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.

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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.

"But you have not grasped the living reality, the essence!"

"But you have not grasped the living reality, the essence!" Husserl exclaims. Nor will I, ever. His examiner (was it J.D. Ratchliff?) said severely "Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature." "The aim of literature," Baskerville replied grandly, "is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart." Joan says: "I have two children." Why did you do that?" I ask. "I don't know," she says. I am struck by the modesty of her answer. Pamela Hansford Johnson has been listening and his face jumps in what may be described as a wince. "That's a terrible thing to say," he says.

-Donald Barthelme, from "Florence Green is 81," Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)

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I've tried to look closely into someone else's face--a cashier at the movies. In order to learn the secret of her life. Useless. The other person is an enigma. And with eyes that are those of a statue: blind.

Clarice Lispector, from "Explanation," Soulstorm (1974)

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His wife was a Chicana poet; every so often she'd threaten to leave him. He showed me a photo of her. She wasn't especially pretty. Her face betrayed suffering, and under that suffering, simmering rage. I imagined her in an apartment in San Francisco or a house in Los Angeles, with the windows shut and the curtains open, sitting at a table, eating sliced bread and a bowl of green soup.

--Roberto Bolaño, from "Jim," The Insufferable Gaucho (2010)

Shit, Jara, It’s Me, Bolaño

"When I felt I’d had enough fresh air and it was time to get back to the bar, I climbed the steps up to the door (stone steps, single blocks of a stone that had a granitelike consistency and the sheen of a gem) and ran into a guy who was shorter than me and dressed like a fifties gangster, a guy who had something of the caricature about him, the classic affable killer, who got me mixed up with someone he knew and greeted me. I replied to his greeting, although from the start I was sure that I didn’t know him and that he was mistaken, but I behaved as if I knew him, as if I, too, had mixed him up with someone else, so the two of us greeted each other as we attempted ineffectively to climb those shining (yet deeply humble) stone steps. But the hit man’s confusion lasted no more than a few seconds, he soon realized that he was mistaken, and then he looked at me in a different way, as if he were asking himself if I was mistaken, too, or if, on the contrary, I had been having him on from the start, and since he was thick and suspicious (though sharp in his own paradoxical way), he asked me who I was, he asked me with a malicious smile on his lips, and I said, Shit, Jara, it’s me, Bolaño, and it would have been clear to anyone from his smile that he wasn’t Jara, but he played the game, as if suddenly, struck by a lightning bolt (and no, I’m not quoting one of Lihn’s poems, much less one of mine), he fancied the idea of living the life of that unknown Jara for a minute or two, the Jara he would never be, except right there, stalled at the top of those radiant steps, and he asked me about my life, he asked me (thick as a plank) who I was, admitting de facto that he was Jara, but a Jara who had forgotten the very existence of Bolaño, which is perfectly understandable, after all, so I explained to him who I was and, while I was at it, who he was, too, thereby creating a Jara to suit me and him, that is, to suit that moment—an improbable, intelligent, courageous, rich, generous, daring Jara, in love with a beautiful woman and loved by her in return—and then the gangster smiled, more and more deeply convinced that I was having him on but unable to bring the episode to a close, as if he had suddenly fallen for the image I was constructing for him, and encouraged me to go on telling him not just about Jara but also about Jara’s friends and finally the world, a world that seemed too wide even for Jara, a world in which the great Jara was an ant whose death on a shining stair would not have mattered at all to anyone, and then, at last, his friends appeared, two taller hit men wearing light-colored double-breasted suits, who looked at me and at the false Jara as if to ask him who I was, and he had no choice but to say, It’s Bolaño, and the two hit men greeted me. I shook their hands (rings, expensive watches, gold bracelets), and when they invited me to have a drink with them I said, I can’t, I’m with a friend, and pushed past Jara through the door and disappeared inside."

-Roberto Bolaño, "Meeting with Enrique Lihn," the final story in The Return. Originally published in The New Yorker.

amazon quoted something i wrote

my review of roberto bolano's the skating rink was quoted on the book's amazon page, under "product description." my friend jason's girlfriend's mom in iowa was "impressed"

stuff done by others; stuff done by me

photograph by ryan manning

ryan manning's sky polaroids in the new yinzer are quiet and stunning. (special thanks to justin taylor at htmlgiant who posted this first.)

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i'm being filmed tomorrow for luca dipierro and michael kimball's film 60 writers/60 places.

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atlas sound's fleetwood mac cover, new track featuring panda bear, and micromix are all up and incredible. (atlas sound is deerhunter frontman bradford cox's solo project.)

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roberto bolano's newest novel the skating rink is highly recommended. i am working on a review of it for the faster times. this is a link to the last thing i did for the faster times.

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gigantic is throwing a party august 26th, with opium and bomb magazines. a few special VIP discount tickets still remain.

one of the perks for the VIP event is kalup linzy:

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the bike experiment continues:

week 8: 82.1 mi
summer total: 715.1 mi
subway rides during week 8: 7 (i got tired of riding through the rain)

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

Books I Read in 2008

Some might say a year-end booklist is something like a literary cock-showing contest. If that's true, then mine is short and incomplete. In an attempt to compensate, I've muscled up my reviews. (Thanks to Lincoln and Blake who inspired me to put this together.)

COMPLETED

1. The Savage Detectives - Roberto Bolaño. Choked full of urgency and heart. A book that will leave you staggering around and emotionally tumescent (heart boner). Soul-crushing, life-altering. Everything you've read about it is true. A verifiable and bonafide masterpiece. I could go on forever about this one. I won't.

2. Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell. I've not read his other books but I like his articles a lot. This was possibly the most readable book I've ever read. Not as rigorous as I think I wanted it to be, but great and highly thought-provoking. The best part is in the middle when he talks about the guy with the off-the-charts IQ who is, essentially, doing nothing with it (he was a bouncer for awhile). Fascinating and heartbreaking. Also good is when he explains why Asians are so smart.

3. Personal Days - Ed Park. A tornado of increasing tragicomedic build-up that sucks you in and vomits you into a better place. Some killer one-liners in there. Tangentially lost my iPod because of this book.

4. Ray - Barry Hannah. Liquor-fueled literary mayhem. Hannah was, as the story goes, something of a drunk while writing this. I get lost at times, but on a scale of sheer linguistic originality and sharpness, unparalleled.

5. Last Evenings on Earth - Roberto Bolaño. What more can I say about Bolano? All the things that are working in The Savage Detectives are also present here. Perhaps more focused than TSD. Maybe more perfect and less staggering? If not a masterpiece, then close.

6. Barbarian In The Garden – Zbigniew Herbert. Brilliantly-written travelogues by a brilliant bastard. Sarcastic and humane.

7. Orality and Literacy - Walter J. Ong. As far as "non-fiction" thought-provokers go, this was my favorite of the year, over Outliers. Some pretty dense, heady stuff, though still highly readable. A lot of convincing arguments. Read it over the span of a night.

8. Drown - Junot Diaz. Seminal, formative work. Of great and convincing power. The story "Fiesta, 1980" makes me never want to be eleven again. The story "Edison, New Jersey" makes me never want to go to New Jersey again. I'm completely down with this book. This was a book for my class with Gary Shteyngart.

9. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri. Pretty and dramatic. It was OK enough (you could not ask for more elegantly crafted sentences), but I guess wanted a little more grit, a little more blood in the stool. Shteyngart.

10. Pnin - Vladimir Nabakov. One of the best novels I've ever read. Maybe my favorite. Hilarious, sad, extremely well-written yet readable as well. "Written as all great literature should be -- which is, ecstatically," says Updike or some crap. And you know what? He's right. I was reading it in the stuffy quiet library on campus. The girl sitting next to me must have thought I was weird because I was so visibly enjoying the book. She kept looking over at me. Shteyngart.

11. Women - Charles Bukowski. You could probably call this one repetitive, but it killed just the same. Bukowski's ability for pith and one-liner is gas. People like to say Bukowski can't write, but them people are fools. If you could talk like him and Woody Allen, you could really go some places. Like to the bar, for example, or to the analyst.

12. The Quick and the Dead - Joy Williams. 80% through. Deadpan, odd, hard to pin down, deceptively unadorned and prosaic. Even banal. All of this done to great effect. Love it so far. Also very funny.

13. Actual Air - David Berman. I can't remember if I've finished this one, but there is so much weird beauty and heart in here, some of the poems I can't stop thinking about. The story about the guy "what's his name" haunts me to this day.

14. Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You - Frank Stanford. Only 1/3 of the way through this massive book, but I'm going to go ahead and declare it. Pound for pound heavyweight poetry champion of the world. Stanford has maybe the purest voice I've ever heard. Reading this is like drinking unfiltered nectar from the gods of youth and then careening on the rickety brokedown antebellum machinery of the heart. "Stanford is gas."

15. Notable American Women - Ben Marcus. 63% completed. This has on and off kicked my ass like a brain wearing a boot. The first section is cripplingly beautiful in its odd and moving sincerity, its life of heartbreak and disappointment disguised within the cruel and exacting tone of an science manual. Subversive. Sentences as sharp as the stick that carved them. Looking forward to getting back into it upon my return to NYC.

16. Home Land - Sam Lipsyte. Not done with yet, but some powerful, bruising shit in here. His first book Venus Drive is a beacon. Filthy good.

17. Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinand Celine. 95% through. Will finish when I get back to NYC. Another soul-staggerer.

18. The Moviegoer - Walker Percy. I think I'm halfway through. Liked it a lot so far. Lonely and elegant.

19. The Fermata - Nicholson Baker

20. No One Belongs Here More Than You - Miranda July. I've liked this book. Offbeat, quiet and beautiful.

21. Jesus' Son - Denis Johnson. Reread. Monstrous. Classic. A truly fundamental and formative book.

22. Red Calvary - Isaac Babel. Reread. Savage and visceral. This book will scramble what you think fiction is capable of in three pages. A triumph of speed and force and urgency.

23. 60 Stories - Donald Barthelme. There are probably still a few stories in here that I haven't read, but this collection absolutely kills. "The Balloon", "Me and Miss Mandible", "The School"...these are canon. Must-read for anyone who wants to do something "new" or "innovative" or "experiemental" or "literary".

OK, I'm tired of writing this. Maybe I'll finish. But probably I won't.

UPDATE:

24. Young Revolutionaries - Chelsea Martin, Catherine Lacey, Ellen Kennedy. I liked this chapbook a lot. Some really cool, fresh stuff being done. The best part in Kennedy's story is where the teenagers are watching the reality television show where the ex-wrestler slash host guy is talking about "'roid rage". Juvenile, genius.

25. Women and Children - The Royal Art Lodge. I liked this art book a lot. Dark yet light. Plain yet awesome. Funny yet sad. Bent.

26. Canteen Issue #2. Exactly what a journal should be. The content, both the prose and the art, is first-rate. The layout is clean. Everything about it, I love: the aesthetic vision of the magazine, the phenomenal color, the weight and paper used, even its smell. I particularly liked Peter Orner's shorts, Gina Gionfriddo's play about bear sex, and Todd Zuniga's story about "Life".

27. Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art #45

28. Noon #8

Whopper virgins, The Savage Detectives and new Bolano publications available online

Two things I reacted to strongly today:

-Roommate Ben points me to whopper virgins.



I was reminded of the film Fitzcarraldo by Werner Hertzog, about an intrepid European businessman who seeks to build an operahouse in the middle of the Amazon jungle. Undeterred by hostile natives and environments, Fitzcarraldo carries on with his plan with a fanatical zeal. The image of the helicopter lifting the specially-made broiler in a net reminded me of the scene where Fitzcarraldo oversees the throng of natives he has employed, dragging his 32-ton steamboat over a mountain. The broiler scene was like a cheapened version of that -- but instead of opera, we're giving them shitty food.

Toward the end of the commercial, I found the "symphonic" music playing in the background as an oddly moving (and disquieting) extension of the director's desire to document a kind of "culinary culture" (these are his words) and "profound new human experience" (my words) -- a kind of culture "sharing" with the Other while, of course, ignoring the possibility that the Other might already have one, that is, a culture. At first I felt amused, then immensely sad. There's something tragic about this: this world we live in, where everyone has eaten a burger.

On a side note, although I have no additional inclination to eat a Whopper (or Big Mac, for that matter), my feelings toward Burger King, I think, have shifted slightly in the positive.



-I'm nearing the 500 page mark of The Savage Detectives by Chilean author Roberto Bolano. I have to say: it's probably the most beautiful and moving book I've ever read. I hope the ending doesn't disappoint me.

Eyeshot has a new piece of his up, a powerful, lyric essay entitled "The Beach". It's currently the only English translation for it. Next week's issue of The New Yorker will also feature freshly translated material of his as well, a short story, which, if it's anything like the last one published there ("Clara"), will be amazing.

Sometimes I wouldn’t even go out shopping because I was scared of coming back and finding her dead, but as the days went by my fears gradually faded, and I realized (or perhaps conveniently convinced myself) that Clara wasn’t going to take her life; she wasn’t going to throw herself off the balcony of her apartment—she wasn’t going to do anything.

UPDATE (12/15/08): Link to Bolano's new story "Meeting with Enrique Lihn" in The New Yorker.