Shane Jones, author of Light Boxes: At Broadset.
There was a lot of buzz and hype surrounding the book and every major press wanted to read it. Three presses ended up "bidding" on the book and I decided to go with Penguin. My agent did all of that work. Again, kind of this surreal and not-in-my-control kind of feeling...
Zak Sally, author of Like a Dog: At Bookmunch.
Jamie Iredell, author of Prose. Poems. A Novel: At The Big Other.
John Brandon, author of Arkansas is now in Oxford, MS. He has a conversation w/ Mary Miller: At HTML Giant.
Giant Robot needs help: At Jacket Copy.
Cynthia Reeser and the new Aqueous Books: At Orange Alert.
Oh yeah, there's this: At Fictionaut Blog.
More after the jump...
Yesterday was a review of Prose. Poems. A Novel by Jamie Iredell, which contains stories from three chapbooks that he previously published. Jamie also designs books for C&R Press, blogs at jamieiredell.blogspot.com and from all hints and clues, lives in Atlanta. I asked Jamie to let us know the five best things he's read lately. This is what he sent back in mid-October:
5. The turning of the leaves in Georgia for fall. No, it's not as spectacular as New England; it's not particularly spectacular at all. But I'll take what I've got, and it's felt good this year to attempt to be very aware of how the planet changes as it goes through the seasons. I've been noting (a la Thoreau, even if not as formally) the dates when the sycamores and dogwoods first sprout buds in late March and when the blackgums start reddening in September, for example. I guess it makes me more here here.
4. Frank Stanford's The Singing Knives. There's really nothing to say about this book except that if you're not a reader of Frank Stanford you're not a reader.
3. I recently re-read Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and, for whatever reason--maybe I never noticed before, assuming he was just one of those "early American writers" who are boring--but, that guy (and that story in particular) has got some serious prose styling going on. I love this: "The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda." Any time you compare one's dilating powers to that of an anaconda--describing a human in such a way--you've got my attention.
2. I didn't really read this, but made it up, although there's probably a recipe out there for it, even if I didn't follow it. I've done this twice now, and it's awesome, that is: I am truly full of awe when eating.
Bourbon Steak Marinade & Sauce
1/2 cup Maker's Mark
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tsp salt
2 tsp back pepper
Marinate 4 tenderloin steaks for at least three hours in the refrigerator, turning once.
Grill the steaks on a charcoal grill, or over the embers of a wood fire. You can use a gas a grill, but I don't think you're grilling. You might as well just throw the steaks in the oven if you use a gas grill.
Save the leftover marinade, transferring it to a sauce pan. Heat over medium low and add 1 tbl of brown sugar, and two tbl of ketchup, and mix well. The marinade makes a great sauce to pour over the steaks. This is some of the best eating, if you're not a vegetarian.
1. The best thing ever (in the last week or so): Uncle Shuck's Pumpkin Patch and corn maze, where I took my sister (who's form California) and who said "no" when asked if--after visiting Uncle Shuck's--she wanted to move to Georgia. My wife also took this photo of me there.
More after the jump...
Friday Five w/ Jamie tomorrow!
Prose. Poems. A Novel.
by Jamie Iredell
Orange Alert Press, 2009Contained in three sections, Prose. Poems. A Novel is a series of loosely connected vignettes about the narrator's time "Before Nevada" "In Nevada" and "In Atlanta" heavily dependent on the surroundings and the people surrounding the narrator.
All of the tales (usually contained on one page) describe an element of growing up and aging--and how relationships change with the ages--they are stories/examples of relationships in adolescence ("Before Nevada"), as young adults ("In Nevada"), then settling to more quiet bars with mature conversations ("In Atlanta").
The stories open with a bear in a neighbor's cabin, and I didn't understand this example at first; how it RELATES--but it does, it does, the narrator is that BEAR, stumbling around trying to navigate an unfamiliar world. These are stories/examples/specific incidences of that navigation.
Don't worry, there are not broad sweeping generalizations weighing this book down like weighs this review down; nothing is heavy-handed or overanalyzed--instead it's a pleasure to read.
I'm not really fascinated by landscapes, not that this book is all about landscapes, but most of it is about the WEST which I don't know much about and there are a couple of raucous scenes of DRINKING, PARTYING, and DRUG USE but not really in the way you think about those scenes, not in an MTV/The Hills sort of way--not that Iredell discusses them passively, those events are presented as more of a way to pass the time, to deal, to understand the relationships between FRIENDS.
Connections must be sought between each story, each piece of a story, or they don't have to be sought at all because each piece stands on its own.
Most pages end not on a couplet, but with a memorable image, a phrase that turns and captures everything set before it, such as these: "Instead of trout, there are tourists, which are almost the same thing" and "It's only now that I can look back and say what kind of idiot I've become."
Those two sit only a page apart, in the first section, mostly about a cabin in the woods and the narrator's memories about cabins, and this was my favorite section. More interesting here are the strings that Iredell attaches between the first residents of Lake Tahoe and its landscape and what the landscape has now become--small cabins and Taco Bells and whatever James Michener has written about and whatever he writes about. It is change, it is not change, it always changes.
Section two is more of the same, but not: an older voice emerges, something fraught with the heave-ho give and go of the modern (or the perceived-modern) "going out" to somewhere culture, even if there is nowhere to go. And fights break out and there is a good illustration of a bitten ear, like what Mike Tyson did to Evander Holyfield.
Again, this section goes back to nature, to snakes, to trying to understand if we know anything at all, which it is generally assumed that we don't, except for where to find drugs, but even that is nonchalant in Iredell's descriptions.
Section three, I enjoyed the specific mentions of Atlanta streets, because I used to live in Atlanta. Selfish. Excellent parts about the narrator and a character named Sally trekking Kennesaw Mountain, once again landscapes and the narrator's interaction with them--always kind of sort of stumbling, like that bear again.
Don't think I really like or "get" the illustrations, but there are some funny captions and I'm glad the illustrations are there, just didn't do much for me. I want this book to go a bit longer, to explore a little more, especially section three, I feel there is more to add, more to be had in the exploration stages of Atlanta, like the other landscapes of the novel are explored, maybe that these are three chapbooks adds to that, but I'll take what is given.
Those expecting a novel, don't go into it with those eyes, go into it expecting an in-the-moment meditation on people and circumstances without context and you'll be much more satisfied. I'm against genres and classifications anyway, for the most part, and I think Iredell is too, except I don't want to speak for him, so I won't except to say, if you find yourself an opportunity to read this slim volume of goodness, I would do it.
More after the jump...
