Lee Child Novels

I like them.

"Reacher had seen plenty of dead people, and Seth Duncan was more dead than most of them."
Worth Dying For

Last week I read 61 Hours by Lee Child and this week it was Worth Dying For. I think Lee Child is great, he understands economical writing. Joe asked do I mean he writes hard-boiled and I think it's different than that. Or perhaps updated. Or perhaps the thing to understand about hard-boiled writing is that it isn't just in what the detective says, but it's in the setup, like a straight man. Because Jack Reacher is a lone hero in situations where no one is as good as he is, everyone is a straight man.

I feel a touch of guilt reading these books, because they are genre fiction unrelated to my culture, and because they won't ever find their way onto the NY Times Best Books of 2010. But this isn't just a palate-cleansing (poetry is hard); I'm learning a lot.

Because Lee Child is a great writer. In the car I'm listening to a Clive Cussler novel, The Wrecker, and there's no comparison. Compared to Lee Child, Cussler (or his "with" writer, Justin Scott) is clunky and all his moves are transparent. I think The Wrecker is a much more difficult novel to write, filled with big, nation-wide events and dozens of characters. Comparing the two is an education in economical writing. Worth Dying For works, for one reason among many, because Child keeps tight rein on his story and characters. He doesn't crowd things unnecessarily with bit parts, and while there are probably some inconsistencies and unlikelihoods, I go along because the prose and the authorial distance is trustworthy. Child zooms in and out on the action effectively, even if that means sometimes he does away with villains without the satisfaction of an explanation, which is something to think about, and perhaps the most interesting hallmark of Jack Reacher's tactics.

Rachel Glaser answers some writer-type questions at The L Magazine

AWESOME.

RBG: I have never been starving before. But I think I write best late at night during a span where I can’t decide if I should eat or sleep.

POW Review

There's a new review of Rachel B. Glaser's Pee On Water book at The Next Best Book Blog, which is a neat site of book reviews and interviews and other nice stuff compiled by the fast reading Lori Hettler. She gave the book 3 stars, which means she recommends it to people familiar with the genre.

My New Book

Joe Young designed (and titled) an explosive new book for me. I am sending queries out now, via this blog post.

Oh yeah it is going to be a memoir.

Mike Topp SASQUATCH STORIES pre-sales start tomorrow.

68 pages
4.5 x 7"
Cover art by Tao Lin
"Sea Nerd" by David Berman
Official release date 12/14/10
$10 US
Go here to preorder starting 11/12/10

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Advance praise from Gary Lutz
Mike Topp is a disablingly funny writer--a miniaturist of nervous precisions, our supreme abridger of metropolitan startlement and inner fidgetry. He dazes and graces us."

Advance praise from Paul Maliszewski
Mike Topp asked me to write a blurb for his book. I thought about it, but then decided Mike Topp should be writing his own blurbs. Nobody writes better in fewer words than Mike Topp. Nobody. Mike Topp creates worlds in seven words, sometimes six.

Other praise for Mike Topp from Eileen Myles
Just when I think Mike Topp’s poems are funny, they’re wise. Just when I think they’re wise, they’re bad. Just when I think they’re bad, they’re great. Mike Topp’s poems are exactly like the world.

About the book and Mike Topp, its author
Sasquatch Stories is a collection of poetry joke stories, each one better than the one before and after it. Mike Topp was born in Washington, D.C. He is currently living in New York City unless he has died or moved.

Blake Butler interviews Mike Topp at HTMLGIANT
A cheaper book by Mike Topp
A more expensive one, with user reviews!


Remember: Wash your keys!

Tom DeBeauchamp and the Lit Mag Club on Andy Devine

I like Tom DeBeauchamp's LMC perspective on Andy Devine's novel excerpt in the NY Tyrant. He suggests reading through the whole thing is ridiculous ("who would?" he says, but people have/do, though I admit I am not one of these A-to-B'ers so I can't argue this point personally). Then he explores some of the ways the novel works, and offers a couple of interesting ways in to the story. He ends:

More likely, the most pleasure you can take from this sort of exercise is in the fact that it even exists. It’s a mind toy, like the best fiction and poetry, a concept with only the thinnest material clothing, alien and humdrum. It reminds you narrative is only one way to stimulate memory, but it gives no other advice.

Business Model **Updated 10 minutes after posting**

I've been writing a business model for Publishing Genius as part of an application for a program in Baltimore called "Operation: Storefront." The end result of this application is, if I am accepted, a storefront provided by the city in downtown Baltimore, which I will use as an office and a small press reading room (which I define [informally here] as a couple of bookshelves with books I like on it, kind of like a permanent spot for the Vouched thing, but the purpose of the reading room is more for fun and an active office than for sales) and a space for people to have events at if they want.

**UPDATE**
I want to say that the reason I am applying for Operation: Storefront is because my life has changed in that come Jan 1 I will no longer have a job at the financial company where I've been working for the past 4+ years, which has been a great company to work for and I've learned a lot from it and they've given me money and an education, but now I don't know what's next, and I'm kind of dragging my feet on every decision. I know I don't want to do the same kind of work I've been doing, though I think I love corporate America and cube farms and regular schedules and $$ and corporate ethics and oversight. But when I die I would be sad that that it is what I did. So I would like to give being a professor a chance but everyone is always like IMPOSSIBLE and I suspect that universities are these evil places with college students running around talking all the time and more importantly, I don't have any teaching experience. So I am thinking it's either the Navy or publishing, and I KNOW I like publishing but there's a chance I won't like being in the Navy. So if I can get this Operation: Storefront grant thing I will have that decision all made for me. Otherwise I will be in the uncomfortable position of making a decision for myself. Faced with making a decision and making a 12-page business model, I've chosen the business model.
**End self-reflective update**

My storefront just be a little thing. But my Business Model is fairly extensive, with Goals and Objectives and Forecasts, and a summary of the market and competition ("Nearly 200,000 books are published every year in the United States, but no single genre is competing against them all. Because sales figures in literary publishing are relatively modest in the first place (Bookscan has reported only 25,000 books selling more than 5,000 copies), Publishing Genius’s competitors—companies like Featherproof, Sator, Wave, Black Ocean—are also one of its resources; in the small press market there is active cross-promotion, so by pricing books within a similar scope, the competition serves to reinforce Publishing Genius as it reinforces the small press culture."). I have an awkward mission statement ("Publishing Genius exists to publish and promote exceptionally well designed and edited books by talented authors with the objective of being a vibrant contributor to public discourse, promoting values of diversity and integrity with a passion for innovation. Selling books is only the beginning of the mission; with interactive projects, we seek to establish a genuine community around literature that entertains, inspires and explores life's profound questions") and a budget (Through Q4 FY 2010: Loss: $23K, Gain: $16K, Current assets: $21K). It's a lot, but it's still a small percentage of what I need to know and it reinforces what I do not know or do.

I might start hiring soon.

In other news, I just ordered the 725th copy of A Jello Horse by author Matthew Simmons. Roar.

with mediterannean food or mediterranean food. Some sort of food from the Mediterrannean area. Mediteranean. Somebody help me out.

In other news, Bush's belt buckle on the cover of his book deserves to be mentioned, right? I mean, it's clearly a sartorial exception for a president and for a book cover.

It takes a long time to make a book, it takes a train to cry.
Do I want to like new ideas? Not really.

I'm A Maniac For Readings and that Sort of Thing I Guess

On Thursday last week I went to see Tao Lin at Atomic Books. He read for less time than it took for him to start reading, but he gave out nice pictures and was nice and his book seems interesting. It's always nice to go to readings at Atomic Books because they offer free beer and the people who work there are smart and smiley.

On Friday I did a thing at Lauren Bender's show called "Show & Tell." I thought what I was showing -- my bloody shirt -- was a little conceptually light so I tried to call Matthew Savoca, who won my bloody shirt in a drawing but I forgot to send it to him. Of course such a prank doesn't exactly make for full-on heady stuff, so I changed it to "Gameshow & Tell" and asked questions to a divided audience (had Savoca answered, it would have been him against them). That was a perfect amount of intellectual vigor, though not quite like Aparna Jonnal, who argued for the nonexistence of free will.

Here's a photo of me from the Show & Tell:

On Saturday I saw some poets from Philadelphia read, including the great Debrah Morkun, Jamie Townsend and Kim Gek Lin Short. They were each different and each of them were masterful at the thing they do. It was nice to talk to Jamie about what he does and how and why and how it fits into the context of what I know of what other people do; we spoke in vagaries. I was glad to hear Kim Gek Lin Short read from her book Run before I started reading it, because now I know how fun/interesting the reading of it ought to be.

On Sunday I did not go to any readings. I scoured the Internet, though, for footage of the poem that Tony Curtis recites in Spartacus -- with no luck. I want it because I want to learn to fight.

Spartacus: I was wrong about you, poet. You won't learn to kill. You'll teach us songs.
Antoninus: I came here to fight.
Spartacus: Anyone can learn to fight. There's a time for fighting, and there's a time for singing. Now you teach us to sing. Sing, Antoninus.

Here is a link to Antoninus's poem. I did that while watching the Ravens game. Then later I read Lee Child's thrilling novel, 61 Hours

On tonight I'm going to see Tan Lin. I hope that seeing him read will help me get through what I think is his amazing book, Seven Controlled Vocabularies and so on. I hope that seeing him read will make me feel like I'm in grad school.

Or tonight I'm going to see Amy Hempel, assuming she doesn't cancel. One of my guilty shame things is I've never read one thing by Amy Hempel. If she has books for sale, maybe I'll buy one.

Joe Young's NAME

I just reviewed Joe's book at Goodreads:

Name by Joseph Young

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I did a blurb for the book that said I don't know much about vampires but I know a lot about fiction and I like this book. That was cool, pithy, good job me. Now that I have seen the actual thing I will review it again:



John Dermot Woods's cover art is somehow fitting, even though there aren't actually any bats in the story. The lone figure on the cover looks down with both an angry look and a sad look. One thing about Robert, the "hero," is that he is very clearly lonely. Another thing about him is that he seethes with that inept sort of anger that comes from feeling alienated. Both of these things are captured in his downward gaze, so good job John.



Robert is a difficult character to like. I don't think I like him. I was frustrated by him--and I think one success of the story is that it provokes a visceral response. I kept wanting to tell him to look up, get on with it. The last time I responded like that was watching Fargo for this first time. Robert is the William H Macy of vampires.



The book is an awesome size, about the same as one of those Short Flight/Long Drive books from the Hobart people. The paper is bright white, which works better in these smaller dimensions, and the margins are adequate. Justin Sirois did a great job of taking John's cover art and making it wrap all the way around. The back jacket copy is a microfiction that does a lot not just to encapsulate the book, but in that encapsulation it suggests something about how Joe writes those little gems; it's not reduction or distillation, more like a hearkening.



Also the book is probably more of a love story than a vampire novel.







View all my reviews

Andrew Borgstrom at Chapbook Genius

JA Tyler on Borgstrom's new chapbook, just out and about:

Andrew Borgstrom's Reflected Off the Occasional Bone is stellar & thick & lovely & decisive. Like reading as surgery, or writing as a fist pounding, or a book in digitally brutal knuckles.

Read it here.

I'll Be Your Martin Luther

The Mid-Continent Public Library asked Martin Luther some questions but Martin Luther is dead so since I have a poem called "Martin Luther" in my book I thought maybe I can help out by answering the questions they put to Martin Luther and that is how you can now read an interview with me Martin Luther here. Thanks to Dylan Little for running this neat series of famous interviews.