The Mumpsimus

[This essay originally appeared in the  Winter 2009/2010 issue  of  Rain Taxi Review of Books . The  Winter 2010/2011  issue has been published, so I'm now free to reprint this essay, and I'll also recommend the new issue to you, because in addition to the wide-ranging reviews of books, there are also good interviews with William Gibson and Lewis Hyde.] ANDRE: Well, Wally, how do you think it affects an audience to put on one of these plays in which you show that people are totally isolated now, and they can't reach each other, and their lives are obsessive and driven and desperate?  Or how does it affect them to see a play that shows that our world is full of nothing but shocking sexual events and violence and terror?  Does that help to wake up a sleeping audience?  —Wallace Shawn & André Gregory, My Dinner with André 1. Wallace Shawn's most recent play, Grasses of a Thousand Colors , is a dream and a provocation and a conundrum...

J. Robert Lennon points to an essay by Ed Park in the NY Times from a couple days ago, "One Sentence Says It All" , which I missed until now, but which obviously appealed to me, an avowed lover of long sentences , because it concerns books that are written as a single sentence. Park's focus is primarily on what "really" makes something a one-sentence novel, a kind of purity test, while Lennon mostly just seems grumpy, declaring the whole idea to be "the kind of fake formal experimentation that a writer is more likely to use as cover for his incompetence than for any kind of genuine insight into character, situation, or language". I think Lennon's opinion is noxious, and I'm skeptical of any use of the word "gimmick" for a writing technique, because it seems to me a particularly prejudicial and generally inaccurate term -- in a broad sense, any literary (as opposed to purely pragmatic) way of writing is gimmicky, because any writ...

My brain doesn't seem to want to participate in year-end roundups this year, as every time I try to think about what books or films or music or legumes I've encountered, I mostly go blank. I seem to have lost the capacity to link such experiences to the experience of time in annual chunks. I wouldn't in any case be able to write a "best of the year" post because I've spent a lot of this year catching up with stuff from other years (well, no old legumes -- that would be gross...). Probably still a hangover effect from my years as series editor for Best American Fantasy. However, some books, at least, do come to mind as things I haven't posted enough about here, and which I would like to recommend. So if you get some good giftcards or something during the holidays and feel impelled to buy something; or if you happen to want some stuff to look for in the library, here are a few titles (arranged alphabetically by author) I've thought rewarded the time...

Remember the Third Bear Carnival ? Of course you do. Well, after a lot of hard work from various folks, we now can offer all of the Carnival posts, plus some new content, as a free, downloadable e-book . Thanks to the contributors, to Matt Staggs for doing the initial compilation, and to Jill Roberts and Elizabeth Story at Tachyon for making it all look great. And thanks to Wired.com for hosting the file! And don't forget -- The Third Bear is always happy to go home with you ...

[This post is a contribution to the Requiem // 102 project created by Nicholas Rombes . The gist:  Requiem for a Dream , isolating one frame from each minute of the film. For more on the concept, see the About page at the project home . This post concerns frame 32: ] 32 We are following the back of a little boy. The past and future are familiar countries. They do things similarly there. The main characters of Requiem for a Dream  spend all their energy and money and passion on trying to escape the present. They retreat into memories, they pin their hopes on a tale of the future. Now  is always terrible and terrifying and terrorizing; then  was wonderful, and soon  will be bliss. Requiem. A mass for the repose of a soul into death. The OED describes an obsolete meaning: An invitation to one's soul to take the peaceful rest one has hoped for or earned.  The earliest citation is from 1607: "Every man sings a requiem to his own heart." A ...

In my latest Sandman Meditations column, I tackled the prologue of Season of Mists , and ended up spending a lot of time talking about Jorge Luis Borges and his first appearance in English: "The Garden of Forking Paths"  in the August 1948 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine : The EQMM “Garden of Forking Paths” appeared in a translation by Anthony Boucher, which means that Boucher was not only a well-respected writer of mysteries and science fiction, not only an important and influential reviewer of mystery fiction, not only the man whose name is honored by the annual World Mystery Convention (Bouchercon) and its awards (the Anthonies), not only the man who co-founded The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , not only an important mentor to many writers, including Philip K. Dick — he was also the man who first brought Borges’s work to the United States. Later translations would become the standard ones (as far as I know, Boucher’s has rarely been reprinted),...

News from Lethe Press that the new issue of Icarus is almost ready . It includes a new story of mine, "Lonesome Road", which I think they quite aptly describe as "almost a literary version of hauntology, a different kind of ghost story -- postmodern, but chilling all the same." The same issue includes an interview with THE ... Sodomite   Hal Duncan , plus stories by Sunny Morvaine and Alejandro Omidsalar. And more! Single copies will be available for purchase  via this link , and subscriptions are available here . Elements of "Lonesome Road" were inspired by one of my favorite recordings, Sam Collins singing "Lonesome Road Blues", available freely and legally via Archive.org :

I want to have adventures and take enormous risks and be everything they say we are. --Dorothy Allison That quote comes from a post at Shiri Eisner's Bi Radical blog called "The myth of myth-busting: normalcy discourse and bisexual politics" , a post I discovered via a friend's link on Facebook. The post questions and challenges the assumptions of another blogger's post called "Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know, or: 'how I came to stop worrying and like the word bisexual’, Part 2" , which sought to counter some "myths" about bisexuality, namely: Existence .  Yes – we do. Monogamy . Yes – we can. Fidelity . Yes – we can. And – we do. HIV & AIDS . No – it’s  not  all our fault. Confusion . No – we’re really not. Indecision . No – that’s not what fluidity means. Greed . Yes, we can have just one piece of cake. Pants . Yes – we’re as capable as anyone else of keeping our various bits in them. Choice . No – we cannot choose to b...

I've been a subscriber of Netflix for quite a few years, and because I've mostly lived in the rural part of a small state where all the cinemas get the same 8-10 major studio movies and the (now rare) video stores don't have particularly rich selections, Netflix has really been an extraordinary addition to my life. This summer, I bought a very cheap, very entry-level Blu-Ray player that allows Netflix's streaming video, and have been enjoying discovering what's available there, because it includes many titles not available on DVD. Through the last few months, the selection has grown significantly, and with the company's recent announcement that they plan to focus their efforts on streaming, it's fun to see all the new things popping up. I'm not convinced Netflix can continue to keep their prices relatively low for unlimited streaming forever, so we might as well enjoy it while it lasts ... Dennis Cozalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule (one ...

What this man needs is a good short story... Roxane Gay at HTML Giant: I recently read  Best American Short Stories 2010 , edited this year by Richard Russo who is one of my favorite writers.  Straight Man ? Amazing.  Empire Falls ? Amazing. My expectations were high. I generally enjoy reading  BASS  because it gives me a sense of what the literary establishment considers “the best” from year to year. I may not enjoy all the stories in a given year’s anthology but I am always impressed by the overall competence in each chosen story. I don’t think I’ve ever read a story in  BASS  and thought, “How did that get in there?” At the same time, I often find the BASS offerings to be shamefully predictable. The stories are often sedate and well-mannered even when they are supposedly not. I don’t see a lot of risk taking and more than anything else, I don’t see a lot of diversity in the stories being told. This year, though,  BASS  real...

If you haven't read John Coulthart's commentary on the recent controversy over an exhibit at the Smithsonian, do.  It's called "Ecce Homo Redux" .  Here's the first paragraph: If the news of the past few weeks has felt like a re-run of the 1980s—ongoing recession, government cuts, riots in London, Tories casting aspersions on the undeserving poor, the threat of another royal wedding—then add to the list of déjà vu  moments a flurry of outrage concerning art and religion in America that’s like a recapitulation of the  Helms vs. NEA  spats of 1989. On that occasion Andres Serrano’s  Piss Christ  was in the firing line, accused of being a blasphemous portrayal. This week it’s been the turn of a video installation of a short film made the same year,  A Fire in My Belly , by David Wojnarowicz, a work featured in an exhibition I linked to a couple of weeks ago,  Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture  at the National Portrai...

I've been sharing items via Google Reader's sidebar widget on this site for quite a while, calling it "Fresh Links".  Whenever I see something in the RSS feed that seems interesting, I click the little share button, and voila, y'all get to see it.  It's increased my laziness, causing me not to create linkdumps much any more.  If there's something I am especially impressed with, interested in, or challenged by, I'll incorporate it into a post somehow; stuff in the Fresh Links section is stuff that seemed to me worth the time I put into reading it. One of the things it allows me to do, if I choose, is see all I've shared.  I haven't done this before, but today I wondered what, for instance, I had noticed at this time last year.  Here's what was there: December 3, 2009 Anne Fernald on Girls Write Now December 4, 2009 Claire Dudman on Herta Müller's The Passport Chad Post with some Bolaño links John Williams on Carol Sklenicka...

Many on the left worry about being "offensive" and indeed worry even more when other people are being "offensive." Many on the right -- conservatism being a sort of machismo these days -- are pleased to offend, of course. This doesn't make them any good as readers or writers. I'm always amused when I run into a young conservative fellow who signed up for a class or writing program after reading a left-wing and homoerotic book like Fight Club . It touched them somehow, but not in any way they could understand, so they just take the stuff Groundlings always take away from some piece of art: spectacle and antinomianism. Antinomianism is part of why so many middle-class white dudes see themselves as victims; they can't be tough rebels if they acknowledged that they're actually already Empire. --Nick Mamatas

I was upstairs and heard a crash. I came down and discovered some of my ever-precarious piles of books had fallen. Had I let the piles grow too large?  Had one of the many books I'm in the midst of reading been placed unartfully on the pile?  Had a small earthquake rustled the house?  Had gravity changed? No, none of those were the reasons that multiple piles fell at once.