Handjives for the Masses

annadevries:

Mark Twain’s house was burgled in 1908. This was the letter that was subsequently posted to the front door.

Thanks, Letters of Note.

Image: Stanley Gould

(via scribnerbooks)

Rancid, you are full of surprises.

booksbenread:

The Gigantic Robot by Tom Gauld

I’m not gonna fib at you: this was an impulse buy, and I regret spending money on it. I bought it from a table at this year’s Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival for ten dollars because it’s an impressive object.  It’s thick, it’s large, and it’s published on weighty tagboard.  Tom Gauld is a fabulous artist with a great sense of humor.  None of that is present in The Gigantic Robot.  

It’s based upon an interesting concept: the right leaf of each spread features what is essentially the same image ten times.  The whole book is about a dozen pages long; its bulk owes to the tagboard.  It takes four or five minutes to ingest.  There’s nothing wrong with what it is, but it could easily have been presented as a stapled and photocopied zine to exactly the same effect, minus the price.  Whatever.  I’m not even upset at all.

…in bed!

My job is weird!

booksbenread:

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

Can you put a price on art?  I mean, really.  Can you?  ART?  REALLY?

Yes, three dollars.  Because that is how much I paid for my copy of No One Belongs Here More Than You.  This was another tremendous find from my favorite-and-totally-secret-Brooklyn-book-gathering spot.  I had just seen July’s newest film, which (spoiler alert) is narrated by a cat, and I was jonesing for more ethereal, inaccessible Miranda July wackiness. 

In my experience, most people do not like July’s work.  I understand.  It can be sickeningly twee and pretentious and weirdly paced.  If you can’t stomach it, don’t read this book.  These stories are essentially sixteen spec scripts for her next movie (and although I’m four years late on the No One… train, I’m certain her most recent book is nearly identical in execution).

But if you dig experimentation and magical realism and twee and a dash of literary overzealousness, get on it!  July holds her own against the best— Lorrie Moore, Gary Lutz, Aimee Bender, what have you.  In fact, she employs a style that I found downright mystifying.  I get the sense that her stories gather all the details that another writer would never care to mention.  And she omits the details, like names and settings and objects and their significances, that they would.  And it works!  It almost works sixteen times!

betterbooktitles:

Frank Herbert: Dune

Reader Submission: Title and Redesign by Rentz Leinbach.

booksbenread:

Stories V! by Scott McClanahan

(SEXY LADY ALERT!: there is a picture of a sexy lady on the cover of this book.)
I go to a lot of readings.  There are good readings and there are bad readings.  This is because there are good readers and there are bad readers.  Bad readers are very, very hard to endure.  Generally, if a writer has some kind of shtick or schlocky gimmick, they give terrible readings: a few names come to mind.  When Scott McClanahan began to read, I thought he was going to be one of those writers.

He’s not!  He was heavy on shtick, yes.  He walked up to the microphone at Franklin Park (whose reading series I heartily endorse) looking like Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket, with a heavy Appalachian accent (real?) and a stilted cadence that made him sound like the autistic kid in Mercury Rising (totally fake).  I was ready to hate whatever he was about to read.  But it was very, very good.  He even used props!  If you have a chance to see McClanahan read, do it.

They were selling copies of this, his most recent collection of short stories at an Unnameable Books-sponsored table at the bar.  All of his books are published on McClanahan’s own “Holler Presents” imprint, which he prefers to shopping his stories around because he says he can “sell a hundred out of the back of his truck for five dollars each.”  I bought it.  Then I chatted with him about West Virginia (where he lives, and which I had visited) and Maryland (Where I have lived, and which he has visited) and Interstate 70 (which I have driven on and which he has driven on) and he inscribed the following in my copy:

“Ben, thanks for coming.  My great aunt lived in Glen Burnie.  Scott McClanahan.”

The stories in this book are very shticky.  One is “written” in “invisible ink.”  One is a message to bloggers who may write negative reviews of his work.  Many last only a few sentences.  Some have alternate endings.  Not all are good.  But a few of them are great and the book is only five dollars, so, you know, I liked it.

ALPHABECHOCOCATASTROPHE!!!