If some one were to tell me, "I am an entrepreneur," I would place that person somewhere on a continuum that swung from chronically unemployed to shifty to the outright criminal. Because really, who would say that? Maybe an uncle, your mother's brother, who is always hitting your own father up for investment capital. Money that will never be seen again.

When I picked up Mathias Svalina's slender volume I am a Very Productive Entrepreneur, I had all those prejudices firmly in place. I expected am More...

This is the first Svalina book I've read. It is a collection of flash fictions that have some similarity to prose poems. Every sentence begins with the phrase 'i started this one business', which leads to an absurd but visually 'pretty' concept. It feels like a long writing exercise. The broad concept of the book allows Svalina to touch on a wide range of abstract ideas and pretty visuals, and it continually returns to a vague critique of consumer culture. The language is very 'light', the appro More...

There are obvious logic problems with some of these start-up businesses. Also, I think some of them couldn't really make you rich. A lot of these businesses would cost more money than it would make. I enjoyed reading his because I want to be rich someday. I duct-taped some of Drucker's parables into this. It worked.

I wrote a review of the book at Necessary Fiction, which can be summed up as: this is a book for the 100%. There is nothing this book didn't do and wound and celebrate in me. http://necessaryfiction.com/reviews/I...

amazing, just as good as Destruction Myth. My favorites are probably obvious picks: skyscrapers in your likeness, glass of sugar-water for parents of deceased children, parts of me to the highest bidder, covered everything in gold, etc.

Each of the prose poems of Mathias Svalina’s collection I Am a Very Productive Entrepreneur begin with the line “I started this one business…” These are micro-worlds where highly skilled technicians unlock clouds for a fee, hand out sugar-water to the parents of dead children, construct skyscrapers in a client’s likeness. While the narrator’s interest... Keep reading at nthWORD Shorts:

http://shorts.nthword.com/2011/08/rev...

As is the case with many of the titles Mud Luscious produces, I find that what I truly love about Svalina’s book is the certain something that is felt but cannot easily be described. In Gabriel Gudding’s blurb on the back of the book, he lauds I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEUR as “a joyful critique of a Randian, post-industrial society.” Although I cannot disagree with this statement, I find it is something much deeper that makes Svalina’s words come alive for me, which is to say this book is More...

This is one I'll return to again and again. Tough to pick a favorite but the opposite of blinders was particularly ingenious.

Well shoot: Before MLP died, my book was going to get to stand beside this book, and I love this book.

I think about the seeingers (sp?) in here a lot.

Part of the success is that the businesses are so diverse. The gimmick persists throughout and yet is not exhausted.

Some writers seem attracted to organizing principles because they genuinely love organizing. "Look at my individual specimens, aren't they well-labeled?" Matthias S (it seems) is instead simply looking for a suitable container to pou More...

I know it's only January, but this is frontrunner for my favorite thing I'll have read all year.

Loving this surreal and riveting novella (serial prose poem to my way of thinking). Love it. Love.

One of the most imaginative writers in the game right now.

This one reminded me a lot of more of Svalina's earlier DIAGRAM writings (http://thediagram.com/7_2/svalina.html) than Destruction Myth did. I mean that in a good way, even though both are great.

Had to return the book. Will come back. Really enjoying it so far.

Wildly imaginative and loads of fun.

I started this one business that stole ideas from Mathias Svalina.

I hired a private investigator who specializes in intellectual theft. He wanders around the same places as the artist, jotting down potential sources of inspiration. What could be better than having a private investigator show you the old homeless woman struggling with her shopping cart, a jagged crack in the asphalt on 43rd or a purple hued sunset on a Wednesday night.

What people want is to see the same things Mathias saw, find More...