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‘Unai Elorriaga does away with the boundaries and coordinates of conventional literature and takes them elsewhere: to the surprising literary territory of a writer with no hang-ups.
‘In these stories there is a psychological process, a learning curve, a painful jump toward crucial knowledge. In Vredaman that jump takes place toward the end, which helps the story glide along joyously, aided by the novel’s two main strengths: the innocent but brilliant, and almost shrewd language of the child narrator and the abundance of secondary stories.
‘Vredaman must be understood from a double perspective: as an approach to reality from a non-realist position and also as the practice of pure creativity…Thus while Elorriaga seeks to explain reality outside conventional lines, he doesn’t avoid it. The events that take place in the novel are more than uncontrolled inventions: they aim to give the world meaning, and are sometimes imbued with naivety…In other words, Elorriaga does whatever he wants, without concern for convention.’ — El Mundo
Unai Elorriaga @ Wikipedia
Unai Elorriaga @ goodreads
‘Plants Don’t Drink Coffee’ reviewed
‘Plants Don’t Drink Coffee’ reviewed
Buy ‘Plants Don’t Drink Coffee’
Unai Elorriaga Plants Don’t Drink Coffee
Archipelago Books
‘Four stories narrated from four different perspectives criss-cross throughout this powerful and lighthearted novel. The young Tomas — who wants above all else to be intelligent — draws us into the web of his curious mind, magnifying misadventures and stumbling upon all sorts of small wonders. Through an omniscient narrative, we learn all about his eccentric entourage, from their surrealist creation of a rugby field on a golf course, the mystery of why a couple of forty years never married, and the intrigue surrounding his grandfather’s role in a European carpentry competition.’ — Archipelago Books
Excerpt
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Video Review: Plants Don’t Drink Coffee
Shane MacGowan en Gibela – Unai Elorriaga
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‘Heaven’s stars are quasi-immortal, while Hollywood’s are fated to fade. Graciously, Trinidad’s page-sized eulogies grant a couple dozen bit players one last flash-in-the-pan. The actors tell their own stories, but Trinidad’s voice floats above them, an angel wearing shades, bestowing epitaphs, footnotes and the harsh irony of glimmer and glamour doomed in a company town. (Capitalism, like time, is cruel.) The lives of these players (including one dog, Toto) end prosaically. Still, they emit elegantly tangy poetry, as does this book.’ — Jack Skelley
Jess Smith: “Every obsession is a mystery that must be figured out.” That’s wonderful. How is poetry a way to interrogate our obsessions? And have you ever found yourself in a moment when you were a poet who didn’t want to be a poet anymore?
David Trinidad: Perhaps there’s a mystery behind every poem I feel compelled to write. Writing for me is not a completely conscious or deliberate act. It’s more of a gnawing, intuitive process. I want to figure out what I think or feel about something—usually something I’ve seen or experienced. After it’s done, the poem will teach me things, help me see differently, from the other side of the obsession, or whatever was eating at me. It enables me to let go, move forward with my life.
Regarding your second question—and a very sharp question it is, Jessica!—yes, I have found myself in that place. I seem to vacillate between not wanting to be a poet anymore, at least a public one, and feeling perfectly comfortable with it all. It’s a balancing act. You have to protect your time, and yourself, find a way of staying honest and vulnerable in your work. And you have to deal with the perils of the poetry world: powermongers, famemongers, gossipmongers, jealousy, competiveness, one-upmanship, pettiness. I guess the latter is the real world, any world. But the poems that matter come from a pure place, an untouchable place.
David Trinidad @ Wikipedia
David Trinidad @ instagram
David Trinidad @ goodreads
The Deep, Dark, Seething Tar Pit of the Past
Buy ‘Hollywood Cemetery’
David Trinidad Hollywood Cemetery
Green Linden Press
‘No one writes sharp-witted, funny, and sad all in one poem like David Trinidad. Hollywood Cemetery is dishy and soapy—any movie buff’s must-have—but beyond that, Trinidad also considers themes of death and memory. The poems are voiced by various former stars, reanimated by Trinidad’s vast knowledge and his incomparable talent for finding the pathos (and often, too, the delicious irony) in these lives.’ — James Allen Hall
Excerpts
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Readings in Contemporary Poetry – David Trinidad and Joanna Fuhrman
David Trinidad Poet on Tea With Tosh
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‘Garielle Lutz is an author who makes at least part of her living writing and editing grammar textbooks. For 25 years she has published, as Gary Lutz, short stories with titles like “Sororally” and “Chaise Lozenge.” Her introduction to the Writer’s Digest Grammar Desk Reference is unusually passionate, for that sort of thing. Her favorite unabridged dictionary is Merriam-Webster’s 1934 New International, and one gets the sense that it is always close at hand, turned to words that had not yet been deemed archaic. In her prose, lines like “As for the daughter: she was a dampered little dispatch already orderly in her dolors” have attracted an ardent audience, which over the years has raised her name into the oxymoronic echelon of “indie giant.” In truth, Lutz is a writer’s writer — and the closest thing to a cult figure in American literature, which, thanks to the top-down consolidation of contemporary publishing, is in desperate need of a little more cultishness. …
‘Lutz’s style, though surely difficult to replicate, becomes immediately recognizable after just a few pages. One of the fascinations of her work is its uniformity, and the sense that it was fully wrought and unimprovable from the very first collection. It’s in this sense that Worsted finds its humor as a title, since many of the new stories are updated fragments chopped from Stories in the Worst Way, and seem to have grown outward in the same mordant direction. This makes Worsted difficult to critique as a discrete collection. Each of Lutz’s stories indexes the rest of her work, and maintains its steady posture. Like Giorgio Morandi, she teases out metaphysical subtleties by painting the same still lifes over and over again. …
‘As a grammarian, she understands the ways gender intersects with language (beginning with but going far beyond the delicate matter of the pronoun), perhaps better than anyone else. With the publication of Worsted, Lutz officially shepherds her work into the realm of trans literature, in the same fell swoop as she playfully undoes the completeness of The Complete Gary Lutz. As revised fragments of her former life’s work, these stories are a reminder that the work of the self is unfinished too, and is as available for revision as the stuff that spouts from it.’ — Nolan Kelly
Garielle Lutz’s Favorite Books
Gary Lutz @ goodreads
I like Garielle Lutz, a lot.
Sentenced to Life: A Garielle Lutz Roundtable
Buy ‘Worsted’
Garielle Lutz Worsted
Calamari Archive
‘Garielle Lutz is one of America’s great writers. Why has her literary genius gone unnoticed?’ — The Nation
‘. . . Lutz displays an innate understanding of the grim compromises of modern life but heightens and glorifies these with [her] dizzying language. [She] refuses to let the dreary world force [her] to write a dreary sentence.’ — The Paris Review
‘Worsted feels illicit, begging to be discussed in hushed tones even amongst hip company. The book’s quiet ravishments of lives brushing up together isn’t incriminating; it’s the style that’ll get you blitzed. Lutz reminds us that sentences themselves can be pleasurable.’ — The Rumpus
‘Lutz is the new sad man of contemporary fiction. [Her] first collection turns the official notion of gender inside out, supplying a new kind of creature—call it a Lutz—which is neither man nor woman.’ — Interview magazine
‘Garielle Lutz’s sentences are among the most original in modern English, their linguistic specificity making them virtually untranslatable.’ — Hyperallergic
Excerpt
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Garielle Lutz interview and reading with Meg Tuite
Obscure Clearly: George Salis Interviews Garielle Lutz
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‘In 2018, the Poetry Society of America awarded Ron Padgett the Frost Medal, for a distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry. A busy intellectual lifetime, reaching further back than its first appearance in an avant-garde literary journal, The White Dove Review, in high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Between then and now, a staggering output of publications in prose and poetry (over 20 volumes now)—and awards, including an L.A. Times Book Prize, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, and the Chancellorship of the Academy of American Poetry from 2008 to 2015— attest to the kind of restless, prolific literary life, the vigilant, upkeeping mind that could make a significant statement about the virtue of a couple hours of frittering.
‘Good poems don’t leave us silent. But they do much more than simply add to the chatter in our minds. The right words, mots justes, become a vehicle to remind us we’re consuming perhaps an awful lot of language; straining at its limits and ripe silences for genuine expression and meaning; expending, per-minute per-day, an awful lot of concentration. It’s good for us to zone out, back off, take a walk. Breathe, as the cognitive behavioral therapists remind us. Who of us, stepping out onto a crosswalk, isn’t potentially in a twilight zone? It’s something beyond the secular sense of things, in our sense however dim that might be of eternity. We’re all, on one level, in the same boat, aged 17, 26, 35, 52, 81 or 90. Life is mortal, we each feel its urgency, pine in its slags.
‘Anne Waldman nails the general feeling Padgett’s late writing, “masterful for its panoramic humanity and mind-stopping verbal wit, its breathtaking power and beauty. We want to stay with the person in these poems all day long.”’ — Michael Todd Steffen
Ron Padgett Site
Ron Padgett’s “Pink Dust” — The Joyful Weight of Words
on ‘Pink Dust’
On ‘Pink Dust’
Buy ‘Pink Dust‘
Ron Padgett Pink Dust
New York Review Books
‘Ron Padgett is one of America’s best-known and most acclaimed poets. Admired by John Ashbery, Jim Jarmusch, and Anne Waldman, his poems have moved and delighted generations of readers with their inventiveness, their gentle humor, and above all their ability to elicit wonder. These qualities are as evident as ever in Pink Dust, whose title refers to the residue from all the author’s erasers, swept away or blown into the air. Like that dust, this is a book of memories rubbing up against the present. Its poignant reflections on old age shimmer with all the insouciance of youth.’ — NYRB
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Ron Padgett and Tyhe Cooper
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‘An achievement, in the major category. — Hilton Als
‘This first novel by Joe Westmoreland begins in 1975, when 19-year-old “Joe” leaves an abusive home in Kansas and tumbles across the country, “learning about being gay from the street-level on up.” In New Orleans he comes out, a boy with a punk heart trapped in a disco scene. When he rolls into San Francisco in 1979 he finds a home in the New Wave anti-Castro movement and in the now-vanished bathhouses and flophouses South of Market.
‘The sexual extravagance of the period is sketched with keen playfulness. As Joe’s best friend says, “I’m not bi-sexual. I’m tri-sexual. I’ll try anything once, and if I like it, I’ll try it again and again!” No matter how hard-core his surroundings, Joe remains a romantic, too malleable for decadence to tarnish. He’s a queer Candide, with Bruce Springsteen’s populism and optimism clinging to him like a tattered Old Glory.
‘”Tramps” celebrates community, the support provided by a shifting band of friends and lovers who throw down drugs and booze with the joyful exuberance of a Disneyland locomotive — a party engine that crashes headfirst into AIDS. The panic and confusion of the epidemic’s early days have rarely been so vividly evoked. Remember when poppers were thought to spread Gay Cancer? The way Westmoreland’s party boys and girls switch selflessly to care-giving is very touching.’ — Dodie Bellamy
Joe Westmoreland @ instagram
Love and Drugs in the Darkest Days of AIDS
‘Tramps Like Us’ @ goodreads
‘Tramps Like Us’ @ Internet Archive
Buy ‘Tramps Like Us’
Joe Westmoreland Tramps Like Us
MCD
‘Abused by his father and stifled by closeted life as a teenager in Kansas City, Joe, the wide-eyed narrator of Tramps Like Us, graduates from high school in 1974 and hits the road hitchhiking. But it isn’t until he reunites with Ali, his hometown’s other queer outcast, that Joe finds a partner in crime. When the two of them finally wash up in New Orleans, they discover a hedonistic paradise of sex, drugs, and music, a world that only expands when they move to San Francisco in 1979.
‘Told with openhearted frankness, Joe Westmoreland’s Tramps Like Us is an exuberantly soulful adventure of self-discovery and belonging, set across a consequential American decade. In New Orleans and San Francisco, and on the roads in between, Joe and Ali find communities of misfits to call their own. The days and nights blur, a blend of LSD and heroin, new wave and disco, orgies and friends, and the thrilling spontaneity of youth—all of which is threatened the moment Joe, Ali, and seemingly everyone around them are diagnosed with HIV. But miraculously, the stories survive. As Eileen Myles writes, “I love this book most of all because it is so mortal.”
‘Back in print after two decades and with an introduction by Myles and an afterword by the author, Tramps Like Us is an ode to a nearly lost generation, an autofictional chronicle of America between gay liberation and the AIDS crisis, and an evergreen testament to the force of friendship.’ — MCD
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Joe Westmoreland, et. al. @ Pathetic Literature launch
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p.s. Hey. ** rei, Hi. I don’t know what that means, but thank you, I think? ** jay, Hey! There’s actually been a kind of rash of haircut wanting slave guys lately, but forevernotyours has been the only one so far who requested that in an interesting way. ‘Kakegurui’: My fingers are pointed at that search term, and my eyes will be peeled. Thanks! Still enjoying your increased freedom, I’m guessing? ** Misanthrope, Well, people definitely don’t read books like they used to. Even shitty books. So there’s that. I guess that may be true even here. I would guess more people in the US recognise, say, the name Ocean Vuong than Pynchon, et. al. at the moment. It’s all just interesting to notice and analyse, I guess. Yeah, see the orthopedist. So says the guy who’s had two very painful toes for months but has yet to seek out a doctor. But you should. ** Carsten, Thanks a lot, man. Oh, the rubble, that was kind of difficult. There was a building in the town where we shot (Cherbourg) about to be knocked down/ imploded/ whatever, and that kept being delayed, and we had to wait and be ready to rush over there as soon as our spy gave us the word, and it finally did happen, and we had to change the shooting schedule to get there before they cordoned it off to people. So, yes, it was real. Yeah, we’re so happy that ‘RT’ is getting a theater release. Quite unexpected, but this distributor is run by young, daring folks, so we got lucky. Uh, the only bands/musicians I personally know at the moment only do instrumental music. But I’ll try to think further. ** _Black_Acrylic, You just need to find yourself a sexy haircutter maybe. Or maybe just enjoy having your hair cut in peace. I’m on the hunt for the ‘Pee Wee’ doc. It hasn’t hit my illegal sites yet. ** Hugo, Hey. Yeah, Michael is amazing. Bookworm was a major gift to writers and writing. And he and I have been friends for a long time, and it’s all very, very sad. A panic attack and reducing someone to tears … pretty promising initial responses, I must say. Stay confident, or find confidence and stay there as the case may be. If you love writing and are driven to write, those are the most important and aspects by far. If you ever read my early attempts at writing, and you never will, I ‘pray’, you’d probably understand what I mean. Wanting to and doing and keeping at it are all that matter. Seriously. No, I haven’t heard the new Swans yet, but of course I will. How is it? ** pancakeIan, That’s a good 50/50 reaction. I would say that’s how I choose the entries. Excellent careful reading there, thank you. I did envy that mozzarella sticks sentence. I might even steal it. Yeah, Don did a portrait of me when I was much younger. I liked it because he made me look really cute, but he didn’t like it and threw it away, I think. I knew Chris a little. I organised a reading by him at this venue where I was curating readings. He was quite old at that point and pretty grumpy, but kind of charmingly so. One should never definitely believe anything one reads these days. There’s barely any truth ‘in print’ around. ** julian, There are your everyday cruel condoms and then there are the kind that look like they could’ve dug the Eurotunnel. Good news about the new Swans. The last one or two were a little sleepy for me. I’m on it. I really like the early Swans, 80s era, the very assaultive phase, especially. They were crushing live. I quite like some of the early 90s stuff like ‘White Light from the Mouth of Infinity’ and ‘Soundtracks for the Blind’. I appreciate what they’ve been up to recent years, but I can’t say that I’m in love with it or anything. Are you a longterm fan of theirs? ** Steeqhen, I only use social media to link up blog posts and announce book- and film-related things. I never get personal there. I don’t have any inclination to do so. I’m always confused by the people who cathart there about every terrible or good thing they’re doing every day. I don’t understand why they think anyone cares and why they think anyone on social media can do anything to help or celebrate them other than adding a ‘like’ or a sad face-type icon. ** HaRpEr //, I can’t remember my friend’s argument about Dickens’ post-modern influence, but it was curiously not dismissible. Never read that Walser. Huh, now I’m really interested, of course. How curious. I’ll seek it. You mean that France is talking about banning smoking in parks and on beaches? Annoying if that actually comes about, but it’s hard to imagine that being very enforceable unless they started stationing lots of police in the parks, etc., which I don’t they will. Hope not. ** maggie, Hi, maggie! It’s very nice to meet you. Thanks a lot for coming inside and for being kind about my stuff. Huh, ere … as in ‘ere long’? There was definitely a reason, if so, but I don’t remember what the reason was. I have a million little structural and stylistic rules I set up for myself, especially in the Cycle books, and I’d have to look at my notes and so, which are in NYC. Cool question, though. It would have to do with some kind of quaintness or archaic thing that I was hoping for, yes. Sorry I can’t be more specific. I think the vast majority of the music I listen to most and am most excited by is non-viral stuff. I just did one of my gig posts here the other day that has some of the music I’ve been liking lately, and I think most of it is pretty off the big radar. I’m really into experimental music, and the magazine The Wire is really good for finding things that are not covered elsewhere if you want to take a look at it? I agree with you about Royal Trux, of course. Thanks again. What do you do and/or what’s going on with you? xo, Dennis ** Right. There up above are five books I’ve read in recent days and enjoyed enough that I am recommending them to you. See what you think? And I will see you back here in Monday.
Now available in North America 
Do you have a definite favorite book of all time? You’ve probably answered this before. I’ve called one book my favorite for most of my life. I first read White Fang in third grade in my school library because it had a wolf on the cover and I was very into wolves at the time. I’ve definitely read some better books since then, and I’m probably blinded by nostalgia at least a little. But it was like the only book I would reread for years. Still sunburned. I’m so pale you can see exactly where my hair was lying that day, it’s horrible. It wasn’t even worth it. I go outside just to get called emo by middle schoolers. But the prettiest birds are coming out more now since summer is here. Have you ever seen a goldfinch in person? Like magic.
What a wonderful blog site this is! So happy to have stumbled upon it! Dominant Daddy 59yrs. old Taxachusetts. Interested to hear favorite literature also.
Hey Dennis,
As someone who grew up in the age of Snapchat private stories and every teen being a pseudo-vlogger, my explanation or reasoning is that people don’t necessarily feel like others care (well some do think that), but instead are a bit caught up in wanting to make their menial life feel more interesting by turning it into ‘content’. The line between documenting your life for yourself and turning your life into a spectacle for others becomes so blurred that you start to feel like without sharing it, it doesn’t really matter – or that it matters more if you showcase it. You see others do it, which makes you do it, which makes them do it more, and it becomes a full cycle until some random person you met at a concert once knows what type of bowel movements you are likely to have after a meal at Subway versus the kind you would have after a Chinese. It’s so easy to post a video or image or post online, and it feels simultaneously insignificant and frivolous and also like it could potentially make you famous or validated by others… it’s probably not as sad as I make it out to be, but I think that people truly do just get lost in it, forget that life existed without social media, and struggle to live without the instant dopamine hit of a like. I’ve had my fair share of private stories and posting every thought and feeling to a collection of people as an anxious habit or reflex to feel less empty.I wonder how much damage growing up with it has done to me, versus the good that it did in connecting me with others. I’m sure it sways, but it is ultimately balanced.
I must admit that I naturally just love to discuss and talk about my life or how I feel or what I think or what I’m watching or liking, but I lack the self-importance to think that it’s profound or has never been done before. I have a healthy amount of self-esteem to know that I’m good at writing and that I’m good at expressing myself, and I also have enough respect and hubris to not get too self-aggrandising; I’m just a guy, with a sensitive nature and a love to express it.
Anyway, I could talk about all of that for hours as it’s on my mind a lot nowadays. I went to collect my Ritalin today only to find out the doctor never sent my prescription, so I have to wait til Tuesday to get it. It’s frustrating as I can feel the fogginess in my brain these past few days getting in my way.
Added ‘Plants don’t Drink Coffee’ to my to-read, I love the writing style (forgive my simplicity, foggy-brained!), so simple yet so captivating. Added Tramps Like Us as well. Erotic and horrific, love it!
“The last one or two were a little sleepy for me. I’m on it. I really like the early Swans, 80s era, the very assaultive phase, especially.”
Yeah, I don’t know, they feel like a band I’ve lost touch with . . . a lot of the recent albums have been the kind of thing I play once, then kind of forget about (though I did really like the song “Finally, Peace” off THE GLOWING MAN). Too many double albums with 10-20 minute tracks, that blur in my mind after awhile. I kind of prefer the 80s era myself, in fact I still rank CHILDREN OF GOD as a Top 100 all-time album. Speaking of which, not too long ago I had my dad sell my copy of THE CONSUMER on eBay and I made a tidy profit off it.
Hi again Dennis, sorry for the inconsistent replies. Studying has been consuming all my time lately.
I just took the last exam of my first year of med school yesterday so I am now on a sort-of break. Still gonna be working at my student clinic and doing some studying, but no exams for a while, so I finally get to breathe!
Not much interesting going on otherwise. We have been trying out some vegan soul food restaurants around here lately (since my daughter is still vegetarian lol) and they’re really incredible. NO is (maybe surprisingly?) a great place for vegan food.
Very sad to hear Michael Silverblatt is not doing well. I wish him the best. He seems like a lovely person.
Hi Dennis
Funny you talk about your early attempts at writing. Because I quite liked “Safe” when I read it about a year ago, even though I know you consider it godawful or whatever. I mean, it’s not the greatest thing, but it’s hardly bad. I would want to read my stuff as if I were another person sometimes, because I think a lot of the issues I see exist only in my head. But I remain myself, for better and for worse.
The new Swans album is ok. I actually liked the live pieces more when I heard them in person and on their album, “Live Rope.” I imagine it will grow on me a bit; I’m not a very immediate person when it comes to music, as I like to spend a good amount of time with an album. Soundtracks for the Blind took me a while to get into as well.
I went up to Antwerp today and found “I remember” by Joe Brainard btw, I am almost halfway through it now. Gives me the same thrill as “Autoportrait” by Leve. Something very addictive there. I devour a lot of books in a single day. I remember doing the same for “Period” by you and “The Immoralist” by Gide. (There are others that I forget. I think I did the same for “Naked Lunch at 13, but I can’t confirm–I dunno if you do the same.)
Anyway, I hope you have a lovely Sunday. Take care
There was an East Village vegan soul food restaurant I quite liked, with very friendly staff, but the concept must be too niche, because they went under last week.
My latest episode of “Radio Not Radio” is now out: https://www.mixcloud.com/callinamagician/612025-radio-not-radio/. Follow the dream fish into K-hole trip-hop, minute-long DIY songs, film noir samples, Brazilian and South African party music, and much more.
Did you catch Arte’s broadcast of L’HISTOIRE DE “SCENARIOS”?
What country is the RT theater release?
Oh, god, more things to add to my reading list!! You’ll have to let me know what you think of the new Swans. It’s a bit of a task to get through, but worth it in my opinion. I can see why you’d say the last two were a bit sleepy, especially leaving meaning which is probably my least favorite album of theirs. I would have loved to see them live in their prime. I saw them last year in LA at the Lodge, which was a really monstrous three hour set, and it was life-changing. Worth the aching feet from standing for that long. I’m seeing them again in Chicago at the Metro, which I’m super excited for. I’m as long term of a fan as I could be at 19. I discovered them at 15 and it was one of those moments that totally redefined what music meant to me.
That Unai Elorriaga book does look to be a winner. Do need to get my way through Gravity’s Rainbow first however, which is no small thing.
Congrats to PSG on last night’s long-awaited Champions League victory! Seems there was some bother on the Parisian streets, which I hope you managed to avoid in your part of town.
Heard that some French soccer fans went wild in Paris the other night. Was any of that near you?
So I caught up with Queer & my reaction was pretty tepid. It’s not terrible, but it’s nothing special either. It certainly looks great, but so what? Daniel Craig is a terrible Burroughs stand-in. Say what you will about Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch (& I’m no fan) but Peter Weller was brilliant. Craig is completely one-note throughout. My biggest problem is with Guadagnino though. I get that desire is his grand theme, but to reduce a man as complex as Burroughs to a needy horny bitch is just disrespectful. Even his quest for yage is depicted as nothing more than a way to control the object of his desire. But I guess it’s all about how you approach a film. I admire Burroughs too much to accept the film on its own shallow terms. And unrequited love as a theme has always bored me to tears. What bugs me is that I can’t see some young kid picking up a Burroughs book after watching this—everyhing that makes him a remarkable writer is absent here.
About the French smoking restrictions: I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Spain & Mexico made similar moves, mainy to make a grand show of how much they supposedly care for the public good, but enforcement is practically nil. Oh the many times I’ve smoked directly in front of a non-smoking sign in Spain, with the proprietor’s permission (or even the proprietor joining me)…
Hi Dennis . I did not know these authors. Elorriaga’s style is endearing……..love the sections about rugby & the boy’s uncle, and butterflies. David Trinidad has much natural humor in his writing, which I think is essential. His poetry makes me wonder how many thousands of movie actors remain totally unremembered over the past 100 years. Lutz depicts everyday minutiae in quite an entertaining manner. That has to be some kind of gift. Ron Padgett’s poem’s have a funny simplicity, and he seems like a down to earth guy, too. Someone it would be fun to have lunch with. Westmoreland sure had a rough childhood……growing up with a father like that, yikes. And , he was there during the AIDS epidemic, and survived it all .
Thanks for all that. Funny how we agree about the scary/fascinating appeal to slaves. I never knew how many attractive young guys are willing to go to such extremes with their bodies and selves , until I started visiting the blog . Well, if I see any mozzarella stick references in your future works, I’ll know where it came from . It reminds me of something in ‘Guide’……..when you said this guy’s member was ‘hot, like a lit cigarette ‘ (paraphrased). That’s stuck with me, for some reason.
Wow, I can’t believe Don Bachardy did a portrait of you and got rid of it . Even if he wasn’t satisfied, at least he could’ve given it to you ! It must have been quite an honor to curate a reading with Isherwood , even if he was a charming grump. I think the documentary said he had a bad time with cancer, near the end.
I just read your essay on that photographer Bill Henson. Had never heard of him, but lord, what an artist. Some of his models are ethereally beautiful. Have you ever heard of the turn of the century painter, Henry Scott Tuke ? His works came to mind when I saw Henson’s, even though they work in totally different mediums and styles.
later !
I have to check out Joe Westmoreland. Good to see it’s back in the print; the library copy here is “in library use only”, hmm. So all those people in the David Trinidad book are real? Wow.
I forget, do you like William Vollmann? There’s a new doc on him, more like an impressionistic portrait really. We had a sneak preview here as part of our doc fest, it’s pretty enjoyable.
Bill
Hi I really want to read David Trinidad. ‘The Late Show’ is the one I hear a lot about so I may start with that one. I actually have been keeping the ‘A Fast Life’ Dlugos collection that he edited by my bed and reading a chunk of it every day, but that’s the closest I’ve got to him.
Oh, I didn’t realise Ron Padgett had a new book out, great. And I’ve heard about that Joe Westmoreland book through Eileen Myles. Super. The Garielle Lutz also looks amazing.
Walser’s ‘The Robber’ is very very good. He’s a writer who when I read I get excessively excited about and need to run around and shout in everyone’s ear about. I read that Walser used to make Kafka roll on the floor laughing and would rejoice in reciting passages to his friends, so I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think I like him for the same reason that Denton Welch is my favourite writer. Something delicate, beautiful, eccentric, and quaint; almost simple in a way, but there’s also a deep deep confusion and sexual/gender elusiveness and a real morbid quality.
Been sort of out of it for the past few days, I don’t even know how anyone gets a job in 2025, and I just want a job in a bookstore or something like that in a cool area with cool people around. Nowhere will hire you unless you have experience, even if you have the qualifications, so it’s a nightmare. Creatively I’m as productive as ever, so I’m too busy in other things to be overly pissed off, but uh, just have to keep trying I guess. So pitiful to be turned down for something you don’t particularly want though.
Yeah, exactly as in ‘ere long’. I’m glad you like the question though I would be curious to see the notes. I kind of like having stumped you on it though, makes me feel like an attentive reader or something.
You’re probably right that I should read The Wire more but I guess with the music question I was looking less for recommendations and more some kind of personal sentiment about celebrity or popularity or maybe even history. I think my whole life I’ve had this split disgust/fascination with the idea of liking things that are very popular. Most things that get popular are not very interesting and as a little outsider or whatever it’s never going to be totally relatable or reflective of me, but there’s something really profound to me about people or art that you know a lot of other people see. I remember as a little kid I really hated any popular music kind of instinctively, but then I got so obsessed with the Beatles. The thing I always liked most about them was the idea that something that was at one point the most popular thing in the whole world could over time become this flattened image with pretty obscure details, and that piece by piece I was filling out a much fuller picture of a band and an entire time period and the context of that fame. Right now I’m listening to music that was actually being released at that time, Lil Wayne’s Da Drought 3, and even though I was like 8 years old I have a little bit of regret that I was dismissive of him and that moment while it was happening.
It’s maybe something for me about, like, being able to trace lines of influence in popular culture, which I think is basically an important skill for anyone who likes to think about art, but also I’m interested in the transformation where popularity makes something kind of hard to engage with on its own terms and turns it into a symbol with a lot of baggage you have to accept or reject. That’s one thing I found interesting in the Cycle books, there’s a huge emphasis all over those books on the image-production of celebrity and the way people take those images in as part of themselves or objects of desire. I love the way those books speak to the alt-rock moment, which seems like it was especially conscious of the push-pull of fame (or with the legacy of people like Kurt Cobain has become itself kind of symbolic of its paradoxes).
In the case of Duster, specifically, when I was in high school I got to really watch the groundwork laid for their more recent viral turn. I had been watching them slowly gain this kind of cult status on places like 4chan and rateyourmusic for years, and then suddenly a good friend of mine had a whole little fanclub of guys who were just obsessed with them and made sharing around their obscure demos and live recordings a big part of their personality. I liked their music but thought it was really odd and kind of tryhard, and that they seemed like a kind of random cult band to get hitched on like that. 10 years later those guys were apparently really onto something and Duster had a massive TikTok revival and now are kind of a canonical ’90s rock band 30 years after the fact.
If anything I probably came to like their music even more after they went viral. I’ve written a lot here and I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to say or if I have a question but I guess I have a lot of thoughts about this topic. I like the idea that the self-identification people feel with celebrities and artworks is a way of connecting with a historical moment, either the present one or something older. I was told about this blog and convinced to read your books by my very dear friend Sarah, who has commented on here a lot and is probably 500x more interested in celebrity culture than even I am. She’s always saying stuff like “celebrities are so interesting” and talking about how she loves Machine Gun Kelly and people like that.
What do I do is a kind of hard or embarrassing question for me to answer. Right now I’m unemployed in Philadelphia and I guess I mostly walk around and think about life and art and stuff. I read a lot and write sometimes and play guitar a lot. I’m currently in the process of removing myself from a pretty emotionally abusive situation with a roommate and looking for a new place. I just got done with 6 months of daily group therapy, which was great to be in and to get out of. I just got diagnosed with Crohn’s. I’m practicing my Spanish by reading Bolaño and having a lot of fun with it. I applied to go back to college this fall but I’m not sure if I’m gonna enroll or not if I’m accepted. I guess I’m sort of lost on what to do overall but I assume I’ll figure it out eventually. I’ve had a slightly rough life so just kind of coming out of survival mode for the first time at 26 and trying to stay passionate, curious, hungry, confident, etc.
Cool recommendations this week, I’ll try to pick some of these up and let you know what I think. I have to say I think it’s so cool you answer comments on here, it’s really fun to have a direct line and I think it’s a good force for the demystification of art and celebrity. I probably have enough questions about your books that it would get annoying so maybe I’ll hold back til we know each other better.
Best,
Maggie
Book recs! Everybody loves Petals of Blood from Thiong’o (It’s his last book written in English), and it’s a good book, but in my very honest opinion some part of that is an abdication of readership after he made the switch to Gikuyu. I’d also recommend The Perfect Nine, although I am partial to mythology and stories about women, so take that as you will. Thank you for the book recommendations. Also cool on the Archipelago Books shoutout. They’ve got good stuff! Amongst other work, they’re responsible for the new Laxness translations, so that’s cool. I also like the name. Forgetting who (else) has said this, but we need archipelagic thinking, with each continent being but another island in the chain. Have you read any Gombrowicz? My weekend has been spent mostly in recovery and grocery shopping, and I can’t wait to begin getting out again this week. Especially excited to meet a friend whose continued acquaintance is unlikely given that we parted ways pretty much when I was 8 and only met again at a climbing wall when I was 14, and have stayed in contact ever since. One of the best people to go look at things with, regardless of content or setting.