Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 100

This Book Will Change Your Life - Here Is How It Happens by Spencer Dew.

We are sitting on a beach. There is heat and skin. Everyone is inked. The skies are boundless and possibility is everywhere. People will get laid soon enough. Words will be consumed. Conversations had. And relationships will continually form and self-destruct like small stars with every moment that passes. We are in a world which is both that of Spencer Dew and not. It is too sunny here, and there is too much joy. It is summer and we are all surface. And that is not Dew. But the rest of it, or the possibility of it, is all Dew. He is a chronicler of relationship and the decay and mire contained there in. Loss and paranoia rule, sharp dialogue abounds, and a sense of structure permeates the work. And his latest, Here is How it Happens, is no exception. It is a novel of place, small town America at its all-night, greasy diner dreariest, and space, the heads of the barely adult, whose every thought seems so very important to them, and every word drips with implications and confusion. Dew knows these places and spaces so very well and captures them in aching fashion. More than that though, he knows what it means to feel trapped, trapped in your small town, your head, your ideas, and your relationships, and to be too young to realize that you are not trapped at all, there is a road, a door, and choices, right there, if you can just discover them. But that of course comes with age and experience and all the things these characters have yet to obtain. All of which is quite foreign as we sit stretched out on a beach rife with words and skin and ink, and yet one more reminder, that books, this one, that one, and the one we'll read next can change your life, if even only for a moment at that. 

Please be as good as you look you might be. Please. Thank you.

Happy (Belated) Birthday.

“When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.” Nelson Mandela

"If you are a runner, this book is a must have." The 27th Mile (not to mention "The Long Haul") gets some Oregon Live love. And likes it. A lot.

So very cool this. Terrific book. Terrific cause. And quite lovely for The 27th Mile to not only get some love, but for "The Long Haul" by TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer get singled-out. Word. Excerpt? Cool.

"The stories are not Boston specific either, another personal favorite of mine are the stories contributed by Ben Tanzer, specifically "The Long Haul". Tanzer talks about the realization that real life got in the way and his long run was getting slower, and he talks about the day he finally realizes he could get faster, that he was not trying hard enough. He takes you through one trip on that long haul as he gets his speed and time back. As a mid-pack runner who has gone through some of her own issues with real life, I love how he puts his life in perspective and uses runners around him on that run to push him faster."

Irby. Terry. Bates. Olszewska. WORDS+MUSIC. Happening. Empty Bottle. September 5th. Coolness. Yes.

New joint. The Natural. At the Cobalt Review - The 2013 Baseball Issue.

Very cool this is. And very thrilled we are to be the starting pitcher for the home team. So please do hit it and please do check-out the whole lineup, not to mention that of the away team as well, because they are most all-star indeed. Excerpt? Cool. 

"I was told to take my base.
When I got there, I noticed that something had changed. The game had somehow taken on a whole new look. The grass was greener, and the dirt was dirtier. The field didn’t look quite so big anymore, and things just didn’t seem to be moving quite so fast out there either. I could follow the pitcher as he slowly went into his motion. The ball didn’t really get to home plate all that quickly. I also saw that the infielders were moving in a kind of slow motion, and that there was probably no way they could prevent me from stealing second base. Was the catcher really going to rifle the ball to the second baseman quickly enough to throw me out? No, not a chance, and so I took off, sliding in feet-first, the throw so late I was practically standing by the time it reached us.There was this hum in the air, like electricity, as I stood on second base. I was lost in it, lost in my own world, and following my own rhythm."

"The voices are perfect and the choices of celebrities are apt and varied." I AM gets some Goodreads love. And likes it. A lot.

So big thanks to the awesomely supportive David Atkinson for that. Drinks brother, on us, for sure, somewhere, soon. Excerpt? Cool.

Celebrity (whether celebrities who make a career out of a persona, ordinary people who fate turns into a celebrity persona, or even a fictional creation that becomes just like a human celebrity) is an interesting phenomenon. They start out as (except for the fictional ones, of course) as individuals, but something of the persona put forth for public consumption takes on a life of it's own in the mass consciousness and breathes independent, though it is not a truly three-dimensional being. Tanzer does something truly interesting in this collection of persona/identity stories in that he takes that echo as a starting point to bring forth the cry of what is again a real being. 

This Book Will Change Your Life - League of Somebodies by the Samuel Sattin.

On a weekend where heroes seem to be so widely unavailable, it is something to read  League of Somebodies by Samuel Sattin as not just the story of a superhero, and all that entails, moments of valor and challenge, fathers and sons, far-off worlds, and origin stories, but as a story where said superhero is in essence created from scratch, and what that means in a world so otherwise devoid of heroes. Do we need them? Do they make a difference? And in the end, do we ourselves have to be our own superheroes, ready to leap tall buildings when and where possible, striving for justice, and fighting those things that lurk in the darkness, mutating, evolving, and forcing us to question our base assumptions about men, women, and what evil looks like? Not that Sattin is asking us to do all that. He is creating something from nothing in a striking, Jewey, Kavalier and Clay-like swing for the fences swirl of togas, spandex, lions, and family. Which is probably enough to ask. The development of a full world like ones we know from the world of comic books, and yet have still never quite encountered prior to entering these pages. Ultimately, literature can be a blueprint and an escape, sometimes inspirational, and capable of changing lives. But they don't necessarily change the world. Only we can do that, even if we're not entirely sure how to do so.   

“Justice? -- You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.” William Gaddis

Friend. Follow. Text. happening lineup stellar coolness more soon yes.

And for now more here. Cool? Thanks.