Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 201
February 3, 2011
February 2, 2011
February 1, 2011
Housley. Artifice. Mixtape. You Can Make Him Like You. Shout-out. Awesomeness.
TBWYL, Inc. favorite and BFF Dave Housley has composed a quite sweet mixtape for the quite sweet Guest Mixtape series at the quite sweet Artifice Magazine and it would be enough if he had merely found a way to give Jim Carroll a shout-out, but imagine our great surprise and pleasure at seeing a shout-out for TBWCYL,Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and his upcoming release You Can Make Him Like You (with pre-orders available so soon it will make your head spin). It changed our lives and we are most appreciative. Many thanks Dave and how about some excerpt below? Sweet. Quite.The Hold Steady
Okay, this is going to be a section in itself. For good reason!
First of all, here's "You Can Make Him Like You," which is the title of my buddy Ben Tanzer's upcoming novel (which is awesome).
And then there's "Stuck Between Stations," which opens with a Kerouac reference ("there are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right") and closes with the death of John Berryman ("she said you're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life and they didn't so he died").
And then there's "Cattle and the Creeping Things," which is mainly about junkies and the bible, and is part of what is essentially a novel in stories told as a rock and roll album, and was the only (to my knowledge) song that was ever annotated by NPR.
Housley. Artifice. Mixtape. Shout-out. Awesomeness.
TBWYL, Inc. favorite and BFF Dave Housley has composed a quite sweet mixtape for the quite sweet Guest Mixtape series at the quite sweet Artifice Magazine and it would be enough if he had merely found a way to give Jim Carroll a shout-out, but imagine our great surprise and pleasure at seeing a shout-out for TBWCYL,Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer and his upcoming release You Can Make Him Like You (with pre-orders available so soon it will make your head spin). It changed our lives and we are most appreciative. Many thanks Dave and how about some excerpt below? Sweet. Quite.The Hold Steady
Okay, this is going to be a section in itself. For good reason!
First of all, here's "You Can Make Him Like You," which is the title of my buddy Ben Tanzer's upcoming novel (which is awesome).
And then there's "Stuck Between Stations," which opens with a Kerouac reference ("there are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right") and closes with the death of John Berryman ("she said you're pretty good with words, but words won't save your life and they didn't so he died").
And then there's "Cattle and the Creeping Things," which is mainly about junkies and the bible, and is part of what is essentially a novel in stories told as a rock and roll album, and was the only (to my knowledge) song that was ever annotated by NPR.
January 31, 2011
January 30, 2011
This Book Will Change Your Life - Chasing The Runner's High by Ray Charbonneau
We suppose it was an interesting week to consume Chasing The Runner's High by Ray Charbonneau. We go on a long, snowy, sub-zero run and two days later, maybe coincidentally, maybe not, we are so sick we don't, can't, run for another seven days, unable to escape the shivers, unable to bare the cold and conditions, yet unable to not keep plotting, planning, and wondering when we will run next, what morning or night, before or after work, between stuff with the kids, wife and writing, always wondering when there will be an opportunity, and when we feel good enough to get out, because that's what we do, everyday, wonder when, and how, plotting and planning and not seeking perfection or time, just wanting, and needing, to get out, which we finally did yesterday before coming home and finishing the book. And that's the thing, well one thing anyway, about the book, it is all about plotting and planning, obsession, all of it, and we get that, but its about something else as well, not just wanting more, but having to obtain it, better times, more miles, life out of balance, control, masochism, and we almost get that too, and yet ultimately we don't, we've never quite crossed-over, but we've thought about it, and so as runners, and writers, this book is a gift, a book we might have killed for in high school, certainly begged for, because books like these weren't written then, or at least published, and so there was little to read about our most compulsive of compulsions, much less any way to know whether other people were like this. And yet, its more than that as well, because ultimately this is a book about addiction and craving and all we will do to fill that kind of void, something we can again just almost relate to, but again, not quite, which makes Chasing The Runners High much less and much more than a running book at the same time, because it is a book that is also ultimately about gaining control over your life by being less in control, being in balance by focusing on all elements of who we are at the same time, and finding pleasure in something that once was, but no longer is, allowed to dominate your every thought.
January 29, 2011
We are The Watch List, hear us roar.
More accurately, "Taking Flight" is The Watch List, and we are most geeked, big thanks Orange Alert.
January 28, 2011
Bradley. Potomac Review. Righteousness. More.
Look at this, TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Ryan W. Bradley, and no, he's still not Ryan Reynolds, has a new piece, "All Things Infinite," from his Alaska series up at the Potomac Review, that is all fathers and sons and goodness and sadness and ultimately quite righteous and sure to change your lives just like yours. Now, how about some excerpt? Cool."I drive four hours in my old man's pick-up, his pine coffin rattling in the bed.
I stopped by his place outside of Palmer, now my place, and picked up his boat. It's a two-person dinghy named "Greenberg" after his favorite ballplayer, whose Hall of Fame induction was the first clipping in my dad's scrapbook. The book ranged from articles about baseball to pictures of halibut caught in Homer or Seward. There was never a night as a kid I didn't see him lug that thing out and set it on the dining room table to do some cutting and pasting.
He built the boat when I was in high school. I had stopped showing interest in fishing, hunting, and every other father-son activity he came up with on his R&R's. But that didn't stop him from spending two whole trips home sawing, sanding, pounding nails. "How about a trip?" he'd said when the paint dried. I told him I had homework and he suggested the weekend. "Don't have to head back to the slope until Monday."
I grunted and left the room. He was always trying to fill those two weeks of being home, but I was too busy being upset about the eight weeks he was away."
January 27, 2011
Word Riot. Ken Wohlrob. Righteousness.
Excited we are to see a new interview with long-time TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Ken Wohlrob up at the Word Riot. We are equally excited about Ken's new joint Songs of Vagabond, Misfits, and Sinners and promise to share our thoughts soon. Really. Now go and enjoy some excerpt.What is the most misunderstood aspect of your work?
I often get accused of being heavy-handed in my writing. In my own defense, I chalk that more up to writers (and writing) having become too solipsistic in the past decade. I think we've had a complete overload of navel-gazing by writers from my generation. I'd rather tell an interesting story with characters that have actual blood in their veins (rather than being stand-ins for my relatives or ex-girlfriends). A lot of contemporary writers tend to be self-focused. But because readers have become so used to those types of stories, I think sometimes, they are caught off guard by my writing. The stories I tell are very rooted in the real world and those moral gray areas that confront us all. Some readers mistakenly think I have a strong message that I want to convey by writing in that manner. I'm really trying to drag the readers back into the thick of it, making them more actively involved in the story, forcing them to take sides as opposed to just sitting there as an unfeeling bystander. I don't have an agenda in my stories, I just want you to be actively involved and think about the characters and their eventual outcome.
