Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 185

These Books Will Change Your Life - the fierce crackle of fragile wings and Salt Creek Anthology by Jason Fisk.

A double-dose of Fisk? For real? Yes, totally, like going to Friendly's or something if said experience was actually life-changing. It should be said upfront, that Jason Fisk is not only a TBWCYL, Inc. favorite, but one of our favorite writers period. Which is to say, well maybe it isn't, that his new hyperfiction CCLaP project Salt Creek Anthology is a triumph, but not just a triumph because of its goodness, though it is quite good, or it's hyperfictionness, though it is hyperfictional, but because it arguably represents a culmination, or gathering, of the many themes Fisk has so beautifully illustrated over the years, small town life, small problems, as compared to the world's problems anyway, but not small to his characters, themes of loss, children and parents, the everyday joys, yet tenuous state of marriage, even happy marriages, the impacts of alcohol and substance abuse, how something as minor, seemingly, as annoying neighbors are such a drag on our day to day existence, aging, community and neighborhood, and connectedness, and all of this, and always, with a touch of pain, and a knowingness, because these characters, the protagonists anyway, aren't confused about where they're at or how they got there, they are just limited by the limitations we all feel in relationships, how to communicate with each other and how to say things well, and in a way that expresses what you really want to say to people who just may not be hearing it. All of which is to say, that Salt Creek Anthology captures all of this so well, and hence touches on another element of the Fisk that we so appreciate. His work has always straddled the worlds of poetry and fiction, and he once told us during his award-winning appearance on This Podcast Will Change Your Life that he didn't want to be labeled as a poet, just as a writer, and that's here as well, that desire to have poetry and fiction mashed together into something else, that something being in stark contrast to the also fierce and crackling the fierce crackle of fragile wings, a collection of yes, actual poems, including Terry which we are thrilled to remind you first appeared in This Zine Will Change Your Life, and fiction, flash and otherwise, much of which thematically and conceptually finds its way into the Salt Creek, and in many ways when read together as we have done, becomes almost a survey of Fisk's early work, exposing you to what is in many ways the foundation and early threads for what Salt Creek came to be, a culmination as it were, and look at that, we've gone full circle. And fiercely at that.

Drop the Needle and Pray: Mourning Clarence Clemons, 1942 - 2011. David Masciotra. PopMatters.

Because the Big Man was the Big Man and because nobody Masciotra's like David Masciotra himself.

"In his memoir, he talks about how the first time he met Bruce Springsteen, they "fell in love" and after playing one song together, they knew that "this is it". Whether or not Clarence Clemons was the best saxophone player in rock music is not for me to judge. There is no doubt, however, that Clarence Clemons was the best saxophone player for Bruce Springsteen."

"It is one you'll hold to your heart after reading." My Father's House gets Literary Chicago'd. And likes it. A lot.

Massive thanks to the Lauryn Allison Lewis and Literary Chicago for a most appreciated review of My Father's House. Drinks and baked goods on us for sure when next we meet.

"Tanzer's latest work will immediately strike a familiar chord in those who have had the great pleasure of reading his previous novels and collections. Still, My Father's House is in many ways a stunning departure from the writer's thematic repertoire. The writing here is incredibly direct, emotional, tender and honest."

Mark Brand and Davis Schneiderman get all Life After Sleep at the Big Other.

Most definitely have the CCLaP, the other, literary one, on the brain this week, much more on all that soon, and so really excited to see good, old friend, TBWCYL, Inc. favorite and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee Mark Brand talking Life After Sleep with new friend and more recent TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Davis Schneiderman at the Big Other. Please do take a look and please do enjoy some excerpt. Please. Thanks.

Davis Schneiderman: Describe where the idea for Sleep emerged from, if you can…

Mark Brand: I first started piecing together Life After Sleep in 2007, shortly after the birth of my son. I was working 50+ hours a week in a medical office and was sleeping only 3-4 hours per night. As all new fathers do, I eventually came to accept that this is typical life with a new baby at home, but at the time it felt to me like I was the lone astronaut on a rocket to Planet Insanity. I had also always wanted to write something that pulled in some of my knowledge of medicine and the hospital/clinical environment, but I hadn't really come across an idea I liked enough to make that happen.

By chance, I stumbled across an article in Discover magazine called "How to sleep 4 hours per night." The article made mention vaguely of TMS technology and the potential side effect it has of putting people straight into REM sleep. My first thought was THAT's what I want for Father's Day, and my second thought was this would make an awesome short story. So I sat down over the course of a few weeks and wrote a short story that eventually became the "Dr. Frost" section of Life After Sleep. His section initially was a standalone short that I really liked and got some good reactions to from readers, but I just felt like I hadn't done enough with the premise, and that there was so much more to say there about sleep and work, and it seemed to grow more and more relevant and alive in my head with each passing year. So I floated the idea to Jason Pettus, my editor at CCLaP Publishing and he liked the idea and told me to run with it. I went back and added Max and Lila and eventually Jeremy to make it more one large work.

Aside from just pure plot cleverness and a giant pile of subtext and not-quite-pointed statements about what I think people would do with a technology that allows someone to have 6 or 8 more hours in a day, (and not a few medical inside-jokes), I wanted to capture some of that experience of just being absolutely flat-out exhausted for an extended period of time. Things start to get wonky, you start waking up not knowing what day of the week it is and you realize you're at work and you have no memory of having breakfast or driving there, that sort of thing. And in the middle of it, especially if you've got a new baby at home and you're so mentally tied to two different and equally demanding facets of your life, you start to feel really bitter and fatalistic about it sometimes. I tried to grab onto that emotion and show the characters just full-on in the path of that oncoming wrecking ball.

"Daring and impressive." My Father's House gets Outsider Writers Collective'd. And likes it. A lot.

So quite appreciative of the very kind words for My Father's House by good, and now maybe best, friend, ever, Caleb J. Ross at the Outsider Writers Collective. Drinks on us for sure, many drinks if that's your thing, when next we meet.

"Ben Tanzer, in his sixth book, takes the inherent heartache associated with a cancer struggle and redirects the focus from the sick (a father) to the coping (the son). In this seemingly simple but extremely important reversal Tanzer has crafted a book that simultaneously represents a perfect extension of his own canon while tapping into a previously unexplored sense of extended vulnerability."

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. All elephant. And Corrigall.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. We have a new poem hunger by John Sweet, which we are way excited about, and, (almost) as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, music curation from Jason Behrends and debt ceiling prose love from Pete Anderson. We hope you enjoy this edition and we appreciate all shout-outs and links. Finally, please note, we are hoping more of you will submit comix, and music, novel excerpts, and art, and video, yes, video, and combinations there of. And most finally, go New York, most proud.

A much appreciated Lori Hettler Friday's Five Book Repetition Patterns Prize Winners mash-up. Of sorts.

Massive hugs to the always awesome Lori Hettler from TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog for not only including Repetition Patterns on her quite stellar Friday's Five Books list at the Between the Covers... blog, but for listing it along with the Prize Winners by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Ryan Bradley, which we should add we will report on soon, real soon, for real.

"Ok, so I know I am totally cheating here, but there was no way I was going to pick between these two. They are equally awesome and deserving of your attention and here is why – Both are incredible short story collections that hold a mirror up to the strange, secretive lives we human beings live. Both have a strong, unifying theme that weaves its way through their respective stories. And both were written by authors that I am honored to have gotten to know through their work."

There is mustache. Video. Word. And big Knee-Jerk Magazine love of course.

Faux-Selleck.

Ben Tanzer Grows a Mustache - watch more funny videos
Faux-Rollie.

These Poetry (Chap) Books Will Change Your Life - Haunts, Emergency Room Wrestling and a patchwork of rooms furnished by mistakes.

There is travel and read and we were thinking poetry and writers and publishers we love, but mostly we were thinking that we must read more poetry, it seems like a requisite, can you write and not read poetry, it seems wrong, and we are not anti-poetry certainly, but we are crazy-ass compulsively driven to read fiction, so there you are, and here we are, traveling and reading poetry of all kinds by writers and from publishers we love. See how that works? Good.

We begin with "a patchwork of rooms furnished by mistakes" by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite, This Zine Will Change Your Life contributor and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee J. Bradley and published by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Deckfight Press, which is up to all kinds of wonderful things. All good yes, sure, but what about the collection itself? "a patchwork" is a wonderfully Bradleyesque series of mini-pop saturated relationship implosions which is reminiscent of Local H's 12 Angry Months, and richly captures why Bradley is the well-deserved King of Pain when it comes to break-up morass.

We recently had the chance to read with TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Laura Cherry, who was such an absolute pleasure to listen to, humorous and touching, refined, but with a wink, and this despite all sorts of intrusions and bar noise. We were particularly taken with "7. Lila: Found Poem" which is part of a suite, is that the right word, of Lila poems, all of which are in "Haunts," and what's so great about this collection, is how it takes a sweeping look at not just the life span, both the grand and mundane, marriage, birth, work, neighbors, love, loss all of it, but life lived, fully, richly, and yes, sorry, poetically.

Finally, and what is maybe the greatest surprise in this sort of round-up, "Emergency Room Wrestling" by the dirty poet, who we are embarrassed to say we were not nearly familiar enough with before this chap, but were geeked to hop in based on the publisher, Words Like Kudzu Press, and its fearless leader, the endlessly awesome Eye Scorpion herself, Karen Lillis, alone, but wow, what an amazing collection of pieces, all vivid and slamming, and so full of death, endless death, but less upsetting or overwhelming, than absorbing, fully absorbing, as life seems so unbelievably fleeting in these pages, a breath here, a brain injury there, then gone in a flash, a sad, sad flash, no time to react, because it's all done, all of it.

Knee-Jerk action, Part One - More Interview.

There is Knee-Jerk action, the first of two parts today, this part more interview with TBWCYL, Inc. favorite and This Podcast Will Change Your Life podcastee Brandon Will where we talk of many things, though mostly of You Can Make Him Like You, marriage, writing about Victorian ghosts and The Hold Steady.

It's a hard line you balance, writing about things that would turn some people off because of its raw nature. Or in this day in age, perhaps, it's a typical scenario, which many people like to dismiss, saying things like, "Hornby's been there, done that. I'd rather read an experimental post-Internet, post-postmodern revisionist story about Victorian ghosts fucking in a Winnebago." You have a style you've been honing since Lucky Man: rapid chapters, exploring classical themes of friendship, coming-of-age, and relationships through a pop-culturally saturated world. But does being active in the Internet writing community ever fuck with your mind, or do you have a steadfast place of creativity?

"Dude, you totally need to represent me or be my marketing rep or something. That is an awesome descriptor/question/something, and I really appreciate it. And I do hope I'm honing, and I do hope it's raw, almost real time. And if it's typical, that's cool with me. I'm drawn to that and will write it and keep searching for interesting angles and more readers. Ultimately, though, your question is awesomely loaded, though I may be reading too much, or too little, into it. What I think you're saying is that to participate in the indie lit Internet world is to not necessarily see this kind of writing, these kinds of themes, done in this way, and maybe that's not what's more popular there. So does that mess with me, my writing, and what I do or hope to do? Which is not just loaded, but a terrific question. And I will say yes and no. Yes, because a meta-Victorian ghost fucking riff is not something I'm all that interested in reading or writing, though there are exceptions. Jill Summers has something sort of in that vein that is terrific, but that also means that there are places I will not get published or that even I submit to, or will submit to again, which is kind of a drag, and limits my options, which can be frustrating. All that doesn't impact the writing process, though, I can focus on what I want to do. It's the in-between, the submitting marketing; thinking, obsessing, convulsive desire to get stuff out of my head and house that can feel bogged down when I pause to wonder where it might go. And when that happens I remind myself to never pause. No pause, Brandon."