Friday Five: 5 Best Things J.A. Tyler has read recently

(I jacked this photo from the awesome interv. w/ J.A. Tyler at The Faster Times. Hope everyone is cool with that).

Like I said yesterday, Mudluscious is awesome and I'm thinking just by association maybe, that editor J.A. Tyler is cool. Though his publishing schedule seems pretty prolific, his own writing is found in a lot of places as well.

J. A. is the author of Inconceivable Wilson (scrambler books, 2009), Sinatra (vox press, 2010), In Love With a Ghost (willows wept press, 2010), A Man of Glass & All The Ways We Have Failed (fugue state press, 2011) and other upcoming books. His work has also appeared in Diagram, Sleepingfish, Caketrain, Fairy Tale Review, elimae, & Action, Yes among others.

In addition to all that madness, books from Mudluscious can be found at: www.mudlusciouspress.com.

Here are the five best things J.A. has read recently:

1. Sleepingfish 8 just released from the always primed & bursting Derek White, this time in editorial-tandem with Gary Lutz, & they turned out an issue that was in the words of Soul Coughing, ‘aesthetically pleasing, in other words, fly’. Works by Sasha Fletcher, Blake Butler, Dennis Cooper, & far too many others to name. I loved that thing.

2. I read a note on the wrapper to a pair of chopsticks – it said: ‘please enjoy this good & delicious, the dynasty of Chinese culture &’. Those words amaze me.

3. Everything I read from Publishing Genius Press including the recent Easter Rabbit by Joseph Young, A Jello Horse by Matthew Simmons, & Mlkng Sckls by Justin Sirois. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with this mad mad press.

4. I am sitting by a sign that says ‘Rob Schneider for America’s Libraries’ – I don’t know, it scares me on many levels.

5. Baby Leg was an enormous book: a hardback version of a formerly serialized (online) story by Brian Evenson & the debut release from the newly formed New York Tyrant Books – covered in Evenson’s own bloodied fingerprints this was a book that I thought about for days after I finished, the images roaming my head & filtering into the rest of me.

More after the jump...

review: The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

The Unnamed
by Joshua Ferris
Reagan Arthur Books, 2010

If you hear someone describe this book as "about a lawyer," they're lying. This book is no more about a lawyer than McDonald's is about floor tiles. Both entities contain their descriptors, but each is about something completely different. Instead this is a book about impulses, uncontrollable impulses. It's a book of family and commitment and being. It's a book of relationships and marriage and that "I do" phrase. This book is not about a lawyer.

It's also a book about illness, and mental illness. I once read an essay something or another about how recent literature has taken a discernible bent towards dealing with medication and the effects of pharma (someone send me the link...I think it was at n + 1, but I couldn't find it...).

Tim Farnsworth is subjected to bouts of uncontrollable walking. Not pacing, but walking, the kind where he strips halfway down and just goes and goes with no control. Due to this ailment, he is strapped to his bed, he misses work, he leaves places with no announcement or goodbye. He tries and hides this from his workplace, saying that his wife has cancer, but it affects his career, destroys his career.

No one has this certain walking disease, the New England Journal of Medicine can't figure it out, all the specialists this side of the Mayo and Cleveland clinics can't figure it out. Tim is alone in his disease.

But he is not alone in his life. His wife picks him from far off distances, his daughter Becka becomes a babysitter for her father. He misses large chunks of their life from work, and then eventually misses large chunks of their lives due to his walking.

Eventually, Tim ventures on his own, alone to handle the disease. Ferris rightly details the frantic nature of Tim's walking and the scant details he is able to retain, finding himself in public parks and baseball fields, this is where the genius of Ferris is really evident. It's the third section, second chapter and it is descriptive, it is fast, it is perfectly applicable to Tim's situation, it is some of the best writing I've seen in awhile. An excellent combination of anyplace-highway land and the menacing rambling thoughts of Tim that mixes his lawyer-ese with bouts of soul-bashing, it is a stumble into madness, physical breakdown and loneliness.

Ferris, like in his previous novel, is deft at changing pace and perspective. We see Tim, then his wife Jane, their stories told separately in some sections, but intermingling where appropriate. The third-person narrator that Ferris invokes is sometimes unreliable to great effect, such as Tim meeting an old friend in a restaurant, and I'll leave it at that.

Tim is obstinate, but also afflicted. His disease causes pain on others, he eventually learns how to handle it, with a potent pharma-cocktail. Then, in many ways, it's too late.

There are some disappointments here. Tim's disease described is vague and unknown, but it's almost too much so. Tim walks a lot, why can't he stop and talk to someone? Why does he end up in random places, why doesn't he just turn back around? Why doesn't a treadmill work very well? Why can't he walk laps or in a specific area? Simple questions like those are never fully addressed, the reader is just expected to be in agreement, the suspension of belief almost too great to get at Ferris' main point---the bounds of marriage.

There are some mixed reviews, but most of those come from too many comparisons to the "other" work, a clever conceit with a lot of funny moments. This is not more of the same, there is really nothing funny or humorous at all.

But this is a book that Save(s) Ferris from just being a gimmick. It would have been easy for Ferris to take the Max Barry route, writing clever corporation satire one after another in a time and place where that is vogue. This firmly puts Ferris on the other side of the fence, into that "serious" writer side. I would be surprised if some consider this book better than Then We Came...but that doesn't matter. Because Ferris puts his career in a steady upward trajectory with this one, it builds and diversifies at the same time. If people doubted Ferris before, The Unnamed shows Ferris to be no joke.

More after the jump...

Friday Five: 5 Best Things Molly Gaudry has read recently

If you spend some time on the literary interwebs, two words that begin to appear repeatedly are "Molly Gaudry." Yes, from what I can figure out she is a real person and has a real (novella) book from Mudluscious called WE TAKE ME APART. Most recently, I've been enjoying her work over at Big Other where she convinces writers to submit embarrassing childhood photos. Quite impressive really.

For the five best things she's read recently, Molly chose five introductory paragraphs, at random, from an anthology she's editing for Flatmancrooked tentatively titled Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narratives (due out fall 2010) and will feature over 50 writers. Plus, here's a bonus cookie recipe she said was good.

1) Aimee Bender's "Appleless," from The Fairy Tale Review

I once knew a girl who wouldn't eat apples. She wove her walking around groves and orchards. She didn't even like to look at them. They're all mealy, she said. Or else too cheeky, too bloomed. No, she stated again, in case we had not heard her, our laps brimming with Granny Smiths and Red Deliciouses. With Galas and Spartans and yellow Golden Globes. But we had heard her, from the very first; we just couldn't help offering again. Please, we pleaded, eat. Cracking our bites loudly, exposing the dripping wet white inside.




2) Blake Butler's "The Gown from Mother's Stomach," from Ninth Letter and Scorch Atlas (Featherproof Books)

The mother ate thread and lace for four weeks so that her daughter would have a gown. She was tired of not being able to provide her daughter with the things many other girls took for granted. Their family was poor and the mother's fingers ached with arthritis so she couldn't bring herself to sew. Instead she chewed the bed sheets until they were soft enough to swallow. She bit the curtains and gnawed the pillow. With one wet finger she swiped the floor for dust. God will knit it in my womb like he did you, she murmured. When you wear it you will blind the world.

3) Gary Lutz's "The Preventer of Sorrows," from Stories in the Worst Way (Calamari Press)

At some point I played up to myself long enough to be living in a room that was scarcely part of the house it was tacked onto. Mornings, the open space between the bottom of the door and the carpet admitted a scalene wedge of light from more substantial regions of the house. Things besides light could have got in. It was my fault for not having insisted on a door that locked.

4) Michael Martone's "Rumination"

I think of him thinking about his cows. I never even knew he was a dairyman. At the Starbucks in the Student Union where I worked he’d ask me about the steamed milk—real milk, right?—in the latte. I think of that now. He’d nurse the drink all day, staring off into space, the space so thick I could almost see that electromagnetic soup of digital bleats bawling from the laptops, the cell phones, the other students all around him were nudging and pawing, grazing through their email, their texts. I drifted over to him, started talking. He bought me a macchiato stained with milk and never let on he left a dairy farm to come to school. Though once early on, now that I think about it, he told me one could major in ice cream if one wanted to. I majored in numbers. Made ends meet. Thinking about it now, there were infinite silences between us like the silences between the bits of the binary alphabets herding around us in the ether. He didn’t say much at all, but that is the nature of farm boys, I guessed, or at least the ones I met back then, weaned in the vacuums of all those empty acres out there.

5) Stuart Dybek's "Fiction," from Tin House

Through a rift in the mist, a moon the shade of water-stained silk. A night to begin, to begin again. Someone whistling a tune impossible to find on a piano, an elusive melody that resides, perhaps, in the spaces between the keys where there once seemed to be only silence. He wants to tell her a story without telling a story. One in which the silence between words is necessary in order to make audible the faint whistle of her breath as he enters her.

More after the jump...

Lit Randomness: James Patterson, Book pirates, Dennis Cooper, Kavalier & Klay, Philip Dick

This James Patterson piece is not what you think: At NY Times Magazine.
Really this is fascinating. Writers CAN make money! A lot of money!

Philip K. Dick & the last years in Los Angeles: At LA Times (h/t Jacket Copy)

How Kavalier & Klay ruins comics for a comics guy: At The Comics Journal (h/t Bookslut)

That epic Dennis Cooper/Blake Butler piece you probably already read: At HTML Giant.
Well, read it again. It's that good.

A book pirate named The Real Caterpillar: At The Millions.



More after the jump...

Lit Randomness: Joshua Ferris, Stephen Elliott, Rudy Wurlitzer, Rules for Writing, Charles Plymell & more

The Joshua Ferris...triple! Oh my!
At Powells, with Reagan Arthur.
At B&N.

Or maybe you prefer Jersey Shore? Lit Kicks does. (from Vol.1 Brooklyn).
The only question remaining: Is Ferris the Eggers or Safran Foer of 2010?

Caleb Ross' fav. upcoming small press books: At Caleb J Ross (sounds like a clothing store.)

A Rudy Wurlitzer Double!
At PopMatters.
At Bookworm (from Maud Newton).
The only question remaining: Is Wurlitzer the William Vollman or Thomas Pynchon of 2010?

You've seen this: THE NY TYRANT GUIDE TO NOT BEING A HORRIBLE WRITER IN THE YEAR 2010. At Vice.
But Vol. 1 Brooklyn breaks it down.

An interview with Charles Plymell, who knew all the Beats, apparently: At Outside Writers Collective.

DIY Book Tour by Stephen Elliott: At the NY Times.
He's in the NY Times?!? (assist by Vol 1.)

More after the jump...

review: When The Cats Razzed The Chickens & Other Stories by Mel Bosworth

Check back tomorrow for the 5 best things Mel has read recently...



When The Cats Razzed The Chickens & other stories
by Mel Bosworth
Folded Word, 2009
(Nice handmade & e-versions available!)


I've never met Mel Bosworth, only exchanged some emails, but if I were to see him, I think I would stalk him for awhile, watch from afar, as he shovels snow or goes to the bar or the coffeeshop or shops at Costco. I would watch him, maybe not like a hawk, but very closely still, just to find out how absurd he really is, before I actually introduced myself.

Because here's the question for Mel--does he believe these stories? Does he tell friends these stories in all seriousness, with no smiles or grins? How sarcastic is Mel Bosworth really, if he's sarcastic at all? I really don't know. Sometimes I felt Mel was telling jokes, sometimes I thought he was revealing spiritual places, other times---both.


See, take this story: "Leave Me as I Lessen." The first line is--"I"m stuck to the beach, melting." Okay, funny haha. But the story really is about someone melting, fading away, not sinking, on the beach and a family takes pictures around the person as an attraction, then as a horror show, and by the end the father kneels in wonder. In between there are lines like--"Dad instructs the children not to bother me. He can see I'm tired." That's damn funny. Maybe not funny here, but it's funny in the story, I swear. The guy is melting, and that's all the Dad can say?

On the funny side is "The Humble Origins of the Milky Way (Boys)," about two guys performing outrageous stunts outside a Chinese restaurant. This is good stuff right here: "I could feel the pressure building in the behemoth beneath me, a churning machine of flab, muscle and cheap wine, and when he loosed me to the stars, the silence cracked my mind like a whip, and I spun, and twirled, and somersaulted." Good stuff. The kicker, the closer, the whatever-that-MFA-word-is, comes like a sly surprise, not fully unexpected, yet surprising all the same--like when you look in a bag of M&Ms and you think they're all gone, but there's still one left. Mel works like that. Mel is able to do most of his shenanigans in 200 word bursts or something, sometimes shorter, giving full legitimacy to the term 'flash fiction' if any one is concerned about those things.

Mel has this thing with fantastical fables, somewhat mythical, and maybe they just don't work for me--but I really didn't "get" them I guess. There's Hambone Sizzlewitt pushing a boulder up a hill, there's Glitterbug and Hucklebuck in a hayfield, that funny beard story (okay, I liked that one). I'm most interested in when Mel Bosworth illuminates something so odd, but probably, maybe, partially, true--because he bridges the absurd and reality so well. Personal preference, I guess.

See, this visceral response from me at the words of Mel Bosworth is completely illuminating--really only to myself, because I've learned more about myself by reading Mel Bosworth--these stories make me think of things I've never thought of before.

When the Cats is just a chapbook, so I hope he unleashes something longer and fiercer one day, but for now, I'm totally pleased with rereading this.

More after the jump...

We read books in 2009. Here are our favorites.

There were a lot of books that came out in 2009 I wanted to read. We know the motto though, time is of the essence. I will not pretend to act like I know what really happened in the lit world in 2009.

All I know is that I started Inherent Vice and couldn't/didn't want to finish it.

All I know is that 2009 made me tired of one of my favorite authors (here's looking at you, Dave Eggers. I still like you, I just kind of OD'd on you. For the record, Vol. 1 Brooklyn was my pusher).

All I know is that Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer are more of a threat to literature than ebooks.

All I know is that I haven't made room yet for Scorch Atlas (gasp!) or Chronic City, two books I'm pretty sure I'd like. Also right now, I'm in the middle of 2666, Simmons' Book of Basketball, Lipsyte's new one and have Blood's A Rover and Amigoland on hold at the library. Those may have found their way on here if I finish any of them before the year is out.

So this is a list of the books we enjoyed the most this year and had never read before. Some of these books came out in 2009, some of them didn't. This is not a "best of" list; it's a favorites of 2009.

My list is up first, followed by Josh Rank....



1. The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
2. Hopscotch by Cortazar
3. Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
4. The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno
5. Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon by Christopher Cunningham & Hosho McCreesh
6. Hard Times by Studs Terkel
7. if on a winter’s night a traveler by Calvino
8. Columbine by Dave Cullen
9. Arkansas by John Brandon
10. Shake the Devil Off by Ethan Brown
11. Lowboy by John Wray
12. Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott
13. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
14. A.D. new orleans after the deluge by Josh Neufeld
15. Our Noise: the story of merge records by John Cook
16. Floodmarkers by Nic Brown

Josh Rank's list

1. Deliverance - James Dickey

The writing style had me hooked from the second page. I bought the book because I heard there was a pretty gnarly sodomy scene but there turned out to be a really good book on both sides of it. It ended up being based around a group’s struggle with morality when faced with the possibility of zero repercussions. Is it okay to kill when it’s necessary? The group answered in a scene so vividly described I felt as if I were climbing the trees right beside them.

2. What is the What – Dave Eggers

If you think your life sucks, read this book. The main character, Valentino Achak Deng, is a real person. Yeah, this actually happened to somebody. The book outlines Deng’s journey out of war-torn Sudan and into Atlanta where things continue to go wrong. You think it sucks that your girl/boyfriend broke up with you? Well at least you don’t have to worry about lions eating your head after you just watched your mother get shot in the face.

3. Pygmy – Chuck Palahniuk

Palahniuk has made a name for himself taking fiction into new directions. Pygmy takes that idea to another level. Written in the voice of an adolescent, non-native English speaker, it is a chore to trudge through at first. After getting used to the style, though, the story lives up to Chuck’s level of story-telling.

4. When You Are Engulfed in Flames – David Sedaris

A main concern for musicians and writers alike is to not repeat yourself. However, when your style is as good as Sedaris’ this doesn’t need to be a concern. If you like anything he’s every written, this book doesn’t disappoint.

5. A Father’s Story – Lionel Dahmer

I may have an unhealthy interest in serial killers. When I got a chance to read about the childhood of my favorite one (is it wrong to have a favorite?) I jumped at the chance. Be prepared to actually think of Jeffery Dahmer as a person and not a monster. It’s a little strange.

6. Blindness – Jose Saramago

An epidemic of blindness takes over. People freak and lock up the infected in an old insane asylum. Shit gets crazy. Beautifully chosen words drag us through the mud of blindness and we come out with a great story.

7. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If you like books that give you characters you become attached to, this book is not for you. Characters come and go constantly from page one until the end. However, the manner of their entrances and exits provide a narrative that makes you feel like you’re reading a dream.

8. Women – Charles Bukowski

Watch an interview with Bukowski and then read this book. Everything will make perfect sense. However, feminists should stay far, far away.

9. Dream House – Valerie Laken

A young couple buys a house together only to find it to be the scene of a crime from years before. The writing style is enough to pull you through but the consistently moving action acts as a motor that doesn’t let you stop until you’re finished. Plus, the author is a pretty sharp dresser.

More after the jump...

Lit Randomness: Neuronovel, Punk rock & trailer parks, e-book doldrums & more

On a non-literary note, check out today's selection in the Albums of the Decade Blog Tour: Built on a Weak Spot.



Why do all novelists now write about mental problems? The rise of the neuronovel: At N + 1 mag (via The Rumpus and HTML Giant).

Let's just say it now--some books will work in ebook format and some will not. It doesn't have to be an either/or proposition. But that's not what these guys say. Instead, let's continue the "e-doldrums": At The Rumpus and "Why Are Books Nice?" at HTML Giant.



Malcolm Gladwell, blah, blah, blah: At Time.

Review of Punk Rock and Trailer Parks: At PopMatters.

Online comics dissect zombie lit: At Vol 1 Brooklyn.
More after the jump...

LIt Randomness: O'Rourke, Junot Diaz, Books Napsterized & more

Heavy on the insight today.



This P.J. O'Rourke thing was entertaining. No matter your politics, he's a clever writer: At AV Club.

Seems like this Oscar Wao thing has legs. Not so sure about that Kitteridge mess. Interv. w/ Junot Diaz: At Guernica (h/t The Rumpus).

Jack Shafer is probably my favorite critic today. Hopefully book publishers won't screw up like music execs, but they probably will: At Slate.

The Revenge of Print: At The Brooklyn Rail (h/t HTML Giant)
The best:

There is also the obvious conclusion that the book business was never intended to function on the present bloated scale and that editors have been merely masquerading like their left coast entertainment industry counterparts.

The symbols are stupid, but I was kind of waiting for a list like this, I'll be honest. The top PoMo (stupid word...how about post-mod?) fiction books. Interesting adds--Percival Everett's new one, The Scarlett Letter, Hamlet and Absalom! Absalom!: At JacketCopy (h/t The Millions).

More after the jump...

Lit Randomness: Kerouac out of the canon, IKEA, crosswords and Heart of Darkness

Should Kerouac be in the canon? At The Second Pass and Jacket Copy.
He wrote it on a scroll, right? Right? Really, several of these listed are some of my favorite books, though I didn't know The Corrections and The Road were in the 'canon.'

If you hate Wal-Mart, you should hate IKEA too: At Salon.

[More after the jump...]

Thoughts on the Dean Olsher's new crossword book: At Kenyon Review Blog.

And this appeared last week, but I just found it...
Why is Heart of Darkness so interesting: At The Telegraph
(h/t Maud Newton).

More after the jump...

lit randomness: eggers, punk fiction intro, greg ames, poets' beards and more

We try to do Lit Randomness every Mon and Wed.


Dave Eggers, of McSweeney's notoriety, and his brother Toph (yeah, that brother from that book) do their first interview together to promote their new book on Cold Fusion: At Paste. BTW, help save Paste.


Intro by Johnny Marr to new punk fiction anthology: At 3am.


Interview w/ Greg Ames, author of Buffalo Lockjaw: At Maud Newton.

All-time 10 ten best and worst mothers in comics: From Newsrama (h/t Fangirls Attack)

Poets ranked by beard weight: At Journey Round My Skull (h/t Bookslut blog)

The Millions' Staff must-have subscrip list: At The Millions.









More after the jump...