Gratuitous Pictures of Cake, etc.

In my quest for the perfect workout music, I rediscovered the late 90s and early Aughts, which right now means that if I had a band I would only be singing covers of Fall Out Boy (deal with it) and some Jimmy Eat World and, I dunno, The Killers, probably.  My Younger Self from college is cringing, despite the fact that Present Self is having a blast.

Mostly I've been doing a lot of reading and bingeing on television shows when I'm not slaving away at the restaurant to support my debilitating book habit, which I have tried extra hard to keep in check this summer.  You would think that free books from the library and recycled books from used book stores would sound appealing to a grad student on a tight budget, but no.  I itch for new things, all the time, and I can't help it.  Soon soon I should be getting review copies (I hope), which gives me little cartwheels of happiness.  Cartwheels!

I made it a goal to start reading more non-fiction, especially science-y non-fiction, so I've been reading Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is such an impressive mix of biology and ethnography and investigative journalism.  Of course, I still have a soft spot for huge nerdy tomes about the origins of ideas, culture, & modernity, so I've been reading Peter Watson's The German Genius and Christine Stansell's American Moderns, too.  Both are way more fun and interesting than they sound, I swear.  On the poetry front, I read Ben Lerner's new book, Mean Free Path, and I like it so much I want to take a bath in it.  Or steal it from the library.  Which I won't, but I'm definitely not ready to give it back yet.  I love in a very different way Amanda Nadleberg's Isa The Truck Named Isadore, which I'm reading for the first time in its entirety.  She was long-listed for the Ruth Lilly Prize this year, which is pretty awesome.

All my projects are coming along at a snail's pace.  Turns out the longer thing I've been working on all summer has segued into a rather complicated story (who knew?) and so not that long at all and kind of a side project in the end.  One day I swear all the loose bolts rattling around in my head will make a book instead of morphing into other things.

Only a few more days left of writing and finishing up half-read books before I head south on the train for a week of sun and Thomas Jefferson theme rides.  Though the air is starting to feel so lovely in Massachusetts--at nights it almost feels like fall is here.

And now!  Your promised pictures of cake:

(Hot Milk Sponge Cake with Vanilla Custard and Dark Chocolate Icing=Boston Creme Pie, YUM.)

(So this is a tart, but you know.  Peaches and Plums.  No Pears.)

The Contemporary Moment Or Whatever

All I want to do when I come home from work is sit down and hang out with Liz Lemon and some Chinese food.

Or, when I'm feeling more ambitious, just lay around and read David Lipsky's Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, collected transcripts of his interviews with David Foster Wallace when DFW was on book tour in '96. Even though I'm sometimes irked by Lipsky's editorial interjections, when DFW starts talking all is forgiven. He's both really super smart and really egotistical; kind of a jackass and kind of a wunderkind. Charming and annoying. Which is the same experience I have reading his fiction and also somehow a combination I seem unable to resist. Which may or may not explain more about me than I would like it to. The two talk about everything from why books are important to how they are seductive and what makes them that way to masturbation and bachelorhood. Maybe about what you might expect but also way more interesting than you would think.

I'm also working through David Mitchell's new book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Reading Mitchell at the same time that I'm reading DFW is proving to be a heady combination, especially since DFW spends a lot of time putting his own writing in the context of postmodernism and literature after the rise of blockbuster movies and MTV specials. Which makes me think a lot about James Wood's frustrating review of Thousand Autumns in The New Yorker, in which he falls short trying to pigeon hole Mitchell's narrative into some kind of weird, prescribed idea of what contemporary fiction is or should be ("post-postmodernism" hoo-ha). Mitchell spoke really well about what fiction (even postmodernist fiction) should do—a) make you want to read & to empathize, b) be careful not to burst the little bubble of the story, or even the conceit of the story, for that matter—during his reading at the Brattle Theater a few weeks ago.

More later about the review, probably. I'm still mulling it all over and it feels important and there are things Woods suggests that just don't make sense on a fundamental level, if you want to talk about "the contemporary moment" in fiction or whatever.

At any rate, off I go to work more on my post-postmodernist historical fractured narrative nonsense. I even bought myself a fancy new writing desk—a real piece of furniture, not particle board or something I picked up off the street (which, by the way, is how I got my new end table). I feel about this writing table what most people might feel about a small dog. A really cute small dog. I spent most of the day it arrived just smiling and cooing at it. I may or may not have just given it a hug.

Glamstallion

The always fabulous Glitterpony is publishing three of my poems.  I'm stoked.  Stoked enough for some David Bowie-inspired cult movie stills.  Possibly an inspiration for the very shiny Glitterpony.  Maybe.

The L Stands For Love

Apparently I'm behind the times, but I really just thought this track from the "Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant" was amazing.  Please, please listen.  It will make your day.

Freaky Friday

Hello, world, I don't even have my head on straight between the new job and moving and the second job and everything, and I'm crotchety from not writing enough.  What to do when the world is upside down?  Well, if you're me, and I am, you have rockstar fantasies when you're dogging it on the treadmill.  So, for your enjoyment, my Current Top 5 Freaky-Friday Rock-Out Choices:

1.  Because I Want (To Be) Her: St. Vincent

2.  Because I Want To Yell Like That: Karen O

3.  Because I Want To Know What It's Like To Have A Voice That Big: Neko Case

4.  Because I Like To Dance: Janelle Monáe

5.  Because Sometimes We Have The Same Vocal Range: Matt Berninger (from The National)

Bonus Round!
Because She Knocks My Song Out Of The Park: Lea Michele

Have you ever read a book called AWE?

I have!

And then I read Black Life, Dorothea Lasky's wonderful second book.  And then I wrote about it.  And now Rain Taxi is going to publish that review.  And now I am smiling pretty big.

Holy Skirts, Batman!

Why did NO ONE TELL ME about René Steinke's 2005 novel, Holy Skirts?

Would I like to read a book about Dada queen, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven?


Who hung out with Duchamp and made phallic sculptures out of plumbing?


Who wore crazy outfits and recited poems in beer halls?


YES. Yes, I very much would.

God, I hope this is as good as it sounds.

von Freytag-Loringhoven's sculpture God (1917).