Status Quorum

I’m at about 11000 words on the novel, now.  Been slow because work on the show has picked up; it’s a big episode—the finale—and I haven’t had as much time at home. I think I figured out a big structural & narrative path though, for the novel, and that’s exciting.  The idea came while I ate chips and salsa.  Many of the ideas come while I eat chips and salsa.  Must continue.

I’ll be posting excerpts from a novel in progress here, until it’s complete or abandoned.

NO COLONY, OPEN

NO COLONY, a paperback collection of new stories published by me and Blake Butler, is now open to submissions.  Details can be found at the site.

And if you want to read words that will make you ___________, check out the buying specials at the source.  Expansive text for cheap.

51

There is an artist in Los Angeles who’s name is hum.  He is a friender.  He is a plax.  To not be crossed, he saym.  To not be crossed.  A fairer father farther norse, up in the green yearnin gables of Ire.  I AM A JOYCE RIPOFF! the artist cries!  NORMUM ETESPLAT! the boy cries!

?%

-It makes a mess of us all.

-What does?

-What does.  What does.  …  Do you see your coffee?

-No, I don’t.

-Okay, funny.  Look at your coffee.  That.  That!  What your holding.

-What does this coffee have to do with anything?

-That’s what makes a mess of us all!  Not the caffeine.  The transaction.  The buy and sell.  The money.  The exchange of it.

-If you say Capitalism I’ll cry wolf.

-Capitalism.

-You realize you have a rudimentary grasp of philosophy, and especially Marxist philosophy, right?

- … Who have you become?

&*&*&

So I’d like to make something expansive, not a hint of self-reflexivity… a modern myth, not a postmodern myth.  Although, look at what you’ve just read (read: ARE READING).  I can’t help it.  Maybe it is true what the French philosopher Deleuze said… something about Capitalism making schizophrenics of us all. (See how rudimentary and I-read-the-back-cover I can be?) That + the postmodern realization that a universal narrative won’t unite a story, not that it WON’T but that if it does we do not trust it, makes me question my willingness and desire to escape what comes so easy and feels so fun.  Yes, this feels fun.  Can’t you tell?

CCCFDDDFCCFDDDDDD

My keyboard is a piano.  The sounds produced by both piano and keyboard are similar.

When in Rome, take the via Cortese to the …

Theory Re: Why I’ve Stopped Reading Blood Meridian Either Just Before or Right After the Big Indian Massacre Scene

by Ken Baumann

Blood Meridian feels episodic.  There seems, to me, all of this just to me of course, to be no thread carrying The Child from one episode to the next.  And maybe that is exactly rendered; ‘there is no string.’  Purely existential violence and movement.  It is bleak as hell.  It’s a strong story in strong language, and I’ve said before it is ‘too strong.’  That was my supplied reason for quitting.  I’ve quit reading it three or four times.  That said, the book still contains my favorite first sentence, one that I cannot shake out of my head some days for the life of me.

I’m currently training myself to read one book at a time.  I’m doing well, so far.  Sticking with Fennegans Forrigan Wake.  Just finished Book I.  I feel good and bad about this; I feel as if all the writers I know personally might die tomorrow, and I wouldn’t have read their books and told them how great they were.  Spooky.  Heidegger’s Guilt.

I started a story a few days ago and have kept on it; made the longest fiction I’ve written in awhile.  I opened the document and stared at the words today.  Nervous.  Lost faith.  I probably should’ve given it more time, stared at it longer.  Let’s see if I can get cracking again on it tonight.

I realized again the other day that, at 15, I sat in a chair every day for thirty days in a row and told myself I was going to write at least 1700 words and did.  For about 20 of those days.  I had a 50,000 word goal.  That was the plan: a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (this was spurred on by NaNoWriMo).  I was on task for about 20 days then fell behind and didn’t write for 8 days in a row.  I convinced myself, with less than 48 hours to spare until ‘deadline’, to finish it.  I did.  I’ve never felt better.

I wrote Interim in 3 days, with little sleep, but Interim is a very short novel (in terms of wordcount).  Very little revision.  It took me maybe 5 months to finish the screenplay.

Don’t know why I’m going over my own metrics, here.

I cannot speak highly enough of these books:

• American Gods by Neil Gaiman
• The Gunslinger by Stephen King

riverrun

I bought a paperback copy of Finnegans Wake (with the cover pictured above) from Shakespeare & Company, the cavernous, warm, wonderful & legendary bookstore in Paris.

Throughout my 2 & 1/2 week trip all over Europe with Blake, I hauled my copy of the Wake around like a newborn, most often cradling it between my right arm and torso, squeezing it tight into my ribs as we walked miles each day, walked from one ancient monument, one obelisk, to another.  I read from the book in many places, most of them moving, e.g. ferries, trains, planes.  Some of the reading occurred while still, laying fevered in hotel beds, reading while my body simmered at 104º, propelled from one incredible paragraph to the next by massive and expansive images and sentences that are so beautiful & poetic they could probably strip paint if cooed from speakers.

I have the book beside me now.  I’m tempted to excerpt the hell out of it; tempted to show you all of the sentences that have made, literally, my jaw drop/me laugh in disbelief, but I can’t do that.  There are too many.  Too much.  I’m responding to this book in a way that I haven’t responded to a piece of art in awhile; I’m astonished.  Infinite Jest is astonishing to me, but in a very different way.  Finnegans Wake is the most lyrical and layered language-game that I’ve ever read.  It’s creating this insane and dreamlike synthesis of not just English but all languages, languages real and imagined.  It seems a circuitous and cyclical myth, that both establishes it’s own heroes and environs and time, but also affirms the idea that all heroes and all environs and all times fit/fall into the monomyth; ‘monomyth’ is a word first published in Finnegans Wake, a word that Joseph Campbell then used to label his philosophy of myth spoken about in The Hero With A Thousand Faces, The Power of Myth & other great books.

So much contained within; I feel like I could read just the pages that I’ve read (almost 200) again and again for years and each time discover something new.

I will post one excerpt, though: the first (and last, and first again) sentence of the book:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Dzanc's Best of the Web nominations:

I’ve nominated Jeff Crouch, Joseph Goosey, and Jason Bredle for their works titled Paper Clips, A Free, Over The Phone Consultation, and Moby Dick, respectively.

Thanks again to Jeff, Joseph & Jason (J city, baby) for their awesome contributions.  Your stories/poems continue to inspire and make me happy.

For more info about the Best of the Web anthology, click THIS!