Rob Walker's Blog, page 4
November 24, 2010
Author Updates
IN THIS UPDATE: Jenny Davidson, Alissa Nutting, David Abrams.
1) Jenny Davidson's novel Invisible Things was released yesterday. It is the sequel to The Explosionist.
***
2) Alissa Nutting's Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls was picked by Steve Almond as one of his Favorite Fall 2010 Books, on NPR's "Here and Now." Listen to the show here.
***
3) David Abrams has a short story, "The Things He Saw," appearing in the Fall 2010 issue of The Connecticut Review. He continues to blog about Fobbit, a serio-comic novel in progress about the Iraq War.
***
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming (Fall 2011) collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
November 22, 2010
Author Updates
IN THIS UPDATE: Joanne McNeil, Robert Lopez.
1) Joanne McNeil recently wrote a catalog essay for the New Museum exhibition "Free. Her essay "Overfutured" looks at Jon Rafman's "9 Eyes of Google Street View" and other technology-inspired art in the show.
***
2) Ropert Lopez's Asunder (Dzanc), a collection of stories, was released earlier this month. Lopez is the author of two previous novels, Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, the latter of which was named one of the 25 Most Important Books of the Decade by HTMLGiant. Watch the animated book trailer. Lopez tells us: "There is a release event for Asunder at Barbes in Park Slope, on Saturday, December 4th at 5 p.m, hosted by Nelly Reifler. There will be guest readers and some guest stars playing music."
***
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming (Fall 2011) collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
November 21, 2010
Significant Tweets for Week Ending 2010-11-21
Art project goal: "Object That Remains A Dream" (Pics) – @PSFK http://t.co/V0M1bkL #
DailyLit, a service that let's you read books by email or RSS. http://tumblr.com/xr4qsylce #
Five Writers Explain How They Got, Kept and Fired Agents | The Awl http://t.co/zgH5EmV #
Bad memory for faces? Blame your reading skills – life – 12 November 2010 – New Scientist http://bit.ly/bh68X9 #
Rose Bowl Flea Market draws thousands, but few buyers – latimes.com http://lat.ms/9XmBFu #
Powered by Twitter Tools
S.O. Book News
IN THIS POST: Bruce Sterling, Todd Levin, Susannah Breslin, Ben Greenman, Marisa Silver.
This is the twentieth installment in a series of twenty posts announcing — in no particular order — which 100 stories will be collected in the Significant Objects book (forthcoming in 2011 from Fantagraphics).
***
96. Bruce Sterling's METAL BOOT story. Excerpt:
We do not know how Wheat transformed his Italian enemies into his fiercely loyal followers, apparently overnight. We do know, as a historical fact, that Roberdeau Wheat distributed certain tokens to the men, just before they embarked from Naples. Those tokens were small brass boots. Every man who joined the Wheat expedition received one of these boots directly from Roberdeau Wheat's own hand. The men wore the boots on their persons. What were these tokens, what was their meaning? Some Masonic recognition symbol — perhaps an aid to prayer, chained to a rosary? Given Wheat's Louisiana origins, they may have been voodoo charms.
***
97. Todd Levin's ZIGGY HEART story. Excerpt:
Mary Eileen's supply of M&Ms was seemingly bottomless. She even found M&Ms in special colors around the holidays — an act in which I'm sure she took some kind of near-erotic pleasure. And whenever — seriously, whenever — you'd swing by and grab a few pieces of candy on the sly, Mary Eileen would unfailingly say, "Treat yourself!" That word — "treat" — from her lips was like an iron file dragging against the edge of my front teeth. The works, from Ziggy vaguely threatening me to "have a lovely day!" to the pink and red M&Ms on Valentine's Day, to Mary Eileen's matronly invocation, all seemed calculatedly designed to make me feel infantile.And I guess that's why I stole that Ziggy paperweight. I emptied the bowl of M&Ms into my backpack, too. An appropriately infantile act I suppose. But why should she have that power over me? And why can't Mary Eileen find a means of happiness that's, I don' t know, grown-up? She never once complained — not formally, anyway — and it's been stashed in my desk, M&Ms and all, for I don't know how long.
***
98. Susannah Breslin's NECKING TEAM BUTTON story. Excerpt:
I imagined my father had won his place on the All-American Necking Team sometime during 1953, his senior year at Brooklyn Preparatory. I knew what he looked like back then from photographs: a young man with deep-set eyes undershadowed by dark circles, his long form gangly with the awkwardness of his youth, a thin tie knotted at the base of his bird-like neck. Once, my mother had told me about his penchant for drinking Zombies, about the time in the middle of a party, he had proclaimed, "I'm a tree," and then fallen flat to the floor, how she had stolen him from another woman older than her, who had a child — and in the remembering, my mother had smiled. But that summer, his father, my grandfather, a frustrated CPA with a roaring temper fueled by an abiding love of Four Roses and the failures of the Brooklyn Dodgers, had fallen dead of a heart attack while taking the IRT subway to work one day, and my father's life had changed forever.
***
99. Ben Greenman's SMILING MUG story. Excerpt:
This object is best known from its appearance in the 1939 film No News From The Navy, a comedy starring James Wilton as a hapless midshipman who cannot set aside his seafaring ways, even when he is confined to dry land as a result of an injury. Wilton's character (who is called, simply, "Sailor") competes for the affection of a young woman named Evelyn (Mary Hannan) despite the opposition of her father (Gordon Howard) and a larger, determined suitor (Kenneth Lopp). The film is a second-tier comedy, but there is one classic scene in which Sailor shaves before taking Evelyn out on a date. He is clearly accustomed to shaving aboard his ship, and as a result, he is constantly attempting to regain his balance, despite the fact the floor is level and stable. The critic Leonard Folsom has written that "The unheralded Wilton has a scene that combines the physical complexity of a Chaplin solo with close-ups of inexpressive expression that rival the finest moments of Keaton." At the beginning of that scene, Wilton uses this smiling mug as his shaving mug, and while he sets it on the shelf above the washbasin midway through, it remains, as Folsom writes, "an oddly compelling focus of the film so long as it is onscreen, enormous in its diminutive size, menacing in its cheer."
***
100. Marisa Silver's TOY CAR story. Excerpt:
The fourth time I went to take the test, my brother gave me one of his toy cars for good luck. My dad had bought him the car, telling him it was the same model as the first car he'd ever owned. The car was pink and my brother had tried to paint it over, but he didn't have the right kind of paint so the car ended up looking like a school bathroom. I put the car in my pocket, turned off my brain, and took the test. I passed. I made no mistakes at all. By this time my parents had split up and my aunt was waiting for me in the waiting area because my mother had started back at her old job selling perfume at the department store. I kept my brother's car all these years, even though the wheels have broken off and gotten lost, and it is so derelict even my own kids won't play with it. It reminds me that even if you look down the road to catch a glimpse of your future, there's not much you can avoid.
***
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming (Fall 2011) collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
November 19, 2010
Author Updates
IN THIS UPDATE: Colleen Werthmann, Josh Kramer.
1) Colleen Werthmann is currently appearing in a play by The Civilians, an investigative theater company, at the Irondale Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. IN THE FOOTPRINT, a new play with music, tells the story of the largest development project in Brooklyn's history. The play examines the conflicts that erupted in from Atlantic Yards' unveiling through to its current resolution in an attempt to discover how the fate of the city is decided in present-day New York and what can be learned from this ongoing saga of politics, money, and the places we call home. The play is constructed from interviews with real life players in this Brooklyn epic, including local residents, business owners, Daniel Goldstein, political leaders such as Letitia James and Marty Markowitz, activists, union members, and community leaders. Info: http://www.thecivilians.org
***
2) Josh Kramer is excited to announce The Cartoon Picayune, a new self-published magazine fusing the art of comics and the tools of journalism. Cartoonpicayune.com is now online, and you can put in your email address to stay in the loop. Josh is currently working on the first issue, which will be full of his own comics reportage and hopefully done in time for MoCCA fest in New York City next April. More of Josh's work can be seen at his blog.
***
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming (Fall 2011) collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
November 18, 2010
S.O. Book News
IN THIS UPDATE: Dara Horn, Curtis Sittenfeld, Cintra Wilson, Chris Adrian, Carl Wilson.
This is the nineteenth installment in a series of twenty posts announcing — in no particular order — which 100 stories will be collected in the Significant Objects book (forthcoming in 2011 from Fantagraphics).
***
91. Dara Horn's MONKEY PUPPET story. Excerpt:
In addition to The Trial, Kafka at the time of his death was also at work on another manuscript, tentatively titled Metamorphosis II: Monkey Puppet. A sequel to The Metamorphosis, Metamorphosis II continues the story of the surreally afflicted Samsa family. After Gregor the cockroach's death and Mr. and Mrs. Samsa's relief as they notice their daughter Grete's blossoming young figure ("they had come to the conclusion that it would soon be time to find a good husband for her") in the final pages of Volume 1, Metamorphosis II resumes ten years later, with Grete Rosenzweig, née Samsa, as a discontented hausfrau and indulgent mother of three in Prague. In the opening paragraph, Grete Rosenzweig awakens from uneasy dreams to discover that she has been transformed into a plush puppet belonging to her surly and ungrateful six-year-old son Adolf.
***
92. Curtis Sittenfeld's SPOTTED DOGS FIGURINE story. Excerpt:
I liked Ronald better because he was taller and because it was harder for me to guess where things stood with him; I had to work to draw him out. Larry just flat-out adored me. He'd always compliment my outfit, and once when he said my perfume smelled nice, I told him in kind of a haughty way that I didn't wear perfume, it was just shampoo. At the movies he'd take my hand even before the trailers had ended. When he picked me up for a date, he'd mention whatever he'd seen or done since we'd last been together that had reminded him of me — a song he'd heard on the radio, for instance, or these spotted dogs, which he gave me after we'd been going out a couple months.
***
93. Cintra Wilson's BASKETBALL TROPHY story. Excerpt:
As we discussed, I wish my best most coveted and rare valuable trophy prize to be safely in your Beloved hands. You may then assure me with your sweet words, Dear Heart, that you have it resting in a mounted place of honor in your diplomatic safe house. I will be afterwards in waiting for your signal to transfer the misallocated foreign aid (US) $344 MILLION I have received in error to threaten my political life daily, into the bank of your politically stable country. Also I am hoping to send, at future times, to our secret beautiful love child out of wedlock, the contested blood-diamond necklace worth (US) $6,900,00.00 belonging to my dearest departed aunt Hortensia Claire Watsson, may she lie in eternal embracing of the Christ.
***
94. Chris Adrian's KANGAMOUSE story. Excerpt:
My brother and I could not agree on how to worship the mouse. It was typical of us back then that we could agree that it should be worshipped—that was obvious from the day it arrived in the mail, a gift from our father, who had been in Vietnam for three years, which was one-third of George's life and one-half of mine, on business more important than his wife and his sons. The last gift had been a green and yellow straw mat, and we agreed that it was, in fact, a prayer mat, the use of which only became clear with the advent of the mouse. The evening it arrived we knelt in our room in our pajamas in the dark. George had his flashlight out and he shined it on the mouse's face.
***
95. Carl Wilson's CHARLIE'S ANGELS THERMOS story. Excerpt:
2Limbic archive trace data: At public school in Lansing, Mich., 1978, subject Derek F. is made to carry the Object to lunch every day by his mother, who dresses him in over-tight velour sweaters and corduroy "floods" [no trans. available] and has misread her ten-year-old son's interest in a popular show. As the larger boys daily thwap his tailbone and head with its milk-swooshing bulk, they bark out "Sabrina! Sabrina!" and laugh.
The term catches on so robustly that in schoolyard argot it long remains an all-purpose insult, more androgynous than "gaylord," as subject's younger sibling Krissy F. finds out to her cost after frugal Mom hands-her-down the Object in 1983. This despite there being a Kris on it too.
Aural trace clip, semi-musical (folkloric): "Sabrina, Sabrina — chipmunk cheeks suckin' on a weena!"
***
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming (Fall 2011) collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
November 17, 2010
Author Updates
IN THIS UPDATE: Annie Nocenti, Sheila Heti.
1) After the January 10th earthquake in Haiti, Annie Nocenti spent four months there making documentaries. This week, HiLobrow.com published the first in a series (titled "Gadou Gadou") of ten reports by Nocenti. Excerpt:
My Haitian film students are devoted to telling the stories of their country in their own circuitous, gentle style. They film as they live: wander into a life, look around, notice things, leave. No prying, no trickery, no push to find an ending. Today we're filming Sonise, a 17-year-old pregnant girl with an easy smile that somehow only increases her impenetrability. She's about to have her first baby in mud, filth and stench. I ask Keziah, one of my students, what she thinks of Sonise. Keziah's a statuesque Haitian with a body steady as a tripod, making her a perfect hand-held shooter. Keziah says: "Sonise? She should be very afraid. But she's not."
***
2) Sheila Heti's new book, How Should a Person Be? (Anansi) is excerpted at length in the new n+1 (issue 10).
***
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming (Fall 2011) collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
November 16, 2010
S.O. Book News
IN THIS POST: Joe Wenderoth, Jim Hanas, Jenny Offill, Jeff Turrentine, James Parker.
This is the eighteenth installment in a series of twenty posts announcing — in no particular order — which 100 stories will be collected in the Significant Objects book (forthcoming in 2011 from Fantagraphics).
***
86. Joe Wenderoth's BALANCING BIRD THING story. Excerpt:
It works like this: in an outdoor space, bricks are stacked—two stacks; between the two stacks, a yarn is pulled tight and secured beneath the top brick on both sides. Next, a Birdman (a native Icelandic priest) tries to balance the Menstruating Judgment Bird on the yarn. If the Bird remains balanced for the next 10 seconds (in the Birdman's head), the Bird has become ripe for Pronouncing Judgment. After ten seconds (in the Birdman's head), which way the Bird falls decides the argument. All of the Judgment Bird's verdicts are understood to be completely just.
***
87. Jim Hanas' WIRE BASKET story. Excerpt:
"Yes I suppose our love was like the wind," he said. "Subtle, omnipresent, powerful.""No, no, asshole," she said, frantically running the heel of her free hand under each eye. "I'm not crying. The wind got in my eyes and…"
"Bracing, kind…"
"I wasn't even thinking about you," she screamed as she swung the basket at Rex's left temple, showering the sidewalk with clementines and five whole grains, which strangers happily helped pile back into Jacqueline's basket as the paramedics loaded Rex onto a stretcher.
***
88. Jenny Offill's MINIATURE TURKEY DINNER story. Excerpt:
"When is everyone coming?" my daughter says. "Isn't everyone coming?" She drags her dollhouse out of her room and begins arranging and rearranging the dining room chairs. It is hard to make them as they should be, it seems. One is always askew. She is so solemn, my little girl. So solemn and precise. Carefully, she places the tiny turkey in the center of the table. It is golden brown. Someone has carved a perfect flap in it. Why, I wonder. Why must everything have already begun? "Hurry," she murmurs as she works. "Hurry, hurry!"
***
89. Jeff Turrentine's "WOMEN & INFANTS" GLASS story. Excerpt:
Bertani 2002 "Catullo" Veneto ($20). Wow. Stunningly bright fruit (especially cherry and blackcurrant), moderate acidity. They were officially divorced a year later. Whenever I would ask my mom about my dad, or wish aloud that I could meet him, she would say that every time she tried to arrange for a visit he balked at the last minute, citing some work-related or personal conflict that couldn't be avoided. I spent my childhood believing that my dad just wasn't interested in meeting me, much less being a part of my life. I served this with some re-heated Chinese food the other night and drank the whole goddamn bottle by myself, it tasted so good.
***
90. James Parker's KITTY SAUCER story. Excerpt:
Floyd inclined an eyebrow à la Errol Flynn. He was at the shoreline, and some sort of John Bircher was fixing his gumline. Karma was a pretzel sometimes. And he hadn't even begun to think about the kitty plate. Why had someone left it in his car last night, this little milk-saucer with the face of a cat painted on it? He had floundered heavily into the driver's seat, with the bar-reek on him, to find it propped on the dashboard like a rebuke. The cat was ginger-ish, with a distant, unreadable expression. "And the same to you, partner," Floyd had mumbled, tossing it onto the back seat and scraping at the ignition. He'd never owned a cat. He didn't like cats. Which was not to say that he didn't understand the cat thing: he knew any number of ex-radicals and tired misanthropes whose single connection to the world-as-commonly-experienced was via some sullen feline. Barney Breaks, for example, the PI he'd hired to spy on his first wife. Pissed-off to the core. A disenchantment with humanity that was truly cosmic. Now there was a cat guy.
***
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming (Fall 2011) collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
November 15, 2010
Significant Objects Meme (24)
I feel like the New York Times Magazine invented this feature — the annotated photograph of someone's den, telling stories about their significant objects — but here's an example of the genre from Seed Magazine that I came across the other day…
***
For more evidence of the Significant Objects Meme, click here.
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
November 14, 2010
Significant Tweets for Week Ending 2010-11-14
Maud Newton's desk! http://t.co/238nk15 #
A renaissance rooted in technology: the literary magazine returns http://t.co/2Aqomtc via @guardian #
Via @nprnews: Doodle Your Way Out Of Writer's Block | http://t.co/OTlRjsz #
Anonymous stories, written on found photographs – Boing Boing http://t.co/KJmVkqv #
From the Desk Of: fun project, pix of folks' workspaces: http://fromyourdesks.com/ #
Literary writers talk about Twitter, Facebook, Google… http://bit.ly/9XkTpz #
Art project revolves around donated "personal objects." Video: http://tumblr.com/xr4pd5uzp #
A tumblr all about bookshelves: http://tumblr.com/xr4pb6je0 #
Speaking of book storage: Here's a "shelf" doubling as a table. http://tumblr.com/xr4pb6ctr #
"Free" (New Museum show) explores how the net has changed our landscape of info & notion of public space. http://bit.ly/cnmRRk #
Gilbert Legrand sculptures from "repurposed everyday items." http://tumblr.com/xr4pab2nx #
Making a birdhouse from a children's book: http://tumblr.com/xr4p3gm0f #
Powered by Twitter Tools
