Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 29

TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog "cracking open" The New York Stories Twitter hype there so is indeed.

It's been awhile since I've given myself over to @BenTanzer, so I'm cracking open THE NEW YORK STORIES https://t.co/GNGMETRh7s
— TNBBC (@TNBBC) April 20, 2015

TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog The New York Stories "cracking open" Twitter hype there so is indeed.

It's been awhile since I've given myself over to @BenTanzer, so I'm cracking open THE NEW YORK STORIES https://t.co/GNGMETRh7s
— TNBBC (@TNBBC) April 20, 2015

The New York Stories is new cover and awesome cover blurb from the endlessly awesome Elizabeth Crane.

"With great humor and the natural voice of your closest confidant, Ben Tanzer brings us stories set in our shared fictional hometown of Two Rivers, NY. With tenderness and heart, Ben brings us real people and their poignant, messy struggles, reminding us of the folly of our youth and the beauty in even our most mundane histories. Though my family left when I was small for the big city, Tanzer has given this reader the gift of a sliding door here, and I think you'll feel the same way, wherever you're from." --Elizabeth Crane, author of We Only Know So Much

And more to come. Not to mention more information at CCLaP for those who want it.

(The ARC of) The New York Stories is the Sean H. Doyle and stoked we are.

And there is more here. As needed of course.

"I've been on this ride from the beginning, never questioning going all the way to the end." The New York Stories. Word. And appreciations.

Much word, and endless appreciations really. Excerpt? Nice. And more word. Really.

"It was great to watch this develop over the years, but it's best that everything is together now because as I read more and more of these stories as time went on I increasingly realized how much they were a part of a single big picture. I couldn't wait until it was complete to read the individual pieces, but now readers don't have to wait. It's all here and I picked up my own print copy so I'd have it all together. Do the same and get ready to change your life."

This Book Will Change Your Life - Benchwarmer by the Josh Wilker.

Our father felt that for an artist to be successful they needed to figure out their niche and exploit the fuck out of it. Though to be clear, he probably didn't use the word "exploit" or even "fuck." Still, he felt it was a necessity, which brings us to the case of the Josh Wilker, and by extension his new new joint Benchwarmer, which is also known as "A Sports-Obsessed Memoir of Fatherhood." Wilker knows sports, he is possibly the consummate authority on sports writing in terms of sports memoir, or more specifically memoir as filtered through the lens of sports. Case in point, Wilker's earlier memoir Cardboard Gods, on which we wrote "the real challenge may be how the writer accomplishes this in a way that sounds vibrant and different and brings new perspective and language to the discussion, continuing an ongoing dialogue in fresh and exciting new ways," in trying to articulate Wilker's use of his love, even obsession, with baseball cards to make sense of his painful, and at times out there, childhood, something so many have written about before, but which Wilker had figured out how to make new again. Which brings us back to Benchwarmer, a memoir of fatherhood as almanac, and encyclopedia, and the utilization of everyone from Steve Bartman to Chris Webber, to make sense of how fucking hard parenting is. The lack of sleep. The new found chasms in the relationship with one's spouse. The feeling of anger and moments of near violence. How sucky everything is and how incompetent one feels in every possible way. Now imagine you've already spent your life dodging chasms, feeling sucky, and full of lack, and then you add a child to the mix? Because then you're just fucked. Which is not to say any of this is unique to Wilker, or that many, present company included, haven't written about it, but this is Wilker's gift, taking the known and filtering it through his compulsions, and sport. This is his niche and he owns it like no one else. Which would make my father very happy and might just change your life. And now we've gone full circle.  

"Back Home" is Sunday Salon NYC's special issue THRESHOLD. And how awesome is that? Quite awesome.

It is also quite appreciated. Excerpt? Word.

"There was this boy with his head in your lap.Which is not exactly what it sounds like, though depending on how that sounds to you, it isn’t exactly not that either.Which is to say that he isn’t a little boy, you have those now and you know what they look like, he was more like a young man, as were you, it’s just that you just weren’t as young as he was, with his boyish face, pale skin, and light, near translucent scruff.But you’re getting ahead of yourself, that is the present, or that present anyway, and this doesn’t work without knowing the past and the decisions you made that got you from there to here.Because before that, there was a door, though not exactly a door, it was more like a passage, both in the metaphorical sense certainly, as in it takes you somewhere both new and old all at once, a sort of a Raiders of the Lost Ark take a step and the bridge will appear kind of passage, but also in a literal sense, because there is also a curtain, and behind it a long hall in a club South of Market in San Francisco that no one in the club seems to be paying attention to, except for you and your friends.Now how can that be?You don’t know, but San Francisco has always been like that for you.Or, it was like that anyway, because you don’t live there anymore, you live in New York City now, you live back home, and San Francisco is now a place you used to live, a place you once ran to, but then ran away from."

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, The AWP 2015 Edition Part I - The Jew Factor, starring the Sara Lippmann.

Can we be more Lippmann? Or podcast? No, we cannot. Though we can be Doll Palace, Meg Wolitzer, gender, Jewey, sexual abuse, AWP 2015, Philadelphia, and any number of things sure to change your life as it has ours too.

Quite honored to be sharing some fine company in the Bustle joint "How To Write A Personal Essay That’ll Tell Your Story The Way You Want It To."

Possibly even more than honored, not that we're sure what that would be. Excerpt? Word.

Examine Your Level of Sincerity Within Your Piece
If you’ve published before, think about how honest you’ve been in your past pieces — and make sure you get to the same place of sincerity again. Push yourself harder if you haven’t. People are attracted to the way people tell stories, not necessarily what they’re writing about, Ben Tanzer said. “If people feel like they can trust you for all the same reasons they did before, they’ll fall in love with you.”

(Sketches from the) AWP 2015.

Kicked off yesterday with best panel of day with @annamarch, @WendyCOrtiz, @meganstielstra, and @BenTanzer. Hope today's is 1/2 as good.
— Susan Lerner (@susanlitelerner) April 10, 2015

#ff #babecity residents @silverbackedG @JDaugherty1081 @dreamingauze @notsolinear @geatland @eshonkwiler @wyllinois @BenTanzer @joelhans
— Lockjaw Magazine (@lockjawmag) April 10, 2015