Read Only, Bell House, Brooklyn, 03/21
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Thanks to everyone who came out and all the readers from Cursor, Electric Literature and Joyland. Thank you Kobo for sponsoring the night!
Now available: Against Expression
Against Expression: An anthology of conceptual writing ( NU Press)
Edited by Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith
Buy at Amazon Buy from NU Press
“Dworkin and Goldsmith, two of the leading spokespersons and practitioners of conceptual writing, chart the trajectory of the conceptual aesthetic from early precursors including Samuel Beckett and Marcel Duchamp to the most prominent of today’s writers.” Includes a unique edit of Voice Over.
Two winter events
The reading line up is still being settled but Joyland along with Richard Nash’s Cursor and Electric Literature will be presenting an all-digital reading night at Union Hall in Brooklyn on March 21. Final details very soon.
Emily and I will be representing Joyland at Book Camp 2 on February 13.
“You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by the way he eats jelly beans.”
Next month is the centenary of Ronald Reagan’s birth and now seems like a good time to talk about why in the hell I titled my short fiction collection with the non sequitur Ronald Reagan My Father.
A novel is a terrible enough thing to write and name. A short story collection might be even worse. How best to come up with an umbrella for things commissioned for print, or galleries, or just thought up in the middle of the night and sneaked into the book? When pressed two years ago for a title, I looked at collections on my bookshelf and I saw Hannibal Lector My Father by Kathy Acker. What would be my response to one of the greatest book titles ever? I thought. Who is my monstrous progenitor? Ronald Reagan came to mind.
“Reagan” can mean many things. Having been born in the mid 1970s and raised on a spit that jutted out between Detroit and an area known fondly as Chemical Valley, Reagan means: gutted factories, environmental devastation, several secret wars in Latin America, and so on.
You may feel otherwise, but that’s what the word means to me. Forces were at work before and after the Regan era that contributed to those states but public figures—and really there is no more public figure than a president— can also act as code keys in our memory.
Read more…
Raymond Carver story…or Crystal Gayle song?
Joyland has been moving cities and driving on snow-covered roads this month. Because Wire CDs are very short we made up a car quiz: Country Song or Short Story Title? With some tweaking, and Wikipedia, I was able to finesse this quiz down to the much more specific and challenging: Crystal Gayle Song or Raymond Carver Story? Your choices are below and the answers are after the jump.
“Why Don’t You Dance?”
“Nobody Should Have to Love This Way”
“Three Good Reasons”
“Nobody Said Anything”
“Coming Closer”
“Show Me How”
“I’m Not So Far Away”
“Put Yourself in My Shoes”
“We Must Believe In Magic”
“A Serious Talk”
“Clock on the Wall”
“Too Good to Throw Away”
“Whoever Was Using This Bed”
Read more…
A Study Guide To Voice Over
During seven months of promoting I’ve doubted, on and off, the selection of works in Ronald Reagan, My Father. It’s a short story collection. Besides things that would look like a short story to, for example, a Toledo book club—even if the stories don’t read as such, and really the book club community of Toledo shouldn’t read my books…but on second thought, they should totally read my books—there are also two monologues that started life in art galleries and performance spaces.
Voice Over was created five years ago by sorting a list of thousands of film taglines into a long narrative. As Doug Nufer wrote to me recently, it was “amazing” that such work “got published by a commercially viable press.” It probably is, though most of the reviews of the collection seem to focus their criticisms on Voice Over and its sequel, Johnny. I don’t want to sound churlish as I’m glad for the reviews, and many have been great, but it’s a bit of a shame. As far my work goes these pieces have the most interesting histories and I’d rather see them as points of discussion rather than art-phobia bait. Voice Over alone, with its inclusion in the upcoming Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing, will have four different versions in circulation.
Read more…
Fall Tour: Joyland Chicago
Thanks to everyone at the Book Cellar and to Megan Stielstra and Joyland’s Midwest editor Charles McLeod. Also thanks to Chicagoan Izzy for showing up with a first edition of Portable Altamont!
Charles McLeod
The reliable gasp when I present the audience with the "Nancy."
Fall Tour: Joyland San Francisco
Joyland SF editor Kara Levy put together an amazing lineup for tonight’s reading. Thanks to her, Dog Eared Books and readers Ruth Galm, Helene Wecker, Tamar Halpern, and Peter Orner. Emily and I now must leave the city with the best food in the world for a quick stop back in Toronto for Word on the Street and then Chicago for our reading on September 30 at The Bookcellar. It was great to hear Peter Orner’s fantastic new work about his hometown of Chicago and the Daley dynasty. All this greatness, however, is tempered by the tragedy of, accidentally, only packing 4 Tshirts for the entire tour.
Dog Eared Books (Helene Wecker to the left).
Ruth Galm
Peter Orner
Fall Tour: Joyland Night at McNally Jackson, NY
Jim Hanas, me
Thanks to McNally Jackson for hosting another great event! Torontonians Emily Schultz and Zoe Whittall launched the US editions of their books and New Yorkers Amanda Stern and Jim Hanas also read. It was a packed room and I was only mildly dorky as a host. On to San Francisco for the reading on Friday September 17, at Dog Eared Books, 8PM.
Amanda Stern
Emily Schultz
Zoe Whittall
Events, Ebook line launching and late reviews
Yes, I have been busy with not only the launch of the Joyland E-books’ first volume, Jim Hanas’ Why They Cried, but also getting ready for September’s readings, which start next week with the Joyland night at McNally Jackson in New York on Sept. 14. Then, we’re off to San Francisco and Dog Eared Books on Friday Sept. 17. Emily and I are talking at Toronto’s Word on the Street Festival on September 26 and then we’re off to Chicago for a Joyland night at The Bookcellar on Thursday Sept. 30.
Reviews of Ronald Reagan My Father are still coming in which is amazing, considering that short fiction is still a bit of the awkward child of publishing. Bookslut said “Nothing short of ludicrous…An experiment with the unexpected” in a reasonably critical take. Jeff Parker, the author of the awesome novel Ovenman said, “[Davis] fucks with America better than almost any writer I know.”
