Showing posts with label gary shteyngart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gary shteyngart. Show all posts

Saturday, August 1

valentines and indictments: i was blogged about slash quoted; bike experiment, week 7



this is one of the things you get when you google "indictment valentine" and then click a lot

nicolle elizabeth wrote a great essay for the fictionaut blog, in which i am quoted next to, of all people, my teacher, the ever-wise and brilliant, sam lipsyte.
Sam Lipsyte says a short story should be a valentine, James Yeh says a short story should be a valentine and an indictment.
which is kind of funny because this was actually something i'd gleaned from a conversation with sam lipsyte, regarding gilbert sorrentino's imaginative qualities of actual things -- sam was saying how the book was both a love letter and a fuck you to his generation, or something like that, maybe he had actually used the terms "valentine" and "indictment," i can't remember exactly. though i do remember how it felt, which was like something unlocking in the rusty lock of my head. in any case. however it happened, this was something i then applied, in some drunken bar conversation with nicolle, to another book (not that it matters here, but it was roberto bolano's the savage detectives, a book which bolano had described as "a love letter to my generation.") the circle concludes. kind of funny.

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this happened a little while ago, but there was a nice note in vol. 1 brooklyn about my gary shteyngart interview for gigantic.
The foodie interview in Gigantic Magazine with Gary Shteyngart is pretty priceless, and if the entire issue weren't as good as it is, this interview alone would be worth the small sum of three bucks.
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bike stats

week 7
: 112.5 mi
summer total: 633 mi

Wednesday, May 13

people have been saying nice things about my interview with gary shteyngart, thank you


gary head by andrew bulger, gary body by joanna neborsky

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magers & quinn booksellers in minneapolis blogged about and linked to my interview with gary shteyngart.

the millions blogged about and linked to my interview with gary shteyngart.

my interview with gary shteyngart is now up on the gary shteyngart wikipedia page.

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thank you everybody, especially gary shteyngart.

Sunday, April 26

updates

a lot of stuff recently:

i have a story in pen america 10, available now.



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i did a video interview with ellen frances, in which we discussed the anxiety of creating a facebook event, the way to sit like tom waits, and gigantic's ideal reader, jeff goldblum.



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illustration by andrew bulger

i interviewed the writer gary shteyngart for gigantic, in which we discussed the russian hamburger, the virility of vegetables, and the age-old question of whether it is appropriate to eat the hors d'oeuvres at a literary party.

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the gigantic launch party at starr space was a big success. thank everybody for coming.

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UPDATE (5/1/09):

i have been blogged about a little slash mentioned in passing on blogs i like and frequent: htmlgiant, heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com, and awfulwaffle. thank you matthew, tao, and nicolle.

Saturday, February 28

class with gordon lish, interview with gary shteyngart, reading by tao lin

more news, all i do is news



-got into the gordon lish class to be taught this summer. i cut and paste a gchat with lincoln about getting in the gordon lish class and published it for a minute but then realized it might not be seen favorably by gordon lish and took it down. i don't know if he uses computers or not (i heard from somewhere he didn't) but i thought it would stupid to put something like that up before i take the class, if i take the class. so i didn't

(i should say here how much i like gordon lish and many of the people who have studied under, been published by, etc. gordon lish, such as barry hannah, raymond carver, joy williams, ben marcus, sam lipsyte, the list goes on.)

-interviewed gary shteyngart. preview to be posted soon on the gigantic: a magazine of short prose and art site. it went better than i could have possibly expected. transcribing it, i felt "excited" and "pleased". i felt as if i could get gigs doing more interviews, in the future. i do not know if i still feel this way, but i still feel good

if the interview was published in another magazine, it might look like this:

[what it originally pasted here was unpublishable. it just said there was "an html error" or something. this is my attempt at its recreation:]


Gary Shteyngart
[NOVELIST]
"MOST THINGS WE PRODUCE ARE PHALLIC. LOOK AT THE SKYLINE. DO YOU LOOK AWAY EVERY TIME YOU SEE THE SKYLINE?"

Discussed within:
-Dressing like a novelist
-Eating like a novelist
-Pastrami

-i also found a summer job

-did approximately 201394442 hours of gigantic work in the last two weeks

-"blew up" over gchat twice at my fellow editors. by which i mean "lost control of my gchat voice, volume level, and/or tone"

-apologized for "blowing up", felt like "an ass", worried if they would "give me a talking to", or "fire me", felt better about it after a while but still slightly afraid

-came into work yesterday, exhausted, and proceeded to get more exhausted.
i'm exhausted, i said to my boss.

this has been an exhausting last two weeks, i said to her.

did you fall in love? she asked me.

you're funny, i said to her. you're a funny person.


-[is this "bloggable"? i don't know. i wrote it and now i want to do something with it, immediate gratification:] i went with my roommate ben to see tao lin read at a loft down the street from me. there were two other readers: todd colby, a poet, and another guy whose name i didn't catch, who played guitar and sang and read from his novel. tao was funny and good and sad; he read a bunch of twitter entries in his usual tao way. my favorite entry was something like "i move my hand to my mouth to cough but sneeze instead". one girl in the audience laughed in a really loud and raspy way and at odd times and made everyone else feel uncomfortable. i don't think i liked her at first but after hearing her like this i think i liked her a lot more, and would have liked to talk to her or something, because i knew she was really uncomfortable, uncomfortable and probably hopeless at a lot of the things she liked and wanted to do. ("i understand," i could have told her, but not in those words, because you can't tell people things like that without seeming like an ass) i wanted to talk to her or something although i know i will probably never see her again. while tao was still reading, the girl with the loud laugh asked a girl with interesting, piled hair if she was his "girlfriend" (they had been seen hanging around each other earlier). the girl with the interesting hair shook her head. after the featured readers there was an open mic part where people read mostly love poems. one of our friends pretended she was ellen kennedy (tao had brought her books along to sell or give away, depending on the niceness of the person, or maybe just his mood, i don't know tao well enough to know) and read a poem by ellen kennedy called "i like to have sex" or something like that, i have the book and could check but i don't feel like going to go get it right now. the ellen kennedy reading went well and there was sincere laughter after some of the parts. three books were sold. one of the people who bought a book came up to my friend afterward and asked if she would sign it and she thought about it for a second and then did and when we were in the elevator she told us about it and i think we all laughed and felt good but eventually sad about it. and then i lost my phone and was in a bad mood the rest of the night and into the morning. you probably know the rest.

Tuesday, February 24

big week last week/this week: i am being anthologized


(I don't know where this came from, or who did it, but it's pretty badass. looks kind of like royal art lodge.)

some of what has happened:

-just found out i will have some pieces in the "30 under 30" anthology of innovative writers under age 30, edited by blake butler and lily hoang. i submitted 5 one-page or so short stories, interlinked and collectively titled "you don't need a place to sleep if you don't plan on sleeping" or "5 shorts". bb does quality, everything he touches turns to awesome. m stoked very much about this

-helped edit/update this: GIGANTIC #1 ONE-SENTENCE PROSE PREVIEW

-did two readings, thank you for coming if you came

-after the second reading, threw an after party with ben at my apartment. geniuses were in attendance. sadly no pictures were taken, i got too drunk to remember, also my camera is pink (a xmas present from my father, pink was the cheapest color they had)

-met some fantastic new people (hellos to kathleen, kyle, kim, kendra, krag, kristoph, claus, erin, there are others)

-got "solicited"

-lost my phone

-found my phone

-wrote a not insignificant amount of facebook and gchat updates, alerting friends to both these occurences

-and now i'm prepping to interview gary shteyngart about meat, over meat. the man is an interview monster.

here he is discussing katz's delicatessan, pickles, and virility: