Mark Sarvas's Blog, page 25

Viva Lost Vegas. Part Five, Strawberry Saroyan.

I wandered the hall.  I was still woozy from whatever it was that led me to pass out:  Grey Goose mixed with Adderall?  Klonopin?  I looked down for a moment and saw I was wearing something fabulous -- a mink shrug and hot pants.  (This, by the way, is an enduring secret of fashion:  your best outfits grow out of being cold, or naked and needing something quickly -- that is, if you have an eye, which I, professionally, do.)

The inimitable Strawberry Saroyan wraps up our FiveChapters tag team s...

Katherine Taylor had to cancel tennis.

I have a sore throat and I'm grumpy.  It's not all sunshine and orange blossoms here in Hollywood, you know.  

Meghan Daum on Kirkus vs. customer reviews.  
Poor Peter Watts.  This piece of news, combined with my sore throat, makes me want to get right back into bed.  And put my eye mask on.  For the rest of the year.
J. D. McClatchy's Going Back To Bed.

Viva Los Vegas: Part Four. John Haskell!

"Harold, honey, meet my daughter.  She speaks German."
I didn't speak German, had never been to Germany, and had very little interest in meeting this...
"I'm Swiss."
"I'm decorating," my mother said.  "And I need you all to help."  She reached up and patted her furry, ployester antlers.  "Do you like my costume?"

John Haskell takes over the FiveChapters group effort today, and rocks it.

Steve Yarbrough is coming to get your awards.

Steve Yarbrough's Safe from the Neighbors appears in January.  This should give awards-panel judges plenty of time to eat it and digest.

Many years ago, when I was a tiny and miserable 17 year old truant in dismal Fresno, I managed to talk someone at Fresno State into letting me take Steve Yarbrough's fiction writing class.  It's arguable that Steve's class saved my life.  It's inarguable that he is in the classroom as he is on the page:  sympathetic, serious, hilarious, honest and direct.

Stev...

Tracey Emin provides everything you need.

This piece of news/blog combines many of the things I like most in the world:  Tracey Emin, real estate, true crime, and impostors.  Magnificent.

Tracy Emin provides everything you need.

This piece of news/blog combines many of the things I like most in the world:  Tracy Emin, real estate, true crime, and impostors.  Magnificent.

Katherine Taylor's Thursday version of a round-up.

Matthew Specktor has an uncommon take on the writing of the second novel.
Pynchon was a Manhattan-Beach-dwelling pot-smoker who wore the same outfit every day, thought of weapons as ambivalent sexual components of the underworld, and wanted his work "to be great and he wanted it to make him money."  I had a boyfriend who fit that very description, but he was a banker. 
Perhaps you have been sitting around this morning not considering Charles D'Ambrosio. Stop wasting time and start thinking...

Viva Lost Vegas: Part Three.

As the fog cleared I had a dim, mortifying recollection of trying to impress a cocktail waitress with rollickingly (in retrospect) unfunny anecdotes about my celeb bro Bruce's childhood Tourette's.  "He kept calling out mailman a whore -- and he didn't even know what a mailman was!" That sort of thing.  Which made me want to bite my own face.  There was nothing left to do but slink out and hope nobody who had overheard my idiocy was old enough to tweet.

Jerry Stahl takes over the FiveChapters ...

Viva Los Vegas: Part Three.

As the fog cleared I had a dim, mortifying recollection of trying to impress a cocktail waitress with rollickingly (in retrospect) unfunny anecdotes about my celeb bro Bruce's childhood Tourette's.  "He kept calling out mailman a whore -- and he didn't even know what a mailman was!" That sort of thing.  Which made me want to bite my own face.  There was nothing left to do but slink out and hope nobody who had overheard my idiocy was old enough to tweet.

Jerry Stahl takes over the FiveChapters ...

Katherine Taylor's Wednesday Morning List.

"We like lists because we don't want to die." 

Live chat with Lydia Davis today at 3pm (that's Eastern, I assume).  Hurry and finish that collection before noon.
Jeff Gordinier gets poorer and poorer:  "This bilingual edition spans the entirety of Rilke's work from The Book of Hours up to weeks before his death..."
The internet was created for things like this.
Ben Fountain, all-time great of the world's greats, recounts his year in reading.
More on lovesickness, circa 1610:  "Love's sweetness is ...