Ben Bush's Blog, page 3

“I am still owed one goddamn riot”

I interviewed Camden Joy / Tom Adelman for Bookforum about narcocorridos, writing in persona, and rock managers beating people with sacks of quarters.

“Can you bring a gun to the GOP debates?”

I wrote a piece for Salon about the GOP candidates’ hypocritical stance about their own safety compared to the rest of us.

“I invariably begin to feel that I am one of the objects of study”

I interviewed T. Geronimo Johnson for Los Angeles Review of Books. In his novel Welcome to Braggsville, UC Berkeley students’ protest of a Civil War Reenactment leads to an accidental lynching. It’s a novel that’s funnier, weirder, and more multi-vocal than plot synopsis suggests. In our conversation, he discussed how the novel’s use of citation reflected the dissociative aspects of being black in academia.

“’The people of the book’ is the cliché. What happens to a people when books disappear?”

I did a pair of interviews with Joshua Cohen about his novel Book of Numbers. For Los Angeles Review of Books we talked about computer code, puns, the “enkitschment” of the Holocaust, and his novel’s often uncomfortable engagement with race. At The Rumpus, I spoke with him about his job translating product copy for porn CD-ROMs while living in Eastern Europe. For Flavorwire, I wrote a listicle: Book of Numbers explained, if not through animated GIFs, at least adjacent to them.

Two interviews with Joshua Cohen

I talked to Joshua Cohen about computer code, puns, the Holocaust as a template for suffering, and the deployment of race in his new novel Book of Numbers at the Los Angeles Review of Books. In the second part of this, I spoke with him about his job translating product copy for porn CD-ROMs while living in Eastern Europe over at The Rumpus.

Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers Explained in GIFs

I wrote a listicle about Joshua Cohen for Flavorwire. It’s his novel Book of Numbers explained, if not through animated GIFs, at least adjacent to them.

Short story “The Overseer” in The Literary Review

In “The Overseer”, globalized markets deliver a comeuppance to Vic Graburn, director of The Leverage Point and A Man Above. How is art designed for export–whether it’s Transformers 3 or trinkets sold to tourists–deformed by the needs of the market? How do intellectual property and de-industrialization intersect? Shameless cultural ventriloquism is also involved.

An earlier version of this story appeared in The Fanzine as “In the Blink of An All-Seeing Eye” a few years back and complete with “illustrations” I made for Junc Gallery’s “Zine Show” exhibit, which included Ron Rege Jr., Sammy Harkham, John Porcellino, and Souther Salazar.

Two Intros for The Believer’s The Organist Podcast

I wrote a pair of super short intros for McSweeney’s The Believer’s The Organist podcast (affiliated with LA’s public radio station KCRW)

One is about a series prospective business texts which leads the episode in which whole chapters of Tao Lin’s novel Taipei is rapped. The other is about binaural recording and Arthur Rimbaud which leads an episode about director Mike Mills’ documentary on the children of Silicon Valley.

National Book Award Winner and Unabomber Suspect William Vollmann on Fossil Fuels, Death, and Cross-Dressing

I interviewed National Book Award winner and Unabomber suspect William Vollmann for Bookforum about his new book Last Stories and Other Stories.

National Book Award winner and Unabomber suspect William Vollmann on Fossil Fuels, Death, and Cross-Dressing

I interviewed National Book Award winner and Unabomber suspect William Vollmann for Bookforum about his new book Last Stories and Other Stories.