TOUGH

Hey, you're a writer who spends hours sitting and writing and then more hours sitting and reading - what do you do for exercise? Does exercising make your writing better?

DON DELILLO AND RUSSELL BANKS

Friday night the NY Writers Institute had an interesting/strange thing involving Don Delillo and Russell Banks. The place was packed with mostly older people (50+) and few people laughed when Banks said that you want your audience to get younger, not older, because the older ones will die and then your work won't be read.

The whole thing was about forgotten writer Nelson Algren who wrote The Man With A Golden Arm and other lyrical/realist novels. We watched the movie version and then Don Delillo and Banks sat at a table on stage with NY Writers Institute head Don Faulkner.

The discussion was a little stiff, but flowed well and had some really interesting points. Like most people there, I just wanted to see Don Delillo. He didn't seem like he could be a real person. I imagined he would be very serious and somewhat intimidating. Although serious, he came off as nerdy, a little nervous, odd, very well organized (he had a folder full of notes he kept going through), soft-spoken and intelligent, and spoke with a slight lisp. I got a good feeling from him. I'd rather hang out with Delillo than Banks who kind of bashes you over the head that he's just this regular beer drinking joe from the northeast (I had seen Banks read before where he also told the story about him being a plumber in the NH).

The discussion revolved around personal accounts both Delillo and Banks had with Algren and how Algren was intensely popular in his time and how now is almost completely forgotten. At one point Algren was the top writer in the country, mentioned alongside Hemingway, but overtime, younger writers and readers came up and didn't read Algren, and both Delillo and Banks weren't exactly sure why this was, other than Algren's style comes off as outdated to many.

Overall, it was interesting. I'm not sure why we had to watch the two hour movie - hardly anything was discussed about it - and I think most were there to see and hear Delillo.

Also, really enjoyed the guy who during the Q&A period said "YEAH, I DON'T HAVE A QUESTION, IT'S MORE OF AN OBSERVATION."

AUTHOR COPIES CAME IN THE MAIL TODAY AWWHAHA.

Order copies direct from FUGUE STATE PRESS.

If you don't like using the Google payment on the pubs site and want a signed copy with my tears of future failure stained on cover, paypal $12 to:

Read an early review from blogger Darby Larson here who says "one of my favorite books of the year" and "In some ways I like The Failure Six more than Light Boxes."

Read "spotlight" on the book at HTMLGIANT here.

Excerpts in the next issue of New York Tyrant and Dark Sky Magazine (both out at the end of this month) and upcoming reviews in Interview Magazine (Dec/Jan Issue) and American Book Review (date unknown).

GERMANY

Just got this scan for the cover of the German edition of LIGHT BOXES. I like it. The balloon wraps around to the back cover. The translation is done (LIGHT BOXES doesn't really translate well, so they changed the title), and things like a website, book trailer, and a "big promotional campaign" all start next month.

Also, possible late afternoon coffee in the works.

+++++Random

+Watching baseball. Not sure I even like baseball. I want to like baseball.

+Don Dellilo is making a rare public appearance at SUNY Albany this Friday. I have no idea why. It has something to do with showing an old movie and then he's going to talk about it and so is Russell Banks. I think I'm going to go.

+When I worked for Borders I had to sell Russell Banks books at a reading he did. I thought I had all his books on the table but forgot two. Russell Banks came up to the table and said "Hi...you're missing two of my books" and walked away.

+I have the deep desire to just sit and listen to music and have been doing a lot of that lately.

+I really love the quote that HTMLGIANT posted the other day by Salvador Dali: "I don't do drugs. I am drugs." Part of me doesn't want to admit liking that quote because it's Dali who gets a lot of shit and it's a drug related line. But there's something really strong and sad about that quote. I like it a lot.

+I want a pair of reading glasses.

+Eating more fruit lately.

+Made a post about how MFA programs were created by writers who didn't want to work shitty day jobs so they sold the idea that writing needed to be taught at colleges and then hired their friends and then deleted the post.

+Currently wearing plaid sweatpants, some kind of gray long sleeved shirt.

THE PAGE AFTER

I have a dream for us that I keep in a kitchen

cabinet. The dream is kept in a little wooden box.

In the dream I'm the world's tallest man and

you're the world's smallest woman and I'm

holding you as tight as I can. A crowd forms

around us but I keep holding you and combing

your hair with my fingers and whispering in your

ear that I can protect you from any evil the world

could offer, any nightmare I could pull you from

because I'm so strong and your so small.

REALLY DEPRESSING/MELODRAMATIC SECTION FROM NIGHTMARE CHAPBOOK

I'm digging your grave. You're lying next to the

hole. You ask me what's taking so long. I see

Avery slipping between trees. He kicks all the

knives from the ground and into the sky. A few

birds fall. I keep digging. I look for the baby. You

fall into the hole and I try to stop you and Avery

bites into my shoulder. Baby fingers shake me,

try to wake me. A boy playing a trumpet walks

through the woods and Avery floats over and

kicks him across the woods, makes the boy

disappear into the horizon. I pull a knife from

my boot and jump down into the hole where I

can't see anything but black and all I do is stab at

everything in front of me and around me and

when I feel your dead body against mine I begin

stabbing myself until we wake up in the bed with

the still awake baby between us.

Today

Today I had a fruit shake for breakfast and some kind of salad for lunch. I'm currently obsessed with "boston lettuce."

Today I read ten pages in Gravity's Rainbow.

Today I checked statcounter and noticed an increase in blog hits yesterday and today, including more hits on the west coast (LA specifically) and random and strange hits from NY places like Madison Square Garden (sure, I'll read there), literary agent house Willey Agency, and an increase in Brooklyn. Hi everybody.

Today I went food shopping.

Today I bought a small bag of cat food.

Today I got gas in the car.

I think that's about it. It's really sunny outside but it's been dark all morning.

I'm going to go read more. Possible nap.

VOLLMANNN

INTERVIEWER:
I've heard that you bought a ten-year-old prostitute out of servitude.


VOLLMANN:
Oh, I did that in Thailand. That Afghanistan book is all about how I tried to help people and failed. Even the book itself was a failure—not a perfect book and it sold terribly. Everything has been totally consistent about it.


INTERVIEWER:
It's a masterpiece in its own way.


VOLLMANN:
A masterpiece of failure.

CHAPBOOK TALK

Chapbooks are an odd little thing. I go back and forth between love and hate and I think mostly this is because I've held some truly terrible chapbooks (just thrown together poems, crudely stapled spines, black and white faded covers, etc) and also some of the best writing and best looking little books ever (Greying Ghost Press immediately pops into my head). Sure, it's not a perfect bound book. There's something different about chapbooks and it can be exciting or you can cringe knowing the author has published roughly 19 chapbooks in his life-time, all out of print. THE CHAPBOOK REVIEW recently published their November issue and it got me excited. There's a really cool and interesting "roundtable discussion" with a bunch of publishers and editors of chapbooks. It pretty much answers any questions people have about chapbooks and it makes it feel important that people are publishing them.