Rereading

So I'm rereading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, for the third time, which is impressive for me because I so rarely reread a book. To be fair, I'm rereading this one because I'm teaching it in a class on the Western. So many books, so little time. Blah, blah. Add in the fact that I'm a slow reader...so, so very slow. And I can see just how finite my lifetime reading list really is. Which could lead some people to ask: why do you keep buying all those books then? To which I reply: stay out of my private business that I just happen to be airing in this public forum, you nosey jerks. Point being, Blood Meridian is an amazing novel, which you probably already knew because you happen to read at a faster rate than I do and have consumed David Copperfield while I was reading over this for typos. Point being, it's good to be trailing the kid and the judge again, at whatever pace.

Sick

I have been sick. But not badly sick. Sick in the way where mucus leaks from your orifices...okay just the nostril orifices because otherwise that is sicker than I am at present. I am also annoyingly fatigued. So all that stuff I have to do, all that stuff that my mind keeps enumerating and ranting about, pacing around its brain pan, yelling to itself because the body just can't seem to get it together. Sick used to be fun. Sick used to be abandon-all-responsibilities fun. But now it's just all the same responsibilities plus the mucus.

Me on storySouth

My poem "Dinner with Family" is up on the superb storySouth, Issue 27, an issue packed with wonders, like stories from George Singleton and Daniel Wallace. And yeah, my piece is a poem...what of it? I can write poetry. I'm very poetic. With the poetry. My only regret is that it didn't come out in April, so I could say it was in celebration of NatPoMo.

There's a Sale at the McSweeney's Store

Just saying...

That I bought a lot of books.

I have a problem.

Coming Soon: XX Eccentric

The next Main Street Rag Short Fiction Anthology: XX Eccentric is coming soon. You can pre-order here.

I Am a Bad Person

So I was reading the essay The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s struggle to surpass “Infinite Jest.” that's in The New Yorker, and I couldn't get enough. The portrait of Wallace, the writing. The sadness. And in the back of my mind, I was wondering about when Pynchon and Salinger go, will there be essays like this. Surely, I thought, and when there are, I want to read them. That, I suppose, doesn't say much to my being "a fucking human being." Or maybe it says it all too well.

Being Gary Coleman: the Ben Tanzer Repetition Patterns Guest Essay

If you remember, I get to throw off my blogging duty...at least this one time...as part of This Tour Will Change Your Life, Ben Tanzer's virtual book tour for his new short story collection, Repetition Patterns, published by the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. Tanzer, of course, is the writer of the novels Lucky Man and Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine and is now publicizing the story collection. So appropriately enough, his topic for today's stop is marketing yourself as a writer, which naturally he entitled:

Being Gary Coleman
by Ben Tanzer

People will not find your work. Okay, they might, and they do, but mostly they won't, because there is a lot of clutter out there, waves of good to great writers, making noise and publishing, and you need to somehow rise above that clutter, if only for a moment.

So, try the following: self-absorption, saturation, compulsion, repeat.

You must love yourself and your work. Your work is a product. Like Tide, but more interesting. Your work is also an extension of you, the best you, not necessarily the most attractive you, bed head is fine, even the occasional lapses in the brushing of your otherwise pristine teeth, but your writing must rock, you must hone it, get feedback, tweak and re-tweak, and keep writing, writing, writing until you have a voice, any voice, as long as it yours.

And then you must celebrate it, like your very own Technicolor dream coat. Now, am I implying that you should think of yourself as Jesus, well Joseph? Yes of course, and Spiderman, Iman, Yoda, President Obama, Elizabeth Crane, The Ramones, Viggo Mortenson, Tom Brady, Gandolf, and even Gary Coleman if it helps. You are your brand and you must love your work. Love it so much that you want it out there because you know without question that people, some people anyway, will love it as much as you do. How do I know this? Because I do, this is how it works, even when it doesn't, see JT Leroy or James Frey.

Now saturate. And no, that is not the same as exfoliate. Well, it's kind of like that. Still, now you must blog, twitter, blog about twittering, update your Facebook status, more blogging, more twittering, get out, share links, blog about your links, make friends, shoot a video for YouTube, link to other blogs, leave comments on people's blogs, make more friends, be funny, swap books, be engaged, and available, and blog, schedule a reading, shoot another video for YouTube, twitter, Facebook, do interviews, ask people to do interviews, twitter about interviews, do more readings, blog more, be interesting, support your friends, join Goodreads, go on a virtual book tour, blog about that, and then twitter some more.

Do this compulsively.

And then repeat.

Any questions?