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:

first, a Box– what They got wrong– the Stoney strand, the Salty sea– what’s Known, what’s Not–

First a cardboard box, printed with blue diamonds and pink, Mezcal, says the logo, 400 Conejos, and atop it in his arms a blue milk crate with a dozen or so albums inside, and an awkwardly tilted gooseneck lamp. Next a sleekly slender turntable under a couple of boxy speakers braced with his chin, cords neatly wrapped about one grasping hand, following the first through the parlor and out the front door. A third backs down the staircase in his shirtsleeves, craning up over the unwieldy bulk of a thick rolled futon toward a presumable fourth, presumably clutching the other end. “Your pardon, miss,” says Pyrocles, there in the middle of the parlor in his dark blue suit, a smile polite beneath his mustaches. “We’ve not been introduced.”

Becker beside him turns to see the woman stood in the archway from parlor to dining room, her baggy T-shirt, hacked-off sweats and fuzzy socks, “right,” he says, as she says “Oz,” and he says, “Oz, this is Oz, meet Pyrocles.”

“Don’t I get an introduction?” calls a heavyset man over the futon, as it’s squeezed through the front door out onto the porch.

“You’ve already met,” mutters Becker, peevishly.

“Context, Arnie,” stepping within as the doorway clears, his enormous cardigan a-sway. “Never open your mouth till you know the shot; what flies in the street’s not fit for a drawing room.” Looking past Becker to Pyrocles. “Whoever told you that you could work with men.”

“Actually, Jimmy,” says Becker, “about the–”

“Nah ah ah,” says Jimmy, lifting an implacable finger, “never quit a job, Arnie, if instead you can get yourself fired.” He produces a plain white envelope, folded once in half.