Tim Horvath's Blog, page 2

Bellevue Website Revamp

My publisher, Bellevue Literary Press, has given its website a facelift, and that means UNDERSTORIES has a new page at http://blpress.org/books/understories/. I invite you to add it on Goodreads directly through the site if you haven't already. And I further recommend exploring the publisher's site, where you'll find great novels and short story collections, both past and forthcoming, along with interviews with authors, background about Bellevue's mission and outreach programs, etc. http://blpress.org

Abrahamic Alligators and Oulipean Games

To celebrate the release of his new book, The Alligators of Abraham, Robert Kloss invited a bunch of writers to respond with textual/video/musical formations and deformations of their own that somehow connect to the original. It's well worth delving into the other pieces by folks such as Mike Meginnis, Amber Sparks, Mike Young, Steve Himmer, and many others. My own approach was to perform a set of classic Oulipean techniques with the text, including:


1) rewriting a section without the letter "e," (a lipogram)

2) running N+1 and N+2 algorithms on it,

3) creating a cento by splicing a quote from it with lines from some other books lying around,

4) doing a snowball and reverse snowball using words found in it, and finally

5) larding, or planting sentences of my own between Kloss's own sentences and then adding further sentences still between those.


I had a lot of fun doing it, and I feel that it actually helped me to engage with the book in some elemental ways. Needless to say, The Alligators of Abraham is a monster and everyone should read it. So, a link to my responses: http://sundoglit.com/texts-inspired-b.... And a link to the book itself:The Alligators of Abraham

Our First Woman President?

Long before the idea of women in binders was on many a tongue, back when Freud was still coming up with the very notion of the Freudian slip, for a short span of time Edith Wilson, rather than her husband, the better-known Woodrow, arguably ran the country. When Wilson suffered a stroke, Edith and those closest to the president circled the wagons rather than revealing his condition. This fleeting historical instance is the basis of a flash fiction I wrote that just came out in "Their Peculiar Ambitions," a series of flash pieces on the Melville House blog, each of which centers on a particular president. Every Tuesday, the series offers up four or five new presidents. Here's a link to my "Woodrow Wilson," with big thanks to Amber Sparks and Kevin Murphy for curating and editing the series.

http://mhpbooks.com/woodrow-wilson/

Reading at NYU on Friday, October 19th

I'm thrilled to be reading at NYU's Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House at an event sponsored by my publisher, Bellevue Literary Press, tomorrow evening at 5 p.m. (58 West 10th Street). I'll be reading with Eduardo Halfon, whose book The Polish Boxer just came out to a glowing review in the LA Times, and Andrew Krivak, whose The Sojourn was a National Book Award finalist in 2011. Halfon has published many books in Guatemala, but this is his first to be translated into English--as a collaborative effort by five translators, no less! If you are going to be in the Greater New York area and can join us, we'd be delighted. Here's are a pair of links to more information about the event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/29137...

http://www.cwp.fas.nyu.edu/page/readi...

Shadows, False Starts, Obsessions

Over at the Story Prize blog, I fielded some questions (okay, I chose them, so "fielded" is a bit misleading) about Understories, and what led to various stories being written, salvaged from the fate of near-certain crap oblivion, etc.

http://thestoryprize.blogspot.com/2012/08/tim-horvath-and-study-of-shadows.html

Book Notes Soundtrack at Largehearted Boy

I put together a soundtrack for UNDERSTORIES at Largehearted Boy as part of their Book Notes series: http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2012/07/book_notes_tim_1.html. It was surprisingly challenging to do, considering how obsessed I am with music and how inextricably connected music and writing are for me (I wrote a novel about professional musicians, which sits in a drawer right now).

I also recommend checking out some of the other soundtracks; David Gutowski, the site's founder, has singled out his eleven favorites, which makes a great starting point.

Contest Giveaway at Largehearted Boy

The website Largehearted Boy is a lively hub of music and literary links, and one of the ongoing features is the Book Notes, where authors write up a soundtrack that accompanies their book in some way. My own for Understories will be coming this week, along with six others. To mark seven years of Book Notes, Largehearted Boy is offering all seven books from the week, plus a $100 Threadless gift certificate, to a random commenter who suggests an author they'd like to see featured at Book Notes. Click here and simply opine on whose soundtrack you've been deprived of all this time, and you'll have a chance to win my book plus much stuff:
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2012/07/contest_win_sev.html.

Winner selection happens at midnight, EST, on Friday the 27th.