Ravi Mangla's Blog, page 48
May 2, 2012
SSM Reading List: "Ten Guys: Historical Figures in Short Fiction"
by Kevin Wilson
- Walt Whitman: “Every Night for a Thousand Years” by Chris Adrian in Gob’s Grief
- Lyndon Baines Johnson: “Lyndon” by David Foster Wallace in Girl With Curious Hair
- Christopher Columbus: “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” by Harlan Ellison in Slippage
- Antonie van Leeuwenhoek: “Concerning Mold Upon the Skin” by Joanna Scott in Various Antidotes
- J.E.B. Stuart: “Knowing He Was Not My Kind Yet I Followed” by Barry Hannah in Airships
- Robert Kennedy: “Robert Kennedy Saved From Drowing” by Donald Barthelme in Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
- John McEnroe: “John McEnroe Visits Seven Months” by Sean Lovelace in Crazyhorse No. 68
- Benjamin Franklin: “Mrs. Franklin Ascends” by Fred Chappell in Moments of Light
- Anton Chekhov: “Errand” by Raymond Carver in Elephant
- Carl Linnaeus: “The English Pupil” by Andrea Barrett in Ship Fever
(Recommended Reading 5/09)
April 27, 2012
House of Pictures
For the past two weeks, ten Magnum photographers (including some of my favorites: Alex Webb, Martin Parr, Alec Soth) have been prowling the streets of Rochester, snapping photographs of the city and its residents. Because of George Eastman and Kodak, Rochester has had the good fortune of hosting many notable photographers. But to serve as the subject, the source of inspiration, is a special honor. The project keeps a photoblog here. The New Yorker has also been featuring work from the project on their website.
(Larry Towell. Rochester, New York. Man praying. Handrolled Tri-X, last frame on roll.)
April 25, 2012
April 24, 2012
April 20, 2012
Quotes 4/20
I want the clauses to riff as gloriously as they can, taking in everything, circumnavigating the perceptual globe if you will, charting every nuance, almost as if simultaneously such that it’s challenging to keep track of everything that’s coming at you as a reader. The harmonic saturation of a Coltrane sonic universe is indeed an aspiration. Much of my stylistic approach involves the recapitulation of one element in permutation: slight nuances of variation in different contexts, building narrative momentum through those accrued subtleties. I don’t want easy, digestible, bite-sized portions: spare, exiguous. I want it rich, too rich, baroque. I cherish beauty and complexity and strive to make clauses the equivalent of musical phrases—the daredevil syntactic leap—that kind of thing, but controlled; it must be meticulously calibrated. Those are the chops I care about. My own discovery of jazz at sixteen or seventeen and the serious study of classical and contemporary music as an undergraduate have always been foundational for my writing.
- Mary Caponegro interviewed by John Madera in Salt Hill 28
April 15, 2012
April 14, 2012
Quotes 4/14
It’s easy and facile to criticize language, to cite it as inadequate, to point out the ways it’s debased. Part of my attraction to this book was that I believe that there’s a lot we haven’t done with it. I think it’s an amazing tool that we don’t remotely understand. I also think as a medium for art, I just think it’s superior. It’s massively unexplored, really. What we can do is limited and we get into all these conservative debates about what we should do or if we’re pretentious to do something else. I just think, Fuck you. This is too interesting for you to say you shouldn’t do this because you might alienate somebody.
- Ben Marcus interviewed at Full Stop (4/11)
But have I come to grips with any of the biggies? No, not at all. Do I understand life and death and reality better? Well, no. I’m more articulate then I was when I was nine, but I don’t know anything new. Don’t know anything at all. Still, it’s part of the pubic relations campaign that artists have always been waging: we are pioneers of consciousness! We are the Enterprise, boldly going wherever, for the sake of mankind, so please give us big grants, so we can jack off with an easy mind. Like I said, I have wanted to stop boldly going many many times. I can’t. But here’s the answer I guess I’ve been working up to: the work of the artist can be true-hearted, true-minded (or false-hearted and false-minded or somewhere in the bleeping middle), and the consequences of that work being in the world may or may not, matter to other people. I am terrified and exhilirated by life, by reality, by death, by thought and emotion–and I think art is a primary, a quintessential human response to those…those…those stimuli!
- Gary Amdahl interviewed at Big Other (4/11)
April 13, 2012
Happy Birthday, Samuel Beckett!
Samuel Beckett and I had a standing appointment for checkers each week at a cafe on the Left Bank. I hadn’t won a game in months and Beckett never failed to remind me of the fact. Though I resisted his byzantine gambits at nearly every turn, the game would inevitably devolve into a single misstep, a brief lapse of concentration on my part. Beckett would execute his crucial jump, landing his piece on Kings Row, and then sit back in his chair, take a sip of coffee, and wait for the crowning ceremony to take place.
- “1948” from Visiting Writers
(Yes… I just used Beckett to help promote my collection… I am a horrible person…)
April 9, 2012
"Loafer" @ matchbook
I have a new story ("Loafer") in matchbook. Here's a quick sample:
The pathos is in the peanuts, my brother said. He was using my kitchen as workspace, a makeshift studio for his peanut butter sculptures. I referred him to a local gallery owner (your classic schmoozer, yea high and gilded in bronze toner), but my brother wasn't interested. No worthwhile artist was ever truly appreciated in their lifetime, a line he recited with biblical certainty. One of the perks of an early passing. Van Gogh, Vermeer, Ritchie Valens. It didn't matter that our last name began with an M.
