to cook a lo mein and afterwards stand staring into the dining room with my mouth slightly agape.
I’ve picked up Sleepingfish 8 more than any other journal so far this year.
We added a new San Francisco date to the tour, see list below. Come-on-out. Then, check out the video Aaron Burch made for our Kickstarter. We need gas money or else we will make mistakes with credit cards!
Nancy Lili G has a kind review and a sweet contest over at her blog: comment over there before Wednesday for a chance to win a copy of AM/PM. I like that someone read my book while waiting to get a tattoo. Thanks, Nancy Lili G.
It’s a cicada day in Texas. Somebody is using a machine.
I’m mapping out a plot today, using different colored inks and pencils to delineate action and requirement because I am five years old. I can’t keep elements clear in my head so it needs to go on the big paper. Back to work.
halfway done
It’s my last day in Portland. I put my face on the green grass. I was here in order to teach at a workshop for young writers and I didn’t ask how old they were individually because I always hated it when people asked me that when I was their age. They all seemed kind and industrious. I felt envious that they were spending the whole two weeks wandering around a grassy campus and doing writing exercises, but I got to be there for two days and that seemed good enough to get a general feel for it.
Ruth Franklin wrote a review of my threats reading in New York last week for The New Republic. It’s an interesting piece and I’m beyond flattered to be on a triptych with Sarah Silverman and Joan Rivers, complete with ideas about women and subversive performance. I feel like I’m developing some kind of related theory, though I’m taking a long time to figure it out because my brain is the brain of a baby who smacks his own stomach with his fist over and over. I hope that baby is sitting next to me for the flight home so I can tell him my ideas about women and subversive performance.
There is a coyote outside. If you ever hear what sounds like someone shaking a dog over a balcony rail, that’s a coyote. How did a coyote get to Portland? How did I get to Portland? I sat next to a toddler on the flight here and she slept from the moment the plane took off until when it touched down. She woke up, looked at the change in scenery out the window, and started crying in hysterical terror. I was like, girl, I know it.
I’m coming out to read to room-sized portions of California in a few weeks. I always hold myself back from saying “Keep it locked for more details” but now that I’m going to California I believe it’s time for you to keep it locked.
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