the Newis Glad:

Things to keep in mind:
A secret of story.

While I’m writing a story, I am subject to a set of tensions indistinguishable from those that overtake me when I write poems. The distinction is most of all technical, because I find the idea of “poetic stories” more horrifying than yellow fever, and I am always very careful that what happens in my stories suggests to the reader a definite structure, a given reality, as unreal as it might seem to the eyes of a newspaper reader and those beings with-their-feet-on-the-ground. (What are feet? What is the ground?) If I find in your stories a fraternity that excites me and makes me want to be your friend, it is precisely the supreme nerve with which you plant your word trees.

Things to keep in mind:
The secret of the technically impressive and theoretically laudable.

The book established Whitehead’s intelligence and originality as a novelist, but I wasn’t too excited by the world of elevator inspection, and I was frankly irritated by the author’s choice of Lila Mae as the protagonist. Although it’s technically impressive and theoretically laudable when a male novelist succeeds in inhabiting a female persona, something about the actual practice makes me uneasy. Is the heroine doing double duty as the novelist’s fantasy sex object? Is the writer trying to colonize fictional territory that rightfully belongs to women? Or does the young literato, lacking the perks of power and feeling generally smallened by the culture, perhaps believe himself to be, at some deep level, not male at all?

Things to keep in mind:
A secret of the internet.

I think “solidarity” is what Freaky Tales would call it, a movie which, believe it or not, I’m actually going to talk about. But again: I’ve given myself permission to write the longest essay anyone will write about Freaky Tales, as an exercise, experiment, statement, and/or self-indulgence; I like writing, and I am enjoying writing this, so I am. But the more I write, the more that length gives permission to anyone who doesn’t want to read it—even encourages them—to close the browser and move on. You’re not stuck with me, after all, the way you have no choice but to see a mural as you drive past it each day. You can go find something you like better and leave me to my fun.

Changing channels.

A sharp eye might’ve noticed some changes to the various outlets listed on the Books page, as other places where: Spectator Books in Oakland has been added, there’s a selection of zines on the shelves there now, so if you find yourself on that side of the Bay, head on over, say hi; and but also, Smashwords has been removed.

the most Recent installment:

a Half-dozen Dream-catchers– how He’ll do It– the Only Mortal here– already Unlocked– a Disagreement–

A half-dozen dream-catchers dangle before a broad window, colors washed away by the glooming on the other side of the glass, relieved only by the pinpoint brilliance of a lamp across the street, there before a three- or four-storey pile of bricks, the huge high windows of it as dark as everything else. She lifts a hand, surprising the shadows, reaches along the sill to nudge a small round mirror in an octagonal frame, shifting it until the silvered surface catches a corner of streetlight flaring, she blinks, lashes artfully thickened by mascara, lids carefully lined. Scoots the mirror back as clack of latch, key-jangle, lights flick on out in the front room, “what we’ve been doing,” someone’s saying, “I think you’ll see,” and she sits up, smoothing wrinkles from her lap.

Lights flick on in here, and there she is, sat on the couch in her charcoal suit, corkscrew curls, dourly patient mien, but he doesn’t seem to see her as he bustles in, grizzled and jowly, doughy in tie-dye, to lean over the big desk, shuffling through an assortment of red- and blue-jacketed files. The second man stays in the doorway, tall and achingly slender in a long pale cardigan, and he does seem to see her, a smile cocked in his lush brown beard, so neatly combed.

“Here we are,” says the grizzled man, manila folder held up, a trophy, “participation,” he says, and then he sees her, too, and his bluster’s whisked away. “Who,” he says, “how, how did you, what are you doing here?”

“Might we have the room, Mr. Stiles?”

“I,” he says, looking to the man in the doorway, who, still smiling, shrugs a slender shoulder.

“A few minutes only,” she says.

“I could just,” he says, pointing, past the man in the doorway, out. “I’ll wait in the car,” he says, stepping back into the front room.