InDigest Blog

THE INDIGEST BLOG NO LONGER LIVES HERE

2009-11-07T20:37:00.001-05:00

Hello Readers. The blog is no longer here. Since we redid the magazine we've moved the blog to the main site.

Click here to see the new blog

InDigest 1207 Tonight

2009-11-04T10:23:00.003-05:00

Attention New Yorkers!!

Tonight is InDigest 1207, again. We've got two great readers tonight: James Hannaham, author of God Says No [McSweeneys, 2009] and Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, who has a couple of poems that will appear in the very next issue of InDigest.

As always, the revelry starts at 6pm and the reading will start at 7pm at (le) Poisson Rouge on Bleecker.

There is a new issue of InDigest - And a New Site For You to Check out

2009-11-04T10:17:00.002-05:00

Dear Readers and InDigest Enthusiasts,

After months of hard work by our small and dedicated staff and a designer/programmer team whose talents are innumerable, InDigest is back and by far better than ever. With a new monthly column by Alex Lemon, poetry by Matt Hart and Rodrigo Toscano, fiction from J.C. Hallman, Poet Ada Limón and Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff InDialogue, and so much more, this welcome-back issue is amazing, and we feel, well worth the wait.

In other news, InDigest 1207 has been happening all along and will continue tomorrow night at (le) Poisson Rouge in New York City with the writers James Hannaham (author of God Says No from McSweeneys) and Ricardo Alberto Maldonado. You can also consider this reading a preview of December's Poetics section of InDigest, in which Maldonado's poems will appear. As with all 1207s there will be a happy hour starting at 6pm, with the reading starting around 7pm. This 1207 will also be a celebration of the new site, so get there early and help us celebrate.

Now back to the new issue. Enjoy!

InDialogue: Ada Limón and Will Sheff
The poet Ada Limón sat down with Will Sheff of Okkervil River in a conversation that "spirals into more of an ethereal dialogue about the struggles of the artist’s life and how one attempts to remain anchored in a world of constant over-stimulation." Also, we've reprinted our interview with Reverend Billy, "Beware the Shopocalypse." He's the Green Party candidate for Mayor of New York City, so we thought it appropriate.

Erratica: A New Monthly Column from Alex Lemon, as well as columns on Art, Theater, and Books.
We are very pleased to have past Poetics contributor Alex Lemon back with a new monthly column, "A Visit to Planet Lemtron." Alex's memoir, Happy, one of the most anticipated books of the year, is due out in late December. You'll also find new columns on Theater and Art, as well as your old favorite, Bedside Stacks. It's like coming home again, isn't it?

Music: A Tour Diary from Peter Silberman of The Antlers & Two New Music Columns.
Peter Silberman gives an inside look at the strangeness of touring: "By now we’re starting to think alike. Making the same movements, wanting the same food, reacting to things the same way. We call it 'tour brain,' and the further in we get, the harder it is to divorce." Also: Two music columns premier, discussing Zak Sally's debut solo album, "Fear of Song," and just what makes "Someone Great" by LCD Soundsystem such a great song.

Poetics: Featuring Poems by Matt Hart, Rodrigo Toscano, Isaac Sullivan, and Fredrick Zydek.
From Matt Hart's "Waking Fit":

At last the dawn. The dawn cuts up.
And I can almost breathe again. The breath
goes smoke again. It’s a smoke like balloons
when they’re clearing their throats.

And, for the first time on InDigest, watch a poem!

Narratives: Stories from J.C. Hallman and Nonfiction from Charles Greene.
Two stories from J.C. Hallman's collection The Hospital for Bad Poets (Milkweed Editions) and an essay on the influence of tv on identity and race, "My Life on TV."

Gallery: The work of Alexandra Compain-Tissier
Paris-based illustrator and painter Alexandra Compain-Tissier’s work is both classic and perhaps low-fi in style, but modern in context. It’s not shiny or computer generated, like so many of her contemporaries. Her work weaves between the worlds of fine art and illustration, ranging from painting exhibitions, editorial assignments, music videos, and creating shoes and perfume bottles for a massive department store campaign for Saks Fifth Avenue.

As always, thanks for reading,

David & Dustin
InDigest Editors

InDigest Blog Has Moved

2009-11-04T10:10:00.001-05:00

Go HERE for the latest from InDigest.

What We've Been Reading

2009-11-01T15:19:00.000-05:00

Brad:
I'm not reading a whole lot right now, as it's the midterm season and I'm just doing a lot of school work. However, I did finish In Cold Blood and I'm nearly done with The Beginning of the Fields, and neither book has disappointed.

I think the most interesting thing I've read recently is a short story by David Foster Wallace called "Good People." It was published in that creaky bastion of glossy high lit, The New Yorker, sometime in 2007. I'm a big fan of David Foster Wallace's writing, having read most everything he's written (save for his 1990 co-authored nonfiction book, Signifying Rappers, and his nigh-impossible to find book on infinity, Everything and More.) The story is exceedingly simple and incredibly sincere and heartfelt. I don't want to say too much about it, as the discovery of the conflict and the characters is surprising and moving. But it made me mourn the loss of a man and a writer who was clearly moving into new and interesting territory.

Have You Done Something Nice For Your Mailbox Recently?

2009-10-29T22:23:00.003-04:00

Anna and Tess Knoebel over at Abe's Penny have been nice enough to send me some issues of their "Micro-Magazine." Every issue is four postcards (one a week for a month) that appear almost magically in your mailbox and bring together a photographer and a writer. It's an interesting project in this time when everyone who's doing something in the art and lit worlds are looking for interesting ways to present their work to people and actually have those people look at it.

Check out more at abespenny.com.

(below: 1.7 featuring Skye Parrott and Katherine Krause)

InDigest Picks

2009-10-28T00:57:00.004-04:00

Books:
Invisibleby Paul Auster [Henry Holt]
+ Paul Auster's 15th novel is a structural marvel. Constructed ni four parts twisted like rope, the novel is part diary, part novel within a novel, part memoir-ish narrative. It's a complicated, insular novel that plays on the reader's expectations from a novel within a novel and the author's constant fight against reality and coincidence for the best subject matter. In the way that the wild happenings in a newspaper can feel forced or trite in a novel, Auster here utilizes the notion of a real life narrative told in a non-literary fashion (from one vantage point). He plays with the notion of coincidence and have that works on the page versus reality. He plays fantasy against memory and reality in a novel of both large and small scale drama that is surprising from the first to the last.

The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Musicby Ben Ratliff [Henry Holt]
+ New York Times jazz critic Ben Ratliff sits down to listen to music with some of jazz's biggest stars in this collection of essays. With the project Ratliff asks jazz legends to pick a few songs and sit down with him to listen. The music could be damn near anything, the only requirement is that the artist he is listening with did not play on the album. The resulting conversations are fascinating as the masters of the form talk about song structure and what makes a great recording. The conversations range from Ornette Coleman to Wayne Shorter to Pat Metheny, bouncing all over the place: Shorter's odd ramblings to Metheny's insistence that "glue" is what makes music work. This is must read material for any jazz aficionado, or even a great place to start if you just want to understand how to listen better.

Other Notable Releases: Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving, The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy by Bill Simmons

Poetry:
Poems of the Black Objectby Ronaldo V. Wilson [Futurepoem]
+ Wilson's newest collection of poetry pulsates in your hand. It feels edgy, even provocative. The book is constructed in parts, any one of which would have made a marvelous chapbook, but together the collection is something far more magnificent. I was a fan of Wilson's previous collection, Narrative of the Brown Boy and the White Man, which itself was not too tame, but I get the sense that this is the first time his voice has emerged as a fully formed being. There is something happening in this collection, the same way that you find O' Hara's distinct voice in Lunch Poems, Poems of the Black Object feels like this is Wilson's true voice. Raw, gruff, coy, elusive, playful and blunt.

Music:
Pelican - What We All Come To Need [Southern Lord]
+ Pelican continue to carve a special place in my heart with this release. Their unique brand of instrumental metal sounds as good as they've ever sounded on What We All Come to Need. Eight new tracks of sludgy, head-banging post-rock-cum-metal. This is a beautiful record.

Glass Ghost - Idol Omen [Western Vinyl]
+ Glass Ghost's newest album is somewhat reminiscent of Spoon's Kill the Moonlight. It really doesn't sound anything like it aesthetically, but there is that odd minimalist construction with occasional hooks tossed around, feeling natural, as though this all comes easily. Idol Omen will make my shortlist of albums that just aren't going to get enough love this year. A slightly esoteric list, I know.

Other Notable Releases: Between the Buried and Me - The Great Misdirect, Kings of Convenience - Declaration of Dependence, Morrissey - Swords, The Sight Below - Murmur EP, Sting - If on a Winter's Night..., Sun Ra - The Heliocentirc Worlds of Sun Ra Vol. 1,Teagan and Sara - Sainthood, Weezer - Raditude

In Theaters:
Skin (Anthony Fabian) [Elysian Films]
+ Skin has a lot of positive buzz going, not that that is always worth something, or indicative of anything. The film is heavy on the drama, but the stellar performances rise to the challenge. If you're trying to keep up with the Oscar bait that is trickling out already, you'll need to watch this one.

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (Troy Duffy) [Apparition / Sony]
+ So, I haven't actually seen this one, but I'm a sucker for the original Boondock Saints and it's kitschy appeal. The gun-battles, the subdued story of vengeance. It's not a perfect film, but it executes the familiar revenge-of-the-common-man story well enough to make me excited. A sequel? Well, maybe it's not necessary, but I'm certainly interested.

Other Notable Releases: Gentleman Broncos (Jared Hess), The House of the Devil (Ti West), Micheal Jackson's This is It

DVD:
Z(Costa Gavras) [Criterion]
+ Criterion gives the royal treatment to Gavras' masterpiece. It's a film of political upheaval and great power on the scale of The Battle of Algiers. If you didn't get to catch it last year when it made the rounds to theaters again then it's time.

Check out this great essay on Z at the Criterion website.

Fear(s) of the Dark(Etienne Robial, Blutch, Charles Burns and more) [MPI Home Video]
+ It's a perfect weekend to rent Fear(s) of the Dark, a film that brings together 6 visionary comic artists to create short pieces centering on fear. It's strikingly beautiful, a pinnacle of modern animation. This is a great film for any time, but you probably couldn't get a better film for a Saturday night in, because I'm sure you aren't going out on Halloween.

Other Notable Releases: Whatever Works (Woody Allen), Death in the Garden (Luis Bunuel), Orphan (Jaume Collet-Serra), The Maiden Hiest (Peter Hewitt), Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,

Comics:
Hulk Vol. 3: Hulk No More(Jeph Loeb) [Marvel]
+ Jeph Loeb has made me interested in a series that has never previously interested me. Hulk (the series), in Loeb's hands, has given birth to the Red Hulk, an even more evil version of Bruce Banner's Hulk with origins we aren't quite sure about. The series has also brought about the thrilling decline of Bruce Banner, and I get the sense that this series is a ways from hitting it's stride. This volume collects issues #10-13 and Incredible Hulk #600. Red Hulk and his team, The Offenders, battle The Defenders, Hulk and Namor's team of heroes. It's a great lead in to the final decline of Banner.

Invincible Iron Man Vol. 2: World's Most Wanted, Part 1(Matt Fraction) [Marvel]
+ If only we could guarantee that the upcoming second installment of the Iron Man films was as engaging as this collection. With Norman Osborn taking over the government Tony Stark starts to try and erase all the information he acquired during the Superhero Registration Act while he was acting head of S.H.I.E.L.D. The final database is in his head, as he destroys each Iron Man suit and starts to erase parts of his memory he has to try and fight Osborn's goons while trying to just remember his name.

Other Notable Releases: Batman #692, Batman: The Widening Gyre #3 (of 6), Captain America Reborn #4, Dark Avengers: Ares #1, Dark Reign - The List: Punisher #1, Dark Reign - The List: Wolverine #1, The Flash: Rebirth #5 (of 6), Hulk #16, Kick Ass #8

Please Note: For some of the above recommendations we receive free review copies. It is InDigest's belief that negative reviews aren't worth as much as a positive review. Why tell you what not to do, when there are some great things to do? We only publish reviews of books, films, albums and comics that we've enjoyed to some degree. This is no reflection of the publisher's providing review copy.

American Life in Poetry: Column 240

2009-10-27T01:01:00.001-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

We haven’t shown you many poems in which the poet enters another person and speaks through him or her, but it is, of course, an effective and respected way of writing. Here Philip Memmer of Deansboro, N.Y., enters the persona of a young woman having an unpleasant experience with a blind date.

The Paleontologist’s Blind Date

You have such lovely bones, he says,
holding my face in his hands,

and although I can almost feel
the stone and the sand

sifting away, his fingers
like the softest of brushes,

I realize after this touch
he would know me

years from now, even
in the dark, even

without my skin.
Thank you, I smile—

then I close the door
and never call him again.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Philip Memmer, whose most recent book of poetry is Lucifer: A Hagiography, Lost Horse Press, 2009. Poem reprinted from Threat of Pleasure, Word Press, 2008, by permission of Philip Memmer and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What We've Been Reading

2009-10-26T09:23:00.003-04:00

Ashleigh:

I'd always meant to read Paul Auster, but somehow I'd never gotten around to it before now. So I feel somewhat ill-equipped to write about Invisible,his forthcoming (and fifteenth) novel. The power of the book lies in its structure: it's divided into four sections, each of which tell part of the tale of Adam Walker, who, as a college student in 1967 gets entangled with Born, a creepy, charismatic professor, and his girlfriend, Margot. Decades later, Adam enlists an old friend to help him write his memories of that time. The plot itself feels intentionally melodramatic, but the way the story gets refracted through Adam's shattered perspective makes it a satisfying exploration of the functions of memory and the nature of authorship. With just the right amount of suspense and a surplus of sexual energy, Invisible shows what happens when the character in a coming-of-age story grows up to find he still can't make sense of the defining experiences of his youth.

InDigest Picks

2009-10-21T09:47:00.003-04:00

Books:
Eating the Dinosaurby Chuck Klosterman [Scribner]
+ Another collection of essays from the master of personal musings on pop culture. Klosterman's wit and subtlety are unparalleled. In Eating the Dinosaur he tackles Garth Brooks, voyeurism, why people inevitably hate their favorite bands newest album, Mad Men, Rivers Cuomo and much more.

Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fictionby Kurt Vonnegut [Delacorte Press]
+ More fiction from Vonnegut. Shouldn't have to say much more than that. Get your fill. I don't think they'll be a treasure trove of unpublished works surfacing any time soon.

The Red Bookby C.G. Jung [W.W. Norton]
+ Consistently hailed as the most influential psychological work that has never been published, Jung's elusive Red Book is finally going to see light. Jung worked on this fever dream for years. As a Dante-esque fantastical parable it mirrors of the evolution of Jungian thought. This could either be a huge let down to Jungians or this could be the biggest release of the decade in psychology.

Other Notable Releases: Noir by Brian Azzarello, To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom by Newt Gingrich, The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

Poetry:
Fire Exit: A Poemby Robert Kelly [Black Widow Press]
+ Black Widow, among others, is asserting that this flourishing book length poem will be one of the major works of Robert Kelly's 50+ years as a notable poet. Kelly is a prolific and established poet whose every work deserves some consideration. As usual, no exception. Check out some video of Kelly reading at the St. Marks Poetry Project in the meantime.

Music:
Flight of the Conchords - I Told You I Was Freaky[Sub Pop]
+ New Zealeand's biggest export is releasing I Told You I Was Freaky, a collection of jams from the second season of their hit HBO TV series. Some of the best tracks: "Too Many Dicks [On the Dancefloor]," "You Don't Have to Be a Prostitute."

Atlas Sound - Logos[Kranky]
+ Bradford Cox's not-Deerhunter band releases their second LP, and it's great.
When Cox steps from behind the layers nostalgia-inducing feedback (Deerhunter) there is a more sensitive (but not too sensitive) side to his songwriting that can even touch something a little country-western (kind of) and it's a beautiful thing. In my mind teh current trajectory of Atlas sound eclipses Deerhunter in a big way.

Cox is currently starting a tour with Athens, GA based Selmanaires as his backing band (they also open and are worth catching if you're debating arriving late).

Other notable releases: Alec Ounsworth - Mo Beauty, Converge - Axe to Fall, Do Make Say Think - Other Truths, Excepter - Black Beach, Sufjan Stevens - The BQE Soundtrack

IN THEATERS:
Night & Day (Hong Sang-Soo) [B.O.M. Film]
+ This glacial South Korean film follows painter Sung-nam after he is forced to flee South Korea on a drug charge. He lives on the edge in Paris. Never sure where his next meal is coming from (or that seems to be the premise, though he does alright). He balances his new working class lifestyle as an immigrant, with nightly phone calls from his wife back home, and his new-found love of a Korean art student studying in Paris. The film can be a little heavy handed at times. Striving to drive home the duality that has found it's way into Sung-nam's life. Or maybe it's just finally surfacing. The cinematography won't remind you of any of the other major names in South Korean cinema with their smooth round edges and over saturated lens. The picture is gritty and often quite dark. Yet, for all it's flaws it's a beautiful study of human infidelity and the short-sighted ways in which we forget what family means.

Night & Day opens Friday at Anthology Film Archives in New York. Potentially (and hopefully) hitting other cities soon.

Anti-Christ (Lars Von Trier) [Zentropa Films]
+ The Knowns: It's a striking, beautiful film. It'll get you thinking. It's a little nauseating, at times. This is one of the fall's must see films. The Unknowns: Will you throw up? (You wouldn't be the first.) Will the Oscars finally acknowledge Lars Von Trier's existence? How many people will actually go see a film with on-screen genital mutilation? (My guess? Fewer than are interested in flying robots from out space.) The film already feels as though it's the most talked about film of the fall. And that's no easy feat considering the subject matter covered in the film and the various ways it could turn people of all demographics off simply through it's grotesque scenes.

One last thing. Their campaign that almost was. Twitter posts the last few days from friend of a friend (etc.): "If you loved Bright Star and can only see one more film this year. Make it Anti-Christ." ...Don't believe the hype.

Other Notable Releases: Amelia (Mira Nair), Ong-Bak 2 (Tony Jaa Panna Rittikra), Rembrandt's J’Accuse (Peter Greenaway)

DVD:
Fados(Carlos Saura) [Zeitgeist Films]
+ Carlos Saura is a master of the cinematic arts and has never received adequate attention. Despite special screenings of Fados at a number of galleries around the US and a theatrical premiere, not enough people ventured out to see the newest work by one of the masters. (And can I just throw out that his Blood Wedding is one of the greatest things to ever happen on film?) Well, now there is no excuse.

Other Notable Releases: Cheri (Stephen Frears), Howards End (James Ivory) [Criterion Edition], Paris 1919 (Paul Cowan)

COMICS:
Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Yearsby Charles Schultz [Simon & Schuster/Andrew McMeel Publishing]
+ Because you think you look too snooty with just a copy of The Complete New Yorker cartoons sitting on your book shelf, if for no other reason.

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb [W.W. Norton]
+ R.Crumbs literal translation of the first book of the Bible in a graphic form has stirred the pot a bit. Crumb has maintained that it is a literal translation. His words can be translated as there is sex and violence, which the naysayers seem to want to deny exists in the Bible. (That's all there is in the Bible.) It's really a ringing endorsement that more than a few Holy Men have found offense in what looks to be one of Crumb's weirder endeavors.

Other Notable Releases: Batman: Streets of Gotham #5, Blackest night: Superman #3, Dark Avengers #10, Dark Reign The List: The Hulk (one shot), Dark Wolverine #79, The Invincible Iron Man #19, Punisher Noir #3, Skrull Kill Krew #5 (of 5), Vigilante #11

Hell Yes Dispatch: Call For Submissions! We Want to Know What Love Is!

2009-10-20T08:43:00.008-04:00

Our friends over at Hell Yes Press are looking for some lovely submissions. Check out the call below and heed the warning. Which sounds right, but I'm not sure if there is really a warning anywhere here. Don't eay Mayo straight from the jar. You'll have a heart attack.

In your life, has there been heartache and pain? Well, now you can put it to good use!

Hell Yes is seeking work that explores relationships -- relationships that exist between people, between people and animals, possessions, inanimate objects, works of art, and/or other possibilities. We want work that tackles the shifting nexuses of bonds and ties.

But, really, let’s cut the shit: we are looking for love (poems) in all the wrong places. Please email us yours at hellyespress@gmail.com (subject: love poems) for consideration in this forthcoming anthology. Submission deadline to break hearts is Feb 14, 2010.

Happy, sad, or confused, get in the mood and send us some poems.

American Life in Poetry: Column 239

2009-10-20T08:35:00.001-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how unsuccessfully classical music fits into a subway.

Bach in the DC Subway

As an experiment,
The Washington Post
asked a concert violinist—
wearing jeans, tennis shoes,
and a baseball cap—
to stand near a trash can
at rush hour in the subway
and play Bach
on a Stradivarius.
Partita No. 2 in D Minor
called out to commuters
like an ocean to waves,
sang to the station
about why we should bother
to live.

A thousand people
streamed by. Seven of them
paused for a minute or so
and thirty-two dollars floated
into the open violin case.
A café hostess who drifted
over to the open door
each time she was free
said later that Bach
gave her peace,
and all the children,
all of them,
waded into the music
as if it were water,
listening until they had to be
rescued by parents
who had somewhere else to go.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Lee Garrison, whose most recent book of poems is Sweeping the Cemetery: New and Selected Poems, Browser Books Publishing, 2007. Poem reprinted from Rattle, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter 2008, by permission of David Lee Garrison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Our Friends at Guernica Are Throwing a Party, And You Should Go

2009-10-16T20:50:00.004-04:00

Our good friends at Guernica Magazine, the magazine that Howard Zinn (!) has called an “extraordinary bouquet of stories, poems, social commentary, and art” and Esquire called a “great online literary magazine,” is having a party to celebrate their fifth anniversary. If you are in New York on October 28 this is where you are going to want to be.

It's quite impressive what Guernica has accomplished in just five years. Some highlights include E.C. Osondu’s story “Waiting,” originally published in Guernica, winning the 2009 Caine Prize, Africa’s leading literary award. A panel discussion on activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, part of the PEN World Voices Festival, was featured in the New York Times. In addition, the Guardian, Salon.com, The New Yorker and other publications have all written about Guernica on their blogs and in their pages.

(Full disclosure: I am Guernica's Blog Editor. That being said, the reason I wanted to be a part of Guernica was, and continues to be, because of the voice they add to the political and artistic conversation that goes on daily in the world. I am consistently impressed by the content that appears on the site and am glad to be a part of it.)

Here's the press release:

Guernica Magazine Celebrates Five Years

with Bash Featuring Jonathan Ames,

Brooklyn Lager, Music, Food, Prizes

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 14 – To celebrate five years of award-winning coverage of international arts and politics, Guernica Magazine is throwing a birthday party on Wednesday, October 28, at the powerHouse Arena in Brooklyn, NY. The Guernica at 5 benefit bash will feature a reading by author Jonathan Ames, the creator of HBO's Bored to Death, along with performances by a special musical guest. Partygoers will enjoy free food and drinks, including beer provided by Brooklyn Brewery, and will each receive a complimentary two-year subscription to Time Out New York.

Guernica at 5
Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 7-10 p.m.
powerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY

“Guernica has a strong tradition of hosting provocative and exciting cultural events, and Guernica at 5 promises to provide even more of the energy that our followers have come to expect from us,” explained co-founder Joel Whitney. Guernica’s popular monthly New York City salons have offered the opportunity for writers, readers, and artists to gather together to share drinks and opinions. Recent Guernica events include a live conversation between Mia Farrow and Bernard-Henri Lévy, a sold-out Hudson River cruise, and a discussion on activist Ken Saro-Wiwa which was featured in the New York Times.

Tickets to the Guernica at 5 can be purchased online through www.mycommunitytickets.com for $45. The first 50 ticket holders will be automatically entered in a raffle to see Andrew Bird perform in Philadelphia on October 25. Funds raised by the benefit will directly support Guernica's ongoing mission to expand the grass-roots international arts and literary community. Members of the Benefit Committee include Mia Farrow, Tom & Susan Chehak, Mark Dowie, Tim Gray, Howard Zinn, and Wendell Potter.

ABOUT THE MAGAZINE: Guernica was founded in 2004 and has grown into an indispensable forum for cultural conversation. It has sparked discussions about the environment; published great stories, poems, paintings, and photos from around the world; and weighed in on topics ranging from the crisis in Darfur to the Iraq war. The magazine has featured heads of state, Nobel Prize winners, literary stalwarts, lawmakers, filmmakers, salsa gods, and cabinet members.

MORE INFORMATION: To arrange for an interview, press passes, or publicity stills,
contact Robin Beth Schaer at guernicamag@gmail.com.

What We've Been Reading

2009-10-16T11:22:00.007-04:00

Brad:
I'm reading In Cold Bloodfor the first time ever. How I'm this old without ever having read it is beyond me. But this book is rocking my socks off. The prose is both concrete and lyrical, and the story is just so horrifying. I'm happy to be making up for lost time.

I'm also reading The Beginning of the Fieldsby Angela Shaw. The aesthetics and the subject matter aren't my usual cup of tea, maybe, but this is also a really excellent book, full of concrete and lyrical writing, and my socks here too are in the process of being rocked off. Wonderful.

Dustin:
I just finished my bi-annual reading of TS Eliot's The Waste Land & Other Poems, as well as the last two parts of Beowulf. (I had the urge to read something in Old English. I had to memorize the first 100 lines of Beowulf, in Old English, when I was a junior in high school and I haven't read any Old English since. When I started working on this blurb I wrote a long apology for reading something in Old English, as though I had offended everyone's family. Fuck that. It was fun.)

I'm currently plowing through Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project.It's pretty great so far. Structurally, it's pretty wild. Though I feel like I've been saying that a lot lately. Maybe I've just become interested in structure and that's what I'm seeing but Hemon's flashing between this story that the main character is trying to uncover and that characters real life is done seamlessly. It's beautiful. Socks, consider yourself rocked.

American Life in Poetry: Column 238

2009-10-13T10:18:00.001-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Though some teacher may have made you think that all poetry is deadly serious, chock full of coded meanings and obscure symbols, poems, like other works of art, can be delightfully playful. Here Bruce Guernsey, who divides his time between Illinois and Maine, plays with a common yam.

Yam

The potato that ate all its carrots,
can see in the dark like a mole,

its eyes the scars
from centuries of shovels, tines.

May spelled backwards
because it hates the light,

pawing its way, paddling along,
there in the catacombs.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Bruce Guernsey. Reprinted from New England Primer by Bruce Guernsey, Cherry Grove Collections, 2008, by permission of Bruce Guernsey and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

InDigest Picks

2009-10-12T11:21:00.003-04:00

Books:
Chronic Cityby Jonathan Lethem [Doubleday]
+ Lethem's newest book crosses the river from his beloved Brooklyn and utilizes Manhattan as a central location. The book is a meandering study of friendship and everyday observation as two odd friends, Chase Insteadman, the spouse of an astronaut stuck in space, and Perkus Tooth, a cultural critic with too little to do, wander on the margins of the cities elite.

Hear an interview with Lethem about the book at Amazon here.

Inventory: 16 Films Featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls, 10 Great Songs Nearly Ruined by Saxophone, and 100 More Obsessively Specific Pop-Culture Listsby The Onion AV Club [Scribner]
+ Inventory is a collection of some of those amazing lists you read every week in The Onion AV Club, with a lengthy intro by Chuck Klosterman. On top of the AV Club writer's lists there are lists from Andrew WK, Patton Oswalt, John Hodgeman, Zach Galifinakis, Paul Thomas Anderson, "Weird Al" Yankovic and more.

Photography:
Grungephotographs by Michael Lavine and text by Thurston Moore [Abrams Image]
+ With a similar feel to Moore and Byron Cooley's No Wave, Grunge is a collection of photography that seeks to capture the zeitgeist. Grunge lacks the intimacy and sense that Moore is letting you in on a secret no one else knows about like he did in No Wave. Yet, there is something really spectacular about the photography here. Seeing Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Billy Corgan and others who've become something totally different in our over the last two decades (see: Chris Cornell's hip-hop album...blek); they are heroes, major rock stars now, but these photos are a beautiful reminder of where these people started, how the music they made at that time was the focal point of an underground movement that changed the trajectory of rock music in America.

Music:
Lightning Bolt - Earthly Delights[Load]
+ Multi-hyphenated noise rockers Lightning Bolt come out with a new album that's just as noisy and incomprehensible as their brilliant Hypermagic Mountain. Oddly enough you can sense maturation in Earthly Delights, which isn't something that always happens with bands as loud and spastic as Lightning Bolt.

Preview their track "Collosus" from Earthly Delights here. [via Pitchfork]

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic[Warner Bros]
+ The last LP from Wayne Coyne and co. was a mixed bag. Some catchy tunes and some songs that were less than exciting. The good news for those of you who were also disappointed: Embryonic rocks. It's The Flaming Lips playing with their sound, evolving and taking risks again. It's an incredibly beautiful album.

Other Notable Releases: Anti-Pop Consortium: Fluorescent Black, Bob Dylan: Christmas in the Heart, Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down: Know Better Learn Faster,

In Theaters:
One Fast Move or I'm Gone: Kerouac's Big Sur (Curt Worden) [Kerouac Films]
+ This often surprising documentary tracks Kerouac as he deals with becoming an international phenom, an alcoholic and reluctant figurehead of a movement. He retreats to Big Sur and writes the novel of the same name. Friends remember the circumstances surrounding the book and, along with fans, read excerpts of the novel. The documentary illuminates the novel and is essential viewing for any fan of Kerouac.

Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze) [Warner Bros]
+ One of the fall's most anticipated films finally hits theaters. The build up from McSweeney's releases (both Egger's Wild Things and Heads on And We Shoot), The Arcade Fire laden trailers, coloring books, short films from Spike Jonze at MoMA and in the new issue of Wholphin, along with enough hype to choke The Killers and the rumored fights between Jonze/Eggers and the studio makes it a frightening weekend where we will remember how fallible the hype machine is, while, probably, still enjoying this film quite a bit.

Other Notable Releases: Black Dynamite

DVD:
The Mighty Boosh Special Edition (Seasons 1-3)[BBC Warner]
+ If you aren't watching this show yet you've made a mistake. Now, go watch crack fox.

Dusan Makavejev: Free Radical- Eclipse Series 18 [Criterion]
+ Eclipse series is one my favorite things happening in the world of cinema. The Eclipse series (by Criterion) restores important, but marginalized, films that have never seen a DVD release in the US. Even if I know nothing about the films being released I get excited. Previously releases of Sam Fuller's early studio work, the first screenplays of Bergman and Flamenco films of Carlos Saura have made my loins throb.

Comics:
Deadpool #900[Marvel]
+ Deadpool hits his 900th issue (is that right?) with a 104 page epic comic. Might as well buy this now before Ryan Reynolds ruins any enjoyment you get out of Deadpool. The whole Merc with a Mouth thing is great when it's written but when Ryan Reynolds keeps blathering on it becomes, not surprisingly, quite painful. (He was only in around five minutes of Wolverine and I wanted him dead.)

Other Notable Collections: The Batman Chronicles Vol. 8 (various), Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk Vol. 1 (Damon Lindelof, Leinil Francis Yu)

Other Notable Single Issues: Red Robin #5, Batman #691

What We've Been Reading

2009-10-09T12:19:00.002-04:00

Ashleigh:
The past few days I've been reading Michael Thomas's novel Man Gone Down.It won the International Impac Dublin Literary Award this past summer, and I'd read a lot about its unabashed literary-ness, its fearless exploration of race in contemporary America, its tender depiction of a man who has long since given up hope of finding his place in the world. And while I can't yet say I love the book (I'm only about 100 pages in), it's fascinating to see the unnamed narrator spiral deeper into digressions and ruminations as the pressure builds to make a new start in life. It's always hard to watch someone fail in real time, and even harder to watch them fail because they are mired in exhuming the past, but Man Gone Down demonstrates that there can be a kind of beauty in it, too.

Jess:
Moby DickThis shit is incredible. The Pequod is ribbed with whale bones. I'd put in a vote for the most badass book in American literature. Plus it's funny.

Minneapple in the Big Apple

2009-10-07T10:29:00.002-04:00

Check out this nice piece on InDigest and the 1207 Reading Series over at the Minneapple in the Big Apple blog.

InDigest Picks

2009-10-07T09:52:00.003-04:00

Books:
The Wild Thingsby Dave Eggers [McSweeneys]
+ Maybe this is just in New York, but it seems everywhere I turn there is something reminding me that Where the Wild Things Are is about to come out in theaters. Based on the children's story, and tied together with the screenplay for the film co-written by Eggers and director Spike Jonze, this is a more in depth version of Where the Wild Things Are. It's a dark, beautiful story that Eggers has adapted. You should of course get the fur-covered edition (pictured to the left).

Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Sonby Michael Chabon [Harper-Collins]
+ Chabon's first work of non-fiction is a series of intertwining essays that essentially amount to an auto-biography. Chabon's writing is always a pleasure to read. Reviews have already called this an "instant classic" (never heard that before), yet there is not reason to believe that this is not the case when it comes to work by Chabon. It seems that so much of his work does, all cliches aside, become an instant classic.

Music:
The Mountain Goats - Life of the World to Come[4AD]
+ The newest disc from John Darnielle is what you would expect, and yet still a little surprising. Every song on the album is named after a bible verse, which Darnielle explained/refused to explain as soon as the track listing was announced. The religious overtones make it a fascinating extension of Darnielle's discography, as he's always had a sort of intrigue with the stories of religion, while maintaining an agnostic stance. The Life of the World to Come is a great album that hits all of your favorite Mountain Goats tropes: piano ballads, catchy sing-along moments, Darnielle's rambling bellow and his wry sense of humor.

No Age - Losing Feeling[Sub-Pop]
+ The young Noise pop duo leaves LPs behind for their formerly favored EP format. It's a killer disc, that is only missing a waft of their fantastic collaborations with Bob Mould from their last tour and ATP appearance.

In Theaters:
Good Hair (Jeff Stilson) [Chris Rock Entertainment]
+ This Chris Rock hosted documentary seems to be of the mind that docs can be fun [gasp]. Rock travels the world stopping in laboratories, beauty salons and talking to people on the streets to discover the "mystery behind African-American hair."

Comics/Graphic Novels:
Dark Reign: Fantastic Four(Jonathan Hickman, Sean Chen)
+ I may have said this once or twice before, but Dark Reign is the best thing that's ever happened to the Marvel world. The collections of the comics, such as this one, are just starting to come out. If you haven't been keeping up with the comic world here's a good spot to start immersing yourself in Dark Reign. The Fantastic Four series isn't the best thing happening in Dark Reign, but, so far, everything has been pretty fantastic in this world.

InDigest 1207 Tonight

2009-10-07T00:23:00.002-04:00

It's that time of the month again. Oh yes, it's time for the InDigest 1207 Reading Series. Tonight we are proud to present J.C. Hallman (The Hospital for Bad Poets [Milkweed]), Paul Harding (Tinkers [Bellvue Press]) and Dana Rossi.

The reading will be happening at (le) Poisson Rouge in New York (158 Bleecker St. between Sullivan and Thompson). All readings start at 7 with happy hour starting at 6. That's right, happy hour. Be there at 6. Book by reading authors will be available at the reading as will authors for the signing of artifacts.

J.C. Hallman grew up in Southern California. He is the author of The Chess Artist, The Devil is a Gentleman, and The Hospital for Bad Poets. A book about modern utopias, In Eutopia, is forthcoming from St. Martin's Press in Spring 2010.

Paul Harding has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has taught writing at Harvard and The University of Iowa. He lives near Boston with his wife and two sons.

Dana Rossi is a freelance writer and stage manager. She has written for Time Out New York, Broken Pencil, New York Press, and a couple of websites here and there. She recently won a New York Press Association Award for a feature article she did on actors understudying celebs on Broadway. Her blog is Party in the Back and it compares current events, trends, and news to 80s movies. On the theater side, she has most recently stage managed at Manhattan Theatre Source and at Soho Playhouse in the NYC Fringe Festival and Encore Series (where she also sound designed her first show). When she's not stage managing, writing articles, or comparing the state of the economy to Back to the Future Part II, she works as a story analyst for Sony Pictures Television

American Life in Poetry: Column 237

2009-10-05T23:50:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

An aubade is a poem about separation at dawn, but as you’ll see, this one by Dore Kiesselbach, who lives in Minnesota, is about the complex relationship between a son and his mother.

Aubade

"Take me with you"
my mother says
standing in her nightgown
as, home from college,
I prepare to leave
before dawn.
The desolation
she must face
was once my concern
but like a bobber
pulled beneath
the surface
by an inedible fish
she vanished
into the life
he offered her.
It stopped occurring
to me she might return.
"I'll be back" I say
and then I go.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Dore Kiesselbach. Poem reprinted from Field, No. 79, Fall 2008, by permission of Dore Kiesselbach and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What We've Been Reading

2009-10-02T14:17:00.005-04:00

Brad:
I'm currently reading Popular Music from Vittulaby Mikael Niemi. Niemi is a Swedish novelist who grew up within the Arctic Circle, in northern Sweden near the Finnish border. The novel takes place in the small town of Pajala (where Niemi himself grew up), with Matthias (as a grown-up) writing in his journal about his youth. It's a strange, eloquent book, with splashes of magical realism as Matthias and his friends slowly encounter Elvis, girls, and lots and lots of snow. I'm not very far along in it yet, but it's proving to be difficult to put down, and once I've done that, difficult to shake its warm hold.

Dustin:
I just foraged through Paul Harding's Tinkers.(Full Disclosure: I read this a couple weeks ago and I'm writing about it now because, not coincidentally, Paul Harding is reading at InDigest 1207 on Wednesday Oct. 7.) Tinkers concerns is two occasionally converging stories: An old man on his death bed looking back at his childhood, and the story of his epileptic tinker father and the battles that each encountered as their life paths ran in parallel and forked. The language flowers into beautiful labyrinths of digressions and descriptions. It reads almost like a work of modernist existentialism but is ultimately more pointed than that. It's complex and beautiful, one of the more demanding and satisfying works I've read in a while.

American Life in Poetry: Column 236

2009-10-01T11:13:00.001-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Cecilia Woloch teaches in California, and when she’s not with her students she’s off to the Carpathian Mountains of Poland, to help with the farm work. But somehow she resisted her wanderlust just long enough to make this telling snapshot of her father at work.

The Pick

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.
I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence,
just watching him.
My father’s body glistened with sweat,
his arms flew like dark wings over his head.
He was turning the backyard into terraces,
breaking the hill into two flat plains.
I took for granted the power of him,
though it frightened me, too.
I watched as he swung the pick into the air
and brought it down hard
and changed the shape of the world,
and changed the shape of the world again.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Reprinted from When She Named Fire, ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009, by permission of Cecilia Woloch and the publisher. The poem first appeared in Sacrifice by Cecilia Woloch, Tebot Bach, 1997. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

J.C. Hallman: The Disciplined Soul

2009-09-29T13:14:00.001-04:00

In preparation for J.C. Hallman's reading with InDigest 1207, Tin House Books has kindly allowed us to re-post Hallman's recent and upcoming blog posts from their blog.

In the fourth and final installment of J.C. Hallman's series of essays about his forthcoming book The Story About the Story he discusses what makes the essays in that book stand apart from traditional literary criticism. Thanks to Tin House Books and J.C. Hallman for partnering with InDigest to bring you this series of essays.

J.C. Hallman: The Disciplined Soul

The essays in The Story About the Story differ from traditional literary criticism in many ways. They contemplate rather than argue. They do not artificially sublimate subjectivity. They preserve mystery instead of dissecting it. And often they expand the scope of what they are willing to address so as to speak to the basics--the history, the process, the purpose--of literature itself.

I didn't quite mean to do this when I started collecting pieces for the book, but the essays in The Story About the Story add up to a solid century's worth of literary wisdom--straight from the horses' mouths.

This wisdom takes a number of forms.

Cynthia Ozick ("Truman Capote Reconsidered") begins with an elegant aphorism: "Time at length becomes justice." Similarly, Nabokov ("'The Metamorphosis'") introduces Kafka with a rapid-fire definition of art, "Beauty plus pity," a maxim that a few pages later is met with Camus' insistence ("Herman Melville") that Melville is the furthest thing from Kafka but still offers "inexhaustible sources of strength and pity."

Other contributors suggest trends. Michael Chabon ("The Other James") recalls that "all stories...descend from the fireside tale, told with wolves in the woods all around..." and Frank O'Connor ("An Author in Search of a Subject") contrasts Katherine Mansfield with "Joyce and Proust, who in their different, more worldly ways were also attempting a magical approach to literature by trying to make the printed page not a description of something that had happened but a substitute for what had happened."

The book's essays often seek to make the effect and purpose of reading a visceral experience. William Gass ("In Terms of the Toenail: Fiction and the Figures of Life") describes beginning a book ("How easy it is to enter. An open book, an open eye, and the first page lifts toward us like a fragrance...") and Susan Sontag ("Loving Dostoevsky"), on ending one, is "purged, shaken, fortified, breathing a little deeper, grateful to literature for what it can harbor and exemplify."

On the stakes of literature, Robert Hass ("Lowell's Graveyard") finds a metaphor for a poem's capacity to change life irrevocably: "Poems take place in your life, or some of them do, like the...day the trucks came and the men began to tear up the wooden sidewalks and the cobblestone gutters outside your house and laid down new cement curbs and asphalt streets." Charles D'Ambrosio ("Salinger and Sobs") unapologetically articulates why he reads at all: "Admittedly, wanting practical advice is a pretty primitive idea of what a book should do, but...I didn't know any better, and probably still don't."

Walter Kirn ("Good-bye, Holden Caulfield. I Mean It. Go! Good-Bye!") reveals the true life of books: "People tell me that the mark of a great book is the way that it sticks with you, stays vivid over time, but I disagree. The best books fade into the scenery, dissolve into instant backdrop, return to dust. But that dust is never the same; it's changed forever." And E.B. White, writing of Thoreau, proposes that the reader-writer relationship is much more than a contract: "He is a better companion than most, and I would not swap him for a soberer or more reasonable friend even if I could."

Sven Birkerts ("On a Stanza by John Keats") sets out to question the whole business of writing about reading--"Is beauty that has been made out of words impervious to other words?" To which Phyllis Rose (an excerpt from The Year of Reading Proust) offers an answer: "No matter how full we make our accounts of reading...what we produce is less than the text it describes."

But of course, what's at stake in the writing life is more than just chat. Seamus Heaney ("Learning from Eliot") reminds us that a writer's life means "the disciplining of a habit of expression until it becomes fundamental to the whole conduct of a life."

The Story About the Story is full of such-disciplined souls.

__________________________________

Courtesy of Tin House and reprinted from their blog.

J.C. Hallman will be reading in New York as part of the InDigest 1207 Reading Series on October 7 at 6pm.

J. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman. A collection of his short fiction, The Hospital for Bad Poets, was published by Milkweed Editions earlier this year. His work has appeared in GQ, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is working on a book about modern expressions of utopian thought.

InDigest Picks

2009-09-29T01:05:00.007-04:00

Books:
Juliet, Nakedby Nick Hornby [Riverhead]
+ I wanted to try and explain the plot of this book, but the more I read the less I understood.

This is the product description from Amazon:
"Annie loves Duncan-or thinks she does. Duncan loves Annie, but then, all of a sudden, he doesn't. Duncan really loves Tucker Crowe, a reclusive Dylanish singer-songwriter who stopped making music ten years ago. Annie stops loving Duncan, and starts getting her own life.

In doing so, she initiates an e-mail correspondence with Tucker, and a connection is forged between two lonely people who are looking for more out of what they've got. Tucker's been languishing (and he's unnervingly aware of it)[...]redemption[...]life[...]emotional[...]artistic[...] But then there's also the new material he's about to release to the world: an acoustic, stripped-down version of his greatest album, Juliet-entitled, Juliet, Naked." I'm so confused already. But Nick Hornby's awesome, so...

The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)edited by Otto Penzler [Vintage]
+ Editor Otto Penzler (Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps) collects over 80 vampire stories in this volume. With the return of vampire chic this collection doubles as some cool literature that you won't find in that Norton you have left over from college or a great gift for your Twilight watching nephew or niece. The collection includes stories from Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Byron, Stephen King (I see you're not surprised), Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ambroce Bierce, D.H. Lawrence and many more. This collection actually has some wonderful literary works about vampires, which is good; it will nicely augment that copy of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies sitting on your coffee table.

Poetry:
Museum of Accidentsby Rachel Zucker [Wave Books]
+ Rachel Zucker's newest collection is a beautifully bound book. It's huge (not long, physically large), and it actually adds something to the whole experience. Zucker likes to surprise through odd enjambments, peculiar inversions and disjointed structure. She likes to let the white space be a part of the poem, like in "What Dark Thing," where the end of stanza does not just mean that it's time to hit return button twice, but that it's time for emptiness, for space to take a pause, to let the words breathe. After reading Museum of Accidents it's hard to imagine the book being anything but this size, a smaller version couldn't contain all the white space necessary to make these poems breathe how they want to and to fully expose their beauty. This is a great collection.

Also out this week through Wave Books is Bluets by Maggie Nelson.

Music:
Drummer - Feel Good Together[Audio Eagle]
+ Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) struck out on his own early this year and now Patrick Carney, drummer of The Black Keys, has a band of his own. That's actually the concept of Drummer. It's constructed of drummers who play in other bands. On top of Carney the band also includes Jamie Stillman of Teeth the Hydra (playing guitar), Jon Finley of Beaten Awake (on vocals and guitar), Stephen Clements of Six Parts Seven (on keys and vocals), and Greg Boyd of Ghostman and Sandman (on drums). It's about time some drummers got their due in the ever expanding world of side-projects.

In Theaters:
A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen) [Focus Features]
+ I can't remember the last time that a new Coen Brothers wasn't a cause for celebration.

Capitalism: A Love Story (Michael Moore) [Overture Films]
+ Ok, yes, I know. Michael Moore is divisive. He can be an asshole and sometimes he does take a somewhat simplistic view of things to get his point across. That's fine; I agree. But Moore manages to do something very few people can do. He can stir national political debate as a writer and filmmaker. There are plenty of people who write books and make films about the same things he does who are far more radical and divisive, or far more centrist, that really don't cause any debate at all outside of their small (often academic) circles. Moore stirs debate because he's good at what he does. There. Someone needed to lay out a defense of a guy who is generally getting attacked from both sides. He's not my favorite, but can you really say you've hated or disagreed with his previous films? Oh. You do. Fair enough.

DVD:
Away We Go(Sam Mendes) [Big Beach Films]
+ Away We Go was certainly not a perfect film, but it has a lot of charm. Mendes, Dave Eggers and John Krasinski all partnered up to make a funny film that felt a little easy at time, but was still pretty damn lovable.

Comics/Graphic Novels:
Batman Widening Gyre #2(of 6) by Kevin Smith [DC]
+ The Widening Gyre marks director Kevin Smith's return to writing Batman comics. The first issue was beautifully bound and incredibly engaging. If it weren't for that whole Bruce Wayne is dead thing I'd say this is one of the most exciting things to happen in comics this year.

Dark Reign Hood #5(of 5) by Jeff Parker [Marvel]
+ This is probably my favorite thing to have come out of Dark Reign so far. The Hood has been an intense limited series and with the conclusion coming out this Wednesday I'd put this up against almost any limited series Marvel has put out. Paired up with the limited series of Mr. Negative (in which The Hood is a main character) Marvel really hit it out of the park on some of these limited series Dark Reign tie-ins.

What We've Been Reading

2009-09-25T13:11:00.003-04:00

Jess:
Been reading The Boatby Nam Le. Very elegant photo on the cover. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about with this book. The language is for the most part unadventurous and the narratives (though finely crafted) take very few risks. It's like someone told me they were going to give me a ride home and then that's all they did. Ride home, as promised. Fine, but we could have at least stopped for soft serve or something. "Meeting Elise" is my favorite story so far and definitely worth checking out.

Ashleigh:
J.C. Hallman's collection of short stories, The Hospital for Bad Poets,is an eclectic mix of ruminations on science, alienation, and philosophy. The best stories combine both the multi-layered, self-aware nature of post-modernism and the practical lessons of fables. Hallman is interested in how we construct our identities and negotiate romantic relationships in a time when technology, scientific progress, and media inform so many of our choices.

Also, as you may have noticed, JC Hallman is reading with InDigest 1207 on October 7th along with Paul Harding and Dana Rossi.

J.C. Hallman: "Kafka? I love Kafka. He's very - Kafkaesque."

2009-09-23T17:33:00.001-04:00

In preparation for J.C. Hallman's reading with InDigest 1207, Tin House Books has kindly allowed us to re-post Hallman's recent and upcoming blog posts from their blog. Thanks very much to Tin House and to J.C. Hallman.

J.C. Hallman: "Kafka? I love Kafka. He's very - Kafkaesque."

Anthologies are notorious for a number of reasons. The books have too many words on each page. They're way too expensive because they're intended as textbooks. And they're never quite as comprehensive as they're meant to be.

The Story About the Story is an attempt to correct all that.

One of the reasons anthologies prove problematic is the whole business of permissions. I went into the process of obtaining permissions for this book with a degree of curiosity and the tenacity of a visionary. But if I'd known what I was getting myself into I probably never would have started. The permissions labyrinth is a maze manned by a squadron of unruly Minotaurs, and I quickly found that as a single Theseus I wasn't going to be able to find my way through it alone. After about a month of phone calls I was at the end of my string, as it were.

The problem with The Story About the Story was multi-fold. When we write about reading, we want to cite things, to use examples--these become permissions issues, too. Furthermore, for an anthology like this to have any chance at succeeding, it needs to have the possibility of getting to foreign markets, at least the UK (a number of the writers in The Story About the Story are British--from Woolf and Wilde to De Botton and Dyer). This meant that each essay actually wound up requiring multiple permissions. The prize for most went to Edward Hirsch. The short selection from How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love With Poetry required two permissions for the text itself (US and UK), two permissions for the Plath poem it explicates, and a permission for a few lines from poet Miklós Radnóti.

Five permissions for one essay. The average permission for The Story About the Story was $150.00 Thirty-one essays in the book.

The budget was $3500.00.

I'm not complaining! True, I wound up in the red on The Story About the Story, but I had never hoped to make a profit, and money wasn't the biggest problem I encountered. The biggest problem was a new descent into the Kafkaesque.

Probably the most famous essay reprinted in The Story About the Story is Vladimir Nabokov's take on Kafka, "The Metamorphosis." Or, rather, "'The Metamorphosis.'" Remember that. Perhaps for ease of use, or perhaps frustrated that "Franz Kafka" becomes an anagram for absolutely nothing else (including any number of words), Nabokov gave his wonderful lecture on Kafka's story the same title as the story itself. He probably didn't realize that this would become a well-laid man-trap in a maze already overpopulated with monsters.

I won't name the publisher who actually wound up owning the rights to Nabokov's essay (though with a little imagination, it's easy enough to figure out), but trouble began almost as soon as I wrote to them about this piece and couple others. Alas, they rejoined, we don't control the rights to Nabokov's "The Metamorphosis." That was controlled by an agency in the UK, which after a few additional calls turned out to be a subsidiary of Random House UK.

Ah, silly me, I thought. I'm such a novice. But fortunately I have good, informed people to help me along on my path. I wrote to Random House UK.

They wrote back almost at once, kindly explaining that Vladimir Nabokov had not actually written "The Metamorphosis," Franz Kafka did, and it was published in a book called In the Penal Colony in 1910.

I took a closer look at the email from the initial permissions department. They had no idea what they were doing.

I called to explain. Nabokov's essay on Kafka was about a story called "The Metamorphosis," and the essay was, in an admittedly confusing

fashion, also called "'The Metamorphosis.'" They did in fact, I said, control the rights to the essay.

No, we don't, they said. There followed a somewhat tense exchange. Nabokov's essay "The Metamorphosis," they insisted, had first been published in a book by Franz Kafka called In the Penal Colony in 1910. That was the information they had.

I should have just run with it from there - but I didn't. Why, I argued, would an essay by a writer two generations further on, an essay about a Kafka story, appear in the same book in which the story was first published? How was that even possible?

There was silence on the other end of the line.

I put the pieces together for them, using my new knowledge of the permissions maze. What seemed most likely was that Nabokov himself had been required to seek permission for the sections he wanted to quote from Kafka. The story was public domain now, but it wasn't when Nabokov was writing, so the agency that was eventually sold to Random House UK gave permission for the excerpts, not the essay.

We'll look into it, they said. A few hours later I received a confirmation that they did, in fact, control rights to the essay. I would receive a contract shortly.

Victory! Castle doors open wide! Acquittal in the trial of the century!

In a few days, the contract arrived. For the English language rights in the United States alone, they asked $6,190.00. As well, I'd need to obtain the translation rights for the excerpts Nabokov had originally used.

For a moment, I had what is commonly known as a "hissy fit." Then I called my agent, Devin McIntyre. I can't do this, I said. I need to quit. This is insane. Devin did what he always does when I call in a panic, ranting about something. He said nothing. He knew his job was simply to listen. (I assume he was playing computer solitaire.) He was better than a chatty Kafka character, but not by much.

I called Lee Montgomery at Tin House. I begged her for help. She agreed, but reminded me that my agent had sold Tin House the book on the assurance that I would do all the legwork myself. He'd never told me this. (To his credit, he sacrificed his agent's cut of our advance to the cause of permissions. Never has an agent worked so hard for absolutely nothing.)

About forty-eight hours later I was calm again. That was really just the beginning. I started the process of talking them down to a reasonable price, which took a while. And I still needed both the translation rights (US and UK), and the UK rights for the essay itself, and then there was the whole hassle of the drawings that Nabokov had made of Kafka's beetle, and of the inside of the Samsa flat. Images in a book are a whole different maze with a new set of Minotaurs.

But it all got done. And there aren't too many of Nabokov's words on the page. And it's reasonably priced. And there is handsome art. And you can use it for a class, or just read it--because it's great fucking stuff.

And there are thirty other essays in the book, besides.

__________________________________

Courtesy of Tin House and reprinted from their blog.

J.C. Hallman will be reading in New York as part of the InDigest 1207 Reading Series on October 7 at 6pm.

J. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman. A collection of his short fiction, The Hospital for Bad Poets, was published by Milkweed Editions earlier this year. His work has appeared in GQ, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is working on a book about modern expressions of utopian thought.

American Life in Poetry: Column 235

2009-09-22T09:27:00.001-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I tell my writing students that their most important task is to pay attention to what’s going on around them. God is in the details, as we say. Here David Bottoms, the Poet Laureate of Georgia, tells us a great deal about his father by showing us just one of his hands.

My Father’s Left Hand

Sometimes my old man’s hand flutters over his knee, flaps
in crazy circles, and falls back to his leg.

Sometimes it leans for an hour on that bony ledge.

And sometimes when my old man tries to speak, his hand waggles
in the air, chasing a word, then perches again

on the bar of his walker or the arm of a chair.

Sometimes when evening closes down his window and rain
blackens into ice on the sill, it trembles like a sparrow in a storm.

Then full dark falls, and it trembles less, and less, until it’s still.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by David Bottoms, whose most recent book of poems is Waltzing Through the Endtime, Copper Canyon Press, 2004. Poem reprinted from Alaska Quarterly Review, Vol. 25, No. 3 & 4, Fall & Winter 2008, by permission of David Bottoms and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

InDigest Picks

2009-09-21T09:48:00.008-04:00

Books:
Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfallby Kazuo Ishiguro [Knopf]
+ Kazuo Ishiguro can be a little stuffy. (It's no coincidence that Merchant & Ivory have adapted his stories into films.) But Ishiguro's formality can be a thing of beauty. Like it is in Nocturnes, Ishiguro's first collection of short fiction. Nocturnes is comprised of five intertwining, yet separate, stories that have music at their core. A jazz musician who is convinced that plastic surgery will aid his ailing career, a man so obsessed with music and opinion that it's the only thing he is valued for, in each story music plays a different role, but Ishiguro utilizes these characters and their different lives to reveal the many ways that music and art infiltrate our lives in meaningful ways.

Odd and the Frost Giantsby Neil Gaiman [HarperCollins]
+ Neil Gaiman's writing hits that sweet spot between young adult, literary and comic book novels. No matter which home the novel will ultimately be marketed to they are always appealing all around. Gaiman is following up his Newbery Award winning novel The Graveyard Book with a story about Odd, a boy growing up in a Norwegian town whose father was killed during a Viking expedition. He is now going to Asgard to stop the Ice Giants from running the city of the gods. I think I said this about a book a couple weeks back, but I'll reuse it: Awesome.

Music:
Volcano Choir - Unmap[Jagjaguwar]
+ The new group which combines the members of Milwaukee's Collections of Colonies of Bees (including Jon Mueller, whose newest solo album is incredible) and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. It's got Vernon's chilling falsetto and the eerie, percussion heavy, ambient swagger of Collections of Colonies of Bees. Go to LaLa right now and listen to "Seeplymouth" and "Husks and Shells." Or, alternatively, have a free download of "Island, IS."

To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie - Marlone[Kranky]

+ To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie has always been a good band, but on Marlone I was often questioning whether this was even the same band. This is a damn good record. Jehna Wilhelm's voice is striking, and their compositions that land somewhere between ambient and psych. The album is head a shoulders above anything they've done so far. It loses some of the pop edge they used to have (though it's still there) and sound a little more like they belong on Kranky. But they also remind the ways ambient and organic music can be infectious and contain elements of pop.

In Theaters:
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Jon Krasinski) [IFC]
+ The film, based on the novel by David Foster Wallace, has been received with a small legion of luke-warm reviews. Nonetheless, it is DFW and that makes it engaging, at least in the fashion where it'll be interesting to look into the film and what the filmmakers saw at work in DFW's book.

DVD:
30 Rock - Season Three[Universal]
+ The third season of 30 Rock may not have been their best, but after they got over the need to have a guest star in every episode (though Oprah was surprisingly funny) the season really picked up. The second will likely always stand as their shining moment, but this is one of the best comedies that's ever graced network TV.

Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf or Death(Nick Park) [Aardman / Lyons / Hit Ent]
+ That's right. The new Wallace & Gromit hits DVD today. Anyone who doesn't like Wallace & Gromit doesn't have a soul. There are no arguments to be had over this one. Sorry.

Comics/Graphic Novels:
American McGee's Grimm #5 [IDW Publishing]
+ American McGee's Grimm may be the only comic book series based on a video game that I've ever had any appreciation for. The central premise of the series is that Grimm, this heinous looking little troll-ish figure, is out to destroy everything that makes comics boring. So, he does his little fart bomb (a sort of fighting maneuver that makes people confused and generally suck at whatever it is Grimm wants them to suck at) to superheroes and the bad guys win. He creates an army of zombies to kill the "good guys" in an old west town. Sure, it's kind of silly, but it's funny and the artwork is truly amazing.

Astonishing X-Men Omnibusby Joss Whedon and John Cassaday and X-Men Origins[Marvel]
As Marvel continues to issue "Origins" comics and films for X-Men characters (a sequel to the Wolverine film is in the works along with an Origins film on Magneto and others), this book goes back and looks through their known origins thus far. This Graphic Novel collects X-Men: Origins: Colossus, Jean Grey, Beast, Wolverine, Sabretooth, and Gambit. Also out is an omnibus of Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men series. Whedon is a master of comics, and this he may be the best writer of X-Men comics Marvel ever had.

J.C. Hallman: Heal The Lung

2009-09-18T17:32:00.003-04:00

In preparation for J.C. Hallman's reading with InDigest 1207, Tin House Books has kindly allowed us to re-post Hallman's recent and upcoming blog posts from their blog. Thanks very much to Tin House and to J.C. Hallman.

J.C. Hallman: Heal The Lung

The essays collected in The Story About the Story assault the institution of literary criticism.

The problem with literary criticism is not that critical actions conducted on literary texts do them damage--the problem is the way in which critical actions tend to be conducted. There's a basic contradiction built into the system: dry, soul-deadening, derivative, entirely dispassionate prose is used to dissect literature that is supposed to be inspiring, passionate, creative, and unique. Worse, this critical doublespeak has become the way in which we expose literature to new readers, to kids. The insidiousness with which literary criticism has infected the culture and targeted children recalls the basic marketing strategy of religious cults and tobacco companies. The present low status of serious reading should not surprise anyone. The Story About the Story wants to believe that this hobbling of our collective soul is like a smoker's lungs: if we quit the bad habit of setting out to write poorly about good writing we can heal ourselves.

The collected essays approach the problem in a number of ways.

James Wood, in an essay from The Broken Estate, offers a novel description of "interrogating" texts. The interrogation strategy--familiar to anyone who has attended an English department meeting or scholarly conference--is as worthy of Edmund Wilson as Abu Ghraib: "Having been caught out," Wood writes, "the poem is triumphantly led off in golden chains; the detective writes up his report in hideous prose, making sure to flatter himself a bit, and then goes home to a well-deserved drink."

Not all in The Story About the Story are quite so angry.

As a schoolboy, Seamus Heaney ("Learning from Eliot") was left scrambling for metaphors to describe initial exposure to T.S. Eliot. "But, of course," he laments, "we were not encouraged to talk like that in English class."

Wallace Stegner ("On Steinbeck's story 'Flight'") notes that literature swarms with interconnected images, but warns against a tendency to go beyond simply noting and enjoying those connections. "The ingredients are all there, and must be noticed, for they are the literal instruments of both truth and suspense. But let us not take them apart, and let us not imagine that when we have become aware of them we have 'explained' the story, or laid bare the mystery of its composition."

Which is what Robert Hass worries about in "Lowell's Graveyard." Not only do literary critics attempt to explain poems, he claims, they project meaning where there is none. Wondering whether "In the Quaker Graveyard" contains imagery of crucifixion as redemption, Hass decides that "three or four pages of [tedious] theological explication could put it there, but it isn't in the poem."

Some take the problem downright personally.

Virginia Woolf ("An Essay in Criticism") equates her annoyance with Hemingway--he's too macho--with literary criticism in general, leaving her eloquently befuddled: "But what reason there is for believing in critics it is impossible to say. They have neither wigs nor outriders. They differ in no way from other people if one sees them in the flesh. Yet these insignificant fellow creatures have only to shut themselves up in a room, dip a pen in the ink, and call themselves 'we,' for the rest of us to believe that they are somehow exalted, inspired, infallible....No greater miracle was ever performed by the power of human credulity."

Geoff Dyer hits an even more fevered pitch. On the occasion of being given a collection of critical essays on D.H. Lawrence (in an excerpt from Out of Sheer Rage), Dyer frets his way to the perhaps hyperbolic theory that criticism and book burning are synonymous: "How could it have happened? How could these people with no feeling for literature have ended up teaching it, writing about it? I should have stopped there, should have avoided looking at it any more, but I didn't because telling myself to stop always has the effect of egging me on. Instead, I kept looking at this group of wankers huddled in a circle, backs turned to the world so that no one would see them pulling each other off....Then I looked around for the means to destroy his vile, filthy book. In the end it took a whole box of matches and some risk of personal injury before I succeeded in deconstructing it."

So should criticism simply be chucked, as Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels prescribe for theory-based criticism in "Against Theory"? No. In fact, all the essays in The Story About the Story conduct a critical action (even Out of Sheer Rage occasionally reads like straightforward analysis). Collectively the message is this: serious criticism contextualizes itself in the critic's subjective perception--the subject is the writer, as much as it is the text. In "Mr. Pater's Last Volume" Oscar Wilde offers a miniature manifesto for the critical enterprise, long forgotten: "The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure."

In other words, good writing about literature is unique, passionate, inspiring, and creative. Robert Hass captures the debate in a single line: "You can analyze the music of poetry but it's difficult to conduct an argument about its value, especially when it's gotten into the blood."

Which should be the whole point, shouldn't it?

_________________________________________________________

Courtesy of Tin House and reprinted from their blog.

J.C. Hallman will be reading in New York as part of the InDigest 1207 Reading Series on October 7 at 6pm.

J. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman. A collection of his short fiction, The Hospital for Bad Poets, was published by Milkweed Editions earlier this year. His work has appeared in GQ, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is working on a book about modern expressions of utopian thought.

What We've Been Reading

2009-09-18T10:53:00.004-04:00

Dustin:
Lev Grossman's The Magicianswas recommended to me by someone who clearly knew exactly what I was looking for. (Who could it have been?) It's a satire of fantasy books (read: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia). But what's really great about it is that it is a fantasy book, and an engrossing one. But it inverts the basic premise behind the classics of the genre. Quentin, the main character, has always wanted to live in a magical world, but when his fantasy is actualized he realizes that his magical world is just as mundane as the "real" world. Life in his world isn't as exciting and full of daring acts of courage as the fantasy worlds he's read about in novels. People in the magical world still poop, need to go to the store, get hangovers and are made cuckolds. School is hard, friends abandon him, adventure doesn't seek him out, he drinks too much, he graduates from his magical school and starts doing drugs, and when adventure finally arrives it's frightening and without glory for those who live.

I was so excited reading it that I was almost scared to finish it. The last time I got this excited about a book while I was in the middle of it I was left disappointed because I expected so much from the end. (The Gone Away World)

It's one of my favorite books of the year. This book will make friends out of the side of you that secretly (or not so secretly) love Harry Potter and the part of you that rebukes your love.

Reina:
Still on La Casa de los Espíritus, but this time I'm on page 30 and am missing about half of the words. (Two weeks ago it was page 20, missing one-fourth of the words....) I've only read it on about four morning bus rides a week - I think I need to set aside some more reading time. What did they call it in elementary school... DEAR? Drop Everything And Read. Ahh, those were the days. I had a lot of Sour Cream & Onion Munch 'ems at snack time.

Paul Harding added to October 1207 Reading

2009-09-17T21:02:00.002-04:00

Paul Harding, author of Tinkers, will be joining JC Hallman and Dana Rossi for the Oct. 7 InDigest 1207 Reading Series at (le) Poisson Rouge.

Paul Harding has an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has taught writing at Harvard and The University of Iowa. He lives near Boston with his wife and two sons.

American Life in Poetry: Column 234

2009-09-16T23:55:00.000-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

This week's poem is by a high school student, Michelle Bennett, who lives in Tukwila, Washington, and here she is taking a look at what comes next, Western Washington University in Bellingham, with everything new about it, including opportunity.

Western

You find yourself in a narrow bed you’ve never slept in,
on a tree-lined grassy field you've never walked upon,
on a cold toilet seat you have not sat on,
in a place you now call your home, your learning, your future.
Red stone pathways expose the buildings that will house
the knowledge you seek,
and the information you want to gather.

You crane your neck to look up
at the 13-story brick tower rising from the ground,
looming over you as you walk past. The melodies
and beats of different songs mix,
create a sound of their own,
flow from open windows. Crushed leeks
Top Ramen noodles ground into a blue
and speckled carpet attract armies of ants
to the communal kitchen on the sixth floor.

You pull your jacket tighter against your body,
strong, salty wind whips off the Sound,
and up the hill as you walk through
Red Square toward the clatter of knives,
forks and digesting bellies.

Finally, you are released like a white dove
from the hands of its owner, allowed to fly
discovering your dreams,
discovering what you are made of.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Reprinted from Dive Down Into the Loud, Seattle Arts & Letters, 2008, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

J.C. Hallman: Driving The Stake

2009-09-16T00:55:00.008-04:00

In preparation for J.C. Hallman's reading with InDigest 1207, Tin House Books has kindly allowed us to re-post Hallman's recent and upcoming blog posts from their blog. Thanks very much to Tin House and to J.C. Hallman.

J.C. Hallman: Driving The Stake

The whole question of beginnings is tricky—a point Geoff Dyer makes about D.H. Lawrence’s poetry in the excerpt of Out of Sheer Rage reprinted in The Story About the Story:

“Who can say when a poem begins to stir, to germinate, in the soil of the writer’s mind? There are certain experiences waiting to happen: like the snake at Lawrence’s water trough, the poem is already there, waiting for him. The poem is waiting for circumstance to activate it, to occasion its being written.”

The same may apply to editing anthologies.

Okay, an anthology is not a poem. The Story About the Story is not something I, as its editor, created or wrote. (That’s actually why I can tell you it’s a great book—I didn’t write it.) But it’s not just an anthology either, or at least I hope it’s not. I hope it’s a clarion call. I hope it changes the world—of course I do. Is that conceited? Probably. Would it be worth doing if it didn’t have a shot at accomplishing just that? Probably not.

So I’ll just assume at the outset here that the beginning of an anthology is interesting. But it’s still tricky—and I might not be able to tell you what exact circumstance resulted in its being edited.

Did the idea for The Story About the Story begin when my agent somewhat reluctantly agreed to send out a book proposal to a select group of publishers? Or did it begin when I started collecting essays of “creative criticism” to use as texts for a course at the University of Pennsylvania, a class that stemmed from a five-page essay I’d written on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw? Or when that five-page essay had itself begun as a seventy-page thesis written at Johns Hopkins? Or, years before that, when I first taught The Turn of the Screw and wondered why my students thought it was about sex? Or when I spoiled a first date with an English Ph.D. student who insisted that every use of the word “queer” in The Turn of the Screw was “loaded” (which is a load of shit)?

All of those are important moments, but perhaps not critical ones. None of them occasioned the book.

Dracula did.

I have a bad habit of arguing with critic types. Theory-based critics, folks who go to scholarly conferences to make friends with peers who will peer-review them through the 120-pages of published material—or whatever the standard is—that they need for the tenure that will ensure that they spend the rest of their lives attending more scholarly conferences. It’s hopeless, I know—but I can’t resist picking a fight. I want to fight about authorial intent. I want to believe—as Henry James did—that it is the producer with whom we are attempting to communicate when we consider the art of literature. (I’m paraphrasing “The Art of Fiction.”) That is, when you read, you communicate with the writer. But what seems obvious to me and to all people still in possession of their souls is a blind spot to most critics.

So we squabble. I’ve ruined garden parties, been rude to people in their homes. I don’t care. I want to pen people in, get them to acknowledge that even though critics employ a standard, scientific hypothesis-proof model in their writing, no one actually winds up “proving” anything in lit crit. In fact, their “arguments” tend to be unpersuasive because they are theories born of passion that are then translated into analysis as dry as a corpse and as boring as binary code. In other words, it’s dishonest. Why do this? I ask. The answer is always the same: that’s the way it’s done.

Even people who know that it shouldn’t be done that way do it that way.

I could live with that. I could live with good people stuck in a bad system. But those people are not the only people here. It’s the other people who occasioned The Story About the Story.

I was at a dinner party one night. There was a nice pork loin and a big oval table, and good wine, and cheerful table-talk through the main course. Then, somehow, the subject of “good books” came up—by which was meant a common standard of objective aesthetic merit. Another tricky subject, to be sure, but not one that necessarily has to lead to discord. In fact, precisely to establish some common ground, I threw out what seemed to me—in a room full of sophisticated readers—to be a fairly obvious truth: a book like Dracula, say, had been very popular, of course, but it was in fact a very poorly-written book.

There was silence for a moment. And then the Victorianist next to me said, “I like Dracula.”

Was I itching for a fight? Had I drunk too much? Probably. But I didn’t steer the conversation directly to authorial intent. First, I allowed that bad books can make for interesting subject matter. Indeed, I was then writing a book about the history of utopian literature—an entire genre almost uniformly horrific from an aesthetic perspective. (The only utopian novel I would remotely defend is Austin Tappen Wright’s Islandia, which is hopelessly romantic.) Of course this was already hinting at semiotics, and I knew all that, not just from Roland Barthes, but from Charles Peirce. (Peirce was close friend of William James, the subject of the last book I’d written.) So I knew the origin of the whole sign-and-signify thing, and I thought it was great when applied to things like professional wrestling and television commercials and beer bottle labels. But literature? No, not literature! Good, serious books were written by good, serious people who knew what they wanted to say! People who took pains—suffered!—to say it. To assume that you could treat books with authors in the same way you treated authorless “texts” was an abomination. And to then turn around and assign some standard of quality to a book that had an author, but might as well have been authorless (Stoker having merely organized a set of tropes bouncing around in vampire literature for a hundred years by the time he came along), was not only wrong, boring, and frightening, it was actually a pretty good description of what’s become of the modern practice of literary criticism.

I won’t describe the melee that followed—suffice it to say we corked the wine and some people went home early. Relationships were compromised. Not that I’m bothered by it. What I came away with was a new sense of impetus, a new drive. I’d taught my old class on “creative criticism” having only ever read the non-creative version of it, and my squabbles with critics had to that point been only border skirmishes where a siege, a campaign, a war, was needed. Now I’d crossed bayonets with the hapless living dead of the enemy itself, the army of theorists who planned to suck the life out of literature just as life had been sucked out of them. I needed to do more than reach out to students a dozen at a time. I needed to drive a stake into the dead beating heart of the Beast, and leave him rotting in his coffin.

So I compiled my own army, my battalion of good souls, in The Story About the Story. If you have a soul, too, you will recognize yourself here, life peering out at life, resuscitating books, finding glory where once dwelt impotent proof.

The Story About the Story will be available October 1 from Tin House Books.
______________________________________

J. C. Hallman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Chess Artist and The Devil is a Gentleman. A collection of his short fiction, The Hospital for Bad Poets, was published by Milkweed Editions earlier this year. His work has appeared in GQ, Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and a number of other journals and anthologies. He is working on a book about modern expressions of utopian thought.

Indigest Picks (best new releases this week)

2009-09-14T10:23:00.007-04:00

Books:
Brian Eno's Another Green World (33 1/3 series) by Geeta Dayal [Continuum]
+ The 33 1/3 series has been churning out the best books on albums since 2003. The series is continues with Brian Eno's Another Green World. It'd have a tough time being better than John Darnielle's guide to Black Sabbath's Master of Reality, written from the perspective of institutionalized teenager, but the series is consistently engaging.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen & Ben H. Winters [Quirk Books]
+ Quirk Books releases another book in the vein of the surprising hit Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Pretty much going to be like you expect, if you expect it to be awesome.

Music:
Tyondai Braxton - Central Market [Warp]
+ The Battles frontman's solo effort is fantastic. It's in the vein of his Battles work, but with the addition of an orchestra to his orchestrations it gains an epic quality. Maybe not a cover to cover classic, but when the album hits its stride it's epic and moving and as good as anything Battles has done.

Fennesz/Sparklehorse - In the Fishtank 15 [Konkurrent]
+ The In the Fish Tank series pairs great artists and has them collaborate to create an EP in the studio. The series has had such luminaries in the past as Low, Tortoise, Sonic Youth, Isis, The Ex, Blackheart Procession and others. Even when these discs aren't incredible, they're always interesting and engaging. Sparklehorse is having a renaissance this year with a great collaboration with Danger Mouse kind of came out this spring.

In Theaters:
The Burning Plain (Guillermo Arriaga) [2929 Productions]
+ Much like the films Arriaga had previous written The Burning Plain is structural brilliance. Far more complex than Babel and better paced than 21 Grams. Theron puts in a great performances and Elswit definitely makes a case for winning the Oscar for cinematography two years in a row.

The Informant (Steven% Soderbergh [Warner Bros. Pictures]
The second (or fourth, depending on how you're counting) Steven Soderbergh film this year is a hilarious faux thriller that sees Matt Damon at the best he's been in years. It's been a while since Soderbergh has made a comedy this good.

DVD:
Trumbo(Peter Askin) [Filbert Steps Productions/IDP Distribution]
+ This documentary follows the life of the great screenwriter Donald Trumbo as he was told by the government he was a communist and then he decided to fight back. It's the kind of Bond moment ever writer hopes for but Trumbo is one of the few who takes on management in such a magnificent fashion.

Old Jews Telling Jokes(Sam Hoffman) [First Run Features]
+ Old Jews telling jokes is a serialization of the great website. The concept is, well, pretty self explanatory. And it's just as hilarious as it sounds.

Reading in Minneapolis tonight!

2009-09-12T13:16:00.002-04:00

InDigest poetry editor Brad Liening will be reading at Magers & Quinn tonight in Minneapolis. He'll be reading with Kiki Petrosino, and it's going to be awesome. If you haven't read either of their work before this is a good chance to hide your shame. Or, alternatively, you can go to The Daily Poem Factory Machine and check out Brad's ongoing poetry project.

The reading starts at 7pm. More information can be found at MagersAndQuinn.com.

Nice Ink on J.C. Hallman

2009-09-11T17:32:00.003-04:00

The Quarterly Conversation has some nice things to say about J.C. Hallman's latest effort, The Story About the Story (Tin House Books, October 1, 2009). The preface to that book appeared as an essay in The Quarterly Conversation.

"Narcissus moments are few and far between, so when you do finally find one you must seize it. There you are, another tepid afternoon reading through the chaff of so many clueless critics—and then suddenly you see your twin bubbling in the current. This guy knows how to write about books! You feel that tinge of excitement. It is a beautiful moment. You are falling in love.

This roughly describes our collective experience when we read J.C. Hallman’s essay serialized in this issue. Quite plainly, we were taken aback by how precisely the author had laid out our own aspirations for criticism in this magazine. The piece, in our humble opinion, points toward an educated, unpretentious form of literary critique that serves both literature and the everyday reader."

Read more here.

Hallman will be appearing as part of InDigest 1207 on Wednesday, October 7.

Dana Rossi Added to InDigest 1207 in October

2009-09-10T13:35:00.004-04:00

Dana Rossi, a freelance writer and stage manager, who has written for Time Out New York, Broken Pencil, and New York Press will be reading along with J.C. Hallman on Wednesday, October 7 in InDigest's monthly reading series, InDigest 1207.

Rossi recently won a New York Press Association Award for a feature article she did on actors understudying celebs on Broadway. Her blog is Party in the Back and it compares current events, trends, and news to 80s movies. On the theater side, she has most recently stage managed at Manhattan Theatre Source and at Soho Playhouse in the NYC Fringe Festival and Encore Series (where she also sound designed her first show). When she's not stage managing, writing articles, or comparing the state of the economy to Back to the Future Part II, she works as a story analyst for Sony Pictures Television.

For more info, go here.

InDigest Picks (best new releases this week)

2009-09-08T09:06:00.008-04:00

Books:
The Original Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [Vintage]
+ Working from one of the earliest surviving drafts of the novel, Charles E. Robinson has constructed two versions of Frankenstein. One being an "original" manuscript, the unadulterated story by Shelley; the second being the Frankenstein as we know it now - the version heavily edited by Percy Shelley. For the first time you can see the difference that the editing made and what Mary Shelley's original intentions were.

Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx [Scribner]
+ In her new collection of short stories Proulx returns to the land of some of her most famous stories. The National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winning author's "Brokeback Mountain" (the first collection) and "Bad Dirt" (second) are some of the great stories that have arrived in the first two volumes of Wyoming Stories.

Comics/Graphic Novels:
Kick Ass #7 by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. [Icon]
+ Kick Ass has already found it's way to legendary status. With a film already in the works and the series just 7 issues in, Kick Ass may be one of the biggest successes of recent years. Millar and Romita's story of the kid who decided he was going to be a superhero keeps getting better with each issue, and this issue promises to see some of the climax of this ongoing series.

Dark Reign: The List - Avengers #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Marko Djurdjevic [Marvel]
+ What can I say? I'm a sucker for Marvel's Dark Reign world. I put it on par with the Civil War series and, at least right now, it feels as though this fall's "The List" chapter of Dark Reign is going to be the apex of Norman Osbourne's Reign.

Music:
Circulatory System - Signal Morning[Rounder]
+ Featuring former members of Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel (including Jeff Magnum) Circulatory System is a sort of all-star group of low key musicians. Unlike many groups that might lure you in with promises of members of some of your favorite bands, this doesn't sound like a new group trying to imitate Olivia Tremor Control or NMH.

BLK JKS - After Robots[Secretly Canadian]
+ There has been a lot of hype around the first LP from South African based Blk Jks. Their Mystery EP was a huge success and After Robots does not disappoint. See them live when you get the chance. Also not disappointing.

In Theaters
9 (Shane Acker) [Focus Features]
+ Based on the Academy Award winning short film, 9 is an animated film about a few rag dolls who try to stop the the end of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. This film is awesome; there is good reason why Tim Burton and Timur Bekmembetov jumped on board to produce the feature length adaptation of this short.

DVD:
Silent Light(Carlos Reygadas) [Vivendi Entertainment]
+ Silent Light is an incredible mediation on life and the choices that make us individuals. Shot on location in a remote Mennonite community in Mexico, Reygadas makes a glacial and visually striking masterpiece. If you haven't seen a Reygadas film yet you need to see this. Reygadas is quite easily one of the most interesting filmmakers working in the world today.

The Human Condition(Masaki Kobiyashi) [Criterion]
+ Kobiyashi's epic masterpiece (it runs for 574 minutes) is a true triumph of cinema. It's a lyrical portrait of the Japanese mentality following the war, through a story of a young man who moves from working in a labor camp, to becoming a solider, to finding himself as a Soviet POW. Starring samurai film legend Tatsuya Nakadai this film is must-see. It's on par with the epic Berlin Alexanderplatz from Fassbinder.

Also available from Criterion this week: Homicide (David Mamet) & That Hamilton Woman (Alexander Korda)

American Life in Poetry: Column 233

2009-09-08T08:35:00.003-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Diane Glancy is one of our country's Native American poets, and I recently judged her latest book, Asylum in the Grasslands, the winner of a regional competition. Here is a good example of her clear and steady writing.

Indian Summer

There’s a farm auction up the road.
Wind has its bid in for the leaves.
Already bugs flurry the headlights
between cornfields at night.
If this world were permanent,
I could dance full as the squaw dress
on the clothesline.
I would not see winter
in the square of white yard-light on the wall.
But something tugs at me.
The world is at a loss and I am part of it
migrating daily.
Everything is up for grabs
like a box of farm tools broken open.
I hear the spirits often in the garden
and along the shore of corn.
I know this place is not mine.
I hear them up the road again.
This world is a horizon, an open sea.
Behind the house, the white iceberg of the barn.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Copyright ©2007 by Diane Glancy, whose novel The Reason for Crows, is forthcoming from State University of New York Press, 2009. Poem reprinted from Asylum in the Grasslands, University of Arizona Press, 2007, by permission of Diane Glancy. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What We've Been Reading

2009-09-04T12:21:00.005-04:00

Reina:
La casa de los espíritus.I started reading it a few winters ago but never quite got the momentum going. Luckily, I'm finding that I still have some Spanish comprehension skills left in me. Enough to get by. Missing out on a fourth of the individual words hasn't got me down! I still feel as though I'm picking up on some nuances and some humor that make the book more than just a story. They make it a memorable one. And I'm only 20 pages in. Again. Cross your fingers that I can make it to the top of the hill. I think I can...

Oh, and Isabel Allende. She's Chilean and writes in that magical realist style.

Dustin:
I recently took a day off of life and did nothing at all. I spent the entire day on my couch drinking coffee and reading; it was everything I could have hoped for. The day before I decided I must do a little preparation and made my way to the Strand after work, and for some reason I decided I needed to purchase an Ian Fleming book. Mostly because I like pulp fiction and I've never read any Bond. At the time, it seemed to me that Fleming wasn't that far removed from pulp novels. Naturally I purchased Octopussy.

According to the introduction by Robert Ryan Octopussy is an odd Bond novel because it's the only one of the films that really isn't based on a book; it's more of an olio of short stories that revolve around the basic framework of the book. (A primary source being the short Bond story "The Living Daylights.") It's also odd because it's a very short novella, which isn't the standard for Bond either.

What I found truly shocking is that Fleming is a good writer and the book didn't have any action at all. In fact, it barely had Bond in it. It was the story of a man who'd retired to the Caribbean (with some money that wasn't his) and was going to a reef every day to sit by an octopus so that the octopus would get used to him and some day come out to touch him in a friendly way. And as any respectable person would, he'd named the octopus Pussy.

He'd done terrible things in the past, during WWII, and Bond shows up to tell him the government figured out what he'd done and he was going to have to go back to England. That's it really. It's just a short conversation between Major Dexter Smythe and Bond and then Bond leaves again and Smythe goes and reminisces in the ocean floating near his octopus. I'm cutting out all the plot put and the flashbacks, but that's the gist of it, and it's was really kind of awesome.

Tuesday Morning Turntable (TMT)

2009-09-01T00:38:00.004-04:00

Ok, so I know things are constantly changing here at the InDigest Blog, but bare with us as we're getting the new content situation figured out and preparing for the relaunch of InDigestMag.com. Point being: This is now TMT, Tuesday Morning Turntable (despite the fact that it's Tuesday night....).

Daniel Johnston - "Freedom"
A surprisingly upbeat track from the cult folkie's new disc. It almost reminds me of Conor Oberst for some reason.
via Stereogum

Slaraffenland: "Open Your Eyes"
A strikingly beautiful circus of sound. The track starts jagged with woodwinds punctuating a murky silence. The whole track gives way to a sort of Bon Iver-ish vibe when the percussion comes in heavy just after the four minute mark.
Via Stereogum

Orenda Fink - "High Ground" w/ Issac Brock
Orenda Fink's second solo disc since leaving Azure Ray in the past is titled Ask the Night and will be out on October 6. This is the first taste of what's going to be on the disc. It's sulk-laden dark pop music, as she has done in the past, but the addition of Modest Mouse's Issac Brock taking the backing vocals and some banjo rocking under her saturating voice gives me the chills.
via Prefix Mag

Converge "Dark Horse"
I still love some goddamn horses in the final 100, riff-laden metal, and, despite what my mother says, Converge still rocks as hard as anyone around. "Dark Horse" is a preview of their forthcoming album Axe to Fall, and it's epic.
via Epitaph Blog

múm - "Illuminated"
As múm continually becomes more melody and structure oriented I've found that I've become less and less interested in their albums. Yet, "Illuminated" bucks this trend. It's a beautiful eerie song that's getting me excited for their fall tour. Note to múm: Please disregard my request that play only tracks from Summer Make Good.
via Stereogum

Alec Ounsworth - "Holy, Holy, Holy Moses (Song for New Orleans)"
Ounsworth, the charming singer of quirk rock stars Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! releases a preview of a forthcoming solo effort (in addition to another side project he's coming out with this year) that is shockingly beautiful and straightforward for the guy who wrote "Satan Said Dance."
via Stereogum

No Age - "You're a Target"
Frantic drums, piles of distortion, an undertone of pop music. Smile.
via P4K

Diamond Rings - "All Yr Songs"
Dammit, this song shouldn't have come to my attention in August. It's such a great summer song. Not too happy, killer wood-block party, catchy as hell. Enjoy it before the sun dies.
Via P4K

J. Tillman - "Though I Have Wronged You"
Fleet Foxes drummer has already proved that he's got more than one good disc in him.
via Stereogum

Fontän: "Neanderthaler"
Swedish electronic musician / producer Fontän has worked with the best indie-pop Sweden has to offer including Lykke Li and Jens Lekman. Striking out on his own now he's created a swirling milieu of guitars and pulsating rhythms that will make your head nod uncontrollably.
via Pitchfork
Information Records

American Life in Poetry: Column 232

2009-09-01T00:05:00.002-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 232

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I’ve built many wren houses since my wife and I moved to the country 25 years ago. It’s a good thing to do in the winter. At one point I had so many extra that in the spring I set up at a local farmers’ market and sold them for five dollars apiece. I say all this to assert that I am an authority at listening to the so small voices that Thomas R. Smith captures in this poem. Smith lives in Wisconsin.

Baby Wrens’ Voices

I am a student of wrens.
When the mother bird returns
to her brood, beak squirming
with winged breakfast, a shrill
clamor rises like jingling
from tiny, high-pitched bells.
Who’d have guessed such a small
house contained so many voices?
The sound they make is the pure sound
of life’s hunger. Who hangs our house
in the world’s branches, and listens
when we sing from our hunger?
Because I love best those songs
that shake the house of the singer,
I am a student of wrens.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2005 by Thomas R. Smith, whose most recent book of poetry is Waking Before Dawn, Red Dragonfly Press, 2007. Poem reprinted from the chapbook Kinnickinnic, Parallel Press, 2008, by permission of Thomas R. Smith and the publisher. The poem first appeared in There is No Other Way to Speak , the 2005 "winter book" of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, ed., Bill Holm. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What's New This Week

2009-08-31T00:41:00.012-04:00

Books:
A Gate at the Stairsby Lorrie Moore [Knopf]
+ Lorrie Moore's newest novel is her first published book in eleven years. If you aren't sure whether or not to read this you should read Jonathan Lethem's convincing review in the New York Times: "[Moore's] a discomforting, sometimes even rageful writer, lurking in the disguise of an endearing one. On finishing "A Gate at the Stairs" I turned to the reader nearest me and made her swear to read it immediately."

The Death of Bunny Munro: A Novelby Nick Cave [Faber & Faber]
+ Troubadour Nick Cave's second novel (following his dark and McCarthy-ian debut And the Ass Saw the Angel) follows a door to door salesman named Bunny Munro who seduces women as he tries to sell them moisturizer. Doesn't sound very Nick Cave in premise, but it's a dark novel. And what's more Nick Cave than being just a little surprising?

Update: Listen to Nick Cave read from the book at PrefixMag.com

I Drink for a Reasonby David Cross [Grand Central Publishing]
+ A new book from David Cross, why wouldn't this be good? Paul Rudd says, "One of the funniest books I've ever skimmed."

Poetry:
Rising, Falling, Hoveringby C.D. Wright [Copper Canyon Press]
+ Wright puts out her first collection of lyric poetry since 2003; it's a collection that focuses it's verse on the strained relations between America and the international community. Wright is a treasure of American poetry and her collections generally need no introduction, so I won't try and explain why you should be reading this.

Graphic Novels:
Confessions of a Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Muthaby Melvin Van Peebles [Akashic]
+ Filmmaker/actor Melvin Van Peebles newest film bears the same title as this book, Confessions of a Ex-Doofus-Itchy Footed Mutha, but this is his graphic novel version of the film. Illustrated by Van Peebles it's a sort of companion to the forthcoming film with stills and original artwork.

Music:
David Bazan - Curse Your Branches[Barsuk]
+ Formerly performing as Pedro the Lion Bazan has struck out under his own name. Always an intriguing song-writer; Curse Your Branches sees him striking out a bit from his folky roots. The electro-tones of tracks like "Hard to Be" sound like Bazan doing some of the best work since early Pedro the Lion.

Theater:
Extract (Mike Judge) [Miramax]
+ Mike Judge, creator of Office Space, Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill, and the less exciting Idiocracy has a new film with Jason Bateman at the center. Everything seems to indicate that this film could be on par with the cult brilliance of Office Space.

[Editor's Note: We used information from another site on this listing. Black Dynamite is actually being released on 10/16/09. Sorry, my excitement got the best of me.]

DVD:
Heroes: Season Three [Universal]
+ Ok, so season 3 of Heroes wasn't the most brilliant of the series, but it was a huge recovery from a short and mostly uninspired second season. The beginning of season 3 was political charged and engaging in the same way the show was when it started, it peeters off a bit, but it starts off fantastic.

InDigest is Looking for New Writers

2009-08-30T22:51:00.002-04:00

As you may have read, InDigest is taking a little break over the summer while we organize some new projects, redesign the website, and get some new staff ready for our new life.

As a part of this process we are looking for some new writers who are interested in contributing monthly columns to InDigest. Columnist positions at InDigest are unpaid - none of us really get paid for this thing. We are working towards making sure everyone is compensated, but at the moment that's not the case.

What we are looking for:
- Film Critic
- Music Critic
- Fiction Critic
- Poetry Critic
- Sports Columnist
- a cartoonist who'd like to have new work featured regularly
- If you have an idea for a column that is not listed here please feel free to send a proposal
- We are also looking for an intern for the fall semester

None of the positions are location specific, though we do prefer an intern who is either located in New York City or Minneapolis.

TO APPLY:
Please send an e-mail to writers [@] indigestmag.com. The subject line should be "YOUR NAME [TYPE OF COLUMN YOU'RE APPLYING FOR]."

In the body of the e-mail include a proposal for what column you would like to write, your past experience in this field and other publications you have written for. Please attach three writing samples of the type you are applying for.

If you are interested in the intern position please send an email to editors [@] indigestmag.com and explain why you are qualified for the position and attach a resume as well.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL ATTACHMENTS SHOULD EITHER BE IN .DOC or .RTF format.
If you can't follow the submission guidelines here (which are pretty simple and straightforward) you will not be considered.

Please be somewhat familiar with the magazine and know what type of work we have previously published.

What We've Been Reading

2009-08-30T09:34:00.005-04:00

Ashleigh:
I would love to lie to you and say that I'm reading The Magicians: A Novel by Lev Grossman or Man Gone Downby Michael Thomas, two recent releases I am excited to start. But until those books arrive (hurry up, UPS), I'm working my way through On Writing Short Storiesedited by Tom Bailey. I picked it up intending to get some pointers for my own fiction, but I was immediately distracted by the selection of classic short stories provided as examples. Turns out this Flannery O'Connor character has a knack for story-telling.

Joseph:
George Pelecanos-The Night Gardener.Pelecanos fucking rules. What do you expect? Great dialog, vivid descriptions of street life, cops, corner kids, and murder. The Drama City is wonderfully written with Pelecanos' eye for detail-the nooks and crannies-neighborhoods outside of the powerful elite. Get wise to Pelecanos son.

The Score: Best Free Downloads This Week

2009-08-29T13:45:00.007-04:00

1. Has to be the taper bootleg of Nine Inch Nails at Terminal 5 this past week, in what is supposedly the final NIN show ever. It's a damn good set. Peter Murphy of Bauhaus joins Reznor on stage and to end the set, and possibly the life of NIN, they cover Pere Ubu's "The Final Solution." Pretty awesome. RIP NIN.

2. South African masterminds Blk Jks did a Daytrotter session last week with a few previews of what you can expect to hear on their debut LP After Robots. It's easy to expect great things after their high-energy debut splash Mystery EP. The Daytrotter session gives some credence to my suspicions that After Robots is going to be great.

3. The Rural Alberta Advantage did a special session at Luxury Wafers, performing some slightly stripped down versions of tracks from their great new disc Hometowns. The band have endlessly been compared to Neutral Milk Hotel, a somewhat just comparison as vocalist Nils Edenloff bears some striking similarities to Jeff Magnum's nasal belt. Yet, TRAA have something special in their orchestrations, a reserved quietude, that make each song epic and enjoyable in their own way.

4. Empty's Tapes posted a recording of Vampire Hands performing at The Turf Club in St. Paul for their "Hannah in the Mansion" CD Release Show. The recording isn't crystal clear, but Vampire Hands are so great that it doesn't even bother me.

5. This past week The Antlers had a CD release event in NYC at The Mercury Lounge to celebrate the re-release of their great new disc Hospice, which was just re-released through Frenchkiss Records. Download this, then buy Hospice, and thank me later.

American Life in Poetry: Column 231

2009-08-25T00:33:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

This column originates on the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and at the beginning of each semester, we see parents helping their children move into their dorm rooms and apartments and looking a little shaken by the process. This wonderful poem by Sue Ellen Thompson of Maryland captures not only a moment like that, but a mother’s feelings as well.

Helping My Daughter Move into Her First Apartment

This is all I am to her now:
a pair of legs in running shoes,

two arms strung with braided wire.
She heaves a carton sagging with CDs

at me and I accept it gladly, lifting
with my legs, not bending over,

raising each foot high enough
to clear the step. Fortunate to be

of any use to her at all,
I wrestle, stooped and single-handed,

with her mattress in the stairwell,
saying nothing as it pins me,

sweating, to the wall. Vacuum cleaner,
spiny cactus, five-pound sacks

of rice and lentils slumped
against my heart: up one flight

of stairs and then another,
down again with nothing in my arms

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Sue Ellen Thompson, and reprinted from "When She Named Fire," ed., Andrea Hollander Budy, Autumn House Press, 2009, and reprinted by permission of the poet and publisher. First printed in "The Golden Hour,"Sue Ellen Thompson, Autumn House Press, 2006. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Monday Morning Mixtape

2009-08-24T09:21:00.006-04:00

Here's a little mixtape to help you plow through the week:

Times New Viking - "Move to California"
+ Awesome noise jam with a hook from their new album Born Again Revisited, out on 09.22 through Matador.
via P4K

Anti-Pop Consortium - "Volcano" (Four Tet Remix)
+ Hip=Hop legends the Anti-Pop Consortium have been working on a new disc for a while now. They released "Volcano" back in June and have now had Kieran Hebden make it a little spacetastic. Still not sure when the disc is coming out for sure.
Via P4K

Radiohead - "These Are My Twisted Words"
+ The second new single track release from Radiohead in August. This one caused some buzz initially because no one actually knew if it was them or not. It is, and it's pretty solid.
via RCRD LBL

HEALTH - "We Are Water"
+ HEALTH seem to be doing everything right at the moment. "We Are Water" is a thick track with churning guitars, spaced out reverb laced vocals, and great minimal hook.
via P4K

Elvis Perkins in Dearland - "Slow Doomsday"
+ A slowly plodding track, with a percussive drive, and a trumpet that doesn't feel affected. This is why Perkins' brand of indie-pop gets me.
via Stereogum

The Very Best - "Yalira"
+ The Very Best does an incredible job of mixing elements of hip-hop and African beat. Every track that comes out is better than the last and "Yalira" is not an exception.
via Stereogum

Os Mutantes - "Anagrama"
+ Os Mutantes forthcoming album, Haih Or Amortecedor, is their first in 35 years, via Anti-. All signs seem to indicate that this is going to be a Guns 'n' Roses reunion.
via Stereogum

Zomby - "Helter Skelter"
+ Dub-step behemoth Zomby put out a new track through RCRD LBL this week. It's short and sweet, but it's the kind of track that makes the whole world seem a little silly if you're walking around and listening to it.
via RCRD LBL

Lightning Bolt - "Colossus"
+ This new track from Lightning Bolt is less noise oriented than you might expect. The track drives forward as though their influences were more prone to metal rather than a broken casette deck and rattling radiator.
via P4K

Pissed Jeans - "Dream Smotherer"
+ Pissed Jeans are a sort of hardcore-ish band that retains a sense of melody and core of punk rock. They remind me of Fucked Up in the way they can craft songs that can be called both brutal and beautiful.
via Stereogum

What's New This Week

2009-08-24T01:06:00.002-04:00

Books:
Collected Storiesby Raymond Carver [Library of America]
+ This may have actually come out last week, but I missed it then and it deserves mentioning. Generally a complete collection of a major author from the Library of America might not be something to note in this context, but this is a pretty special book for fans of Carver. The collection includes the book Beginners which is only available here. It's Carver's famous collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love without the rather considerable edits by Gordon Lish. The debate about Carver sans Lish has been raging for years. Clearly Lish made Carver more of a minimalist and refined his style, but to what extent did he suppress a voice? To what extent did he give Carver the voice he was searching for? Your questions answered here.

Take a look at the story "Beginners" here. (And, yes, this is "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" before Lish's red pen entered the fray.)

The Skating Rinkby Roberto Bolaño [New Directions]
+ As Bolaño's oeuvre continues to be translated into English his legend only seems to grow. The Skating Rink captures Bolaño's style perfectly: flourishing language, crime, and romance all included. A corrupt civil servant has been misdirecting funds to build an ice rink for his lover. An illegal Mexican immigrant and writer, Gaspar Heredia (Bolaño anyone?), has discovered the corruption. The mystery unravels with murder and surprises in the three revolving stories set in the imaginary town of Z, just north of Barcelona.

Also out this week: Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon [Random House], Home Boy by H. M. Naqvi [Random House]

Music:
Asobi Seksu - Transparence[Polyvinyl]
+ The New York indie-pop duo is equal parts art rock band and pop crossover. Their light melodies and treble laced songs are heavily influenced by Japanese pop, and each of their albums seems to be a little better than the last. Their new EP, Transparence, won't be an exception to the rule. This follows on the heels of their lush February release Hush, which is worth checking out if you don't know who Asobi Seksu is.

Listen to some tracks from Asobi Seksu at Daytrotter.

Blitzen Trapper - The Black River Killer EP [Sub Pop]
+ New tracks from Blitzen Trapper is never a bad thing, and, thankfully, The Black River Killer EP seems to a bit of a misnomer as this thing is pretty long. Seven tracks that contain their signature bluegrass-rock foundations with huge hooks and dark overtones. The lead off track "Black River Killer" is pretty stellar. You can listen to it here.

Also out this week: Willie Nelson - The Nearness of You, Mariachi El Bronx - Self Titled [Swaml], Kid Cudi - Man on the Moon, David Bazan - Curse Your Branches, Arctic Monkeys - Humbug [Domino]

Theaters:
Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda) [IFC]
+ Hirokazu Kore-eda is a rising star of Japanese cinema. His newest film, Still Walking, will definitely further that premise and attract many new film-lovers to his work. It rivals his fantastic 2004 film Nobody Knows, and seems to be a sign that he just keeps getting better. If you've got this film playing in your city this weekend go see it.

Check out the trailer here

Big Fan (Robert Siegel) [First Independent Pictures]
+ Big Fan is the first vehicle where Patton Oswalt is going to take the spotlight (outside of the great comedy-documentary The Comedians of Comedy). Oswalt plays a crazed New York Giants fan, and he struggles with the implications and depth of his obsession after being beat up by his favorite player. Oswalt may shine here, under the guidance of writer/director Robert Seigel, who is making this film as the follow-up to his first filmed script with The Wrestler.

Also out this week: Halloween II (Rob Zombie), Taking Woodstock (Ang Lee), We Live in Public (Ondi Timoner)

DVD:
Eclipse Series 17: Nikkatsu Noir(various directors) [Criterion]
+ I was going to write how I've never been disappointed with the Eclipse series, and how it's opened a world of cinema that I'd never have had the chance to experience without it, and that the Nikkatsu films are a crazy olio of some of the hippest cinema from Japan in the 50s and 60s. But then I read the description on the Criterion site and it made me want to watch it even more: "This bruised and bloody collection represents a standout cross section of the nimble nasties Nikkatsu had to offer, action potboilers modeled on the western, comedy, gangster, and teen-rebel genres." Translation: Bad ass.

Second Skin(Juan Carlos Pineiro-Escoriaza) [Pure West]
+ Second Skin is a documentary that explores the world of gamers and people interested in virtual worlds such as Second Life. It explores how these worlds enhance and destroy individuals, and have these alternate universes have changed the landscape of technology forever. It's got all of the charm of films about sub-cultures such as Darkon or King of Kong with the slight alteration that if you've never heard of the games and programs here, it's because the people in the film are far ahead of the curve.

Also out this week: The Last Days of Disco (Walt Stillman) [Criterion], Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman) [Criterion], Duplicity (Tony Gilroy), Adventureland, Sunshine Cleaning

InDigest is Looking For New Writers

2009-08-21T15:01:00.003-04:00

As you may have read, InDigest is taking a little break over the summer while we organize some new projects, redesign the website, and get some new staff ready for our new life.

As a part of this process we are looking for some new writers who are interested in contributing monthly columns to InDigest. Columnist positions at InDigest are unpaid - none of us really get paid for this thing. We are working towards making sure everyone is compensated, but at the moment that's not the case.

What we are looking for:
- Film Critic
- Music Critic
- Fiction Critic
- Poetry Critic
- Political Columnist
- Sports Columnist
- a cartoonist who'd like to have new work featured regularly
- If you have an idea for a column that is not listed here please feel free to send a proposal
- We are also looking for an intern for the fall semester

None of the positions are location specific, though we do prefer an intern who is either located in New York City or Minneapolis.

TO APPLY:
Please send an e-mail to writers [@] indigestmag.com. The subject line should be "YOUR NAME [TYPE OF COLUMN YOU'RE APPLYING FOR]."

In the body of the e-mail include a proposal for what column you would like to write, your past experience in this field and other publications you have written for. Please attach three writing samples of the type you are applying for.

If you are interested in the intern position please send an email to editors [@] indigestmag.com and explain why you are qualified for the position and attach a resume as well.

PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL ATTACHMENTS SHOULD EITHER BE IN .DOC or .RTF format.
If you can't follow the submission guidelines here (which are pretty simple and straightforward) you will not be considered.

Please be somewhat familiar with the magazine and know what type of work we have previously published.

What We've Been Reading

2009-08-21T09:39:00.004-04:00

Brad:
I'm reading Nice Hat. Thanks.,a book of collaborative poems by Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer. It's an older book (it was published in 2002) that I'm just getting around to. It's perfect for summer -- humorous, fleet, leaving you with positive impressions like a day at the beach.

I'm also reading Fort Red Border,the first book of poems by Kiki Petrosino. The title is an anagram for Robert Redford, who appears in the first third of the book, interacting with Petrosino's speaker and framing inquiries into topics such as ethnicity and heritage. If you are in the Twin Cities, she'll be reading at Magers and Quinn on September 12 at 7 pm with (ahem) a poetry editor at InDigest.

Reina:
I just finished reading Surfacingby Margaret Atwood. One of my close friends could not stop praising it, and when I found out that Margaret Atwood is a humanist (a system of thought I've been curious to learn more about recently), I requested my friend's note-laden, dog-eared, and underlined copy, which she readily passed to me with both hands like a treasured object. Unfortunately, I do not feel the same way toward the book as she does. The story of a young woman returning home again after a long and painful absence was told well enough, heavy with symbolism and addressing issues such as sexism, patriotism, and humanity's altogether destructive nature, but it just didn't resonate within me like I had hoped. Still, I haven't given up on Atwood, and I plan to read her more popular novel, The Blind Assassinsome day soon enough.

Dustin:
This past week or so I read two novels that I'm not going to talk about, yet. They aren't out, but both are by past InDigest contributors, and both were quite spectacular. I don't want to ruin it because I'm sure I'll be talking about them a lot soon.

But this week I also read Ada Limón's new chapbook What Sucks Us In Will Surely Swallow Us Whole. It's a collection poems that sort of narrates a road trip through California, but it's less direct than I'm making it sound. It doesn't have a trajectory necessarily, but all the poems are about this road trip and what it means or how it changes people, makes us come to new realizations about people and places. Limón has a really great fashion of creating new images out things that are familiar, or turning intangibles into a digestible image. One of my favorite lines does just that, "She thinks she could go farther / faster without the drag of what she carries; / nothing but her body's own quiet / insistence to accelerate." It's really quite beautiful, not just the words but the book itself is. It's out through Cinematheque Press, a press I've only recently discovered - and have been ingesting everything I can get from rapidly - (I read from Joshua Marie Wilkinson's newest collection, out through Cinematheque, at the last 1207 reading). They make some really great little books, giving great attention to detail and what design elements will really add to the book. They do a fantastic job, I recommend going and buying some of their extremely affordable books.

The Antlers "Two"

2009-08-21T09:26:00.001-04:00

Our friends in The Antlers have a new music video out for their track "Two" from their new disc Hospice. It's a pretty awesome video.

American Life in Poetry: Column 230

2009-08-18T10:00:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

It’s been sixty-odd years since I was in the elementary grades, but I clearly remember those first school days in early autumn, when summer was suddenly over and we were all perched in our little desks facing into the future. Here Ron Koertge of California gives us a glimpse of a day like that.

First Grade

Until then, every forest
had wolves in it, we thought
it would be fun to wear snowshoes
all the time, and we could talk to water.

So why is this woman with the gray
breath calling out names and pointing
to the little desks we will occupy
for the rest of our lives?

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Ron Koertge, whose most recent book of poems is "Fever," Red Hen Press, 2006. Reprinted by permission of Ron Koertge. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

The Score: Best Free Downloads This Week

2009-08-17T09:10:00.008-04:00

1. Deastro posted up a new EP at their blog. The electronic artist Randolph Cabot Jr. is prepping for a new full length release and is offering up some free tracks (as will happen frequently with Chabot). It's a fun, upbeat album that ought to make you excited for the fall Deastro release.

2. Deerhoof recorded a Daytrotter session this past week. It includes slightly more spacey and reverb laced versions of some recent songs, as well as a pretty awesome thirty second improv introduction to the session which is worth listening to.

3. The Bowery Poetry Club in New York hosted a show called "Double Nickels" Anniversary Show a little while back, and NYC Taper has posted audio of the show. It was a celebration of The Minutemen's pivotal album Double Nickels on the Dime (possibly best discussed in Michael Azzarad's Our Band Could Be Your Life). The show has really cemented by a short set from former The Minutemen member Mike Watt. Great tribute to a band whose career was tragically cut way too short.

4. Minneapolis stalwart's Halloween, Alaska recorded a Daytrotter Session last week that is pretty solid. If you haven't heard them take a listen to this.

5. John Vanderslice recorded a version of his track "Sunken Union Boat" for KEXP, who has posted the track to The Free Music Archive. It's a really great track that rivals his recent set done with an orchestra.

More: Bishop Allen, The Church, Claremont Trio, Cotton Jones, Crystal Antlers, Eroica Trio, Future Islands, Jolie Holland, Ladytron, Love is All, lucky dragons, Patterson Hood (of Drive-By Truckers), Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, Starlight Mints, The War on Drugs

What We've Been Reading

2009-08-14T18:42:00.005-04:00

Jess
I've been reading Dry Manhattanby Michael Lerner [Harvard University Press]. It's a history of prohibition in New York City. I only started last night, but there is some wild shit already. The anti-saloon league and William Anderson's "great innovation was to pioneer the modern craft of political lobbying in the service of a single moral cause." Lerner is not a particularly great writer, but his research and his ideas are top notch. Check it out, I know everyone is 300 pages of interested in prohibition in NYC.

David
Fact: Periods slow things down. Fact: The lack of periods in a book makes your blood pressure rise, your anxiety level does the same, and if it—this lack of periods—goes on too long, it could be bad for you health. In short doses, though, it’s exciting.

Take, for example, Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness[New Directions]. Without having the book in my hands, I’d be willing to bet that if I did, I could count the number of periods in the entire book on these hands. The result is a paranoid romp that mirrors on the page the narrator’s decent into (possibly) irrational lines of thinking. It’s less speed reading as it is reading on speed.

The latest book I read that uses this device is Ray of the Starby Laird Hunt [Coffee House Press], a mystical adventure into a foreign land that, if we were to explain it to someone, is not strange itself—it could be many European cities from what I understand. But the language and the style choices (and the characters, but we’re talking about the language and the style choices here), namely the lack of periods, make this a strange land. Each two- to three-page section only has one period, coming at the very end of the section. The result is not so much a decent into paranoia the way I remember Senselessness being, but the heart-racing pace it sets, all the same, creates a sense of anxiety. The difference could be attributed to the fact that one is told as a first-person narrative, relying on the main character as the narrator, while the other has an omnipresent narrator. It could also come from the dream-like landscape Hunt puts us in: Human statues walk the streets in full costume; shoes talk to characters before being tossed from a cliff. Still, the pacing that results from the decision to all but exclude periods makes these drastically different books than they would be were periods placed throughout. Without time to breathe, the reader can only allow himself to go along for the ride. And it’s a beautiful, terrifying, and unbelievably sad ride that Hunt brings us on in Ray of the Star.

American Life in Poetry: Column 229

2009-08-11T10:14:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

For over forty years, Mark Vinz, of Moorhead, Minnesota--poet, teacher, publisher--has been a prominent advocate for the literature of the Upper Great Plains. Here’s a recent poem that speaks to growing older.

Cautionary Tales

Beyond the field of grazing, gazing cows
the great bull has a pasture to himself,
monumental, black flanks barely twitching
from the swarming flies. Only a few strands of
wire separate us--how could I forget
my childhood terror, the grownups warning
that the old bull near my uncle’s farm
would love to chase me, stomp me, gore me
if I ever got too close. And so I
skirted acres just to keep my distance,
peeking through the leaves to see if he still
was watching me, waiting for some foolish move--
those fierce red eyes, the thunder in the ground--
or maybe that was simply nightmares. It’s
getting hard to tell, as years themselves keep
gaining ground relentlessly, their hot breath
on my back, and not a fence in sight.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Mark Vinz, whose most recent book of poems is "Long Distance," Midwestern Writers Publishing House, 2006. Poem reprinted from "South Dakota Review" Vol. 46, no. 2, by permission of Mark Vinz and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What's New This Week

2009-08-11T09:42:00.005-04:00

BOOKS
Undiscovered Gyrlby Allison Burnett [Vintage]
+ This book is a sort of diary/blog of a girl. Which sounds a bit like Gossip Girl, but it's not. This is a dark, strange book that sounds like more of a mystery than a book filled with teenage angst.

Self's Murderby Bernhard Schlink [Vintage]
+ Part of the Black Lizard/Vintage Crime series from Vintage (which is releasing some fantastic pulp), Self's Murder is the third book in the Gerhard Self series, which are pretty dark compelling pulp mysteries.

MUSIC
Bobby Bare Jr. and David Vandervelde - American Bread EP [Junket Boy]
+ Yes, Bobby Bare Jr. continued making music after "You Blew Me Off." Yes, a good deal of it is pretty good. Unfortunately the Junket Boy website seems to be kind of unusable at the moment.

Box Elders - Alice & Friends[Goner Records]
+ Box Elders are what should happen when pop and punk get together. Not the hyphenated bastardized version of both genres, but great pop tunes sung frantically with a lo-fi aesthetic mixed in to give the catchy hooks some grit.

THEATERS
It Might Get Loud (David Guggenheim) [Thomas Tull Prod./Sony]
+ A documentary about the rock guitar, filmed from the point of view of Jimmy Page, Jack White, and The Edge. Awesome. Seems like a logical film to follow Guggenheim's last, An Inconvenient Truth.

Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki) [Studio Ghibli/Disney]
+ The master of animated films is back with a new award-winning film. I don't think Miyazaki's missed yet. Even if you're not into anime it's hard not to love everything the guy does. He's kind of like a one man Pixar, minus the 3-D-o-rama.

DVD
The Class (Entre Les Murs)(Laurent Cantet) [Haut et Court/Sony]
+ This award winning French film follow a novelist who tries to become a teacher in a rough Parisian neighborhood. It's like Dangerous Minds for fans of Rohmer and Rosselini. I know.

InDigest 1207 Tonight!!! (line-up change too)

2009-08-05T17:13:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone,
Quick note for you. InDigest 1207 is tonight at 6:30pm. It's free as always and will feature John Wray and Ronaldo V. Wilson. Marlon James has had some traveling issues and is going to be unable to attend tonight. But, in his place, we will have Akhil Sharma. Wow. It's going to be a great night. Sorry to anyone hoping to see Marlon. I promise he'll be joining us for a 1207 in the near future.
Much love,
David and Dustin

What's New This Week (a little behind schedule)

2009-08-05T01:24:00.005-04:00

Books:
Inherent Viceby Thomas Pynchon [Penguin]
+ New Pynchon, and it's a noir-ish detective story. That's about all that needs to be said.

Music:
The Antlers - Hospice[Frenchkiss]
+ This album was really released earlier this year, but the band signed to Frenchkiss and had the album remastered. It's out in the new version now (and it just got Best New Music on Pitchfork). Buy this. It's breathtaking. It's easily a top five album to come out this year and you'll be really upset (and not even know it) if you don't buy this.

Modest Mouse - No One's First, and You're Next[Sony]
+ Modest Mouse can be a little hit and miss (how's that for a vague statement?) but this album is definitely on the mark. They've been releasing 7" singles all year and this brings them all onto a single collection. If you haven't seen their new video you should go check that out right now too (it's directed by Heath Ledger).

Theater:
Beeswax (Andrew Bujalski)[Cinema Guild/Sisters Project]
+ This is a great film. I'm a big fan of everything the man does, but Beeswax is as good as anything Bujalski has done. If you're in New York this weekend come to (le) Poisson Rouge, there is a screening of Bujalski's last film Mutual Appreciation (starring Justin Rice of Bishop Allen) and following the screening I'll (Dustin) be doing a little Q&A w/ Bujalski.

DVD:
Flight of the Conchords: The Complete Second Season[HBO]
+ Flight of the Conchords almost didn't get a second season, and even though you're happy when you found out it was going to continue you weren't quite sure if it would reach the poetic majesty that it attained in it's first season. It did.

American Life in Poetry: Column 228

2009-08-04T00:55:00.001-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

I don't often mention literary forms, but of this lovely poem
by Cecilia Woloch I want to suggest that the form, a
villanelle, which uses a pattern of repetition, adds to the
enchantment I feel in reading it. It has a kind of layering,
like memory itself. Woloch lives and teaches in southern
California.

My Mother's Pillow

My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow;
she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled.
She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow.

For years her hands were quick with thread and needle.
She used to sew all night when we were little;
now she sleeps with the Bible on her pillow

and believes that Jesus understands her sorrow:
her children grown, their father frail and brittle;
she stitches in her heart, her breathing shallow.

Once she "even slept fast," rushed tomorrow,
mornings full of sunlight, sons and daughters.
Now she sleeps alone with the Bible on her pillow

and wakes alone and feels the house is hollow,
though my father in his blue room stirs and mutters;
she listens to him breathe: each breath is shallow.

I flutter down the darkened hallway, shadow
between their dreams, my mother and my father,
asleep in rooms I pass, my breathing shallow.
I leave the Bible open on her pillow.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation, publisher of Poetry
magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at
the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2003 by
Cecilia Woloch, whose most recent book of poetry is "Narcissus,"
Tupelo Press, 2008. Reprinted from "Late," by Cecilia Woloch,
published by BOA Editions, Rochester, NY, 2003, by permission
of Cecilia Woloch. Introduction copyright ©2009 by The Poetry
Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as
United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library
of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited
manuscripts.

What We've Been Reading

2009-08-02T21:13:00.002-04:00

Ashleigh:
I've spent most of the week reading Ian McEwan's acclaimed novel Atonement.I was initially suspicious that this would be yet another elegantly written tale of stuffy people going nuts in the English countryside, and it is, but I'm enjoying it anyway. I, along with seemingly every book reviewer in the world, am impressed with how McEwan applies his empathy and insight to a group of disparate characters. Not content to make this just a war story, or a love story, or a story about class, or family relationships, McEwan has also woven into his narrative an ongoing rumination about the way stories work, and the effect that storytelling has on the storyteller. I would say more, but I'm only halfway through the book; I'll let you know if part two lives up to part one. I've also just begun The Art of Travelby Alain de Botton, which I'm reading in order to mentally prepare for an upcoming vacation. De Botton draws on accounts from famous travelers as he explores the ways travel can force us to engage with the world -- and ourselves -- in new ways.

American Life in Poetry Column 227

2009-07-28T09:26:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Jane Hirshfield, a Californian and one of my favorite poets, writes beautiful image-centered poems of clarity and concision, which sometimes conclude with a sudden and surprising deepening. Here's just one example.

Green-Striped Melons

They lie
under stars in a field.
They lie under rain in a field.
Under sun.

Some people
are like this as well--
like a painting
hidden beneath another painting.

An unexpected weight
the sign of their ripeness.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2008 by Jane Hirshfield, whose most recent book of poems is "After,"Harper Collins, 2006. Poem reprinted from "Alaska Quarterly," Vol. 25, nos. 3 & 4, Fall & Winter, 2008, by permission of Jane Hirshfield and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What's New and Rad This Week

2009-07-27T21:55:00.005-04:00

BOOKS
The Girl Who Played with Fireby Stieg Larsson [Knopf]
+ The Swedish author whose life was cut short in 2004 has been a big hit since his first publication in America. This should be as good as his first detective novel in this series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

MUSIC
John Adams Doctor Atomic Symphony - recorded by Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra [Nonesuch]
+ This intense score from John Adams is based upon his "Doctor Atomic" opera and is as odd and intriguing as the title might suggest. Go here and preview the second part "Panic." Makes my eyes flutter a little.

Joshua Redman Quartet - Moodswing[Nonesuch]
+ Joshua Redman is easily one of the best saxophonists alive. Every album, even when not perfect, has a little something worth waiting for. This shouldn't be any different.

THEATERS
Thirst (Park Chan-wook) [Focus Features]
+ Awesome. This film is fantastic. Win of the Special Jury prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival and winner of my heart in June, Thirst still bears everything you want from Park: the meditations on violence, the absolutely gruesome scenes, the lush cinematography. But Thirst is more of a drama than anything he's done before. Well worth the wait for new Park to come to America.

Adam (Max Mayer) [Olympus Pictures]
+ This is little heart-warmer here. Adam has Asperger's Syndrome and falls in love with his new upstairs neighbor. It's beautiful and well-written, one of the best indie-films of the summer.

DVD
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America(Tony Stone) [Heathen Films]
+ Ads for this won't stop reminding me of Pathfinder, which was an abysmal piece of dung, but Severed Ways intrigues me so much. It's an independently made film on a pretty large scale. Done by a studio this film would be under-financed and trying to be something it never could be. But this looks like it's far more complicated than that.

What We've Been Reading

2009-07-26T21:23:00.004-04:00

Brad:
Infinite Jest,by David Foster Wallace. I knew that there'd be absolutely no way I'd be able to read this during the academic year, so I saved it for this summer. After three months I'm nearly done. I was already an admirer of Wallace's, having read most of his other fiction and nonfiction by the time I came around to his titanic 1996 masterpiece. While I'm not quite to the end, it's capitalizing and following through on the expectation and the promise built up over 800 pages (and plus 100+ pages of endnotes).

David:
I'm currently (finally) making my way through the last couple season's of HBO's unbelievably good series The Wire.None of the episodes ever disappoint, but I have come to watch closely, near the end of the opening credits, to see who the teleplay and story are by. If the names Richard Price or George Pelecanos come up I know I'm in for an extra special episode.

If you're a fan of The Wire then you will want to get yourself the novels of Price and Pelecanos. These novels are as gritty as any episode and with writers like these it is no wonder that an extremely literate bookseller friend of mine was quipped that watching The Wire is as substantial as reading a good novel. Price has been called one of the greatest dialogue writers of all time and the empathy that Pelecanos makes the reader feel for all of his characters is unmatched.

There is great crime fiction being written today, you just might need to look a little deeper than the face-outs at your local Barnes and Noble. If you're looking for a place to start I'd recommend Price's Lush Life and Drama City by Pelecanos.

(Go here to hear why selling shoes was the best job Pelecanos ever had.)

Dustin
I've been reading Ed Brubaker's Incognito series of comics. This new series is pretty amazing. Issue #5 just came out, and the series just keeps on getting better. It follows a guy with super-powers who is completely amoral. But he's being forced to pretend he's a normal citizen in a sort of witness protection program. Naturally that doesn't work out very well. In an effort to have the chance to use his powers he does a little good, and doesn't like it a whole lot. It gets pretty complicated and the narrative is really well layered with a lot of complex characters, who are all essentially "bad guys" but have to deal with making real choices in this world they inhabit. It's a story with "good guys" and I like that a lot. It's really dark. Sean Phillips illustrations are pretty amazing as well.

Brubaker has done some really intelligent (and often graphic) comic series and this is one of his best. (There are some good interviews with Brubaker on Incognito here and here

InDigest Under Construction

2009-07-21T15:17:00.001-04:00

As you can tell by the lack of content on the site the last month or so, we're taking a little break. This is not (only) because the summer has finally come to New York and we are out playing Frisbee in the parks. It's because InDigest is currently under the knife, getting a major face lift. We have brought on board a very talented designer and programmer and they are doing amazing things with the look and feel of the magazine, which we hope to unveil sometime in August.

Until then, take this time to catch up on some of the content you didn't get a chance to read and/or look at the first time around. How about these amazing poems by Ada Limón, "61 Trees" and "Rest Stop"? These poems will be included in a book coming out with cinematheque press later this summer. And Ada was recently in The New Yorker; her poem "Crush" found its way into the summer fiction issue.

Maybe fiction is more your thing. How about a story from the early days of InDigest by Sam Osterhout? Sam is currently the host of Radio Happy Hour, a live old-timey radio show that welcomes special guests, such as Norah Jones, Michael Showalter, and Andrew W.K., to perform as themselves in the script. The show is getting all kinds of attention. You can subscribe to the free podcast here.

If you've read everything there is to read on InDigest, then check out our blog, which is still being updated while the magazine is under construction. There are new features like "What's New This Week," which gives a concise list of the week's best releases in books, music, theater...really in everything, and "What We've Been Reading," which highlights some of the books the InDigest crew has been reading.

And of course there is always InDigest 1207 Reading Series, which keeps gaining momentum as the months go by. In August alone we'll welcome John Wray, Marlon James, and Ronaldo V. Wilson. And on the schedule for the fall already are the writers Neil Smith, J.C. Hallman, and James Hannaham, and the musician Franz Nicolay (of The Hold Steady). (Read a review of John Wray's Lowboy by James Wood in The New Yorker, here, and reviews of Marlon James' latest, The Book of the Night Women and J.C. Hallman's book of stories, Hospital for Bad Poets, here and here, respectively.)

As always, thanks for reading. Please be patient as we make InDigest better. We promise it will be worth the wait.

David and Dustin
Editors

American Life in Poetry: Column 226

2009-07-21T00:11:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Elizabeth Bishop, one of our greatest American poets, once wrote a long poem in which the sudden appearance of a moose on a highway creates a community among a group of strangers on a bus. Here Ronald Wallace, a Wisconsin poet, gives us a sighting with similar results.

Sustenance

Australia. Phillip Island. The Tasman Sea.
Dusk. The craggy coastline at low tide in fog.
Two thousand tourists milling in the stands
as one by one, and then in groups, the fairy penguins
mass up on the sand like so much sea wrack and
debris. And then, as on command, the improbable
parade begins: all day they've been out fishing
for their chicks, and now, somehow, they find them
squawking in their burrows in the dunes, one by one,
two by two, such comical solemnity, as wobbling by
they catch our eager eyes until we're squawking, too,
in English, French, and Japanese, Yiddish and Swahili,
like some happy wedding party brought to tears
by whatever in the ceremony repairs the rifts
between us. The rain stops. The fog lifts. Stars.
And we go home, less hungry, satisfied, to friends
and family, regurgitating all we've heard and seen.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "Sustenance" from "For A Limited Time Only," by Ronald Wallace, (c) 2008. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. The poem first appeared in "Poetry Northwest," Vol. 41, no. 4, 2001. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What's New This Week?

2009-07-20T09:17:00.007-04:00

MUSIC:
Riceboy Sleeps - Riceboy Sleeps[XL / Parlophone]
+ The new project from Jonsi (of Sigur Ros) and his partner Alex Somers is an ambient wonderland. Yes, it is reminiscent of Sigur Ros. But it's also so much more.

Magnolia Electric Co. - Josephine[Secretly Canadian]
+ Magnolia Electric Co. steps back into the studio after a bit of a lull. Their new album deals with death close to the band, and the album is as dark as the subject matter, but incredibly beautiful.

The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away[Thrill Jockey]
+ This might just be personal bias, but I can't remember the last time I didn't like a Fiery Furnaces album. I feel rightfully excited about this one (especially after previewing the entire album in live form here).

MOVIES:
Orphan (Jaume Collet-Serra) [Warner]
+ Have you seen the posters for this film? Damn scary.

In the Loop (Armando Iannucci) [BBC Films]
+ This satire of modern government and warfare looks hilarious. This has been done frequently in the last year with films like War Inc., but this looks as though it might exceed the expectations.

DVD:
Repulsion(Roman Polanski) [Criterion]
+ This film is long overdue for the Criterion treatment. One of Polanski's few films he made before coming to America, this is a slow-burner - you can feel the madness the main character is sinking into sinking into you too.

Watchmen (Director's Cut)(Zak Snyder) [Warner]
+ Only in hopes that the Director's Cut will be a little more faithful to the book and elicit a little more than an "eh" from viewers.

RIP Frank McCourt

2009-07-20T00:35:00.007-04:00

The Pulitzer-Prize winning author Frank McCourt passed away on Sunday at the age of 78. A New York City school teacher, McCourt always taught that the most interesting subject matter was inside the author. Advice he put to work in the award-winning account of his impoverished childhood in Ireland. Angela's Ashes sold over 4 million copies, won the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award. He employed the same autobiographical technique in his other books Tis (1999) and Teacher Man (2005). As well known as he was for Angela's Ashes, he seems to be know even better for being a great teacher who cared about students and the written word passionately.

Read more about McCourt at The New York Times and Time
Read an account of the writing process for Angela's Ashes at Slate

What We've Been Reading

2009-07-19T19:25:00.006-04:00

I'm a little behind this week in getting our "What We've Been Reading" post up. So it goes. But it's up now. And if you work on my schedule, where Sunday is not the first, but the last day of the week, then this post is just making it in before the end of the week.

David:
Marlon James' John Crow's Devilis a haunting account of Gibbeah, a remote Jamaican town in the 1950s. The story is an epic tale of two men of God, Pastor Bligh, known as the "Rum Preacher" for his penchant to drink, and "Apostle" York. When York comes to town and takes over Bligh's church he demands that the people become his followers, but in the guise of God. When Bligh sobers up and comes looking to take back what was his, the ensuing struggle for the church, indeed for the souls of Gibbeah's people, is grounded in the stuff that makes us human and the earth the earth, while otherworldly events come spewing out of all of it.

James is a gritty writer whose prose can have you squirming in your seat. In his ability to describe the most unseemly of events, we are brought into a world of struggle, both with the most basic of human elements and the most profound questions our nature leads us to ponder. While James' newest book The Book of the Night Women has been critically lauded (and rightly so) as of late, it would behoove you to go back to his first novel to see him cutting his teeth on the story of Gibbeah.

Marlon James will be reading, along with John Wray and Ronaldo V. Wilson in New York at (le) Poisson Rouge on Wednesday, August 5 as part of the InDigest 1207 Reading Series.

Jess:
52 McGs.by Robert McG. Thomas Jr. A collection of 52 witty, warm and playful obituaries by the New York Times' resident commemorator of lives obscure, briefly famous and always eccentric from 1995 until his death in 2000. Each obit. is about two and a half pages and manages to note not only poignant details redolent of a lifetime's experience but often surprisingly thorough historical context as well. Thomas was a fan of people unconventional and abstruse; some of my favorites include the only minister willing to give Lee Harvey Oswald a Christian burial (by intoning this potent eulogy: "Mrs. Oswald tells me that her son, Lee Harvey, was a good boy and that she loved him. And today, Lord, we commit his spirit to Your divine care") and Rudolf Walter Wanderone, a pool hustler who claimed the Minnesota Fats character in Robert Rossen's The Hustler (1961) was inspired by his life and began calling himself Minnesota Fats after the movie came out. They are brief and always highly compelling, I think a perfect coffee table book as long as your coffee table isn't too squeamish about death.

Ashleigh:
I'm reading Deb Olin Unferth's collection of short stories, Minor Robberies.It's from 2007, and I really should have read it before I reviewed her excellent novel Vacation, but better late than never, right? I can't tell you how much I'm digging this collection. It's comprised of about 35 very short stories, and the things this woman can do in three pages are amazing. I love the way she experiments with form without drawing undue attention to her experimentation. I love that her characters' minds can never sit still. I love how her stories often hinge on the possibilities and delights of one word or phrase. Mostly I just love how much fun I'm having reading them.

Dustin:
I'd been piddling around reading random poems from this book here and there, and then, finally, just sat down and read all of Bill Holm's The Dead Get by With Everythingthis week. Holm is an amazing poet. He's really quick witted, and can get a joke into an enjambment in a very subtle way. His poetry is far more than his wit, but that's what really grabbed me. The poems have a great depth to them, yet they almost all bite. He also managed to capture such a uniquely Mid-Western voice, with it ever feeling affected. It's truly a tragedy that we lost this great writer back in February.

An Experiment in Web Serialization

2009-07-15T21:54:00.001-04:00

Recently, a contributor to Guernica emailed me expressing some concern. I am "fed up with the old model of submitting my work to corporate publishing houses," Shya Scanlon wrote, "only to have them balk at the commercial prospects of literary, unorthodox fiction. So I'm trying another approach." Well, that approach begins tomorrow when Scanlon's "Forecast 42 Project" begins.

The approach to getting his novel Forecast into the world is an experiment in web serialization. Scanlon has brought on board 42 web sites--as he describes them, "a fine mixture of well-established literary journals, avid bloggers, and otherwise supportive literary-minded folk"--to publish Forecast in twice-weekly installments (Mondays and Thursdays). Beginning tomorrow with the journal Juked, Forecast will also be seen in 3:AM Magazine, Opium Magazine, and many others before it's final installment on Monkeybicycle.

Forecast is a literary novel that uses elements of science fiction and noir to tell the story of Helen--a suburban house wife of a lying weatherman--and Mawell--a Civilian Surveillant paid by the government to watch Helen--in a world where the weather has gone berserk and electricity is made out of negative human emotion.

Working in publishing, and specifically online publishing, the idea of how best to reach an audience who has so much to look at, listen to, and read is constantly at the forefront of one's mind. This is nothing new, I suppose, but given that online media is still relatively young there still exist huge opportunities for experimentation. It's exciting to see people playing with ways to use the tools at their disposal when publishing online.

So, I'll be watching Scanlon's experiment closely. And there's another aspect to Forecast 42 Project that I respect immensely. It is Scanlon's hope "that if you aren't familiar with [the participating online journals] already, you'll explore their rich offerings long after this project has concluded." As the founding editor of one online magazine and the blog editor of another, I'm a fan of any project that attempts to shine some light on 42 of these "literary-minded folk."

To follow Scanlon's Forecast 42 Project:
1) follow his Twitter posts, @shyascanlon
2) befriend him at Facebook.com/shya.scanlon
3) continue to check this page, which will be updated with links to each chapter as it goes live
4) each chapter will link back to the previous chapter, and forward to the next once it's live, so I encourage you to use the participating sites themselves to navigate the novel. Click here for the full list of sites.

Photo: Courtesy of Matty Harper.

American Life in Poetry: Column 225

2009-07-14T08:26:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

There have been many poems written in which a photograph is described in detail, and this one by Margaret Kaufman, of the Bay Area in California, uses the snapshot to carry her further, into the details of memory.

Photo, Brownie Troop, St. Louis, 1949

I'm going to put Karen Prasse right here
in front of you on this page
so that you won't mistake her for something else,
an example of precocity, for instance,
a girl who knew that the sky (blue crayon)
was above the earth (green crayon)
and did not, as you had drawn it, come right down
to the green on which your three bears stood.
You can tell from her outfit that she is a Brownie.
You can tell from her socks that she knows how
to line things up, from her mouth that she may
grow up mean or simply competent. Do not mistake
her for an art critic: when she told you
the first day of first grade that your drawing
was "wrong," you stood your ground and told her
to look out the window. Miss Voss told your mom
you were going to be a good example of something,
although you cannot tell from the way your socks sag,
nor from your posture, far from Brownie-crisp.
This is not about you for a change, but about
mis-perception, of which Karen was an early example.
Who knows? She may have meant to be helpful,
though that is not always a virtue,
and gets in the way of some art.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2008 by Margaret Kaufman, whose newest book of poems, "Inheritance," is forthcoming in spring, 2010, from Sixteen Rivers Press. Poem reprinted from "The Chattahoochee Review," Vol. 28, no. 2,3, Spring/Summer 2008, by permission of Margaret Kaufman and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What's New This Week?

2009-07-13T09:12:00.008-04:00

BOOKS:Near Death in the Desertby Cecil Kuhne [Random House]
+ Kuhne edits a collections of stories from early explorers to modern journalists who battle the most punishing landscapes on earth. Near Death is 13 true stories from the desert by people who survived insane situations.

MUSIC:
Dead Weather - Horehound[WEA/Reprise]
+ The new supergroup from Jack White (The White Stripes) and Allison Mosshart (The Kills) shares a lot with the other supergroup White started, The Raconteurs, but Dead Weather carries more energy and urgency than the Raconteurs could ever muster.

David Bowie - VH1 Storytellers[Virgin/EMI]
+ Bowie talkin' about Bowie. There aren't really any ways this could go too terribly.

Hercules and Love Affair - Sidetracked[Renaissance]
+ Hercules and Love Affair in nearly name only here. This is the same album you fell in love with last year. This is a chance for Butler and co. to show what kind of dance party they can throw. But, if the previews are any indication, they can throw a damn fun one.

DVD:
For All Mankind(Al Reinert) [Criterion]
+ Al Reinert, who co-wrote Apollo 13, created a documentary in 1989 about all the men who have placed their feet on the moon and all of those who died in the effort. It's a visual masterpiece (and it's a documentary, gasp). See the trailer here.

12(Nikita Mikhalkov)[Sony Pictures]
+ 12 is Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov's re-imagining of 12 Angry Men for modern day Russia. Affected by all of the racism, the wars, the changing government, the jury is forced to determine the fate of a young Chechen boy who is accused of killing his adoptive Russian father. (read a review)

The Edge of Love(John Mayberry) [Image Entertainment]
+ The Edge of Love follows Dylan Thomas and the two women fighting for his love in what would be the last moments of his life. No. Really. It's a film about a poet.

THEATERS:
(500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb) [Fox Searchlight]
+ This film is sure to be one of the quirky "indie-ish" films of the summer. Early reviews are positive.

In the Loop (Armando Iannucci) [IFC]
+ Hilarious Brittish satire of government and the great machines of war. Another odd role for James Gandolfini as well who continues to prove that he's far more versatile than The Sopranos would have you believe.

Harry Potter & the Half Blood Prince (David Yates) [Warner]
+ Fuck it. I'm excited.

1207 is Going to Rock Faces in the Fall

2009-07-12T22:24:00.003-04:00

If you haven't been over to the 1207 events page in a little while you probably didn't know that we've added a whole bunch of new readings to the series. Damn. The fall is looking good. In August we have John Wray (author of Lowboy),Marlon James (author of The Book of Night Women),and Ronaldo V. Wilson (author of Narrative of the Life of the Brown Boy and the White Man).In September we just added Neil Smith (author of Bang Crunch| read review in Bedside Stacks), and Franz Nicolay (of The Hold Steady & his solo project Major General).October we're bringing in JC Hallman (author of The Hospital for Bad Poets).And in November we have James Hannaham whose book God Says Nowas just released through McSweeneys. Damn.

What We've Been Reading

2009-07-11T08:39:00.007-04:00

Dustin:
I'm just finishing up Lowboyby John Wray (who is reading at the August 1207). I happened to be discussing books of this type with Geoff Herbach recently and it occurred to me (I was just starting the book then) that Wray has an extraordinary ability to make incredibly flawed characters but show them authorial love. The book is partially from the POV of a mentally ill teenager, but Wray handles these characters so well that it everything feels very real and vital. It feels like a book about the times not a book about a mentally ill person because he does it right.

David:
My pick this time around is an older book. The Meadowby the poet James Galvin was recommended to me by another great poet, Rick Barot. We were discussing nonfiction and I threw into the discussion Blues for Cannibals: The Notes from Underground by Charles Bowden. Rick responded with The Meadow, a meditative masterpiece on the history of a piece of land on the Wyoming-Colorado border and the people who occupy it.

Ashleigh:
I'm just about to finish the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus. The drawings are just okay, but the story and characters are compelling. It's been on my to-read list since seventh grade; I wish I'd gotten around to it sooner.

Jess:
Airships by Barry Hannah.Short story collection about the South (mostly white men in the South) post Civil War and through the 1970's or so. Many of these are only three or four pages long. Denis Jonson was obviously influenced by the language when he wrote Jesus' Son. Language like I wove a piece of cloth from a piece of lightning, buried it, dug it up half-wizened but still flickering, starched it and made a lamp shade. Wouldn't it feel shitty if I turned on the lamp? And then kept telling you about how I lost my wife?

Reina:
I've been very, very slowly making my way through Belovedby Toni Morrison while also reading a book on mother-daughter relationships.

Radio Happy Hour This Weekend, Podcast on iTunes now

2009-07-10T09:30:00.001-04:00

Hey all - you can now download the new Radio Happy Hour podcast over at iTunes. This is a really funny old time radio show (which is done live) and has lots of guests such as Norah Jones. Awesome. The show features former InDigest contributor Sam Osterhout and Geoff Herbach, who read from Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg at the last installment of InDigest 1207.

If you happen to be in New York this week come down to LPR and see the second installment of Radio Happy Hour which will be featuring Michael Showalter. You can get your tickets here.

American Life in Poetry Column #224

2009-07-07T01:43:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

When we're young, it seems there are endless possibilities for lives we might lead, and then as we grow older and the opportunities get fewer we begin to realize that the life we've been given is the only one we're likely to get. Here's Jean Nordhaus, of the Washington, D.C. area, exploring this process.

I Was Always Leaving

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2008 by Jean Nordhaus, whose most recent book of poems is "Innocence," Ohio State University Press, 2006. Poem reprinted from "The Gettysburg Review," Vol. 21, no. 4, Winter, 2008, by permission of Jean Nordhaus and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What's New This Week?

2009-07-06T09:20:00.007-04:00

BOOKS:
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton [Granta]
+ This book has gotten only positive buzz so far. Joshua Ferris called it "a glimpse into the future of the novel itself."

Behind My Eyes: Poems by Li-Young Lee [W.W. Norton & Co.] (reprint)
+ Lee's fourth collection is a beautiful book that is surprising and sometimes dark and funny.

MUSIC:
Bowerbirds - Upper Air [Dead Oceans]
+ Another full length from one of the best groups doing folk. Bowerbirds have managed to make folk beautiful and surprising again.

The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns [Saddle Creek]
+ Saw these guys play a couple weeks ago in Minneapolis with InDigest founding editor Chris Koza, and they were fantastic. A revised Neutral Milk Hotel.

Oneida - Rated O [Jagjaguwar]
+ Oneida is releasing a three disc concept(ish) album, and if the preview tracks have been any indicator this may be the first three disc set you'll be able to sit through.

Tiny Vipers - Life On Earth [Subpop]
+ Tiny Vipers' gorgeous, haunting down-tempo tunes feel lost in time. They could have been written yesterday or a century ago.

DVD:
Stanley Cup 2008-2009 Champions: Pittsburgh Penguins [Warner]
+ No, I'm not kidding. This was the best Stanley Cup Playoffs in so long that I had to put this up as one of the best things going on this week. This was an amazing year in hockey. Whatever, forget it then.

THEATERS:
Humpday (Lynn Shelton) [Magnolia]
+ Two college buddies, an artist and a family man, decide to one up each other until they have decided to have sex together in a porno contest. Really.

Soul Power (Jeffrey Levy-Hinte) [Antidote]
+ A documentary about the legendary soul concert in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1974.

Thanks for Coming, So Nice to Meet You

2009-07-03T09:28:00.004-04:00

Thanks to everyone who came down to (Le) Poisson Rouge on Wednesday for our July 1207 reading. It was a great time, and we liked hanging out with you.

In case you really hate fun, and didn't come, but now wish you did here's what you missed:

Paul Gregory Himmelein read from a novel in progress that only utilizes language found in two different 18th century dictionaries. He read from, as his influential text, one of these dictionaries titled The Vulgar Tongue.

Geoff Herbach read from his hysterical and tragic novel The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg.He also read a couple of poems by John Berryman which made me immediately go home and start reading The Dream Songsagain.

If you missed all the fun join us on August 5th for 1207 w/ John Wray, Marlon James, and Ronaldo V. Wilson.

American Life in Poetry Column #223

2009-06-30T09:15:00.001-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 223

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

There's lots of literature about the loss of innocence, because we all share in that loss and literature is about what we share. Here's a poem by Alexandra Teague, a San Franciscan, in which a child's awakening to the alphabet coincides with another awakening: the unsettling knowledge that all of us don't see things in the same way.

Language Lessons

The carpet in the kindergarten room
was alphabet blocks; all of us fidgeting
on bright, primary letters. On the shelf
sat that week's inflatable sound. The "th"
was shaped like a tooth. We sang
about brushing up and down, practiced
exhaling while touching our tongues
to our teeth. Next week, a puffy U
like an upside-down umbrella; the rest
of the alphabet deflated. Some days,
we saw parents through the windows
to the hallway sky. "Look, a fat lady,"
a boy beside me giggled. Until then
I'd only known my mother as beautiful.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2008 by Alexandra Teague, whose first book, "Mortal Geography," winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Prize, is forthcoming in 2010 from Persea Books. Reprinted from "Third Coast," Fall 2008, by permission of Alexandra Teague and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

What's New This Week

2009-06-29T10:04:00.005-04:00

Music:
Wilco - Wilco [the album] [Nonesuch]
+ First new Wilco in far too long.

Richard Thompson - Walking on a Wire: Richard Thompson (1969-2009) [Shout Factory]
+ A beautiful four disc set with a 60 page booklet tracing Thompson's career through his early work with his wife into the last two decades of his solo career.

Bjork - Voltaic
+ A new 2 CD / 2 DVD set from Bjork in a big beautiful package.

Spoon - Got Nuffin
+ A new short EP from Spoon. A couple of months ago there were rumors that Daniels and co. were putting the finishing touches on a new album in Portland. This might be the first waft of that long overdue possibility.

Theaters:
Public Enemies (Michael Mann) [Universal]
+ New gangster film on the story of Dillinger with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. [trailer]

The Beaches of Agnes (Agnes Varda) [Cinema Guild]
+ The incomparable Agnes Vardas releases a brand new film. Get excited. [trailer]

DVD:
Tokyo! (dir. Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Joon-Ho Bong) [Comme des Cinémas]
+ One film in three parts, from three separate directors. Carax and Gondry are well known experimentalists, and Joon-Ho is one of the most exciting new directors around (see The Host).

Do the Right Thing (20th Anniversary Edition) (Spike Lee) [Universal]
+ Few films deserve a big fancy box set more than this. Spike Lee's best film hands down.

Wholphin: Issue 8
+ Wholphin, the short film DVD magazine from McSweeneys, is issuing Issue 8. These are always really great, I recommend trying it.

American Life in Poetry: Column #222

2009-06-25T10:26:00.002-04:00

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Coleman Barks, who lives in Georgia, is not only the English language's foremost translator of the poems of the 13th century poet, Rumi, but he's also a loving grandfather, and for me that's even more important. His poems about his granddaughter, Briny, are brim full of joy. Here's one:

Glad

In the glory of the gloaming-green soccer
field her team, the Gladiators, is losing

ten to zip. She never loses interest in
the roughhouse one-on-one that comes

every half a minute. She sticks her leg
in danger and comes out the other side running.

Later a clump of opponents on the street is chant-
ing, WE WON, WE WON, WE . . . She stands up

on the convertible seat holding to the wind-
shield. WE LOST, WE LOST BIGTIME, TEN TO

NOTHING, WE LOST, WE LOST. Fist pumping
air. The other team quiet, abashed, chastened.

Good losers don't laugh last; they laugh
continuously, all the way home so glad.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2001 by Coleman Barks, from his most recent book of poems, "Winter Sky: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2008," University of Georgia Press, 2008, and reprinted by permission of Coleman Barks and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry #221

2009-06-16T10:28:00.002-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 221

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Sometimes, it's merely the sound of a child's voice in a nearby room that makes a parent feel immensely lucky. To celebrate Father's Day, here's a joyful poem of fatherhood by Todd Boss, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

This Morning in a Morning Voice

to beat the froggiest
of morning voices,
my son gets out of bed
and takes a lumpish song
along--a little lyric
learned in kindergarten,
something about a
boat. He's found it in
the bog of his throat
before his feet have hit
the ground, follows
its wonky melody down
the hall and into the loo
as if it were the most
natural thing for a little
boy to do, and lets it
loose awhile in there
to a tinkling sound while
I lie still in bed, alive
like I've never been, in
love again with life,
afraid they'll find me
drowned here, drowned
in more than my fair
share of joy.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2008 by Todd Boss, whose most recent book of poems is "Yellowrocket," W. W. Norton & Co., 2008. Poem reprinted from "Poetry," December 2008, by permission of Todd Boss and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

American Life in Poetry #220

2009-06-11T09:34:00.002-04:00

American Life in Poetry: Column 220

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

One of the privileges of being U.S. Poet Laureate was to choose two poets each year to receive a $10,000 fellowship, funded by the Witter Bynner Foundation. Joseph Stroud, who lives in California, was one of my choices. This poem is representative of his clear-eyed, imaginative poetry.

Night in Day

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light's great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun--
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2009 by Joseph Stroud, and reprinted from his recent book of poems, "Of This World: New and Selected Poems 1966-2006," Copper Canyon Press, 2009, by permission of the author and publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Issue 11 Now Online

2009-05-28T23:28:00.004-04:00

Issue 11 is now up, and our contributors in the Narratives section find, through their fiction, new and interesting ways to deal with relationships gone south, and our Poetics section contributor expresses his joy at your appearance in that crown! We also bring you the beautiful work of Sougwen Chung in our Gallery, and welcome back our series InDialogue, where writers and artists talk to each other about, well, anything they want to talk to each other about. Here, two long-time members of the InDigest family, Meakin Armstrong and Sam Osterhout, discuss, among other things, the fate of the funny man, growing old, and why Meakin’s characters don’t have enough sense to get themselves out of the damn basement.

And remember, if you're in New York stop by (le) Poisson Rouge the first Wednesday of every month for the InDigest 1207 reading series, where in June we will be welcoming Stephen Burt, Angela Ball, Rodrigo Toscano, and Giao Buu (and later this summer, John Wray, Marlon James, Ronaldo V. Wilson, and Geoff Herbach).

Narratives
Nicole Callihan's delightfully odd story about a man who sees his friends' relationship somewhat differently than they do.

"One Fish, Two Fish"

&

Peter Bognanni's wild ride into the mystical world of swords...and how they can spice up your love life.

"Historical Replicas Unlimited"

Poetics
Three poems by Michael Ogletree:

"Look at You in That Crown!"
"The Thread"
"Anything Goes, I Guess"

Gallery

Beautiful, swirling prints with muted colors and surprising depth by Sougwen Chung.

InDialogue

Past InDigest Narratives contributors Meakin Armstrong and Sam Osterhout InDialogue.