Burn This Book: an interview with author Blake Butler
Laura Carter06.21.10
Could have put this one up weeks ago, ‘cept ye editor here couldn’t figure out how to blurb it. How to reckon a few lines on a book so poetic, yet lush with traditional narrative (if your idea of tradition spans from Samuel Beckett to Cormac McCarthy to Ben Marcus, taking a Lovecraft/Lynchian detour through a world familiar, close, suburban and simultaneously apocalyptically hellish… same difference?), as if all the tragedies you hear on the news distantly, the floods, the fires, the quakes were taking place on your own trimmed yard, or erupting from your esophagus and/or mind. So took weeks off to ponder it, and being summertime, our heads got swollen like a certain political character toward the end of said book to be blurbed, Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas. And finally Fanzine said wait, Laura Carter nails it here in her equally challenging and poetic intro; so fuck our blurb. Read her words and Butler’s in this interview. Butler, from Atlanta, is also the editor of HTMLGiant, author of the novella Ever and his next novel There Is No Year will be out on Harper Perrenial next year. -CM
Music: Ariel Pink – Before Today:
The Fanzine06.11.10
There’s a point on Before Today, the new album by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti (the 1:45 minute mark of ‘Beverly Kills’ to be exact),…
Comedy: David Cross – Bigger and Blackerer
Casey McKinney05.30.10
Well I was just saying to someone, when the fuck is David Cross (ex-Atlantan) gonna come out with something new? I mean America certainly hasn’t…
My Life in the Bush of Words or, J.D. Salinger in Africa: Broken Glass, by Alain Mabanckou
Louis Chude-Sokei05.25.10
Written in a long, continuous sentence this bawdy, intertextual novel from the Congolese author of African Psycho takes as its themes "capitulation, decadence and the joys of self-abasement." Louis Chude-Sokei, author of The Last Darky, reviews and examines the long-standing prohibition on black writers exploring themes of self-loathing and intra-community criticism, both of which he argues are essential literary tools.
And Everything is Going Fine: Soderbergh on Spalding Gray
Theresa Smalec05.21.10
Actor and monologist Spalding Gray’s suicide was all the more upsetting because he was an artist who seemed so intensely engaged with life. It seemed to say something a little unpleasant about life itself that he should choose to leave it behind. Although as Steven Soderbergh’s new documentary makes abundantly clear, Gray’s lifelong fascination with death was hardly a secret. Theresa Smalec interviewed Gray on January 9th, 2004, the day before his disappearance. Here she reviews Soderbergh’s film which is – appropriately enough – narrated entirely by Gray himself.
Marque of Goodness
Jon Leon05.20.10
How does one define the undefinable? It is the enigmatic and ineffable marque of goodness that Jon Leon does his ostensive best to name, winding his way through the meandering hooks of Jane Eyre, Marilyn Monroe, and the LA-based writer Kate Durbin, and in the end, winds up writing a book review. It’s good.
Music: The Flaming Lips: The Dark Side of The Moon (redo)
Casey McKinney05.13.10
Flaming Lips: I love Dark Side of The Moon, listened to it times hundreds trying to synch it up with The Wizard of Oz (ha). Once, when I was young…
Music: Xasthur: Portal of Sorrow
Mark Gluth05.08.10
American Black Metalist Malefic has staunchly refused to compromise his vision or execution since starting the project known as Xasthur 15 years ago….
Success is not an Option: Postmodern Crime and Comedy in L.A.
Jim Ruland05.07.10
James Greer’s enviable big league career began as a music critic of such a high order that, well, shoot, he was asked to throw down the pen to play in one of the seminal rock bands at the fin/turn of the siècle. Then he wrote their biography (talking about Guided by Voices here, dream job). His debut novel Artificial Light unraveled the Kurt Cobain realm of rock star mythos, and in his sophomore novel from Akashic, Greer succeeds, with dark stunning wit, the story of The Failure – "Guy Forget…a harebrained scheme addict of the highest order." Jim Ruland reviews.
Music: Mi Ami
Casey McKinney05.04.10
Speaking of disco (in light of Francia’s Imelda Marcos piece) music was supra-fun for a while there, not long ago, as bands were rediscovering the…
