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:

the Underwear first – the Rest of them – the Filthy kitchen – eight & eight & eight Again – agile saffron color glass–

First, the underwear, blue jockey shorts he finds among the tangled bedclothes and clumsily works over long and skinny feet, kicking up to yank them along his shanks and teuks, snugly snapping them about his loins, working his fit within. Something clunks free as he unwinds a pants-leg from the blankets, and he bends over the foot of the low bed to fish it up, a pair of goggles, leather straps a-dangle, lenses framed by round brass rings. Frowning through them in the dim light, he huffs over one of the lenses, misting the glass with his breath, and scrubs at it with a pinched-up wrinkle of bedsheet. Peers through them again, turning this way and that, the only light in here diffused through gauzy curtains hung in slender windows there and there. Careful of his slumping pompadour, he works the straps over around the back of his head, fitting the lenses over his eyes, blinking behind the glass, then lifts the lenses up to his forehead, just beneath his pile of matted curls. Then he casts about until he comes up with a grubby white T-shirt.

Clack and creak, the trailer’s flimsy door pops open and below springs groan as the Mason climbs within, Luys in yellow corduroy and rough brown serge, his hair a neat black cap, two white paper cups in the cardboard caddy in his hand. “Hey,” says Sweetloaf, turning the T-shirt around, inside-out and back again, “you have any fucking idea what the fuck time it is? Because I did not mean to sleep this fucking late.”

Luys smiles. It’s a gentle smile, to see Sweetloaf there, knelt on the alcoved bed, jockey shorts and goggles, terribly delicate shoulders, those knees too great for his thighs, the T-shirt slowing, stilling in his hands, “sun’s fucking up,” he’s saying, “we gotta get the fuck on our way, is that chai?”