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Ten Everywhere has moved

Actually, I don't think I will yank these down ... but recent ones can now be found routinely at FlatmanCrooked.

Previous Blogger versions will be coming ...

Posted by bl pawelek at 7/28/2010 9:26 PM | Add Comment

Blake Butler and Scorch Atlas


 


Scorch Atlas (destroyed) by Blake Butler from featherproof books on Vimeo.



In 10 words (no more, no less) describe Scorch Atlas.
Candy shit floating on money with dogs having dogs.

Five Questions There:
1. So, why encourage people to destroy your book?
Because things are things; America is troll's butt and why shouldn't any tears get pumped out that butt. Like a dog said, money is for every dad.

2. Instead of the name 'Scorch Atlas", I like "Want for Wish for Nowhere" - what would you name it now?
I'd name it Dick President.

3. How did you come up with the different 'art' for each of the pages?
I fell into a box of women and threw up on each of them. Then I paid a charitable host to laugh at me and take the door back to where it was supposed to be.

4. Scorch Atlas portrays the land as desolate, chaotic, engulfing. Look out your window. What do you see?
Sandwiches and liquid fuck.

5. (p135) Reminds me of Tristram Shandy. If a picture is worth 1,000 words - list a few about this image.
Pictures aren't words, they can't have the word, a word is worth no picture, a picture is a habit, a little baby throwing candles for dad to come lick its specials, I didn't.

Five Questions There:
6. Like your characters, do you look fondly on your past days?
I don't have characters. I don't have past days.

7. Why the library book design?
My dad said get paid.

8. What song best matches this book?
'Sandical Parisians' by Yarn. The 100th song written by Jon B. from Jodeci, who is dead, or who should be.

9. After writing about the children in this book, how many do you think you will have?
4, one with teeth, one will love me like a father, one will scrape a dick, one has lice.

10. What is your favorite line in this book?
"Michael Jordan's ranch."

In ten words (no more, no less) describe your next project?
Swords with swordbreath.

Posted by bl pawelek at 5/27/2010 9:01 PM | Add Comment

Alyssa Knickerbocker and Your Rightful Home


Describe Your Rightful Home in ten words (no more, no less)
You're a little girl. Your friend disappears. You are fucked.

Five Questions Here:
1. Is the Orphan Sister game still being played? Did either girl make it her rightful home?
Yes to the first question, no to the second. You think you want to win at games, but when you do, there's that sad, sinking, after-Christmas feeling of letdown. Really, you just want the game to keep going on and on. (It occurs to me that maybe this is all one big metaphor for death. Creepy.)

2. Diane never tells anyone about 'the incident' with Lydia. Good or bad?
Neither good nor bad, just human.

3. I am sure you have been asked a million times, "What happened to Lydia?" So, I will try and refrain. "What happened to Howard?"
I think Howard is one of those leathery, tanned-to-a-crisp expatriates living somewhere in the Caribbean, smelling of cigarettes & liquor & body odor, gambling at the casinos, selling watches to the tourists & barely scraping by. Maybe Lydia is back in the beach shack he rents illegally. Maybe not.

4. Let's assume that you (right now) believe in the Power of Clothes. Who would you like to be?
I've always daydreamed about time-traveling, so I would probably put on an apron & bonnet & be Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'd make head cheese with Ma & ride ponies bareback. Or, alternatively, I'd love to be Carla Bruni for a day. But only if I didn't have to be married to that little Frenchman.

5. There are many times that a literal reader may question Lydia's existence. The reader may not trust this narrator. Your thought?

I didn't write the story with this possibility in mind, but if I squint, I can see how someone might read it that way. The problem with this is that you're forced to see every aspect of the story as a fabrication: the mother, the daughter, the landscape-- and pretty soon "your" whole life is sucked down the rabbit hole of delusion, and isn't that just the definition of writing fiction? 


Five Questions There:
6. What is the answer to the final question?
Ha! You're tricky. I'm going to pretend that you just asked me "What was the best life advice you ever received?" Well, Barry, that's an interesting question. I'm going to have to go with the note that my grandfather, Charles Harold Thompson, WWII paratrooper and die-hard Bostonian, sent me before I left home for college: "Keep your bowels open and your powder dry."
7. What gave you the first idea for this book?
The scenario with the matching bracelets actually happened, when I was a little girl playing dress-up with a friend. In real life, the mistake was discovered, the bracelet was returned, and everybody laughed about it. I started thinking: What if it had gone differently? It's interesting how the smallest thing can have a profound impact on a life, like a pebble in the way of a bicycle tire.

8. Washington or Wisconsin?
Sorry, Wisconsin... it's got to be Washington. The sea, the dark trees, the distant mountains, the sky laying "like a dirty dishrag over the Puget Sound" (Tom Robbins).
9. What is your favorite movie? Why?
"Reds," in which Warren Beatty plays the activist John Reed, Diane Keaton is Louise Bryant, and Jack Nicholson is Eugene O'Neil. Why? Because it's four hours long. Because it's about artists & feminists & communists. (I guess I like "ists.") Because Warren Beatty is gorgeous. And because of the scene where Keaton says, "I'd like to see you with your pants off, Mr. Reed."

10. Ok, what happened to Lydia?
It doesn't matter. She could be dead, she could be traipsing from casino to casino with Howard, she could be a fashion journalist in France, or she could be living next door to you, waving hello as she checks her mail in her bathrobe. Either way, her impact on your life remains constant.
Describe your next project in ten words (no more, no less).
Girls in sailboats violate international water boundaries, unearth family secrets.

Posted by bl pawelek at 5/4/2010 10:48 PM | Add Comment

Molly Gaudry and We Take me Apart

 

In ten words (no more, no less), describe We Take Me Apart.
It is about women and love, and women in love. 

Five Questions Here.
1. (pg 7) You learned the game of princess. Did you play? Did you win?
Ha! I'm still scrubbing toilets. My landlord/housemate posted a chores list on the fridge. The game of princess never ends. 

2. I love the line, "I have no need for a timepiece" - do you think we rely to much on clocks?
Interesting . . . I wonder what our lives would be like if we had never invented time. Would we work? How much? How often? All right, then: yes, we rely too much on clocks. 

3. After reading this (p38): "GO UP TO BED, I'LL STILL BE HERE WHEN YOU COME BACK DOWN & I was but not really" - why is that not the saddest line ever written?
Because sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do, and that is called "making sacrifices" or "facing adversity," and these things make us stronger. 

4. Which came first, the cover art or the mother's description on pages 54-55?
The description. The cover art was the final piece.  

5. When MLP published Parts, I liked the line, "I believed then in the function of things & how things could work & become the becoming of another" - what is your most important function?
Feeding and letting out my dog. 

Five Questions There:
6. You start with Cinderella and end with Snow White. What princess did you want to be growing up? Any favorite princess song?
I think I wanted to be a foreign princess from some made-up land, but, at the same time, real. I always hated the music parts of those Disney movies and fast-forwarded through them. Exceptions include "Under the Sea" and "The Circle of Life." 

7. You must have spent many a sleepless night, choosing very safe routes along the way, how lost did it get?  
Sorry, by 'a sleepless night' I meant hours over the language & by 'safe routes along the way' I meant specific words and phrases & by 'lost' I meant tough.
Haha, thanks! In edits with J. A. Tyler, we kept cutting small things here and there, but with a book as small as mine, it got a little scary to be cutting a couple hundred words at a time. A word here, a phrase there, a line here, a few lines there, and I was like, Oh my God there'll be nothing left. But in the end it was worth it; it's better for it. 

8. What is the best thing you have read in the last month (only one)?
Julie Orringer's story collection, How to Breathe Underwater.  

9. Go to your IPod, hit random and play. What song is it and why is it important to you?
"Two" by The Antlers (Hospice). I'm not sure the song is important to me, but I really love this album. I don't know; this is a hard question. Sorry. 


10. What one book should everyone read right now (beside We Take Me Apart)?
Daniel Bailey's THE DRUNK SONNETS. 

In ten words (no more, no less), describe the project you are working on now.
Flora the Whore involves a female pimp and her star.

Posted by bl pawelek at 4/3/2010 2:03 PM | Add Comment

Shya Scanlon and In This Alone Impulse

  

In ten words (no more, no less), describe In This AloneImpulse, 
Nunchucks spun against a bloated bag of fresh horse manure.

Five Questions Here:
1. What alone gave the impulse in titling this?
As I say on the acknowledgements page, I feel like the spur for ITAI was my then-new home, New York City. The city has a way of exploding the boundaries between self and other, like being under water and breathing in. It shook me up and rattled out these tiny mostly-monologues. 

2. Why the restriction to keep all the pieces at seven lines?
It was unintentional, at first. I wrote one or two that happened to be that length, and then decided on the form as though I knew it would be the only part of the process I'd have any control over. Inside of those seven lines, what-say-what-say-what anything could happen. 

3. What is the best thing about sharing these as video readings on YouTube? What is your favorite one? 
I don't feel like I've done them all justice, really, but I've enjoyed the variation and play. I don't plan them out in advance, I just sit down and choose a poem and then try to figure out a novel way of adding a visual dimension. I also like adding my voice, exposing myself, and the opportunity to show people a different side/tone to the pieces a reader may not have seen/heard.

4. The book does have a sense of personal introspection. Why have others read them as well? 
Well, this question could as easily be asked about the writing process as such. Why have people read anything? They are introspective, yes, but they are also the journal of a journey, and I want to share that record, to reach out with it, to use it to not feel so alone.

5. Who is Tony Hoagland to you? 
Tony Hoagland is a poet who mostly works in, or out of, the confessional tradition. His work is “talky” and casual, often humorous, and among my peers, he's rather despised for it. But I kind of like him. Anyway, he seemed an interesting counterpoint to the work that I was doing with ITAI, and also as a kind of correction, as a tap on the shoulder, to jar me out of myself. I do think it's strange that he's the only poet I mention throughout the collection. Think of him as a signpost.

Five Questions There:
6. After the effort, describe the light drawn over skin (p66). 
You're the second person who has pointed out that particular line (Joe Sullivan did in his generous review). Describe it? Fleeting. 

7. So we finished the book, what will we sing? 
You've got to meet me halfway on that one. Next time you're in New York look me up, and we'll figure something out. I use the first person plural frequently throughout this book, and I think it's because of how alone I was when I wrote it. I was writing a community or relationship into being, a place where I felt safe, maybe, or at least… watched, observed. In dialog, sometimes the “we” refers to the narrator and some interlocutor, and other times it's clearly referring to a group--I like the ambiguity of who we is. We is always abit ambiguous.

8. Describe your power of resonant language. 
Is this some kind of trick?

9. What piece of art best matches this writing? 
That's tough, and probably depends on my mood. It could be anything from the fanatic urban intellectualism of Aesop Rock or Rauschenberg's crazy Combines, to Frank Warren's strangely interior/exterior Postsecret project, or the eclectic and kaleidoscopic outfits of Alexander McQueen. On a larger scale, it might be the ghost-in-the-machine architectural wonders of Rem Koolhaas, or Andy Goldsworthy's site-specific disintegrating studies of time. The book is polyvalent, and most “matches” would probably share this interesting exploration and recombination, while also insisting on remaining recognizably human.

10. If this book is an 'investigation into interiority, 'then what were the investigation's results? 
Well, that description isn't exactly accurate. I'd say the poems themselves are the investigation AND the results. But it quickly becomes complicated by issues of self vs. external reference. Are these poems “pointing” at something other than themselves? Are they signs? Or are they more like what you hold in your hand after digging around in a puddle too mud-clouded to see the bottom of? I suppose I think they're both. But I don't claim to know more about them than I do about language itself, which is to say, I'm all hunches and hints. The other answer to this question, of course, is that the results aren't yet fully in, nor will they ever be. The results are how readers respond, what you find, your attraction to “Wit, a sliver” and subsequent composition of “Save the Step.” Will they continue to resonate with people? The question of results will remain open as long as the poems continue to be read.

In ten words (no more, no less), describe what you are doing next in life. 
Write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write, write.


Rauschenberg's Combines, Collection 1954:



To read more about Shya and In This Alone Impulse, visit Noemi Press.

Posted by bl pawelek at 3/29/2010 9:05 PM | Add Comment

JA Tyler and Inconceivable Wilson

 

In ten words (no more, no less), describe Inconceivable Wilson.

Wilson leaves a woman.Wilson goes. Wilson is consumed. Gone.


Five Questions Here: 

1. The cover of your book is a black and white shot. It has the name Wilson on it. It is a bit blurry. Seems very complimentary to your story, no?

Yes, and initially we played with photographs of people, face shoots, but in the end we wanted something more abstract, less telling, and when Jeremy Spencer (editor at Scrambler Books) saw this cracked glass photo, we were instantly done with thecover search.

2. The novella is dedicated to your wife, who is "constantly waiting for me to return." How much Wilson is in you?

The obsessive nature and wandering into the mind, those are both me – but Wilson goes when I stay, and Wilson walks when I sit, so in that regard we are only slight reflections of one another.

3. Some basic logic: 

IF: darkness is a photograph (pg1)

AND: a photograph is worth 1,000 words

THEN: darkness is worth 1,000 words.

would Wilson agree?

For Wilson, the darkness is infinite and splendid with horror, but his experience with photographs is how they trap and freeze and pretend that what was, still is.

4. What is your favorite line of the book?

“Please forgive the way I look, it has been so long since this last picture was taken, and before I became so much less” – this line started the book originally, is the book now, so it must trump all other lines.

5. (p66) "A man in the dark eats my words, go and weep andcircle." Would you consider this a "theme" of the book?

Yes, and this is the book itself: Wilson goes and weeps and circles, Wilson is eaten and consumes,Wilson goes and is gone, Wilson broke through a circle, circles back, finds the end cycle.


Five Questions There

6. Wilson hallucinates, dreams, writes his name in codes, etc. Can we trust him?

Wilson’s dreams are the real, Wilson’s hallucinations are the world, Wilson’s codes are the only language – we have to trust Wilson because he is our link, our only voice, and all he says, is.

7. What song would best accompany this story?

Great Lake Swimmers : ‘Your Rocky Spine’

 

8. Page 93 seems to anchor the entire story. Was that planned?

In all reality, I wanted each page to be the anchor, and I wrote it as such. I picked the word search time thinking yes, this page must say it all without saying everything –and then the next time I sat down to write I said the same thing, and so on. I don’t know if it works in that way for readers, but that was how I took to writing it.

9. "I never knew what I was doing here" (p99) - is that the saddest line in the book?

For me, the whole book is sad. Wilson never reaches his goals, never returns, never knows what happens with the woman in red, and loses himself too eventually, piece by piece,without recompense, without intention, without happiness.

10. When I finished, the first words in my mind were: "Come. I come. I have come" as in a sequel back to the woman. Thoughts?

Interesting – I never thought in terms of a sequel or of the woman as a point to restart. Wilson has come but his coming is going, and as soon as he goes, he is gone.


In ten words (no more, no less), describe what you are working on now.

A narrative scatter, an inside world warring against outside hands.

Posted by bl pawelek at 3/22/2010 10:06 PM | Add Comment

Emma Straub and Fly-Over State

Describe Fly-Over State in 10 words (no more, no less).
Couple moves from Brooklyn to Wisconsin, have scary neighbor. Hilarious!

Five questions here: 
1. So, Wisconsin or New York? 
For me, personally? New York, always. I lived in Madison for three years, and truly loved it, but I'm afraid I am a city girl, through and through. 

2. What was the best part of writing this book? The worst? 
Writing Fly-Over State certainly helped me process my newfound surroundings. It was also really wonderful to work with Deena Drewis, one of the editors. She whipped this story into shape with great compassion and aplomb.

3. What is your favorite line of the book? why? 
Oh, I couldn't possibly pick a favorite. I will say, however, that in the last two months, since the book's release, several people have told methat they enjoyed the line about having to be introduced name first, wife second. So perhaps that'll be my vote as well.

4. Some might say this is the Story of Mud. Thoughts? 
Yes, Mud did take over the story a bit, didn't he? I suppose that's the danger of writing about a pot-smoking man-child. Clearly he's going to wanta lot of page-time. 

5. From page 52 on ... is it the love affair of Mud and Sophie? 
Well, I suppose one might read it that way, but no, I don't think so. Sophie's marriage may crumble, but it may not. In any case, I highly doubt that Mud will be the next in line for romance. I don't think he's quite equipped for that. 

Five questions there: 
1. The love letter was a great idea - where did you get it? 
I've always written love letters. To friends, to boyfriends, to myparents from summer camp. There is nothing better than getting real, proper mail. And I am so genuinely grateful to people for buying my book, that I thought, hey, why not? Surely they deserve a love letter, probably for many reasons. I think I've written about a hundred so far. 

2. Go to your IPod, hit random, what song is playing? What does that song mean to you? 
My iPod is sitting in a drawer, gathering dust. I'm afraid I hardly ever use it. I listen to the radio a lot, however, and that's pretty random. I'm a big fan of Taylor Swift. I want to eat her up like an ice cream cone. I wish I could have been that poised at 19. 

3. Describe one thing that you do religiously (beside read the bible).
Though I am not a bible reader, there is a short list of things I do believe in. I believe in art, I believe in yoga, I believe in my cats. Those things I love religiously.

4. What is your favorite piece of art? Why? 
I have two favorite pieces of art on my walls-- Maximal Rose, a painting by Susan Bee, and a lithograph of a typewriter by Hugo Guinness. Susan Bee is a friend of my family's, and her work is so colorful and engaging that it always makes me happy. My husband and I bought the Hugo Guinness a couple of months ago, as our 1st anniversary present to each other. Paper! 

5. What is the worst part of writing? 
The worst part of writing is also the best part of writing-- it's when you go back over and have to rewrite the whole damn thing. 

Describe your next project in 10 words (no more, no less) 
Novel about marriage, New York, marriage, children, marriage, parties, marriage.

Posted by bl pawelek at 11/26/2009 9:31 PM | Add Comment
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