Nick Mamatas's Blog, page 53
June 21, 2013
New LOVE IS THE LAW blurb
Man, when was the last time I updated this blog twice in one day? Back before Twitter, which consumes a lot of this "Hey, lookit this news article" energy, I'd occasionally have as many as five or six posts a day. Anyyywaaaay.
A new blurb! For Love is the Law! Which you should totally pre-order. Perhaps this blurb will be persuasive? Let's see:
"Good Lord—Nick Mamatas' first crime novel makes The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seem as edgy as Murder, She Wrote. Easily the most original mystery of the year, full of big ideas, serious menace, and raw attitude. As Dawn tells us in the very first line, she's a fucking genius. Well, so is Mamatas."
—Duane Swierczynski, author of Fun & Games, X, and Judge Dredd.
GENIUS!
Well, what are you waiting for? CONSUME! In just a few months from now, you'll receive a package you don't remember buying.
A new blurb! For Love is the Law! Which you should totally pre-order. Perhaps this blurb will be persuasive? Let's see:
"Good Lord—Nick Mamatas' first crime novel makes The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seem as edgy as Murder, She Wrote. Easily the most original mystery of the year, full of big ideas, serious menace, and raw attitude. As Dawn tells us in the very first line, she's a fucking genius. Well, so is Mamatas."
—Duane Swierczynski, author of Fun & Games, X, and Judge Dredd.
GENIUS!
Well, what are you waiting for? CONSUME! In just a few months from now, you'll receive a package you don't remember buying.
Salinger
Have you seen the trailer for Salinger?
Pretty intense music, eh? One expects a spaceship to crash into the Empire State Building or something. What secrets shall be revealed? Probably the existence of a safe deposit box or two.
Well, I like Salinger even though that's pretty much the least cool thing in the world now. Which is to say that for people older than I am, Salinger is often a meaningful author, and for those younger than me he is often widely loathed as he is part of the school curriculum, and pretty much the worst thing he wrote is what is taught. That, and anti-productivity narratives generally are viewed with suspicion these days.
Salinger's influence on my own writing is hardly a secret. Jamie Mason twigged to it years ago, writing Like J.D. Salinger (an obvious but unacknowledged influence), Mamatas seeks to touch the reader without becoming his friend. Lavie Tidhar, writing about my novel narrated by spiders, noted that it is Salinger, specifically, I think, who informs Mamatas’ voice.
And, of course, there is my story “Four is Me! With squeeeeee! (And LOLer)”. Duh.
Anyway, I started thinking about Salinger again the other day when my friend CV said, on Gchat, that she was finally reading the Glass family stories and thought that she understood me better now. So what's going on?
A few things. It's a conversational tone that can still impart a lot of information—personal, social, even theological material. His dialogue is often extremely powerful, and the stories have a ragged edge at the end. Even when they end in suicide—"He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple"—there is a sense of life continuing rather than a pat bit of nonsense. At the same time, there's little in the way of so-called epiphanies that infect literary fiction. When the imaginary Jimmy Jimereeno gets hit by a car, it's in the middle of the story.
And, of course, like anything else that becomes a mass consumer product, Salinger—and anti-Salinger—is a form of identity signifier. I have a habit, from my school days, of scanning bookshelves when I enter a room. Back when I was young and wild, I could spot a willing sexual partner based largely on the presence of a copy of Nine Stories on a shelf. So, the documentary? Surely more of the same. It'll get the audience Salinger stuff usually gets, and write-ups by earnest types in the correct magazines (spoiler: they'll find the film disappointing), and then people will go back to grousing, or re-reading, or passing the books along. But this is the last little bit. Let's ask some actors what they think—and the youngest person they can come up with is John Cusack (b. 1966). And all the kids named Holden by their literary parents? They'll just get old and become phonies, like all the rest.
Pretty intense music, eh? One expects a spaceship to crash into the Empire State Building or something. What secrets shall be revealed? Probably the existence of a safe deposit box or two.
Well, I like Salinger even though that's pretty much the least cool thing in the world now. Which is to say that for people older than I am, Salinger is often a meaningful author, and for those younger than me he is often widely loathed as he is part of the school curriculum, and pretty much the worst thing he wrote is what is taught. That, and anti-productivity narratives generally are viewed with suspicion these days.
Salinger's influence on my own writing is hardly a secret. Jamie Mason twigged to it years ago, writing Like J.D. Salinger (an obvious but unacknowledged influence), Mamatas seeks to touch the reader without becoming his friend. Lavie Tidhar, writing about my novel narrated by spiders, noted that it is Salinger, specifically, I think, who informs Mamatas’ voice.
And, of course, there is my story “Four is Me! With squeeeeee! (And LOLer)”. Duh.
Anyway, I started thinking about Salinger again the other day when my friend CV said, on Gchat, that she was finally reading the Glass family stories and thought that she understood me better now. So what's going on?
A few things. It's a conversational tone that can still impart a lot of information—personal, social, even theological material. His dialogue is often extremely powerful, and the stories have a ragged edge at the end. Even when they end in suicide—"He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple"—there is a sense of life continuing rather than a pat bit of nonsense. At the same time, there's little in the way of so-called epiphanies that infect literary fiction. When the imaginary Jimmy Jimereeno gets hit by a car, it's in the middle of the story.
And, of course, like anything else that becomes a mass consumer product, Salinger—and anti-Salinger—is a form of identity signifier. I have a habit, from my school days, of scanning bookshelves when I enter a room. Back when I was young and wild, I could spot a willing sexual partner based largely on the presence of a copy of Nine Stories on a shelf. So, the documentary? Surely more of the same. It'll get the audience Salinger stuff usually gets, and write-ups by earnest types in the correct magazines (spoiler: they'll find the film disappointing), and then people will go back to grousing, or re-reading, or passing the books along. But this is the last little bit. Let's ask some actors what they think—and the youngest person they can come up with is John Cusack (b. 1966). And all the kids named Holden by their literary parents? They'll just get old and become phonies, like all the rest.
June 18, 2013
Lies
The only question is who Orson Scott Card is lying to—himself, or the people who'd watch this video. A story in Writers of the Future is better than launching with a novel? It's the best way to launch a career? The annual anthology is the best anthology published today? All the stories are extraordinarily good?
Oh my sweet baby Jesus.
Vice and the Will to Offend
I always laugh when I think of Vice Magazine, which despite actually being the arm of an obnoxious international lifestyle marketer* has some fairly interesting content—both political and cultural. Its fiction especially has been quite remarkable, tapping alt.lit and Famous People, sometimes all at once. The current issue has the theme of Women in Fiction, and Vice being Vice, it has prepared some linkbait, specifically a fashion spread of women dressed like famed writers right before they committed suicide. And then Vice took it down after an online fuss. Pseudofeminist site Jezebel is sooooo angry they actually reposted the images and kept them up.
It reminded me of several years ago, when Vice solicited me for a piece of fiction. They explained the magazine a bit—they needn't have, I lived in places where it is available—and the editor (no longer with the magazine) explained that Vice can be offensive, sometimes willfully so. They wanted something in that line.
So I wrote the story Solidarity Forever. As you can see from the link, Vice didn't like it. I even altered the text to make it more palatable, but noooo.** Nor did any traditional horror magazine, of course. I ran it in my own Flytrap column (aside: Flytrap is running a Kickstarter to resurrect itself) instead. I even ran a little contest—basically, the story didn't sell because it offended the wrong people.***
And that's Vice, to a tee. The images are calculated to offend only so many and only so far. Certainly it isn't depicting these writers after their suicides—there would be bloated, ugly faces, and the garments they're wearing would be bloodied, singed, and soiled. Can't sell clothes that way! Plus it would offend the designers, and dead bodies are never upmarket unless stacked like cordwood in the background.
The photos are offensive, I think, but they're also not nearly offensive enough. Were they actually designed to truly offend, they would by definition not be designed to sell clothing, nor would they be so passed around by the various click-cliques of professional bloggers claiming offense. That is, Vice would have offended the designers, the photographers, the models first, and then moved on to the public with the result. But like with my story, they fell short, and then took another step backwards. You can't sell soap to Peoria by offending even this guy:
You must instead use him, and his friends, to offend the midwest into buying the soap.
*It's speciality seems to be selling the "hipster" lifestyle to people who fume constantly about how much they hate hipsters. If Cheers taught me anything, it's that hate isn't the opposite of love, indifference is. Many people who go on about how dumb or ugly or lame hipsters are spend most of their time and money consuming cultural hipster runoff. They live downstream from the hip, sometimes literally.
**The story originally began "This story is dedicated to Bono of the band U2, for all the work he has done."
**The issue boiled down, for many editors, to this: the "white guy" who is contemplating renting a child so as to rape it is killed for "no reason."
It reminded me of several years ago, when Vice solicited me for a piece of fiction. They explained the magazine a bit—they needn't have, I lived in places where it is available—and the editor (no longer with the magazine) explained that Vice can be offensive, sometimes willfully so. They wanted something in that line.
So I wrote the story Solidarity Forever. As you can see from the link, Vice didn't like it. I even altered the text to make it more palatable, but noooo.** Nor did any traditional horror magazine, of course. I ran it in my own Flytrap column (aside: Flytrap is running a Kickstarter to resurrect itself) instead. I even ran a little contest—basically, the story didn't sell because it offended the wrong people.***
And that's Vice, to a tee. The images are calculated to offend only so many and only so far. Certainly it isn't depicting these writers after their suicides—there would be bloated, ugly faces, and the garments they're wearing would be bloodied, singed, and soiled. Can't sell clothes that way! Plus it would offend the designers, and dead bodies are never upmarket unless stacked like cordwood in the background.
The photos are offensive, I think, but they're also not nearly offensive enough. Were they actually designed to truly offend, they would by definition not be designed to sell clothing, nor would they be so passed around by the various click-cliques of professional bloggers claiming offense. That is, Vice would have offended the designers, the photographers, the models first, and then moved on to the public with the result. But like with my story, they fell short, and then took another step backwards. You can't sell soap to Peoria by offending even this guy:
You must instead use him, and his friends, to offend the midwest into buying the soap.
*It's speciality seems to be selling the "hipster" lifestyle to people who fume constantly about how much they hate hipsters. If Cheers taught me anything, it's that hate isn't the opposite of love, indifference is. Many people who go on about how dumb or ugly or lame hipsters are spend most of their time and money consuming cultural hipster runoff. They live downstream from the hip, sometimes literally.
**The story originally began "This story is dedicated to Bono of the band U2, for all the work he has done."
**The issue boiled down, for many editors, to this: the "white guy" who is contemplating renting a child so as to rape it is killed for "no reason."
June 17, 2013
Monday Quick Notes
The Bram Stoker Awards were handed out this weekend. The field was so weak that not even the the StrokerAwards parody twitter account bothered to play along. I was happy to see Mort Castle finally break his Goose Egg Streak (most nominations without a win) with his Anthology Editing win for the Bradbury tribute volume Shadow Stories. Also, Novel went to Caitlin Kiernan's The Drowning Girl, which is well-deserved. I liked Lucy Snyder's short story as well.
Superfan and cover designer Brian Bouncher of Barsoom Design has created a gallery of alternative covers for my forthcoming crime novel Love is the Law. What do you think?
There are more at the link, so click on it. Brian's always looking for paying gigs if you have design needs by the way.
I enjoyed reading the final interview with Iain Banks. Since his passing, I've been wondering how The Wasp Factory would go over if it were published by an unknown writer today. I almost never re-read books, but I did last week. I have to think the book and author would be roundly vilified in these sensitive times. Likely, The Wasp Factory would have been published by a small POD press and if it gained any traction at all in the marketplace, it would be the ripple effect of a bunch of people who weren't going to buy the book anyway declaring that they'd be boycotting it.
Speaking of that, in a mild way, I sent a reprinted story into a college textbook publisher that is looking for fiction the other day, and the editor responded, " We probably wouldn’t use the story below because we avoid content that touches on suicide, (as well as alcohol, drugs, weapons, religion, etc.)." and asked me if I had anything else that might be more suitable. Uh...I don't think I do!
I've been doing this seven-minute exercise routine in the mornings. I don't have time to do a circuit of two, but I've found it fairly helpful for cardio so far. Check it out! I replace a deep horse stance for wall sits, elevate my feet on the push-ups, and do chin-ups and hangs instead of dips, but it's cool. I had people who blog posts about exercise, but this is a cute little routine that works and can be squeezed in. There's a free android app for it too. I found that somewhere in the comments of the Times blog about the routine.
Finally, Harlan Ellison did too grab Connie Willis's boob. What kind of journalist doesn't follow up on a claim like that?
Superfan and cover designer Brian Bouncher of Barsoom Design has created a gallery of alternative covers for my forthcoming crime novel Love is the Law. What do you think?
There are more at the link, so click on it. Brian's always looking for paying gigs if you have design needs by the way.
I enjoyed reading the final interview with Iain Banks. Since his passing, I've been wondering how The Wasp Factory would go over if it were published by an unknown writer today. I almost never re-read books, but I did last week. I have to think the book and author would be roundly vilified in these sensitive times. Likely, The Wasp Factory would have been published by a small POD press and if it gained any traction at all in the marketplace, it would be the ripple effect of a bunch of people who weren't going to buy the book anyway declaring that they'd be boycotting it.
Speaking of that, in a mild way, I sent a reprinted story into a college textbook publisher that is looking for fiction the other day, and the editor responded, " We probably wouldn’t use the story below because we avoid content that touches on suicide, (as well as alcohol, drugs, weapons, religion, etc.)." and asked me if I had anything else that might be more suitable. Uh...I don't think I do!
I've been doing this seven-minute exercise routine in the mornings. I don't have time to do a circuit of two, but I've found it fairly helpful for cardio so far. Check it out! I replace a deep horse stance for wall sits, elevate my feet on the push-ups, and do chin-ups and hangs instead of dips, but it's cool. I had people who blog posts about exercise, but this is a cute little routine that works and can be squeezed in. There's a free android app for it too. I found that somewhere in the comments of the Times blog about the routine.
Finally, Harlan Ellison did too grab Connie Willis's boob. What kind of journalist doesn't follow up on a claim like that?
Nell Robinson and the Rose of No Man's Land
Last night Olivia's friend took us to a show, supposedly to see Ramblin' Jack Elliot. He was there, but what we saw was something else altogether: a terrible war-song revue called Nell Robinson and the Rose of No Man's Land.
War can make for great drama, theater, and music. Of course it can. It's a major aspect of the human experience. Just last month we saw Black Watch, which was very good. This one was not.
I knew we were in trouble early on when the stage was decorated with cut outs of a farmhouse and trees. And indeed, we were told that the show was actually a conversation being held in LA—"Lower Alabama"—about all the wars in which singer Nell Robinson's family had fought. I object, generally, to the idea that the southern states best represent Americana or some notion of the 'real America' but of course all a creator need do is somehow signal knowledge of the issues involved to alleviate potential problems. Robinson didn't bother though. We instead were treated to the usual bullshit family letters which are interesting only to Robinson and people of similar backgrounds, and then music of various sorts—"The Battle of New Orleans", some traditional songs, one about the Bonus Army, etc. Robinson, a local performer, affected a light Southern accent and basically decided that her family's story was the universal American story. As she explained in a recent interview, "Now we have stories from the perspective of soldiers, loved ones and parents, all the people effected by war and service." Sure, and as long as they're all white—uh, excuse me, "Scots-Irish"*—people from Alabama
One problem is that Robinson only has one tone—happy-go-lucky. Bluegrass tends to that, but vocal tone can carry a lot of information, and emotion. For example, "Blue Eyed Boston Boy":
The song's a lament. Note the plaintive quality of the voice. One should not clap and dance the Axl Rose serpentine dance while singing it. Not if one wishes to be taken seriously anyhow. And every song was more or less arranged in the same way, despite some being of eighteenth century vintage, and some, like "American Anthem" by Gene Scheer, being contemporary. The best song was Ramblin's Jack's version of "Drive On", but even that poor old guy seemed a little befuddled—he forgot some lines, didn't sit down when he was supposed to, and missed a number of cues. As the event was being taped for PBS, they redid a bunch of stuff. There's still time for him to change his name to Stumblin' Jack Elliot, I suppose.
Robinson has all the charisma of a substitute teacher. "Does anyone know what the Bonus Army was?" she asked—literally! Then she ruined this song:
And Maxine Hong Kingston read, very well I might add, a letter from another of Robinson's insipid relatives about the Bonus Army. This relation wished she had the power to turn off the lights illuminating some buildings by the Capitol to..."feed the hungry." *gasp* *choke* Then Robinson explained how the Bonus Army led to the creation of the GI Bill. And everyone applauded, I dunno, student loans.
It got worse when Robinson declared that she had a special personal gift for the vets in the audience. The show was a benefit for a local homeless vet outreach charity, but her gift wasn't some kind of monetary or in-kind donation to the cause. It was another song, this one with lyrics provided by an extremely mediocre poem she found in a letter from her grandfather.
That wasn't even the ultimate outrage. The aforementioned "American Anthem" was. Robinson asked her brother-in-law why he enlisted in the military, he bade her to listen to the song. Have you heard it? It's the dumbest piece of shit in all the world.
Robinson appears to be one of those musicians who is very impressed by music, was just wowed that her brother-in-law used music appreciation to express his commitment, and that eight years ago was what led her to develop this review. Eight years! Eight years, and the thing was still full of blown takes, wallpaper, a single jangly country-radio arrangement for every song involved, and sentimentalist glurge.
Ugh. Were I not with a friend of Olivia's, I would have walked out after the third song. To amuse myself, I spent most of my time wondered why aging punks, like John Doe (who was there, reading letters instead of singing or playing guitar) always seem to embrace the bolo tie once they near sixty years old.
*One of the best parts of Black Watch involves a soldier aping the American accents he heard from US soldiers sniffing around for swag. "Hi there! My great grand-pa was in the Black Watch back in Scotchland. May I trade for a real tam-oh-shan-TER?"
War can make for great drama, theater, and music. Of course it can. It's a major aspect of the human experience. Just last month we saw Black Watch, which was very good. This one was not.
I knew we were in trouble early on when the stage was decorated with cut outs of a farmhouse and trees. And indeed, we were told that the show was actually a conversation being held in LA—"Lower Alabama"—about all the wars in which singer Nell Robinson's family had fought. I object, generally, to the idea that the southern states best represent Americana or some notion of the 'real America' but of course all a creator need do is somehow signal knowledge of the issues involved to alleviate potential problems. Robinson didn't bother though. We instead were treated to the usual bullshit family letters which are interesting only to Robinson and people of similar backgrounds, and then music of various sorts—"The Battle of New Orleans", some traditional songs, one about the Bonus Army, etc. Robinson, a local performer, affected a light Southern accent and basically decided that her family's story was the universal American story. As she explained in a recent interview, "Now we have stories from the perspective of soldiers, loved ones and parents, all the people effected by war and service." Sure, and as long as they're all white—uh, excuse me, "Scots-Irish"*—people from Alabama
One problem is that Robinson only has one tone—happy-go-lucky. Bluegrass tends to that, but vocal tone can carry a lot of information, and emotion. For example, "Blue Eyed Boston Boy":
The song's a lament. Note the plaintive quality of the voice. One should not clap and dance the Axl Rose serpentine dance while singing it. Not if one wishes to be taken seriously anyhow. And every song was more or less arranged in the same way, despite some being of eighteenth century vintage, and some, like "American Anthem" by Gene Scheer, being contemporary. The best song was Ramblin's Jack's version of "Drive On", but even that poor old guy seemed a little befuddled—he forgot some lines, didn't sit down when he was supposed to, and missed a number of cues. As the event was being taped for PBS, they redid a bunch of stuff. There's still time for him to change his name to Stumblin' Jack Elliot, I suppose.
Robinson has all the charisma of a substitute teacher. "Does anyone know what the Bonus Army was?" she asked—literally! Then she ruined this song:
And Maxine Hong Kingston read, very well I might add, a letter from another of Robinson's insipid relatives about the Bonus Army. This relation wished she had the power to turn off the lights illuminating some buildings by the Capitol to..."feed the hungry." *gasp* *choke* Then Robinson explained how the Bonus Army led to the creation of the GI Bill. And everyone applauded, I dunno, student loans.
It got worse when Robinson declared that she had a special personal gift for the vets in the audience. The show was a benefit for a local homeless vet outreach charity, but her gift wasn't some kind of monetary or in-kind donation to the cause. It was another song, this one with lyrics provided by an extremely mediocre poem she found in a letter from her grandfather.
That wasn't even the ultimate outrage. The aforementioned "American Anthem" was. Robinson asked her brother-in-law why he enlisted in the military, he bade her to listen to the song. Have you heard it? It's the dumbest piece of shit in all the world.
Robinson appears to be one of those musicians who is very impressed by music, was just wowed that her brother-in-law used music appreciation to express his commitment, and that eight years ago was what led her to develop this review. Eight years! Eight years, and the thing was still full of blown takes, wallpaper, a single jangly country-radio arrangement for every song involved, and sentimentalist glurge.
Ugh. Were I not with a friend of Olivia's, I would have walked out after the third song. To amuse myself, I spent most of my time wondered why aging punks, like John Doe (who was there, reading letters instead of singing or playing guitar) always seem to embrace the bolo tie once they near sixty years old.
*One of the best parts of Black Watch involves a soldier aping the American accents he heard from US soldiers sniffing around for swag. "Hi there! My great grand-pa was in the Black Watch back in Scotchland. May I trade for a real tam-oh-shan-TER?"
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