All Tomorrow’s Parties

People are praising Jennifer Egan for her incisive take on the music industry in her 2010 bestseller A Visit From the Goon Squad. In her review on the Fiction Writers Review website, Jackie Reitzes says, “At the novel’s heart is the role of music as both an agent and a subject of nostalgia. Rock acts as a bygone era and the conduit on which we may resurrect what has been lost.”
(very minor spoilers ahead)

William Burroughs Goes to Church

The spandrels glutted with slaphappy nuns who cling to the carved marble faces of cross-eyed saints, each projecting ear or crook or staff a fingerhold. “Just hoping to get closer to the Big Guy!” they cry as they try to gain purchase on the stages of the cross in bas relief. The whole cathedral splashed over with the Lite-Brite candy colors of the clerestory windows, smudgy scenes of Appropriate Touching and Godliness Next to Cleanliness and Peter and the Seven Earnest Girlscouts.

Front row of pews, Sweetie McGuffin eats pack after pack of Chuckles. She saves all the licorice ones for her dad, so thoughtful, stuffs them down the sides of her socks for him when she gets home. She’ll whip them off when he looks up from his Reuben with extra dressing in front of the gameshows and hold up his surprise confectionaries, “Ta da!” He knew there was a reason he sent her to that church school.

Eating the Classics

Back in high school, making literary sugar cookies got to be a thing with me.  (So did literary Easter eggs–one year I did all great deaths from the American canon.)  One especially great high school birthday party involved the decoration of an untold number of cookies, including the production of a world-class seahorse-shaped Raskolnikov made by one of my friends and a hippo Anna Karenina with tracks from the train run down her side.  This particular batch was made as a thank you to the staff of the bookstore where I worked for four summers.  Can you find:

Parting Notes from the Expedition

March 2_^st, 1_82

I write this in whale blood, as the last of the pencils were lost when Cleverdon tipped the canoes yesterday or the day before while pulling in for the night.  At campfire, I confronted Cleverdon regarding the loss of said pencils, which he denied.  I have ordered his rations cut until they can be located or until he will confess.  I am a lenient man, but not in regards to the affront of my values, and I rank the abuse and misplacement of supplies among the basest sins afforded a polar explorer.  Under the circumstances, I was forced to harpoon at least three particularly robust and unsightly whales whose blood I have now collected in several tin canisters I was able to procure from a local village community.  I had no desire to interact with said villagers, although several of the women presented themselves to me in the lascivious garb of their people.  They were appalled when I spoke of the dozens of majestic whales or perhaps seals I had slaughtered for my purposes, but eventually conceded the absolute necessity of my deed.  Indeed, they said, certainly those seals would gladly die in the service of science.

Dreamboat Extravaganza

Dreamboat, the new literary magazine from two sentimental chicks with a penchant for photobooths and mutual appreciation of Winona Ryder, is holding a benefit paty to raise money for our first print edition.
It will be an evening of drinks, dancing, door-prizes, and deep thoughts.
There will be a performance by Brooklyn band The Dust Engineers and readings by Jami Attenberg, Sara Barron, and Josh Bell, among others.
There is no cover but our hope is that you’ll have so much fun you’ll feel moved to drop a little love into our piggy banks.
Tell all your friends!

Sunday, April 17th 6:30 PM until the cows come home
Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY

http://www.dreamboatliterary.com/
http://thedustengineers.bandcamp.com/album/the-dust-engineers-ep
http://jamiattenberg.com/
http://sarabarron.com/

Haiku CliffsNotes: Barthelme’s The Dead Father

No time to read Barthelme’s The Dead Father?  Sample its choice moments in haiku form instead.  And then go read the real thing–it’s Barthelme at his best.  (Plus, these are probably only even remotely funny if you’ve read the book.)

*          *          *

For a gorilla
You dance a mean mazurka.
Dig that smart bowtie.

I’d offer you punch
But you helped yourself, such a
Take-charge kind of ape.

*          *          *

Hiding ‘neath his coat
The young zitherist alone
Escaped the melee.

*          *          *

Dead Father to Jules:
You can button your blouse but
I still know they’re there.

*          *          *

Sateen capes, brocade
Tube tops–only the best for
Great Father Serpent.

*          *          *

Prizing the Story

Lamenting that you were once again not only snubbed by the Academy, but that your Oscar invite got lost in the mail? Don’t return that loaned Cartier and drown your sorrows in Tanqueray at the Viper Room just yet!   Come instead to the short story’s big night out–the Story Prize reading and awards ceremony, taking place this Wednesday, March 2nd at 7:30.

Finalists Anthony Doerr, Yiyun Lee, and Suzanne Rivecca will read from their work before sitting down for an on-stage conversation with Larry Dark.   If last year’s ceremony serves as any kind of bellwether, the night promises to be a lively one, although Wells Towers and his winsome Viking maurauders from Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned may be an impossible act to top.