The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Category: Uncategorized (Page 13 of 1085)

Please welcome to the world … Joshua Escobar Demons of Eminence (Fellow Travelers Series)

 

Welcome to the world, Demons of Eminence, the debut novel of poet Joshua Escobar (aka DJ Ashtrae + Little Piñata), winner of The Bo Huston Prize 2023. Demons of Eminence is the 16th book in the Fellow Travelers Series, an imprint of Publication Studio, edited by novelist Matthew Stadler. The Fellow Travelers Series also published Kevin Killian’s Spreadeagle, Nate Lippens’s My Dead Book, STS’s Golden Brothers, and books by Shelley Marlow, Travis Jeppesen, Aeliana Nicole, and Brekan Blakeslee, among others.

In Demons of Eminence a young travel nurse and self-described cumdump observes and sanctifies the friendship between an aging gay porn star and a goth chola dropout half his age, one that leads to them throwing endless parties in the industrial scrublands of SoCal’s Inland Empire at the height of the pandemic. The title is taken from a poem written by one of the characters. Set primarily in the IE at the height of the first COVID epidemic, the story also takes us to Portland, Los Angeles, San Diego, Oaxaca, and Mexico City.

“Hail the sad-boys, demon twinks, puppy punks, burly cholos, gurlie goths, marijuanos, gay tweekers, DL dudes, plaid vaqueros, circuit fairies, trans otters, lesbian-poet-theorists, and leathered manwhores who people Joshua Escobar’s inspired and lovingly rendered universe. Suspended between COVID stay-at-home orders and the strained capacity of a hospital’s ICU, a glitter-spangled affirmation blazes through suffering, loss, and loneliness in a euphoria of sex-parties and drug-fueled raves around Southern California’s Inland Empire. In hard-edged prose with an ear for the feverish poetry of gay banter and elective joto affinities, Escobar expertly captures the intergenerational ‘crossfire of pain and ambition’ as the festival of youth begins to fade into the night horizon between Fontana and Los Angeles.”

—Roberto Tejada, author of Why the Assembly has Disbanded and Carbonate of Copper

Joshua Escobar’s Demons of Eminence is a delirious and intoxicating off-road trip through the heady and sexed-up world of a young travel nurse at the height of COVID. He’s also a hornithologist on the make, undefended and open to experience, which includes hookups, friendships, and ecstatic states of being lost—to music, men, a nation’s insanity. Simultaneously wised-up and questing, full of wonder, sexual valor, and radical turns of mind, it’s a novel like no other.

—Nate Lippens, author of My Dead Book and Ripcord

 

Here’s the start of Chapter One: Blood Sport, which also appeared last Fall in Your Impossible Voice:













In 2025, Joshua will give readings from Demons of Eminence in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and LA in March, in Houston and New Orleans in April, and in New York and the East Coast in June, mostly at indy bookstores. At the end of last year, some of Joshua’s friends came together to celebrate the launch of the novel at a combo party-and-reading that gives a good taste of the book. During the launch Joshua talked about the places and parties that inspired the novel, Matthew Stadler talked about The Bo Huston Prize, and Patrick Kiley (who runs one of the Publication Studios that actually produce and distribute the Fellow Travelers Series books) talked about the art of printing and binding. Then each of the guests read a selection from the novel: Julio Acevedo/Lady J Monroe; Anna Moschovakis; Monique Quintana; Roberto Tejada; James Nulick; Brittany Menjivar; and Matthew Stadler.

 

 

The writing and production of Demons of Eminence was supported by The Bo Huston Prize, which honors the life and art of Bo Huston, author of four books of prose before his untimely death at age thirty-three. Diagnosed HIV-positive, Bo went to Zurich in 1991 to undergo an experimental treatment for AIDS. His essay, “Meditations in Zurich,” published posthumously in Thomas Avena’s anthology, Life Sentences: Writers, Artists and AIDS (Mercury House, 1994), is a nonfiction account of this experience. Bo’s novel The Dream Life is also part of the Fellow Travelers series, with an afterword written by his close friend and colleague, Rebecca Brown. This year’s winner of The Bo Huston Prize is Amercan prose writer and graphic artist Raegan Bird; she will complete her first novel, Hard to Say Not Knowing, to be published in the Fellow Travelers Series. More info about the prize here.

 


photo of Bo Huston in the early 1990s

 

Joshua Escobar is also author of the chapbooks Califorkya Voltage (No, Dear/Small Anchor) and xxox fm (Doublecross Press), and a full-length collection of poems, Bareback Nightfall (Noemi Press and Letras Latinas), that was a finalist for the 2021 California Book Award. He edits the student magazine, Open Fruit and lives in West Hollywood, CA.

 


Image of Escobar wearing a hand painted leather mask sold out of a gay bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

 

As a bonus for all you readers, here are some excerpts from Josh’s four-part poetry book, Bareback Nightfall (Noemi Press):




 

Check out the Instagram for the Fellow Travelers series for a Q&A with Escobar and Brittany Menjivar.
Check out Josh’s instagram for merch and ephemeria related to the book.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. Today the blog reconstitutes its red carpet function in order to do its part in ushering the first novel by the writer/poet Joshua Escobar into the cold, cruel world. But less cold as of today. Please eyeball the sample and related info re: this very fine, spanking new chunk of narrative prose and see if it seems like something you would like to gulp down in its entirety. Much gratitude to the venerable, never endingly admirable Fellow Travelers Series for the post and mostly for the exciting book. ** PL, Hi! Oh, gosh, I don’t know all that much about the Estate business or the workings of Matta-Clark, I wish I did know more. But I do have a friend who’s kind of a Matta-Clark expert, and I’ll shoot him a message and see if he would pony up some info or direct me to some extant source to pass along. Apologies for not having stuff to tell straight off the bat. I’m excited that you’re so interested in his work. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Yury’s doing A-okay. I hope your mid-week isn’t boring you to tears. ** James, Well, then for sure don’t look into the microscopic mites that apparently live in every pillow that everyone in the world sleeps on, and definitely don’t seek out microscopic photos of them, and, on second thought, I probably shouldn’t have even mentioned that, sorry. Thank you for braving the post in detail. I should hire you as the blog’s publicist or something. Interesting about even-steven. And somehow surprising that the name Steven existed as early as 1866. I’ve never used a Kindle, so I don’t know. For me it’s either books or pdfs. Wow, you are powering through the GbV oeuvre. You might even end up hearing the gigantic all of it if you keep that up. Favorite GbV album is very hard, as you can imagine. Historically, when people ask me that question, I often say ‘Under the Bushes, Under the Stars’. But I don’t know. Actually, their brand new one ‘Universe Room’ sounds thus far like it might be up their among their best. If you want to investigate Robert Pollard sans GbV, his album ‘Kid Marine’ is a masterpiece. Anyway, I should stop. I could blather about them for years. I hope English gave you whatever its warmest greeting would consist of. ** _Black_Acrylic, Bad times are already here, my friend. ** Dominik, Hi!!! That show sounds cool, naturally. Ah, PSB. Nice. That lyric attained its score without my even having to hunt. Hold my place, I’ll be back in no time, As I buy some drugs for this girlfriend of mine, Got my cash and I know where to find, Just the perfect gift for that girlfriend of mine, Only cash, but I know where to find, Just the perfect gift for a love that’s sublime, G. ** Steeqhen, Ha, what do you know! Gay rugby team, wow. But then why the hell not, I guess. I bet there’s no gay American football team. Wait, there probably is. I’m the worst at figuring out what gay guys like to do. Good news about the lack of gas. ‘Amazing’, it doesn’t get much better verbiage-wise than that. Cool. Uh, I don’t know the names of teeth. A molar, sort of midway back in my mouth. February has been relatively friendly. I’m way over the cloudy, gloomy, wet skies it has in tow however. I hope yours is being sparklier. ** Sypha, Hi! Yes, for the longest time there was some strange bug in the verification system that was keeping lots of people out of here, but it seems like it has finally magically been repaired at least partly because no one has written me to say ‘I can’t get inside your blog’ in a while, and I was getting those messages all the time. Nice, I’ll read your review. Everyone, Sypha aka the excellent fiction writer James Champagne has reviewed James Nulick’s novel PLASTIC SOUL, which was the previous walker of the blog’s red carpet, on goodreads, and that means here. ** jay, Hi, jay! So happy to add to your DVDs. No coffee, no problem. I hope you’re enjoying the great but unfortunately a bit nippy and drab at the moment Paris. “God Jr.’ to the rescue! If you guys find exciting nooks and crannies in the local environs, do pass them on. Hugs from across town! ** Tyler Ookami, I’m going to have to investigate that. How strange. What a fitting audience for Abramovic’s crapola. And The Chapman Bros. thing. Wow. If only that cult wrote experimental fiction. Poor Cattelan to have this whole, sometimes quite terrific body of work get dumbified by his little banana joke. Anyway, that sounds extraordinarily lame. Worse than I had even imagined. ** Steve, Based on my antibiotics use, you should start feeling just the slightest bit better today. Excellent concept for your album. Even, dare I say, potentially viral. I do understand artists not thinking they have anything original and sufficiently artistic to say about politics to put it in their work and thinking that’s something more important to relay to their followers in the work’s margins. Everyone, Steve has interviewed UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE director/actor/co-writer Matthew Rankin and actor/co-writer Ila Firouzabadi here. ** HaRpEr, I know that, at least with Bresson, there are all kinds of rights issues. And his widow is very, very controlling of his work. But she’s very old so … we’ll see. Yeah, Oklou is a real find. I wondered if people in London knew the Ben Wilson things IRL. I’m going to look at my shoes a lot the next time I’m there. So sorry about your mom. Complicated, no doubt, but stressful no matter what. Same with me and my parents. I used to try to pretend they were just our house’s hired security detail. ** Bernard Welt, Whoop! Blowing your considerable mind is a conquering Mt. Everest kind of thing. Yeah, curious about Brady Corbett’s unexpected fate. I can’t imagine seeing ‘The Brutalist’. I saw his first film only because Scott Walker did the score, and that was enough to ward me off. I’ll stick to following the charmingly wishy-washy futures of Billy Mumy and Butch Patrick, thank you. ** Darby☏, Hi! Your first comment actually appeared here a few days ago, and I responded then. Curious Twilight Zone moment there. Your thoughts on Rimbaud would be most highly prized. Verlaine was wild while he was fucking Rimbaud and then he turned into an alcoholic lump of a guy who sat around in cafes giving interviews about Rimbaud and signing autographs. Trip! Where? Have the most amazing fun! ** Bill, Given how many thematic art posts I do, the chances definitely are that Sampson has been here before, yes. I don’t in fact know Q. Hayashida. I like her name. Okay, on it, thanks, pal. And I hope you keep emerging. ** Right. Go back to studying the new novel placed before you today please? Thank you. See you tomorrow.

Micro

Yukari Ehara

 

 

Sean Miller


Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.


Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from musée du Louvre, Paris, France.


Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from LA County Museum, California.


Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France).


Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from Tate, London, U.K.


Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.


Microscopy of Dust Sample Collected from Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.

 

 

Joe Sola
Joe Sola exhibits six microscopic paintings inside gallerist’s ear.

 

 

Willard Wigan


Noddy Holder through the eye of a needle (2016)


Castle through the eye of a needle (2016)

 

 

Slinkachu



 

 

Microscopic Alcohol Art

 

 

Ben Sack

 

 

Takahiro Iwasaki

 

 

Jonty Hurwitz
Artist Jonty Hurwitz has created sculptures so tiny that they can only be seen using an electron microscope.

 

 

Donald Eigler, Crommie, and Christopher Lutz
The mirage occurs at the foci of a quantum corral, a ring of atoms arranged in an arbitrary shape on a substrate. The quantum corral was demonstrated in 1993 by Lutz, Eigler, and Crommie using an elliptical ring of iron atoms on a copper surface using the tip of a low-temperature scanning tunneling microscope to manipulate individual atoms. The ferromagnetic iron atoms reflected the surface electrons of the copper inside the ring into a wave pattern, as predicted by the theory of quantum mechanics.

 

 

Vincent Bousserez

 

 

Vik Muniz

 

 

Zebrafish Larvae

 

 

Malcolm Douglas Chaplin
Simon Fraser University’s Nano Imaging Lab has produced the world’s smallest published book. The only catch: you’ll need a scanning electron microscope to read it. At 0.07 mm X 0.10 mm, Teeny Ted from Turnip Town is a tinier read than the two smallest books currently cited by the Guinness Book of World Records: the New Testament of the King James Bible (5 X 5 mm, produced by MIT in 2001) and Chekhov’s Chameleon (0.9 X 0.9 mm, Palkovic, 2002). By way of comparison, the head of a pin is about 2 mm.

 

 

Anatoly Konenko

 

 

Adalberto Abbate

 

 

Lisa Swerling

 

 

Samuel Peralta
Semi-retired Filipino-Canadian physicist and writer Samuel Peralta’s Lunar Codex project will include a digitized collection of art, poetry, music, film, podcasts, books, and magazines from 30,000 creatives, and as the name suggests, will be permanently installed on the moon through unmanned rockets. So how exactly will Peralta transport works from thousands of artists to the moon? Well, they certainly won’t be physical. Peralta will be digitizing the various materials by transferring them to memory cards. More specifically, lightweight and nickel-based NanoFiche cards that can withstand harsh environments.

 

Kris Martin
Like much of Martins work, “Microscope” is a readymade he has cunningly tampered with; instead of magnifying objects, it makes them smaller. ‘When looking at people from a distance, they become minuscule, like ants.

 

 

Yury Deulin

 

 

Frederik De Wilde
Frederik De Wilde is a Belgian interdisciplinary artist whose artistic practice lies at the intersection of art, science, technology and design, exploring the concepts of inaudible, intangible and elusive. As an innovation consultant for the Flemish Ministry of Culture, he is also a member of the jury of Innovative Partnerships 2020. In his practice, he critically examines the radical changes that technology imposes on society and our environment, sometimes on the technological side, often in the conceptual, perceptual, sensory and human domains. Ultimately, he seeks to (re)connect our humanity – which requires a symbolic rewiring – while making us enthusiastic about the unknown and the future.

 

 

Wendy Originals

 

 

Jon Boy

 

 

Jonah Samson

 

 

Liliana Porter

 

 

IBM

 

 

Hasan Kale

 

 

Eldon Garnet
Memories of Tomorrow is both a form and a concept. The sculpture presents an idyllic past and the current collapse of nature as a synthesis. It is a sculptural representation of industrial disequilibrium. Memories of Tomorrow presents the possibility of returning the machine to nature, of constructing harmony and compatibility. This sculpture is symbolically loaded totems of possibility.

 

 

Nikolai Aldunin

 

 

Juan Miceli

 

 

Abigail Goldman

 

 

Mykola Syadristy
Mykola Syadristy is recognized as the best miniaturist in the world. The Mykola Syadristy Museum of Microminiatures is located on the territory of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine. This museum is a special place, because all the works of the master are made by hand, according to personally invented technology for each type of work.

 

 

Maurizio Cattelan

 

 

Joshua Smith

 

 

Anatoliy Konenko

 

 

Matthew Albanese

 

 

Ben Wilson
Ben Wilson, since 2004, has spent most days painting whimsical miniatures on some of the millions of flattened blobs of chewing gum that are spat out on the city’s paving stones.

 

 

Liza Lou

 

 

Zadok Ben-David
Yemen-born, London-based artist Zadok Ben-David has just realized People I Saw But Never Met. This work contains more than 3000 metal figurines. Each figure is inspired by a photograph captured in the street by the artist at a time of his life.

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Totally understood, the internet is like a stress machine these days. My pleasure re: PL. Haha, Sebadoh’s mistaken Death Metal first impression. Ah, Britney at long last. Rollercoaster of love (say what?), Rollercoaster yeah oohh oohh oohh, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, but they probably would have flunked him. Vwave, ooh, I don’t know about that. Thanks, Ben. Pretty enticing, and, yeah, if a related post floats to your surface, please have at it. ** Misanthrope, I can’t really think of anything coming from the top right now that isn’t moronic. Yury goes to sleep at, like, 4 or 5 am and wakes up at, like, 2 pm, and he’s still a workaholic. I’m trying to think of the Chinese food equivalent to cheesy crust, and I can’t. I guess it would involve sesame. ** Bernard Welt, Howdy, B. I would be most interesting to talk with you after you’ve had a couple of bong hits if that’s any encouragement. I know who Patti LuPone is. I don’t if I’ve ever heard, read or seen her do anything but say or do rebellious things though. Glad you agree re: Simone’s genius, and of course you do. I didn’t know Tim was into her, did I? Actually I have no idea what Tim’s taste in music was other than church music. Huh. Hot stuff, you are and have always been. You just always needed to put your nose where you feared it didn’t belong. Or something. Nice! Intelligence survives thus far. You might have done a McCay Day, true, hm. The first years of the old blog are still a bunch of complicated data on a hard drive that I still need to upload and start restoring, but it’s so much work. Point is, it might be in there. Anyway blah, blah, always amazing, yes. ** Sypha, Wow, a rare visit from Mr. Champagne. Hello there. Based on my Facebook scrolling, you seem to be doing interestingly out there. And you were right! How’s it going, pal? I restored your ‘American Psycho Day’ not so long ago, if you didn’t see that. ** James, I presume the aliens don’t think it’s mumbo jumbo. And I could live without carnivores, so we’re even. Well, my teen actor friends might have faded into something much more important but much less viral. This is way too old school for you, but I was friends with the boy (Wayne Stam) who played an alien boy on the second season of the old TV series ‘My Favorite Martian’, and he ended up being a respected scientist although weirdly he made a brief return to acting as an adult as a dancer in the video for Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call My Maybe’. The Farina book is still in print but only on Kindle. You’re forging ahead with GbV. You’re a saint. You only have, let’s see, 37 albums left to go. ** Steeqhen, Hi. American football seems like something that should’ve died out years ago like Pet Rocks or something. It’s so laborious and clunky, and even though I have no personal interest in rugby, it seems like it has all the good things about American football without the parts that make you either fall asleep or make you want to pull your hair out. ** PL, Your read on ‘Emilia Perez’ is pretty much word for word what everyone whose opinion I respect has said about it. I too think art should have no responsibility. I guess I think it should ideally just intermediate betwixt marker and receiver with a developed sense of fairness. I like ‘Purple Rain’, of course. I’m a little burnt out by it after hearing it playing somewhere or other for years. My favorite Prince album is ‘Sign ‘o’ the Times’, I think. I’ve just recently gotten into Oklou after someone here recommended her. I like her work, yeah. She’s playing here soon, and I’m wondering whether to go see her or not. I’m not interested in Lady Gaga. In fact I’m kind of anti-interested in her. I do kind of like that early single ‘Poker Face’ though. I love Gordon Matta-Clark. How great that your teacher is introducing you guys to him. He’s a very special artist. I moved from LA to NYC in 1983, so I missed most of the pre-gentrified SoHo stuff. I did have a friend who lived there in an absolutely massive loft who only paid $200 a month rent for it, which is mind-boggling to think about. I was in NYC for the brief lived East Village art/performance scene when that was still a raw, rough area. That was quite heady and fun. I can tell you more if you tell me what would be interesting to hear about. ** Tyler Ookami, Hi, T. I agree, but I guess I like the frustration. I sort of live by the ‘confusion is the truth’ motto. Thanks a lot for the links. I don’t know Terry A. Davis. I’m intrigued by my first glance at one of his videos. I’ll pursue him. As far as I know, no one has lined up Pizzagate with ‘TMS’, but what a curious comparison. Huh. I’ll think more about that. Yeah, the BJM cult has always escaped me. From what I’ve heard, his thing is pretty easy to pick apart. Well, yeah, not to mention that you could make 5 to 10 exciting experimental films with just one of those ads’ budgets. ** Steve, I keep waiting for the protest song to come back into vogue. Should be any day now. Luck with the meds. Seems like that should do it. Agreed about the Oklou. Strange that she’s French, or strange that there’s something interesting actually happening in borderline mainstream French music. ** Lucas, ‘Blacks’ is my favorite Xiu Xiu song. Thank you for the little vid. Huh, he really revamped it. Nice to see you too, of course. Your hair looks very cool. Taking school seriously … yeah, there must be a way. I was never so good at that. Optimistic! Yes! ** James Bennett, Hey, James. I’m doing alright, thanks. I’ve seen Laffoleys in person, and, actually, reproductions are really just fine in his work’s case. They’re not about brushwork or anything. His appeal … I have an inherent deep interest in artists who need to create their own unique architecture/structure in order to fully convey what they’re excited or fascinated by. And I like work that’s ultimately opaque but is aesthetically so precise that you have to trust its instincts. Something like that? Yeah, ‘Dielman’ is so great. Do you know Akerman’s other work. She’s a pretty great artist generally, I think. Your attitude towards the work you’re doing sounds absolutely right to me. Your certain limits could seem like a frontier to your readership, you know. Interesting about the recurring false sentimentality impulse. Good question about what I come up against in first drafts. I honestly don’t know. I’m always so reliant on future editing when I’m writing first drafts that I don’t pay that kind of attention until later, and, yeah, I’d have to think about that. Interesting and I will. Thanks for the itchy thought. ** HaRpEr, Hi. I hadn’t seen that Gary Hume. How strange. Is ‘Une Femme Douce’ not on Criterion Channel or something? I guess the restoration was reasonably recent. The big victim of that, ‘Four Nights of a Dreamer’, has finally been restored after years of promises to do so, so hopefully it will be able to be seen without the fading and scratches one of these coming days. Yeah, exactly, about the Jobriath doc. It’s crazy how important the sound mix part of filmmaking is. Zac and I spent 6 weeks every day finessing ‘RT”s sound in extreme detail, and the changes were often so slight that it wouldn’t seem to have mattered, but it’s amazing what a difference it makes. ** Uday, Hey. I too was delighted to see ‘gimlet-eyed’ in the headline of the Walter Robinson obit. First use of that term I’d heard in, gosh, decades. Thanks about the galerie shows. I used to curate actual art shows in the 90s and early 00s, and I miss it, and this way I don’t have to get permissions even. My position on Valentines Day? Mm, it’s nice that love has a day, and I remember it being interestingly pressured when I had a secret crush on someone and VDay presented the opportunity to subtly sneak that crush to the crushee in a formally acceptable way. I’ll write you back today, btw. Yesterday got away from me, sorry. ** Okay. Squint. See you tomorrow.

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