Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 87

These Books Will Change Your Life - The Girlfriend Game by Nick Antosca and We The Animals by Justin Torres.

There are those moments when we stumble into books, and writers, and we are sort of amazed we haven't previously. Either knowing of the book, but not enough, for example The Girlfriend Game by Nick Antosca, a writer and book well-known to us, and yet not someone we had ever crossed paths with, on the internet or otherwise. And then there are books like We The Animals by Justin Torres, which we had somehow never heard of, and now seems impossible given the response to it. Regarding the Antosca there were some Tweets, a dialogue, of sorts, the idea that we should read one another's work, and here we are. With Justin Torres, there was an interview, a question of animals, and here we are as well. 
Which is where exactly? Well, on the face of it, we have consumed too greatly different collections. The Girlfriend Game, a gathering of stories about murder, revenge, crime, madness, and pychosexual proclivities, and We The Animals, a series of interconnected flash fictions about three young boys growing-up poor and wild to teenage parents in upstate New York. While The Girlfriend Game is taut and drenched in horror, We the Animals is near feral in its intense bursts of family instability. What they have in common though, and what makes this stumble so timely, is the pervasive sense of dread that both collections continually embrace, and ratchet-up from page to page as the reader powers through to the end. In both cases, to finish the collections is nearly a relief, as the damaged lives on the pages before us, slowly worm their way into our brains, take root, and linger there uncomfortably long after we're done.

Wherein we talk social media, control, isolation, and Friend.Follow.Test with the Chicago Tribune.

Though not just us. We are in some quite fine company. So do hit it, please, now, thanks. Excerpt? Word.

"Tanzer, too, was interested in exploring the connections people make online: "I wanted to comment on how lost you can get in your own head space because you are basically only connected to your computer and there are larger implications of isolation and how damaging isolation can be. Social media sort of gives you a sense that you are making a connection that may not be real or that you think you can control, but you can't really control it because you can't control other people's responses."

Lost In Space. Chicago Book Expo. Charlie Chaplin. Curbside Splendor. All of it.

We are "Orphaned - Sketches from Dystopia" in the Litro and most appreciative for that are we.

We are. For real. So big thanks to the Dan Coxon and the whole Litro crew. And drinks, many, on us, for sure. Yes. Excerpt? Cool.

"I am a child. I am watching The Day After. There is a bomb, a flash of grey, things move in slow motion, and instantaneously the world as we know it no longer exists. People are dead. The air is poison. Things can never be the same because the fabric of the world has been torn and re-shaped into something that will never be safe again. That’s Armageddon. That’s not dystopia. Dystopia is slower, less pronounced. Things spoil and curdle, the norms change, and what we expect from the world morphs into something new, where the expectations about our quality of life are lower, and life for the many is harder and sadder and revolves around surviving a version of our lives that is lesser, and harsher, than we knew before. We can talk all we want about Mayan post-apocalyptic shit, but with the financial systems fucked, endless poverty, power and money concentrated in the hands of the few, and the expectation of work, real work that supports our families, diminished, this is the true state of the world today, dystopic, and bleeding out."

Wherein we are Lost In Space ARC.

(The) Orphans is coming to Brooklyn.

It's true. There is Orphans reading on November 30th, 7:30 pm, at the Mellow Pages Library and we would like you to join us.

There will be disco balls. Sparkly and true. Books. So many books. Words. Endless words.  Dogs and Cats living together. And rock star readers who are sure to change your life:

Joseph Riippi - Because, A Cloth House

John Reed - Tales of Woe, Snowball's Chance

Sara Lippmann - Sunday Salon, Girls Write Now

And TBWCYL, Inc. Spokesperson Ben Tanzer - Orphans, out now from Switchgrass Books and NIU Press, among others.

So please join us. Please spread the word. And please don't stop being you, because we think you are quite awesome at that.

Word.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live. All Trying. And full of Atkinson.

The new edition of This Zine Will Change Your Life is live, and we are thrilled to have new fiction, Trying to Explain by the David S. Atkinson, and (almost) as always, photo action from Adam Lawrence, music curation from Jason Behrends and ongoing glitchy ACA website prose love from Pete Anderson. Really? Really. 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, Josh McCown. Really? Really.

The Michael Wayne Hampton is all Romance for Delinquents and Love Letter Promotion yo.

Like totally. So please do Love Letter Promotion. And most definitely Romance for Delinquents. It just might change your life.

Shameless, albeit much appreciated, Matt Micheli Orphans Tweet hype. And big thanks to the Matt Micheli for that.

@bentanzer #Orphans. Lying here on the couch with the Kindle as my wife watches #housewives of somewhere... pic.twitter.com/HLIp1GonEj
— Matt Micheli (@micheliworld) November 21, 2013

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Seventy-Three - Transgressive, starring the Shawn Syms.

Quite transgressive, and so Syms yo. We are also Canada, beards, Friend.Follow.Text, social media, and the Bodega Buck. So please do hit it, it just might change your life.