Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 142

Let's do this shall we, yes, great, looking forward to seeing you there.

This Book Will Change Your Life - The Second Most Dangerous Job In America by Steve Himmer.

[image error] We are so not sure how we missed the release of Steve Himmer's Atticus Shorts mini-ebook The Second Most Dangerous Job In America, but we did. We also read it and blurbed it, see below, and we are happy to report that it changed our lives. We believe it may just change your life as well. So please do hit that. Like now. Well done.

"From outward appearances Steve Himmer has it all going on. Best-selling author. Loving family. A beautiful head of hair. And yet, despite, or maybe, in spite of all this, with The Second Most Dangerous Job In America, Himmer continues to stake his claim as the writer most attuned to how the intersection of isolation and work not only comes to define our identity, but shapes it and warps it and by extension also defines the state of the world today."

"Tanzer’s prose is clean and clear. He gets to the heart of each scene, each conflict, without wasting a moment." My Father's House gets Murder Your Darlings'd. And likes it. A lot.

It really does. Big thanks to the Cort Bledsoe and Murder Your Darlings for these quite kind, and ultimately, most humbling words. Drinks sir on us for sure when next we meet. Now, how about some excerpt? Excellent.

"Tanzer’s prose is clean and clear. He gets to the heart of each scene, each conflict, without wasting a moment. He also avoids melodrama in what could easily be an over-the-top book in less capable hands. Tanzer also places the novella in time with cultural references to movies, especially. It’s as though he’s saying that in the looming absence of a father, this narrator looks to the culture at large. Similarly, he doesn’t look to religion or some ethnic denotation for solace; he looks to film, which is an interesting insight into the mores of this generation." 

We are most beautious PACHYDERMINI birthday ode. And the Tomaloff is king. Long live the king.

In fact, we are talking a whole PACHYDERMINI mini book series which you can have in its entirety for a most small donation indeed. Something that is not just beautious, but sure to change your life.

There is We May Shed These Human Bodies Press Release. Pre-orderness. And Ad. Which when you think about it is all quite beautiful really.

For real. Here.

Wherein we most unceremoniously find ourselves reveling in what is otherwise an Untoward celebration of the Szumowski's killer illustrations for The New York Stories.

Here. Totally.

"A lot of tasty layers to this read, quite a unique and relatable coming of age tale." You Can Make Him Like You gets some Goodreads love. And likes it. A lot.

Very like. And big thanks to the Jeff Phillips for that. Drinks on us sir for sure, and now some excerpt, cool? Indeed.

"Makes me want to have a kid, and not have one, in the same stroke of thought. Any writer that can make me feel f***ed up like that is like a crazy chef that makes a good spicy dish, that burns my tongue and flushes my face but makes me crave more of his signature work, if that makes sense." 

These Books Will Change Your Life, Part II - Legs Get Led Astray by Chloe Caldwell and Letters From Robots by Diana Salier.

Travel. Read. Linger. Is that the right word? Regardless. We were travel and now we are not. We were bed and beach and read and now we are riff, and muse, and verbiage. We are also collections, nonfiction essays with Legs Get Led Astray by Chloe Caldwell and poetry with Letters From Robots by Diana Salier. It is coincidental that we fell into these books at the same time, but we are not surprised to see that these two have recently read together because of what the work has in common - being young and searching, and all that goes with it, drinking, drugging, sex, pop culture, friendship, heartache, wandering, confusion, and the hunger to consume everything in front of you because it's in front of you and it's new and it must be experienced, tortuously deconstructed, left behind and found again. 
There are differences though as well. Salier appears to be saying, these experiences are coming to you as observations, no emotion, no distraction, lived-in and sparse maybe, but happening from a remove. Because that's how robots, and artists, many, most, not all, relate, from a distant place, diligently distilling what they know down to words and images. Caldwell, however, has chosen to eschew anything that looks or presents itself as removing her words from anywhere or any emotion she may have ever experienced, and just how it was experienced, the sex, the drugs, the dumpy apartments, fucked-up dudes, and isolation. It's all there, right there, in front of you, for you to consume with her if you can stand not to turn away. Ultimately, if Salier is writing precise unvarnished letters from somewhere removed from a moment, Caldwell is taking pictures of each and every moment and refusing to airbrush them for our comfort.

These Books Will Change Your Life, Part I - AYITI by Roxane Gay and Temporary Yes by Kat Dixon.

Travel. Read. Beach. Lie in bed. Read. And on and on. Here we have two joints from Artistically Declined, the short story collection AYITI from Roxane Gay and the poetry collection Temporary Yes from Kat Dixon. As always there is a desire to seek out threads and how these collections hang together given their shared publisher, and yes, one we too have worked with, and continue to work with. Here at least, there is youth, relationships, and the potentially fleeting nature of life, love, and even crises, both big and small, all of which we believe is true and real and our experience of reading these works. But this is also where the similarities end, or said differently maybe, this overarching reading of these works is the spring board for two collections that ultimately go off in disparate directions.
AYITI is comprised of a swirling series of stories about characters who live in Haiti, have left Haiti, or are desperately trying to get out of Haiti, all of whom, and regardless of the state they are in, are trying to make sense of relationship to Haiti, its past and what it still might become. The stories are also about violence, and beauty, conflict, and not just what men need to do, think they need to, or feel entitled to do, or how crippling male pride can be, especially in a place where men have no place and no way to make their way, but in this case, what all of this means for the women in their lives, and how they must adapt, what they must give, and what is constantly taken from them. In terms of the fleeting, what AYITI reflects, is that even what appears to be fleeting, and what seems to be a momentary, lingers, and carries over throughout your life, something Gay captures as beautifully as anything in this quite jaggedly vibrant collection. In contrast, Dixon writes about what it means to be in the middle, or even the start, of the fleeting, to be young, in love, and trying to figure out and discern what it all means. She writes of the small things that every relationship is comprised of, and how imbued with meaning every touch, every step, and every angle can be. What these characters don't know is what these moments will mean later, how they will carry and linger throughout their life. They can't of course, which is what is so wonderful about youth in the first place. It is all new. Who knows what is to come. And who cares.       

"Like Ray Carver, Tanzer knows how to show little pieces of our life that make us who we are and crush our expectations." So Different Now gets Mourning Goats'd. And likes it. A lot.

We really do like it a lot. We are also very appreciative of not just the Mourning Goats kind words about So Different Now, but their ongoing support and general awesomeness. Big thanks Goats, and drinks, many, on us when next we meet. Excerpt? Cool.

"In short, So Different Now is a super fast read, and it'll knock you on your ass. Every story is poignant and ridiculously well written."