Despite the creeping existential dread.

Ben Schachtman, fellow Associate Editor at Anobium, reviewed my Say you're a fiction with such affection for the Conium Review.

 

I’m willing – happy, even – to surrender to her dreamscape; Larsen’s heroines aren’t going quiet into that good nightmare. Despite the creeping existential dread, they are ready to fight, both against the ‘two men’ who stalk her and the larger forces which those men stand in for. A métaphore noir: we already know the plot, but sometimes the characters manage to subvert the script.

Say you're a fiction / Dancing Girl Press, 2012 / $7 / awesome poetry / by me / get it right here

I wrote my first piece of Journalism (capital "j") this past week (these past weeks) and my stomach acid's tsunami'd its way through my entire nervous system and I'm presently one big blur of hyperbolic stress. Of course it serves me to try new things, but does it serve those waiting for their news?

I tried to put all of this out of mind on my trip to New York. I've never drank in New York because the stress of travel used to be so great. Now I experience pretty equilateral calm all over, I don't have to use maps, and I felt like drinking at the MoMA. Of this leg of the trip, my Significant Otter said, "I was very concerned you were going to start touching the art." I did get perilously close to that Claes Oldenburg stuffed pie.

The Algonquin's been renovated and it is exceptionally swank by this person's standards (my swank-barometer has everything to do with the number of chairs, ambient light, and accessible, sleep-ready surfaces in a given space). A lot of time was spent in the hotel room. Working out of my bed hasn't disqualified a large, clean bed in New York City from being an ideal vacation destination. Unlike busier, more chaotic periods of my life, I used this trip to genuinely relax. I spent a long time around statues at the Met and a long time in the lower level of McNally Jackson. I asked a bookseller at the Strand to help me find both a Crackup at the Race Riots and the Fire Next Time.

Then my interview with Ian Kanski was hoisted atop Harrisburg Magazine's site, where it looks outstanding. I spoke with Ian for three hours. It was incredible what a fluid monologue he delivered me. It was very difficult to edit. This is such a fraction of it.

I have two more MakeSpace artists left. Look out! I've been doing this since January and it's going to be June. 2013's really caved in on me.

Over the course of my internship I read all the books heretofore a part of Dorothy: a Publishing Project and now OH MY GOD LOOK WHAT'S COMING OUT:

Creatures by AMINA CAIN (!!!) / Fall 2013

 Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge by RENEE GLADMAN (*screams and passes out*) / Fall 2013

This humiliates the notion that "good news" can exist outside the context of books. The other Ravickian books by Renee Gladman (this is the third) out from Dorothy are some of my favorite reading experiences I've ever had. AND AMINA! Amina was half responsible for &Now San Diego, one of my favorite things that's ever happened to me. I'm pretty overwhelmed every day of my life that I got to see so many living writers I admire. And my conduct throughout the whole thing was just embarrassing which, at least, I have a benchmark for behavior in the presence of those I respect now: don't open your mouth, Kari, or else. But Amina's work is A TREASURE (I Go To Some Hollow, Les Figues) and I can't even — I was not prepared for all this!

If you, too, seek to be overwhelmed, check out Anobium editor Ben Van Loon's interview with Sam Lipsyte (part 2 is here)! There is something beautiful there.

Q: So when people call your work cynical, do you think it’s ever appropriate?

A: I know why it’s called cynical, but to me, cynical is if you make plastic road cones for a living, and you know that something in the material is harmful to human skin, and you say that you’re not going to do anything about it because the profit is too good. That’s cynical. I’m writing about life, which I find very dark and very funny and very moving.

Press received.

Nona Willis Aronowitz (Tomorrow Magazine, Minimum Ragers) and Aaron Cassara (Barista) are working on a documentary series for Atlantic Cities on small cities utilized by millennials. I saw they were headed to Pittsburgh and emailed Nona to suggest they stop in Harrisburg. They did!

It was about to close for the night, but I'm glad they got to see the Scholar, even briefly. We met there and moved uptown to the MakeSpace, where the time passed extremely fast. I'm so glad they got to talk to as many people as they did, all of whom are representative of all the things I love about Harrisburg.

They had a rental car with which they were very unfamiliar and it was magnificent watching them struggle with it. They were favorably impressed to an extent I could not have foreseen. I confirmed for myself what a lousy subject I make, which justifies anew my commitment to being the creator.

I've been asleep since then (that was Wednesday/Thursday). Scant waking hours that have punctured through I've been editing a seven-page interview with one of the MakeSpace artists, polishing the first installment of a new column, and learning about Medicaid expansion.

In the past I've touted "reading comprehension" as a skill on my resume. Now faced with the subject of Medicaid expansion I feel like I've really been lying all along — to myself most of all. I've spent days on this research, and every time I think I've wrapped my head around it enough to commit to a declarative statement, I wind up in that special blank mindset that I associate with the Law & Order: SVU theme song playing on a loop, forever.

CAN YOU SURVIVE.

Oh my goodness, I read Modelland.

Modelland is Tyra Banks' bizarre foray into young adult literature. "Oh my goodness" is what I say when I'm trying not to swear. A former employer once told me she found it spooky, how much I said "oh my goodness."

I was really frustrated that I could not just find a synopsis of this book that might help me limp my way through it — it is just shy of 1,000 digital pages. The lack of available synopses tells me what I suspected as I found myself up at 4 a.m. trudging through superfluous detail after superfluous detail: no one — alive on Earth, I think — has finished this book. It took me half a year.

Reasons to read Modelland:

• It's female-centered! There are only two male characters of note, both of whom are essentially incidental. The main character is a young woman, the main thrust of the story is her friendships with various other girls, the primary antagonists are complex (for this reading level) women and girls including women in positions of authority, and that was surprisingly, consistently refreshing and well done considering the book's subject matter.
• Modelland is about a world in which the only celebrities — the only figures of remotely any note — are models, and they are (and are not, all at once) exactly like models are IRL. They have powers, like flying and multiplying their forms and perpetual agelessness, but they are also vehicles for advertising held to a rigid standard of appearance. I was surprised by how the book engaged with this since Modelland the place, a magical school where, every year, special young girls are selected and whisked off to, is touted as being dark and forbidding and the models fascinating as much for their beauty as their ability to survive the terror. But "beauty" is as abstract and elusive a concept in the book as in life, and although there are facets definitively invoked to represent what is not beauty, the fact of beauty not being a real thing is articulated and wielded by characters in the book who are active, drawing conclusions, figuring things out, prioritizing their safety, and thinking of others as a result of acts of kindness, and that's great to see.
• The character names are horrifyingly funny. The protagonist's is the absolute worst — Tookie de la Creme! — and her best friends are Dylan, Piper, and Shiraz, and it would make my life if those names Easter egg'd their way into an episode of Girls.
• I do think of this as a significant plus: for the beginner learning to write, the whole introduction of Tookie is full of so many typical mistakes that it is worth close examination. At school, Tookie is so unremarkable, and so unloved at home, that she can just sprawl out in the hallway, shoot whipped cream into her mouth, and write in her diary in the middle of the day, and no one notices. But even prone, her clumsiness results in people tripping over her and her stuttering her brains out in an attempt at an apology. Everything Tookie does in the first few pages are so exaggerated and helpless that she does not come across as sympathetic or sad but unable to conduct herself socially to an extent that is alienating no matter the age and experience of the reader. Considering the fact that Tookie, in the end, is assertive, her confidence has been enhanced by difficult experiences, and she responds in such human ways to the way she is treated — both when she suddenly and sincerely seems to be considered beautiful by other people and when her safety is threatened — that an easier way into the character would have served as an even better payoff in the end. It takes a long time before Tookie even starts the trip to Modelland, and it's hard to hang in there with her for so long.
• I am weary of so-bad-it's-good when it comes to books. They are a greater investment of time and energy than film. But this was ecstatically bad. This book took SUCH JOY in its bad moments. Everything has an absurd name that gets reduced within the page to an obtuse acronym. The fantasy is grounded in the familiar and convenient in a way that — and maybe I'm wrong — kids can grasp that, instead of the familiar seeming even more mundane, illumines and makes special the real. That's an achievement considering how fashion as an industry does precisely the opposite.

Reasons to avoid Modelland:

• If you've already read 50 Shades, Twilight and so on for the trash factor, you don't need more on your plate. Unless it is your genre, in which case this is your Ulysses.
• The one department in which Banks' errant inventiveness totally fails her is so, so ugly: the nations that make up the world that Modelland the story takes place in are not only barely elevated above the ones they mean to represent in reality, the characters that come from them are stereotyped classically. Overweight Dylan lives in a Walmart. Shiraz does nothing but speak broken English. Piper is pale and analytical. Of all the things to botch.
• Most offensive in terms of the storytelling itself is its pace. Although the book does take joy in its bad moments, they are surrounded on all sides by painstaking action described to within an inch of its flimsy, ill-rendered life. Everything takes a long, long time to happen and, as a result, the suspense fizzles. The story does not need the hokey suspense it tries so hard to cultivate — the cause-and-effect of the events make sense — and it can only be the result of a failure to trust in the reader's attention span. When I was a member of this book's target demographic, I happily swam all the way through Little Women. I think young readers can hang on without being baited and subsequently so disappointed.
• I am at a loss. I can't speak as effectively as I want to on this subject because at times this book was as atonal as its theme song.
• The end is open to future installments that may or may not materialize, and criminally little that is ooed and aahed over by the narrative is resolved, which will make the reader feel really ridiculous for getting all invested in Modelland.

The good news.

If I were deeply invested in driving traffic to my blog, I would not talk about anything but Jemima Kirke.

Last night, David Sedaris was downtown. The crowd, all of whom were well-dressed, gave over to throat-shredding scream-laughs. He rebounds from audience questions in a way I really admire. The only moment he became reactionary was when someone asked him if he experienced any anxiety around Macy's. He explained that he said nothing bad about them, and he said it a number of times before he moved on but eventually returned to the point, citing that they made employees sign an agreement that they would not write about their experiences as Macy's employees. The tyranny of retail: I know it.

I loved the rhythm of his show: long story, vignettes, long story, diary entries/jokes. My days have followed a nice trajectory, too. I got several installments of extravagantly good news. And I had a blast copyediting two features in the forthcoming second issue of Local: a Quarterly of People and Places, which is now available for preorder. Coming soon also: genuine sharing of news, extreme gestalt review of Girls season 2.

Mad girl's love song.

In Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Laura Palmer knows she’s about to die. Agent Cooper points out how, while she did not commit suicide, she did consent to and prepare for her murder. In her last days, she warned her best friend, Donna, not to wear her stuff: don’t fetishize me, she was saying, don’t make me into a symbol or a set of aspirations, don’t channel me as a transcendent measure to get free from your boring suburban life; I am a broken person and I am in so much pain. It’s an incredible privilege that the dead girl gets - after an audience is not only used to her as a structuring absence, but they’ve also seen Donna access her sexual awakening by wearing Laura’s sunglasses. Mad Girl’s Love Song is the kind of book Donna would have written about Laura Palmer: endowing talismanic power to incidents and items in lieu of presenting the facts of her life and why she is worth discussion.

I wrote about Mad Girl's Love Song, the 02/13 biography of Sylvia Plath by Andrew Wilson, for HTMLGIANT. This was a joyous exercise: the book was irritating and compelling. Please see the review for vignettes about caviar and diagnoses of borderline personality disorder.

Energy and intimacy.

I talked to Stephen Michael Haas, an artist/musician who is also tremendously fun to talk to (I thought there was no way we talked for only six minutes, but lo - he is very on message). This was the first time I collected quotes for an article, and it was an appropriate occasion. A lot of good people with a more authoritative sense of what constitutes noteworthiness re: art in Harrisburg were ecstatic to talk about him. You, Wayfaring Googler, can read the whole issue of TheBurg where this article appears right here.

Quarterly report.

Where I've been:

1. At the beginning of February, I went to see John Waters in York, a small city with a meticulously designed new regional magazine that I read in the lobby with a whiskey sour. It rained on our way there but I could have gone for a more intimidating storm so we could be stranded in the theatre with John Waters and have a madcap adventure. The theatre used to be a department store. My boyfriend was rapt with the usher, who served in the army under a former president - I think Roosevelt but I don't trust that memory. Since he was in state government, he lived over here and asked us about all these landmarks - mostly theatres - that were ruined or gone.

The joy I got from listening to John Waters was out-of-body-experience in magnitude. The show was not sold out, but the front was filled, and in an effort to manage all my feelings, I distracted myself by trying to figure out why the burly character to my left was there. He laughed at a Justin Bieber joke and a goiter joke and nothing else.

2. Today I went to an equality rally with my oldest friend. She's one of my closest. She was upset because she didn't bring a sign to the rally, but her hair is neon and everybody else looked like a lawyer. She was all I could see up the street.

I saw several mayoral candidates (good) but also a guy who looked exactly like Danny Trejo (better).

3. I saw Amour last month - I love Haneke and musicians even when I am sentimental for Haneke and sociopathic youths. The White Ribbon, I now understand, is the superior film because it has both.

4. My depression barometer is the stack of books beside my bed. I read fast. When I am not finishing books but starting them compulsively - I start them compulsively anyway - and they pile up, things are grim. I've jerked myself out of this negative trend by working, to my exponentially increasing joy, through the Dorothy: a Publishing Project catalog.

Renee Gladman's the Ravickians is one of my favorite things I've ever read. The tonal relationship between each book is so chilling and wild and tender and comforting. I am halfway through Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi's Fra Keeler now. I'm reading them in order.

5. I can't believe a documentary on Harry Dean Stanton premiered at SXSW and I didn't even know about it in order to freak out way, way in advance. It should be better this way, but I have so much freak out to make up for now.

6. I asked Amanda Owens questions and she gave me a recipe for a chum cocktail and a renewed appreciation for gold spray paint.

7. I have the new My Bloody Valentine album and I liked what I've heard but I haven't been listening to much of anything besides the Master soundtrack, which has a longer cut of Madisen Beaty singing "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me)" and I don't need anything else right now. It isn't a pure, uninterrupted cut - her character is singing to Freddy, and he laughs at her and she gets bashful and he goes "no no no no" as the eerie bassoons or other such eerie instrument intrudes and begins the next track.

I ascribe an unrivaled creepiness to bassoons. Once, a good friend of mine was roped into a breaking and entering. She was remorseful and scared and asked for my help in coming forward about it. I went to her house to talk with her, and when she started to tell me about what happened - who she was with, what they were doing, why the entered the house - music started playing that absolutely perfectly complimented the very suspenseful story she was telling me. She did not react as if she could hear the music, and I started to act insane. I was ready to scream. I interrupted her and demanded to know the source of the music, and she tilted the door open and showed me her dad, sneaking around with the bassoon, which he did, I ascertained, when unwinding at home after work.

8. My internship ended today. I all ready cried, but I was pretty shaky and numb. It was the best experience I've ever had, and if I could have sustained it longer, I would have. The editors got me cake and a gift card and a beautiful card and a notebook, none of which is going to leave my person much for the next ever - except for the gift card, which is going to become a copy of Monsieur Verdoux this weekend. Looking at stills from the film at the Criterion Forum, I realize Chaplin resembles Henry Winkler. Maybe not everyone will see it, but I can't un-see it. I've been watching episodes of Law and Order: SVU and Winkler was a deeply unsettling villain in one episode. In others, I correctly spotted Keir Dullea and the woman who plays Lucy's sister, Gwen, on Twin Peaks.

9. Other books in the stack: Sempre Susan by Sigrid Nunez (reread, favorite), red doc> by Anne Carson (slowly, with feeling), the Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe (I paused and plan to resume this week that I've freed up and dedicated to luxuriating in it), many issues of the New York Review of Books and Bookforum (displaced, probably at my bedside forever), Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger (I am halfway through and so into the pace of this book but feel very sick reading it, just as it reminds me of a time, but there is so much to admire - I'm looking forward to having the whole picture), Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath (I keep taking it off the shelf and reading "Lady Lazarus" - I used to read it and other Arial poems aloud in college and at my old job I used to read my office mate poems by Catherine Wagner and Carrie Murphy).

10. I ordered Kate Zambreno's Apoplexia, Toxic Shock, and Toilet Bowl: Some Notes on Why I Write from the great Guillotine with the "NO MORE WIRE HANGERS" broadside. I framed it. On the place on my wall where I wanted to hang it, I hammered a nail that refused to be hammered in past a certain point. I tacked the framed broadside to the wall with double-sided adhesive. It lends a lot of suspense to that corner of the room, it and its precarious commitment to the wall.