Story in the VICE Reader

I have a new story up on VICE! It's about a president's daughter, an art fair, and one particularly insufferable couple.

2 Readings 2 Weeks (+ 2 Updates)

Two readings in the next two weeks. To paraphrase a sign I once saw hanging in an IKEA, I pledge to never, ever stop providing you and your family and friends high-quality readings at an affordable cost--in this case (and in most cases), free.

Here are two more examples of this unwavering dedication: 

1) FRI 5/31 / 7PM / READING

Readings by:

Rosebud Ben-Oni

Metta Sama

Ekere Tallie

James Yeh

Book Thug Nation

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

100 N 3rd (btw Berry and Wythe)

L to Bedford or G to Metropolitan or J, M to Marcy

2) THU 6/6 / 7:30PM / GARDEN PARTY WITH MEANINGS

Performances in the garden by:The Socially Acceptable Situations (new band of Preston Spurlock and Fran Agnone)
Little Cobweb / The Johns / Julie LaMendola supergroup
Kung Fu Crime Wave
Catherine Lacey
James Yeh 

and more!
Private residence in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, email for details

And here is something that was recently published (and one I'm currently working on):

1) Interview with Lydia Davis now online at Gigantic.

2) I'm putting together a segment about Andy Kaufman and audio for the Organist--the Believer/KCRW's great new internet radio show, otherwise known as podcast. If you have any insights you would like to share with me on his work (or radio/podcast production in general), you should get in touch!

Thanks as always, and hope to see you around.

Three stories at BOMB, two in NOON

Happy to have three stories up on the BOMB Magazine site. On the bottom of the page are links to an interview conducted with my good friend Michael Barron and two poems by Jenny Zhang. (Art by Dominic Fortunato.)

I also have two stories in this year's edition of NOON, alongside some of my favorites, including Lydia Davis, Lincoln Michel, Deb Olin Unferth, Christine Schutt, Anya Yurchyshyn, Brandon Hobson, Clancy Martin, and others.

New Publication

Happy New Year! Here are four very short things/one-liners that just went up on the Wonder tumblr. Thanks to editors Andrew Durbin and Ben Fama for publishing these! Hope you enjoy.

New publications

My story "Crawlspace" is in the summer 2012 issue of Fence, alongside, among others, Denis Johnson(!), Jacob Severn, Ana Božicević, and Lonely Christopher.













My story "I Did Not Want to Be Wrong and I Did Not Want to Be Embarrassed" is in the 2012 edition of NOON alongside, among others, Deb Olin Unferth, Lincoln Michel, Ann DeWitt, Lauren Spohrer, Anya Yurchyshyn, Clancy Martin, Brandon Hobson, Kim Chinquee, Dylan Nice, and A. L. Snijders (translated by Lydia Davis).

I'm thrilled to be a part of these two fine issues from persistently fine publications. Special thanks to Fence fiction editor Lynne Tillman and NOON editor Diane Williams.

New story up at Tin House

If you're bored at work today, my story "I Was Confused and Just Wanted to Know" is now up on the Tin House website. It's about a bike, some boys, and is fairly short.

They were large cats, they were long cats.

There were about six gray cats walking around from place to place, each cat worse-looking and more sinister than the other. For one thing they were large cats, they were long cats, they moved slowly, staring momentarily at something and continuing on to eat cat food from their bowls or kill something outside. And I thought cats were supposed to be so cut and funny.

I described them to a cat-owning exercise teacher. First she laughed. Then she said, “They must be old, they sound like old cats. They’re old cats.” Her style was to say things over and over, as if that would make them more true.

“Like what do they do?” she asked.

“They walk from one place to another and sit back down,” I said.

“That’s what the old ones are like,” she said. She knew about all kinds of animals. Her youngest son owned a lizard and the lizard was always outgrowing his cage. A science homework project at school required something that involved a rat going through a maze. They had a hamster at home, but they’d been told by rodent experts that hamsters wouldn’t go through a maze. The exercise teacher and her son had to go out and buy a rat. They asked the pet-store owner whether they could return the rat after the science project. They didn’t want a refund, just to be rid of the rat because they had too many animals already. But then they all grew to love the rat.

“The rat was nice and friendly,” the exercise teacher said. “He was smart, too.”

It was a white rat, and when they approached his cage, he’d come to greet them. When I laughed, she said, “Really rats are nice, they are, they’re nicer than people.”

When they brought the rat back to the pet store the proprietor tried to persuade them to keep it. They still didn’t want a refund, they wanted only to be relieved of the burden of the care of the rat. The owner tried to scare them by saying snake owners came in to buy rats to give to the reptiles for dinner.

“She did scare us,” the exercise teacher said. “We all loved the rat. My son was starting to cry. A teenage girl, a customer, heard the whole thing and said she would take care of the rat. But when they told her the price of the cage, she couldn’t afford it. I said we’d pay half and the store owner offered to pay the other half. The girl was so happy to get the rat. Really, the rat looked so adorable. It was love at first sight.”

“It must be the same way women love rats in the human species,” I said.

“No,” the teacher said. “Rats are nicer, they’re not like men.”

-from The Unprofessionals by Juile Hecht (2003)

Some of What I've Been Up To Lately

My story "Your Mother and Henry Rollins," published in lovely Beecher's Magazine No. 1, was discussed by Nathan Huffstutter on HTMLGIANT. (Feel free to leave a comment up there, by the way--the post looks kind of lonely.)

The story, says Huffstutter, is "not at all about Hank R." and "only somewhat about a mother." And he's right.

The piece isn't super long, but here's a bit of insight from Huffstutter that I liked:

Conflict, such as there is, exists not between James and “you”, not between James and her mother, but between James and the page, with the struggle to honestly locate and give label to his feelings.

(If you are interested, I would be happy to send along a Word document of the story itself.)

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I had a conversation over beer with Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Jason Diamond for Impose Magazine about the new Real Estate album. (The album is really good, by the way.)

Jason: I know this sounds corny, but I would like to put the first two Real Estate records on my iPod and just walk around New Jersey.

James: People assure me that there are a lot of nice gardens to walk around.

Jason: I always wondered if the Garden State thing was bullshit. I also don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, but there’s a song called “Wonder Years” on here. That makes me feel pretty good.

James: Was that set in New Jersey?

Jason: I think it was.*

*Jason had a lot of good lines during the conversation--way more than I did--but here is one part that requires refutation. From The Wonder Years Wikipedia page:

The series depicts the social and family life of a boy in a typical American suburb from 1968 to 1973, covering his ages of 12 through 17. The suburb's name and location are never specified but different elements overwhelmingly suggest that the setting is California. In the first episode the Arnolds attend the funeral of Winnie's brother Brian Cooper at Golden Gate National Cemetary, in San Bruno, CA. In one episode, Kevin displays his driver's license issued by the "State of California."

The killer first single from the album, "It's Real":

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I signed the Occupy Writers petition.

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I did two readings, one at the Center for Fiction in Midtown, the other at a smallish bar in Bushwick called Goodbye Blue Monday, where I once played bass back in, I think, 2008 or 9.

The readings seemed to get positive responses.

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I should include that, on my way to the Bushwick reading, I spilled off my bike and landed awkwardly on my knee and wrist.

--

Here is me with the DIY splint I constructed around approximately 5am (which was when I finally got home from the reading [and the DJ set I had to do after]):

(The cloth you see is old tube socks; the cut-up cardboard box is, shamefully, from Amazon.)

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Here is me with the "professional" splint I later obtained, wrapped/constructed by my doctor friend/former college roommate Evan:

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Meanwhile, I'm laying low for the indeterminate future. Reading a book a night. Last night was The Lover by Marguerite Duras, the last page of which killed me. (I don't think it gets much better ending with a phone call.) The night before was The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, while also completing the last 200 pages or so of Bolano's behemoth 2666, one of the best books I've probably ever read. So beautiful and giant. Today I wanted to read Jakob Von Gunten by Robert Walser (or Selected Stories), but the library I went to didn't have either. I sit here, at this desk in Midtown Manhattan, where there are other people ostensibly writing things all around me. I walk outside and it's surprisingly cold. I realize I am underdressed. I think to myself, at least my wrist is getting better. The split is off.

"The grapefruits were organic, and pink inside."

"Before Heather and the Dunes on a glass-topped table was the bottle of gin, two thirds gone, three grapefruits, and a hand juicer. The bottle had a picture of a little old lady on the label who gazed out at them sternly. Beneath the table, their knees were visible, Heather's young dimpled ones and the Dunes's knobby ones. The knees looked troubled, even baffled, beneath the glass."

-from "Lu-Lu" by Joy Williams, Escapes (1990)

On his pumpkin head he wore a tall hat.

"The Man with the Pumpkin Head" by Robert Walser

Once there was a man and on his shoulders he had, instead of a head, a hollow pumpkin. This was no great help to him. Yet he still wanted to be Number One. That's the sort of person he was. For a tongue he had an oak leaf hanging from his mouth, and his teeth were cut out with a knife. Instead of eyes, he had two round holes. Back of the holes, two candle stumps flickered. Those were his eyes. They didn't help him see far. And yet he said his eyes were better than anyone's, the braggart. On his pumpkin head he wore a tall hat; used to take it off when anyone spoke to him, he was so polite. Once this man went for a walk. But the wind blew so hard that his eyes went out. He wanted to cry with his candle ends, because he couldn't find his way home. So now he sat there, held his pumpkin head between his hands, and wanted to die. But dying didn't come to him so easily. First there had to come a June bug, which ate the oak leaf from his mouth; there had to come a bird, which pecked a hole in his pumpkin head; there had to come a child, who took away the two candle stumps. Then he could die. The bug is still eating the leaf, the bird is pecking still, and the child is playing with the candle stumps.

-Robert Walser, from Selected Stories

I Don't Bet on Horses, But I Like the Ladies.

SINFONIA #2 by Daniil Kharms

Anton Mikhailovich spat, said "ech," spat again, said "ech" again, spat again, said "ech" again and left. To hell with him. Instead let me tell you about Ilya Pavlovich.

Ilya Pavlovich was born in 1893 in Constantinople. When he was still a boy, they moved to St. Petersburg, and there he graduated from the German School on Kirchnaya Street. Then he worked in some shop; then he did something else; and when the Revolution began, he emigrated. Well, to hell with him. Instead, let me tell you about Anna Ignatievna.

But it's not so easy to tell about Anna Ignatievna. First, I know almost nothing about her, and second, I've just fallen off my chair, and have forgotten what I was about to say. So let me instead tell about myself.

I am tall, fairly intelligent, and dress prudently and tastefully. I don't drink, I don't bet on horses, but I like the ladies. And the ladies don't mind me. They like it when I go out with them. Serafima Izmaylovna has invited me home several times, and Zinaida Yakovlevna also said that she was always glad to see me. But I was involved in a strange incident with Marina Petrovna, which I would like to tell about. A quite ordinary thing, but rather amusing. Because of me, Marina Petrovna lost all her hair, became bald as a baby's bottom. It happened like this: Once I went over to visit Marina Petrovna, and bang! she lost all her hair. And that was that.

-from Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms