Ben Bush's Blog, page 5

Solex reviews her own Pandora station, Aimee Bender, Tom Bissell, Spalding Gray

I’ve been working as managing editor at The Fanzine and  wanted to pass along some links to some interesting pieces that are up at The Fanzine right now.

I am a longtime fan of Dutch cut’n’paste pop-star Solex, a.k.a. Elisabeth Esselink. Here she reviews the Solex Pandora station. It’s interesting to read a musician’s opinion of the Pandora playlist that typifies their style.

Also, Matthew Simmons did a great interview with Tom Bissell about his recent book, Extra Lives, which sets out to apply something a bit like literary criticism to video games. Also, an interview with Aimee Bender about food, fiction and her recent novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.

Also, a review of the new Steven Soderbergh’s recent documentary on actor and monologist Spalding Gray, who committed suicide in January 2004. The review is written by Theresa Smalec, who was the last person to interview Gray before his death.

Louis Chude-Sokei delivers a fascinating review of Alain Mabanckou’s Broken Glass delving into the importance of self-loathing as an authorial tool and the ways it’s traditionally been off limits for black writers.

Great fiction from Jimmy Chen of HTMLGiant and Andrew Leland.

Kaya Oakes brings a thoughtful piece on the radical anarcho-socialism of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Workers. Oakes presents a real different vision of the possibilities for Catholicism, after the ongoing bad news about priest abuse scandals.

Finally, here’s a blog I wrote about fiber optics and the difficulty of visualizing internet infrastructure.

Trinie Dalton, Kevin Sampsell, Joanna Ruocco, Louis Chude-Sokei

Just wanted to pass along some links to some of my favorite new pieces up on the Fanzine.

“Sex and Micro-Prose” — Trinie Dalton on Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography and Joanna Ruocco’s Man’s Companions. Trinie makes a lot of interesting connections between the two works.

“Pottymouth” — Kevin Sampsell talks dirty in his piece on the conversations that occur in bed.

“Knowing Me, Knowing You, Knowing Them” — Louis Chude-Sokei reviews Shameem Black’s Fiction Across Borders but perhaps more importantly tangles with the echoes of Edward Said’s Orientalism and the way it has inhibited fiction writers from imagining and/or speaking as characters who are culturally, racially, sexually different than the writers themselves. He aptly describes the way that disdain has become indistinguishable from respect. I always find Louis’s work to be pretty incredible but here he says quite a few things that seem long overdue. The accompanying collages are from Berlin-based artist Paul Tyree-Francis, who has done quite a bit of graphic design for the Luaka Bop record label.