Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 257

hoang. malone. tidhar. ml press. booyah.

The September ml press trio is live and ready for your perusal and purchase. As always these stories are full of vivid images, with this batch particularly focused on relationships on the brink of madness and implosion. We would add, that while it may go without saying that all of three of these pieces are rich and Tylerian in nature, unfortunate title aside, we do want to give a special shout-out to rape children by kendra grant malone.

Too Young to Fall Asleep by Sally Weigel.

As previously announced Jason Pettus and his minions over at CCLaP have a new joint out Too Young to Fall Asleep by Sally Weigel. As also previously discussed we promised to re-consume Sally's novel and then report back on it here, right here. And so to loosely paraphrase the always awesome Otis Day, let's hit it. Too Young to Fall Asleep takes something we all think we know, high school, and intersects it with something we don't yet understand, the impact of the Iraq War. What's unique of...

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Thirty-Six - "L'shana Tova."

Breathe. Reflect. It is week Thirty-Six of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our terribly self-absorbed effort to post one self-portrait per week for one year. In a contradiction we are all to well aware of this week's edition coincides with the new year and a time of self-reflection, not self-absorption. So, we will keep it brief and move on to the housekeeping. If you want to track this project in its entirety you may do so at the Flickr. If you want to see a self-portrait of your...

Alien. Apartheid. Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. HIV/AIDS. Robocop. The Holocaust. The Fly. Internment camps. District 9. The bomb. And then some.

We are digging the Deckfight. You?

We have been digging the Deckfight and we think you just might want to take a look. There you go. Feels good, right?

The Torn Pages Show. 11 Chicago artists. 11 Chicago writers. Will be cool. Quite cool. Though some funding is needed. Are you in? Maybe?

The Torn Pages Show is coming, The Torn Pages Show is coming. No, we don't know exactly when, but we are excited to be participating. For this show the inestimable Josh Lucas is teaming with 11 Chicago writers, including many TBWCYL, Inc. favorites, including Jill Summers, Joe Meno, Tim Hall, Jamie Calder, Amy Guth, Zach Dodson and our very own spokesperson Ben Tanzer, and 11 Chicago artists, including among others the quite rocking Allison Dunne Burque and Dominique Holmes, to write and...

Ah, youth. Or, should we just say that CCLaP is officially releasing its first novella - Too Young to Fall Asleep by the quite wonderful Sally Weigel?

Very exciting stuff. The fine folks at CCLaP who very generously released Repetition Patterns last fall are back with their newest entry into the world of pay what you want e-literature, Sally Weigel's novella Too Young to Fall Asleep. We saw an early version of the book and were quite taken with it. We plan to re-read it shortly however and will report back to you with all of our quasi-formal and terribly objective thoughts and reactions. In the interim though please do visit the CCLaP...

Dang, first John Hughes, and now this?

"Totally zonked, and all the dope scraped or sniffed clean from the tiny cellophane bags. I can see the Cloisters with its million in medieval art out the bedroom window. I got to go in and puke. I just want to be pure."

From the start, and even now, no book meant more, or means more, to us than The Basketball Diaries.

Rest in peace.

Bad Monkey by Curtis Smith.

If you are a geek reader book-loving fanboy type, is there much better than stumbling into a book you know little to nothing about, by an author you're not so familiar with, sorry Curtis, and then encountering so many unexpected pleasures while reading said book? No, not so much. Sure hitting the Sizzler with Jim Carroll or Lynda Barry would be quite cool, but few things are better than the unexpectedly pleasurable book-reading experience. Which is our way of saying that the short story...

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Thirty-Five - "Bad Monkey."

It is Week Thirty-Five of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, our effort to post one self-portrait per week for one year, and this week we are all "Bad Monkey." More specifically we are reading Bad Monkey by Curtis Smith and it is the goods. We will report back shortly on our overall reactions, but in the interim please feel free to follow this project in its entirety on the Flickr and maybe even send us a self-portrait of your own, which we in turn would be thrilled to post right here...