I Love and Understand You and Would Be Perfect to You Now

The "novel-in-stories" is done. I LOVE AND UNDERSTAND YOU AND WOULD BE PERFECT TO YOU NOW is done. Done as of 4pm today and sent off.

Some statistics (format "inspired" by a recent post by Tao Lin):

Total pages: 148 (12-pt Garamond, double-spaced, landscape, two columns)
Total stories: 29
Words: 36,671
Sentences/Paragraph: 3.1
Words/Sentence: 12.4
Characters/Word: 4.1
Passive Sentences: 2%
Flesch Reading Ease Level: 80.7
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 5.0
Longest Story (in pages): 15 ("Masturbation at Work")
Shortest Story (in pages): 1 (multiple)
Longest Story (in words): 4,627 ("Masturbation At Work")
Shortest Story (in words): 114 ("Ride Horse Look at Flowers")
Longest Story Title: 21 words ("Edith Piaf is Playing in a Dorm Room in a Upstate South Carolina, Whispering Secrets in a Language I Can't Understand")
Shortest Story Title: 1 word ("Arrival")
Representative Sentence #1: click here
Representative Sentences #2 and #3: "I was so sure it was something new, or else something I hadn’t felt in a while, but it was hard to tell with somethings, particularly the kinds of somethings I was so sure about. I was frequently wrong."

Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests explained here.

Some statistics for other pieces of writing:

OTHELLO (Act I) by William Shakespeare

Passive Sentences: 3%
Flesch Reading Ease Level: 80.3
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 4.2

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE [part 1] by Thomas Hardy

Passive Sentences: 10%
Flesch Reading Ease Level: 65.5
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.4

GREAT EXPECTATIONS [part 1] by Charles Dickens

Passive Sentences: 7%
Flesch Reading Ease Level: 74.7
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 7.7

"Espirit de l'Elevator" by Gary Lutz

Passive Sentences: 8%
Flesch Reading Ease Level: 74.4
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 6.3

SHOPLIFTING FROM AMERIAN APPAREL by Tao Lin

Passive sentences: 1%
Flesch reading ease: 86.2
Flesch-Kincaid grade level: 3.5

Deerhunter, Pavement, personal update

-If you haven't heard it yet, the new Deerhunter album Microcastle is absolutely fantastic, as is the free bonus LP that comes with it, called Weird Era. In fact I think Microcastle is probably the best album I've heard this year (even the cover art, which is pasted above, kicks ass). I think they have an aesthetic that could be considered noisy, beautiful, fuzzy, and young. I like this aesthetic. I am seeing them next week in Williamsburg.

Here's a link to the Pitchfork review of the album. I didn't read it but I feel like their ratings are, with the exception of Vampire Weekend, usually pretty "accurate", which is to say, "agreeable". They gave the album a 9.2.

And if you like Deerhunter but haven't been to their blog, you could do worse with your time. Dude's prolific -- and generous. The blog is loaded with freebies and demos (look for the song "Requiem for All the Lonely Teenagers with Passed Out Moms"). His "micromixes" are also great (and free).

-I'm really excited about the reissue of Pavement's 1998 album Brighten the Corners, which comes out December 9. I just pre-ordered a copy in order to receive some free shit.

Unfortunately, the song "For Sale: The Preston School of Industry", one of my favorites, isn't among this shit. Apparently, it "cost too much" for Pavement to purchase it from the Dutch TV place where they recorded it.

As consolation, here's the video, of them recording it:



Download of the song available here.

-On the personal front, work continues on The Great Asian-American Novel in Stories. Earlier tonight I did a reading of two very short stories from the book. I read a story called "McDonald's with Mother in Country of Her Birth, Not Mine" and another one called "You". I think the first one got a better response, although I don't think the second one got a bad response. "It was funny," said someone afterward.

If you're interested, I'd be happy to send you an excerpt. I'm looking to have a completed first draft by mid-December.

That is all.