RAP BATTLE!

My girlfriend and I are planning a visit to India next month, so I’ve put myself on a crash course in Indian political and cultural history. A number of people directed me to the writings of William Dalrymple, a Scottish historian who has spent most of his adult life in India. I’m reading The Last Mughal, his account of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, during which Emperor Bahadur Zafar Shah II reluctantly supported an unsuccessful insurgent rebellion against the British; its failure led to Zafar’s exile and solidified the British Empire’s position in India. It’s a fascinating read, not least for its depiction of the decline of India’s last Islamic dynasty, which, at its height, ruled virtually all of subcontinental India, including modern-day Bengal, Pakistan, Kashmir, and part of Afghanistan; by the 1850s, the empire was essentially broke and restricted to the city of Delhi. The Mughals brought Persian culture to India; during the empire, Hinduism and Islam coexisted across India and influenced each other. Zafar, himself a poet and Sufist, was a supporter of the arts and friendly towards Delhi’s Hindus, and is portrayed to be wary of hard-line ‘ulamas in his court. (Later, fundamentalist British missionaries would themselves find the orthodox Muslim clerics to be a useful foil.)

Zauq

Early in the book, Dalrymple writes of a feud between the court poets Mirza Asadullah Khan (“Ghalib”), an aristocratic-descended drinker, gambler, and “rake,” known (and satirized) for writing complex verse, and Mohammad Ibrahim Zauq, the Mughal Poet Laureate. The rivalry flared up during the 1852 wedding of Jawan Bakht, age 11, Zafar’s fifteenth son and heir apparent:

The squabble at the wedding was over a single verse in Ghalib’s sehra (or wedding oration) where he appeared–characteristically–to suggest that no one in the gathering could write a couplet as well as he…. Zafar also encouraged Zauq to reply to Ghalib’s unprovoked sally. The fine sehra that the Poet Laureate came up with ended with a couplet tossing the challenge back to Ghalib:

The person who claims poetic skills,
Recite this to him and say,
“Look–this is how a poet
Weaves a real wedding veil.”

The verse was published in the following morning’s newspaper, and Zauq was subsequently shot in the leg outside the studios of Hot 97. Anyone know of any more good feuds between poets of yore?

Looking back a couple weeks to Amanda’s post on Flash animation for poetry, I was thinking about how interesting and lacking this mixed media approach is in literature.  The truth is I would like to sneak in a few photographs I took into my thesis, and I was trying to find evidence to convince my advisor that this would be a good idea.  After tooling around a bit the only contemporary novel of literary fiction I could find that had pictures in it was Jonathon Safron Foer’s novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which came out in 2005.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has pictures spread throughout the book  and at the end has a flip book of a man floating back up to one of the Twin Towers before they fell in the 9/11 attacks.  I thought it was kind of beautiful and creepy and hopeful way to end a novel.  Of course critics disagreed.  They said his use of pictures was just a cleaver way to distract readers from believability issues with the characters and some less than interesting writing.  I guess in some ways I can see where they are coming from, there were some places in that novel I didn’t quite believe or feel necessary but overall I did enjoy the novel.  It has been a few years since I read the book so maybe now that I’m a little older and wiser I will see more issues with it.

I know and truly believe that an author can’t expect his or her work to succeed because of the use of pictures or sound or anything like that but is it possible to succeed despite the use of pictures in novel?  Apollinaire turned his poetry into pictures and those seemed to work, for the most part at least.  Barthelme uses pictures in his short stories.  The visual arts borrow language in there work often.  (Right of the top of my head, Charles Sandison and Rupprecht Matthies who are both on display at the Denver Art Museum if you can check it out.) Is there anywhere else that it works in contemporary literature? Is it a cop-out to use pictures in literature?  What do you think?

My first time pitching a manuscript to an editor ended in disaster and tears. It was at my very first writing conference and I was there to learn from published writers and meet with agents and editors from big and reputable companies. The manuscript I’d brought with me had gone through numerous revisions and my writing group had critiqued it all the way through—twice. I felt ready and then immediately unready when I found out that you don’t bring your manuscript to a conference, you bring your pitch.

Luckily, the conference information I received when I picked up my name tag and bag of goodies included a sheet describing the pitches I would need. A two minute in-person pitch for my group appointments and a thirty second elevator pitch for when I bumped into publishing professionals in the bar, in the hallway, and—well—the elevator. Written in bold and extra large font was the warning to never, ever, ever pitch to an agent or editor in the bathroom, no matter how friendly they appeared when next to you at the urinal or sink. Read more »

Remember that suitcase your mother had—that sixties’ green, plastic shell, hinged on one side with latches on the other, that suitcase that opened into two equally sized compartments? That’s a portmanteau. I’d bet that Lewis Carroll had one of those suitcases, too, because he took its name to coin some good jabberwocky: Humpty Dumpty says, “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy…You see it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

Some portmanteaux have been around the block: grumbling (growling + rumbling), chortle (chuckle + snort), flare (flame + glare) and of course, motel (motor + hotel). When I was growing up, we ate with sporks and watched while the TV showed infomercials and televangelists all day. Read more »

Dear Mr. Farley,
We’re going to pass on your nonfiction piece, “Tumescent Eyes.” We suggest that you familiarize yourself with our magazine and take advantage of the enclosed subscription form. Thank you for your interest in the Cathode Ray Review, and we would enjoy seeing your work in the future.
Sincerely,

Greg Arious, Managing Editor

Internal notes scribbled on the manila envelope:

NO- This piece gave me diarrhea. The first line was garbage. I wish I could go to this guy’s house, smash his computer with a hammer, and gouge out his eyes, so I’d never have to read this shit again. If he learned Braille, and somehow figured out how to use one of those Braille typewriters, I’d go back to cut off his fingers. Some good similes though, but nothing compared to the novel I’m working on. –Chad C.

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Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

The other day I was going to take part in Dan’s book-counting experiment, but I soon realized that it was a hopeless task. My bookshelves are a disaster. It’s like the Titanic—word’s gotten out that there aren’t enough lifeboats, so everybody’s on the main deck jonesing for a spot—instead of a nice orderly evacuation that Eliot and the other upper-crust folks expect, all the books keep piling onto one another, lunging after lifeboats that aren’t really there. So Billy Collins is right next to Chaucer, and a hardly read Catholic Catechism is staring down the dog-eared copies of Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso, and then the band plays this drag of a song, and the lights go out, and I realize that I’ve got to get another shelf before I do any counting at all.

Speaking of sinking ships—that brings up an all-too-true literature death. OK, so the poet Hart Crane killed himself by jumping off a steamship on the way home from Mexico. Earlier in his life, he’d worked at his father’s candy factory. What candy did his father invent, you ask? The lifesaver. Is it wrong of me to find this funny? (Is it too soon?)

Anyway, to solve my bookshelf problem, I built a couple floating bookshelves, as they’re a pretty easy DIY project and they look kind of neat when they’re done. And the name isn’t embellishment; they really do look like they’re floating. In fact, on occasion, I like to walk by mine and pretend I’m Rod Serling at the beginning of an episode of the Twilight Zone. As an added bonus, you get to choose a book that you don’t like and drill screws into it. I went to a thrift store and found a book of Norman Rockwell’s, whose work I hate. (If I’d seen a Thomas Kincaid book, I would’ve gladly used that, believe me.)

The old fashioned hollowed-out book is another fun book-related project. It too lets you deface a book, but it’s got to be thick enough to be hollowed out. For this project, I chose a guide to tax law of 1991. Granted, unless one’s a drug dealer or an international man/woman of mystery, it doesn’t have a lot of practical use. (I keep my passport in mine.) Nevertheless, having a secret compartment can’t hurt, right? Read more »

i declare that "electric literature no. 3" is greater than, or equal to, an entire container of fudge tracks ice cream. if you know me at all, you know this is not a small gesture.

so we’ve had a bit of chatter here about electric literature.  but really, that was more about the organization, or the concept, than the stuff they’re putting out—via print, and e-book, and iPhone, and animation, and possibly invisible microwaves sent straight to your brain.  seems only fair to follow up with a look at the actual work—especially since after all the hype they’ve received, i could only find one other review of this latest issue. (full disclosure: i’m currently on staff at willow springs—though i like to think of electric lit as more of a colleague than a competitor.  we all just want people to read more, right?)

i read electric literature no. 3 over the course of a sunday afternoon.  of the first things i noted, a few aesthetic points:  it looks nice.  and feels nice.  it’s got some crazy painting wrapping both front & back covers, with simple, minimalist text, printed on a glossy stock.  the pages inside were a soft, creamy white, occasionally punctuated with whimsical line drawings (not unlike something from mcsweeney’s), and carefully laid out.  i know it’s a small thing, but it seems like *way* too many journals ignore these easy touches and print on a glaring white page loaded with text—not to mention the intimidating size of some of them.  because, you know, i & the rest of america were so anxious to read their magazines in the first place.  but electric lit is a travel-friendly 6″x9″ size, with only five stories; it’s a slim 120 page book, but only about 65 pages of fiction after accounting for blanks and illustrations and whatnot.  totally manageable.  inviting, even.

as a partial rebuttal to those concerned about electric literature focusing too heavily on already established authors: the thing is, sometimes you publish a big name because there’s a reason they’re a big name—they got game.  this issue starts off with a story from aimee bender, who’s got three books out, with a fourth on the way, and publishing credits at pretty much all the places a writer wants to be published at.  and you know what?  her piece kicks ass.

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Or your second. Or so I hear. As yet 100 percent unpublished in the field of literature, or whatever, I went searching for a little inspiration in the form of others’ suffering. Here’s a quick look at the slow starts of four famous authors, some of whom I have to assume are also relatively rich.

Salman Rushdie

It is fair to say Rushdie’s first published novel, Grimus, bombed. (One critic described it as “ramshackle” and “copiously encrusted” with allusion.) As Rushdie told Dan Webster in a 2005 interview, he’s proud of the fact that he kept trying. He also suggested that, looking back, such a career move seems a little nuts. Read more »

We can't all be this clever

I wouldn’t presume to call myself a connoisseur, but certainly I am an enthusiast of men’s room graffiti. I don’t mean drawings, which I can sometimes appreciate but never like too much, especially when it’s just a bunch of penises. (Isn’t it always?) I’m talking about text—the strange, cryptic, banal, or extremely offensive thoughts that refuse to remain unexpressed.

I’m talking about the first office I worked in, where a presumably grown man had written A friend with weed is a friend indeed. The science building at Indiana University, where an entire tile wall declared, in giant pencilled letters, I LOVE BOOBS, a sentiment that obviously burned too bright, until someone had no choice but to share it with everybody. I’m talking about IU’s Ballantine Hall, where obnoxious misogynistic bullshit—I could have fucked a chick on the rag last night, but I didn’t want to mess up my sheets—was followed by: Questions? Comments? Inquiries?

There must be something about college, because the crown jewel of my experience was at Eastern Washington University.

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René Magritte's The Human Condition

Shya Scanlon started a nice discussion over at Big Other about writers obsessing over craft to the neglect of other issues: “I hear fiction authors talk far more about, say, the structure of metaphor, than about the moral or existential predicament of their characters, and sometimes it gets depressing to hear all these fastidious little creatures go on about their backstage pulleys and gears as though the play itself were of secondary importance”

He’s responding to a quote from Elif Batuman, author of the new book The Possessed, who writes: “‘What did craft ever try to say about the world, the human condition, or the search for meaning? All it had were its negative dictates: ‘Show, don’t tell’; ‘Murder your darlings’; ‘Omit needless words.’ As if writing were a matter of overcoming bad habits — of omitting needless words.’” Read more »