e-singles

Frade Killed Ellen, Turquoise Truck, and The Betrayal of Times of Peace and Prosperity are longer short stories available as stand-alone e-books at Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, and other locations. Because they're "sold separately" and appear as electronic books, I italicized these titles, but because they're short stories and not novels or even novellas, we could argue quotation marks are more appropriate for these titles.

Joker, Joker, Deuce

Only July 30, The novelist-in-residence at L.U.S.K. finished Paul Beatty's Joker, Joker, Deuce.

Avee Chaudhuri's "Problem Women, Problem Men"

"He sat down from his oration and had another scotch whiskey. We had furnished him with a bottle of Cutty Sark, which I think put him in mind of ships, barges, indentured labor, uneven trades, doomed marriages perhaps. He spent several minutes staring at the bottle. Someone in the corner said, 'get this man some egg rolls, stat!'"

~~ from "Problem Women, Problem Men" by Avee Chaudhuri

"Paideia" by J.L. Moultrie

At Hobart, J.L. Moultrie experiences homelessness and more.

Morrison and Robbins

The novelist-in-residence at L.U.S.K. has been reading The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison and Alien vs. Predator by Michael Robbins.

rare titles

Enjoy a signed Dan Fante Chump Change or "as new" hot indie titles. 

I've been working ever since I was twelve.

"'I was eleven or twelve. I remember when the taxicab driver brought that telegram.'

"'I need details,' I said hoping to coax him into a deeper story, something better than my imagination. 'Was it a weekend? Were you coming home from school? Were you watching cartoons? Was your mother at work?'

"'I think I was at work.' He laughed. 'I've been working ever since I was twelve. I had a job changing tires.'

"'You were pretty much taking care of the family while he was gone?'

"'Yeah, my great-uncle got me a job changing tires.'"

~~ from To Float in the Space Between by Terrance Hayes

write a novel in the voice of Mark Twain's Jim

"[Saul] Bellow went on to say something I like to propose to folks put off by political poems: 'I could write a better book from Lolita's point of view.' (Oh, if only Bellow had written that book!) Write a poem from [the Black tennis star's] point of view. Write a poem, write a novel in the voice of Mark Twain's Jim. Or in the voice of one of Charles Bukowski's girlfriends."

~~ from To Float in the Space Between by Terrance Hayes

A Reminder by Sam Redlark

I'm scheduled to receive A Reminder by Sam Redlark later this week. It's the first chapbook from serious-lit press and online journal.

To Float in the Space Between

"My coming-of-age story begins unheroically with me on a college bunk reading [Etheridge Knight's] 'The Idea of Ancestry' in a literature textbook.' It may be that poets coming of age staring across space as the speaker does in that poem. I read the poet's biography: a black man from Mississippi, a prisoner who became a poet. I didn't know anything then about 'constructed speakers' in poems; I believed the 'I' of the poem was Etheridge Knight. I recognized him."

~~ from To Float in the Space Between by Terrance Hayes

#fridayreads redux

Shipped paperback copies of Auggie's Revenge and Fight for Your Long Day remain available at reasonable prices. There are also affordable copies of Auggie's Revenge at Apple Books, on eBay, and for Kindle as well as at Bookshop and Smashwords.

this outhouse of a city

"I went outside, sat on the steps, and fired up a Marlboro from the pack I'd bought from the machine near the front door. I was through for the day. I'd had my fill of defeat. But the late spring afternoon was sublime. I watched two sleek ravens on the asphalt a few feet away as they tore apart the flattened carcass of a dead squirrel. The thoroughfares were glutted with cars and trucks and buses going who knows where. It came to me at that moment that one day I'd have to skip town myself. Where I'd go. I didn't know, but it would have to be far away. It wasn't working out for me in this outhouse of a city, and my gut told me it never would."

~~ from God Bless America by Mark SaFranko

Brad Listi's Other People with Scott McClanahan

West Virginia's Scott McClanahan discusses with Brad Listi friendship, flood, and his new novel Fights!

Loser III is green, / And on the scene.

Mai Bell and Conor Hultman's Loser III is available, and submissions might not yet be closed for Loser IV.

never once having to punch the clock

"When I thought about it, I had to marvel at how lucky our employers had come up in the cosmic lottery. Inheriting a factory, for example, was nothing to sneeze at—that was Sir Schonenstein . . . or bring sent to Europe for an advanced degree—we had one of those . . . or being groomed to take over daddy's medical practice.

"Never once having to punch the clock is a sweet way to spend seventy or eighty or ninety years . . . and then there were those scintillating evenings at the Trenton Country Club, where all the elite gathered for play . . . and the winter vacations down in the islands . . . the Harvard class reunions . . . 

"No matter what the wise men said, time is not an illusion, and life can be long and hard if you happen not to be one of the chosen few."

~~ from God Bless America by Mark SaFranko

it's poor swollen America

"The radio clicks on—it's poor swollen America, / Up already and busy selling the exhausting obligation / Of happiness while intermittently debating whether or not / A man who kills fifty people in five minutes / With an automatic weapon he has bought for the purpose / Is mentally ill. Or a terrorist. Of if terrorists / Are mentally ill."

~~ from "Dancing" included in Summer Snow by Robert Hass

The Kafka Virus

"The madness of each ordinary day versus / the language of someone raised by history / versus someone raised by a virgin, / I'm mostly interested in the devil's story, // because I know there's some devil in me."

~~ from "The Kafka Virus Verses: Thursday" in So to Speak by Terrance Hayes

fast friends

 

Conor and Mai's Loser I and Loser II with newbie Deadbeat Poets Society's Volume I: Maximiliano Guzmán. L.U.S.K.'s novelist-in-residence has placed short pieces in each of these.

metaphor

"Who does not love metaphor? Its quickness / That gives us the world to taste with our common senses. / I'll tell you what terrifies me: it is the idea that 'this is like that / Is like this is like that' could be all of the story, endlessly / Repeated, the poor human imagination having evolved into this / Brilliant swiftness of perception and then been stuck there, / Like a hamster in a cage, groping in the endless turnstiles / Of resemblance. We are to celebrate this?"

~~ from "An Argument About Poetics Imagined At Squaw Valley After a Night Walk Under the Mountain" included in Summer Snow by Robert Hass

cancer at fifty

"The clapping sound is the new crew boss / keeping time. Jane Kenyon, cancer at forty-seven. / Larry Levis, heart at forty-nine. Ray Carver / who had met Tess and beat alcohol which / was going to kill him, cancer at fifty."

~~ from "Harvest: Those Who Die Early in the Middle Years" included in Summer Snow by Robert Hass

Loser II

Mai Bell and Conor Hultman's Loser II includes Alex Kudera, Oliver Land, Nora Rawn, and many more.

Deadbeat Anti Lit Mag: Volume I

"Conversation Slam" by Alex Kudera and other Joycean masterpieces are printed in Volume I: Maximiliano Guzman from the Deadbeat Poets' Society.

Define life.

~~ from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes

(Listen to Terrance Hayes read his poems at Politics and Prose in Washington D.C.)

 

We survived.

If anyone would like a shipped paperback copy of Auggie's Revenge or Fight for Your Long Day, the internet can deliver. There are also affordable copies of Auggie's Revenge at Apple Books, on eBay, for Kindle, as well as at Bookshop and Smashwords, too.

Independence Day's Frank Bascombe

Richard Ford's Independence Day remains the best novel I've read whose action takes place in and around an American holiday, and in the past few years, I've discovered that the fourth and fifth novels in the Frank Bascombe series are as equally compelling. The Sportswriter is possibly my least favorite of the five, although for years that was all there was to Frank. Without putting too much thought into it, I'd rank the five books from favorite to least favorite thusly: (1) Independence Day, (2) Be Mine, (3) The Lay of the Land, (4) Let Me Be Frank With You, and (5) The Sportswriter. I read them in the order in which the appeared, but it was years after the date of publication for all except Independence Day. Speaking of which, happy Fourth of July.

America's Bicentennial

Consider a memory from Independence Day, 1976.

The Angel of the Bridge

Consider John Cheever's opening paragraphs from short stories he wrote in the early 1960s.

 

beach reads

Enjoy the sun with a novel or two unless an eclectic mix of poetry and fiction suits you.

This is not the signed copy linked to above.