Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 187

A Providence Charleston Cousins Taylor Books You Can Make Him Like You This American Life Nerves of Steel West Virginia podcast photo essay wrap-up.

Barry Graham, Ben Tanzer, Scott McClanahan and Angel Babies

We were Providence for the Cousins Reading Series with the William Walsh and Laura Cherry, as well as, Timothy Gager and Ray Charbonneau. We Were Taylor Books and You Can Make Him Like You. We were Nerves of Steel West Virginia with the Barry Graham, Scott McClanahan, Jay Hill and sublime Harold Ray. And now we are home, photo essay and Nerves of Steel podcast in hand. Rejoice. And enjoy.


Ray Charbonneau, Ben Tanzer and Timothy Gager

Laura Cherry and William Walsh

Taylor Books - Charleston, WV

Harold Ray

Jay Hill and Ben Tanzer

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. All hunger. And Sweet.

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 Weinergate 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, Heat or Mavericks.

You Can Make Him Like You gets some nice shout-out from Greg Olear and Tom Williams respectively.

Big thanks to TBWCYL, Inc. favorites Greg Olear and Tom Williams for their respective You Can Make Him Like You shout-outs.

First, Greg has included You Can Make Him Like you on his list of 10 Great Fathers Day Books at The Olive Reader - The Weblog of Harper Perennial. The line-up is stellar, Hornby, Perrotta, Almond, et. al., and the inclusion much appreciated.

"Tanzer's protagonist, Keith, is sort of the target audience for the beer commercials they run during football games. But in the end, Tanzer does make us like him. This one is told in short, pop culture-rich passages that makes for perfect bathroom reading."

And second, Tom talked You Can Make Him Like You during his interview at the Recommended Reading blog.

last book you finished in a single sitting

It's fairly recent and it's Ben Tanzer's You Can Make Him Like You--the novel combines both an interesting subject matter/plot and the kind of treatment (short, intense chapters, each almost a story on its own) that kept it in my hands on a fairly long flight from Austin to DC.

Again, big thanks to you both, and drinks on us, for sure, when next we meet.

This Book Will Change Your Life - The Mimic's Own Voice by Tom Williams.

Work. Travel. Read. More read. And The Mimic's Own Voice by Tom Williams. There were moments when we weren't sure we had the words we wanted to describe this book. Did we enjoy it? Yes. Wholly absorbed. Immersed. And wanting to know more about this fictional mimic and his gift for voice, his rise to fame and his demise, no not demise necessarily, but when a celebrity crashes back to Earth, undone by their own limitations, confusions or rejection, it is a sort of demise, right, it is. And when we throw issues of race into the discussion, what it means to be an artist and even threads on mental health, maybe, what we have is a story packed with contemporary themes integrated into what is almost historical, even sociological, in voice, or is that setting, and yes it's story, but there is an academic voice here as well. It's almost a study at times, survey or assessment, a cataloging of humor and craft, a history even, but fictional, sort of, all of it, a world that you believe exists, could exist, did exist, may have existed, and clearly actively does in the vibrant and rich imagination of Tom Williams. There is also the voice, William's voice if you will, which makes the book something else as well, a reflection maybe, some kind of observation or commentary on what it means to be an artist of color in changing world where a lack of color still holds sway, but may, will, not, for much longer. We're not entirely sure of this though, it is speculation, and we don't want to overstate or understate anything, much less forget, again, that there is story here, a story both moving and intriguing. So, please do read it, breathe it in, have it change your life, and please do pause if you will during the scene where the protagonist Douglas Myles is forced to confront his purported rival King David Blum on national television, a scene that reverberates, pulsates really, with William's energy and brio. Beautiful that.

Dave Housley gets all Magic Power.

We have much love for TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Dave Housley, are very excited for his forthcoming music-tinged collection "If I Knew the Way, I Would Take You Home" from the Dark Sky and are quite digging his Magic Power riff on the origins and inspirations for said collection. So please do hit that and then please do take a moment to Housley. Thanks. Good work that.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Stories V by Scott McClanahan.

Work. Travel. Read. More read. There you go. And there is reading, a lot, but not much travel recently, and no time to finish things when other things keep coming in and coming up, but then there are airplanes, and hotel bars, shuttles, and terminals, and there is read, and we are in West Virginia, and tomorrow night we will be Nerves of Steel with the Knabb and the Graham, and the McClanahan, and here in his home state, and so Stories V! had to be read, was read, and you know we love the Stories and Stories II, and if the former is comprised of McClanahanian near fables of a world we rarely visit or see on paper, and the latter more fable-like with its touch of mysticism and spirituality, albeit still McClanahanesque, Stories V! is yet something else, or not something else, but it is more personal on the one hand, or is it that we know Scott better? Maybe? The Scott of these stories seems weirder though, which we like, because Scott does seem weirder than the guy we see reading or listen to on podcasts, and this weirdness is nice and humanizing, but again is this our projection, or some need of some kind? Yes, maybe, sure, but then more than weird, these pieces feel like they are ready to be performed. And we know somewhere we read Scott talking about writing stories not for the sake of writing per se, but for the chance to perform, and that's how many of them feel, which yes, may be more projection. And so, why all this, this stream of consciousness, this riff and blurbage, because with Scott the question isn't whether the work is good, it is, always, or even maybe whether he's one of our best short story writers, he is, but making sense of what he does, story after story, as they blend together into one long narrative about a guy named Scott who we now think we know, and we might, because we know someone named Scott, and we know his stories, the ones he has shared anyway, and it's good, all of it, and it changes lives, ours, yours, his. Maybe. We think.

Cousins. Tonight. So hit it.

Please be good. Thanks.

And now we pause for a brief Michael Tanzer interlude.

It is June 3rd. And today is the birthday of TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer's father Michael Tanzer, artist, advocate, raconteur, tough guy and pool player. He has been dead eleven years this coming fall and at the risk of being morbid, nothing about that seems sadder than the idea that he will slowly fade from our collective memory, something we know he would have hated. So, in an effort to avoid, or at least prolong said fade, please do take a moment to revisit our 2008 storySouth award nominated creative nonfiction joint and Michael Tanzer homage "PaintWriteDeathLifeArt (Sketches from a Life in Art)," and please do note, and yes this seems coarse as hell, that his last work of art graces the cover of our soon to be released novella My Father's House, something we couldn't be more excited about.

When Lauryn Allison Lewis met the Prize Winners.

Quite enchanted we are to see TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Lauryn Allison Lewis most kindly reviewing Prize Winners the new Artistically Declined pop-up joint by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Ryan W. Bradley. Now how about you enjoy some excerpt, hit the review, and then maybe go buy yourself a copy, because it just might, will, change your life, if only for a little while.

"Prize Winners is a 112-page collection of eighteen mostly flash-length stories, which is just right, considering the punch each packs – considering the unwavering gaze each levels at its reader, daring one to flinch, daring one to sync up one's heartbeat with its own pounding pulse."