This Friday’s Last Words feature comes from Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou, one of the few writers able to pull off the Writer-As-Protagonist conceit with sly, irreverent, acidic aplomb. I’m not a particularly gifted reviewer, so I direct you to this Bookslut review of the book.

Also, from a great interview on the BOMB website between Mabanckou and Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainana:

BW I wanted to approach the idea of what you want to do with the French language in your work. How do you see yourself as someone trying to own French somehow?

AM Given my frustration with not finding literature in Congolese languages, writing in French implied that I wouldn’t write anything similar to what classic French writers tend to write—very polished, clean literatures respecting the rules of L’Acadamie franacaise. But at the same time when I read certain French writers like Louis-Ferdinand Caline, for example, who wrote Journey to the End of the Night, I saw that it was possible to break the rules. Broken Glass is written in French, but if you feel the rhythm of the prose, it’s like the Congolese way of speaking. That’s why I use only one kind of punctuation throughout the book: the comma. I’m proud that I now finally found a way to deal with the French.

…

BW: Structurally, Broken Glass is fascinating. It seemed to me as if the character Broken Glass was speaking to me, yet I was reading him on the page. I was taking in the sound somehow, although I read it in translation. And also the setting, the bar Credit Gone West! (laughter) Here is this very drastic, very crazy place, and this half-crazy man who has digested this world of literature and is speaking back to it. I mean, that is incredibly powerful because it almost sends the center of the world to this decrepit bar in Congo-Brazzaville, the middle of nowhere. Broken Glass, the character, is taking from Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Garcia Marquez, and from all these other writers, weaving them into his speech and speaking to them and owning their territory. Beautiful.

I love a book that eats Great Western Culture and Literature, then vomits it back out, grinning.

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Congratulations to Myfanwy Collins for winning the Flatmancrooked fiction prize for 2010.

xTx’s chapbook, He’s Talking to the Fat Lady, is now available from Safety Third Enterprises. Buy it now.

There’s a really fantastic interview with Steven Himmer on the Atticus Books (his forthcoming novel’s publisher) blog.

Over at Everyday Genius, there’s an equally fine interview with Jen Michalski.

Ravi Mangla has four micros at The Outlet. Get plugged in!

Notnostrums 5 inclues Ben Fama.

New Dogzplot! Kevin O’Cuinn!

Volume 2 Issue 1 of the Medulla Review features Rae Bryant, Alexandra Isacson, Sheldon Lee Compton, and others.

A memoir excerpt from Amye Archer is featured this week at Glass Cases, the website of agent extraordinaire, Sarah LaPolla.

There’s a poem by Joseph Quintela up at Bananafish.

Chantel Tattoli tackles 1589 at For Every Year.

There’s a really interesting profile of soccer player Fernando Torres written by Jennifer Juneau for The Bleacher Report.

Listen to Robert Swartwood (nee Smartwood) discussing Hint Fiction on NPR! Yes! NPR!

A new poem by Len Kuntz appears at The Camel Saloon.

Lemon, by Jennifer Spiegel, is featured in Switchback. She is joined by Joseph Celizic.

The November issue of the Collagist includes an excerpt from Lambs of Men by Charles Dodd White, an introduction to a classic reprint by Blake Butler, and fiction from Andrew Borgstrom and others. Nick Kocz also reviews Our Island of Epidemics. BUY THE BOOK!

Read this essay by Brian Oliu in the Used Furniture Review. And submit your writing to them too.

Keyhole 10 is available for pre-order. You can read work from James Tadd Adcox and Ben Loory.

The newest issue of NANOfiction is also available featuring Mat Bell, Doug Paul Case, Scott Garson, Luke Geddes, Kirsty Logan, Sean Lovelace, Sara Lippmann, Nick Sansone, Katie Jean Shinkle, Eugenia Tsutsumi, Desmond Kon, and others. Get it for $7.

Matt also has a story in the new issue of Conjunctions 55, Urban Arias, and you can read that story online.

Brad Green shines the Dark Sky spotlight on the one, the only, THE Ryan W. Bradley.

If you couldn’t be there, you can watch J. Bradley’s set from the InDigest 1207 Reading Series in NYC this past weekend. He also has a story at Small Doggies.

Rae Bryant’s Solipsy Street is up at Metazen.

We also have November Word Riot to enjoy. Check out writing from well, no PANK contributors, but we thought we would mention it anyway.

The Fall 2010 issue of Blue Fifth Review includes Dennis Mahagin and Bill Yarrow.

Poetry from Eric Burke joins the Ante Review.

Four Room Hotel by Vallie Lynn Watson is up at Metazen.

In Union Station Magazine, a poem from one of our favorites, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz. She is joined by Stevie Edwards. Cristin also has five poems in the Used Furniture Review where she is joined by Kyle Hemmings.

Dog Days by Jen Michalski is up at The Patapsco Review.

Blip Blip Blip Beep Beep Beep Janey Smith.

Even if I haven’t submitted to a contest, and most times I haven’t, my inner-reader and inner-editor are always hyper-critical of any book labeled as a “winner”. So while I am familiar with Shome Dasgupta’s writing through various online and print journals, I was still a bit tense when opening the first pages of his book i am here And You Are Gone, winner of the 2010 outsider Writers Chapbook Contest. Quite frankly, I was unsure whether or not the writing would live up to the label, whether or not I would feel like I had just read the first place winner of an undoubtedly high number of submissions. Would Dasgupta’s book feel, in my opinion, deserving of the title “winner”?  

The short review is this: It is.

 The long review is this:

 From start to finish, following the protagonist Jonas from Kindergarten through his senior year, we are introduced to the requited / unrequited love of Jonas for Mary, the unwholeness of Jonas’ family, and the way in which we grow, and live, from our school-infancy through our final often complex nest-leaving.

She let him wear the heels for the day, but when he got home, Mom told him that he had to wear his shoes from then on.

“I want to be tall.”

“You are as tall as you want to be—it doesn’t have to show. Be tall from inside.”

Jonas didn’t know what she meant, but when he thought about it later, it was like some kind of spiritual assertion.

“I will be tall.”

“I am tall.”

i am here And You Are Gone is a super nice mixture of these kind of micro-narratives within a well-told overarching story, like seeing a ten-thousand word text separated as eggs, yolks here, whites there:

The rain had taken his dad away the night Jonas was born. Mom always said that his dad was the kindest man with the gentlest eyes. She never married anyone after him, and during the thunderstorms, she would stand outside and ask the sky what it would like for dinner.

Too, there are several sections in i am here And You Are Gone that break from the more simplified structuring and become these even more epic poetic castles, molded in sand with narrative dexterity, something that i am here And You Are Gone shows us about Dasgupta’s growing capabilities:

I hear the calling of my name in the sound of footsteps; I do not stop until I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and see pain’s glory; we do not speak, nor do we continue to walk, but we stand still and study each other until we fall.

We are motionless: I am a mosquito, you are amber, and we’re fossilized.

Millions of years later, paleontologists will find us on a piece of bark; they will see the petrified look on our faces and wonder what had caused such eyes. We cannot answer, for we are in each other’s mouth, wishing we were made of cotton and orange peels.

And while the narratives of each small segment are finely-tuned and enormous in their meaning, they do meet with some stumbles in the resolution of the book, where the ending felt simultaneously stretched a bit beyond its capacity and also as if it were lugging more conventional baggage than the rest of the manuscript, slipping a tad out of the enjoyable poetic / conversational mixture that Dasgupta has initially fashioned.

But in reality, my only true complaint about i am here And You Are Gone is regarding the inclusion of ASCII Art (using Mary’s name) at both the beginning and the end of the book. It was that pseudo-artistic opening that made me fear for Dasgupta’s book, though the writing eventually proves the unwarranted nature of that panic. But the art is a symbolic reach that makes it tough to turn the next page, tough to see that Dasgupta shouldn’t be relegated to these crude word-pictures; he is already creating much more vivid and true images with his phrasing, his sentences, his micro-narratives crawling under our skin, and that is where Dasgupta should stay, in that vein, until we are all crawling with him:

“I don’t know any French,” I said. “You only need to know one word mon cher,” she said, “Amour.” “Oh, okay,” I said, “What’s that? Is that your name?” She moved her hands, removing my body from reality, making an atheist feel holy. She closed her eyes, and I couldn’t keep mine open, and in the darkness, I saw her touches, each touch, each graze, giving a little glow, like a million lightning bugs floating around us. I saw her moans, and I kept muttering to myself, “Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster,” hoping that the next morning I wouldn’t forget to buy a French-English dictionary.”

I Am Here and You Are Gone

Shome Dasgupta

Outsider Writers Collective, 2010

$8.00

Yes, I would sometimes like to write postcards like the above telegram to people. Especially since I now live so far from everyone I know. Postcards which say only, just as On Kawara’s telegrams do:

I AM STILL ALIVE

or

I HAVEN’T COMMITTED SUICIDE DON’T WORRY

or

I HAVEN’T COMMITTED SUICIDE WORRY.

*

While dueling with debilitating pain, I listen to Rakim and Funkdoobiest.

Funkdoobiest, “Rock On”:

Rakim, “Guess Who’s Back”:

This is(n’t) how writing begins.

*

“IF YOUR SOUL LOVES THE SUN.”
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Yes, I would sometimes like to write postcards like the above telegram to people. Especially since I now live so far from everyone I know. Postcards which say only, just as On Kawara’s telegrams do:

I AM STILL ALIVE

or

I HAVEN’T COMMITTED SUICIDE DON’T WORRY

or

I HAVEN’T COMMITTED SUICIDE WORRY.

*

While dueling with debilitating pain, I listen to Rakim and Funkdoobiest.

Funkdoobiest, “Rock On”:

Rakim, “Guess Who’s Back”:

This is(n’t) how writing begins.

*

“IF YOUR SOUL LOVES THE SUN.”
Continue reading →

Over at flavorpill: 10 Online Lit Mags You Should Be Reading. Guess who comes in at number three?

When someone asks me what I do for a living, I tell him or her I’m a writer at an advertising agency. I could say that I’m a copywriter at an advertising agency, but there have been too many instances in which the person to whom I’m speaking replies with something like, “Oh, you put those little circle-c’s next to words to protect people’s ideas?” One time I told the stranger who said that, “Exactly,” and he made this mouth movement as if he silently burped and that was the end of that. Things suddenly felt awkward. We were both waiting for the other person to continue the conversation, only to realize that neither of us could think of anything else to say. Puts circle-c’s on things. Cool. Okay, see you later.

The truth is, there are times when I wish that were my job description, and those times are usually on Monday mornings, when half the agency jails itself in the conference room for the production meeting, an ironic name to say the least. Rarely is anything truly produced, with the exception, perhaps, of vendettas. The production meeting is where we talk about the week’s work as well as who should eat shit and die.

Okay, I’m exaggerating on that last part. But still, many days, you can walk into that conference room with a pen and paper and walk out with only the pen jammed upright into the back of your hand. Some people are lucky enough to leave the meeting early. Sometimes, an outgoing person passes an incoming person, the former with a look of relief, the latter looking like Han Solo right before he gets cryogenically frozen. In a strange, twisted way, I sometimes hope a little tension does arise in the meeting, at least for a few minutes. I don’t watch hockey, but I imagine the feeling I get is akin to hoping a fight breaks out on the ice. No sane person wants outright chaos in the world, but controlled chaos? Well, I’m okay with that. I mean, nobody’s going to actually murder anyone, so we can put that worry to rest.

Here’s the thing: the production meeting is not only where jobs and deadlines are assigned, it’s also where the reasoning for each job is constructively critiqued. Is this job necessary? Are we handling this job the right way? Is there a better way? And critiques can hurt, even when they are constructive. As a fiction writer (my night job, you could say), I’m used to being openly critiqued. I’m certainly used to being rejected, and I have the Excel spreadsheet and intermittent depression to prove it. Being openly critiqued is never easy, but you can get used to it.

Now would be a good time to mention that this is the nature of the business, no matter which agency you’re at. Advertising is a fast-paced and high-stress business. And the thing is, people can be really passionate and sometimes those passions can make you happy as a clam as you go about your day and, other times, you’ll feel as if you just ate a clam contaminated with campylobacter. In other words, if you don’t have thick skin, perhaps advertising isn’t for you.

Amazingly, once the dust settles after leaving the production meeting, everyone is okay with each other. And what do we do the following Monday but waltz right back into that meeting as if we completely forgot what happened just seven days ago.

Someone in my agency once said, in an ironic way (to get a laugh), “We’re going to get through this year if it kills us.” Funny and, in certain ways, true. But first, we have to get through the production meeting, even if it means a self-imposed stab wound to the back of the hand.

The folks at Girls With Insurance have this to say:

It’s contest time.

What we have up for the winning is a once-read (by yours truly) copy of Mather Schneider’s Drought Resistant Strain (Interior Noise Press, 2010,  $15–GwI review forthcoming). Schneider, as you may have garnered, is the cantankerous author of the GwI column by the same name as well another book,  Hell Traits: Poems from the Old Pueblo (Temporary Vandalism, 2008).

To win, write an essay up to 1,000 words on the subject of people you almost loved or a specific person you almost loved. At the very least, your essay should somewhere include this line or a line like it: “If only you’d known that in that moment you could have suggested anything.” Or something like that. Essays addressed to their topics will receive special attention. Essays do not have to be factual, but should be convincing.

All essays will be considered for publication unless otherwise requested. In order to be included in the running, your essay must be eligible for publication–that is legally and willingly on your part.

All entries must be server-marked not-later-than 31 January 2010 at 10:00PM EST. Please attach your entry as an OpenDocument or Rich Text file and paste it into the body of your e-mail addressed to  phm@girlswithinsurance.com

Thanks.

P. H. Madore

GwI Associate & Often Forlorn Romantic

This may well become an annual announcement but writers, you must, for the love of all that is holy, stop writing stories where the main characters are writers. I understand the appeal. You are, perhaps, writing what you know. You’re writers so you’re creating stories around the experience of being a writer. In recent memory we have read stories about writers hoping to be published, excited to have been published, writers who have entered contests and won contests. You have written stories about happy writers and miserable writers and lonely writers and desperate writers. Sometimes your writers have sex and it is awkward. Very often they drink, smoke, or use illegal substances. Some of these stories about writers have been satirical (but not) like when you pretend to be kidding but really you’re serious.

Your characters sent us a secret coded message. They want to pursue other career options. They want to put out fires or loaf about collecting unemployment. They want to be bicycle messengers and construction workers and engineers (either train or the other kind). They want to work as mechanics and office drones and nurses and doctors. They do not want to be writers. They are tired of being writers. Listen to your characters. They can do more, trust me.

When I say writer, by the way, I’m also saying poet. Oh how poets love to poem about poets. You write odes to poets and sonnets to poets and couplets to poets. Poets, poets, poets. We get it. You are poetic. And yet, a quatrain for violinist or a school teacher would be a refreshing change. Consider it, perhaps.

A corollary to this rule is that writing about teachers and students is also pretty uninteresting. We read approx. 24 stories a week about old professors who leer after young women (or when we’re lucky, men). We read about students being bored in class or studying for tests or wanting to become, you guessed it, writers. School is great but we don’t want to read about it. We work in schools and we are writers so when you’re submitting, imagine how sick of pizza you would be if you worked at Pizza Hut.

We still love you!