BEST BOOK THAT MADE ME WANT TO WRITE A BOOK LIKE THAT

[Why Did I Ever by Mary Robison]

This book isn't disjointed--it's shattered. Mary Robison had writer's block for years and years so she just started writing down individual thoughts on notecards. After awhile, she assembled them into this book. As a base-level theory, that's somewhere between genius and fundamentally retarded, but Robison is too good. The narrative isn't buried or secondary. It's right fucking there. It just happens to be delivered in the form of 530 short short short stories.

I want people to quit writing stories and poems and collections that try too hard at sounding disjointed and come off as sounding like Mad Libs for MFA dickheads. But, since they probably won't, it really made me want to do it. So I think I'll try that in 2013.

BEST BOOK THAT MADE ME NEVER WANT TO WRITE A BOOK LIKE THAT

[A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley]

Definitely a book I had to slog through at points, but when I finally just gave in and started high-lighting the best lines and paragraphs, everything unlocked. Exley seems like a terrible, wonderful mess: alcoholic, sports obsessive (hence the title), destructively impulsive. I will never write like this, partially because I just don't, but mostly because I can't put my life through the wringer like he did and come out with enough energy--or whatever it is that it takes--to document it, to essentially go through it all over again.

BEST NOVEL BY SOMEONE WHOSE STORY COLLECTION I DIDN'T LIKE VERY MUCH

[The Ask by Sam Lipsyte]

Am I missing something with Venus Drive? I just can't get past the terrible people never learning anything. I went into it after reading (and loving) Homeland and was beyond excited. Venus Drive felt like pointless nihilism to me. I read The Subject Steve next and began to think Homeland was a fluke. Then I read The Ask and realized that Lipsyte is the real deal, beyond capable and into the realm of crushing. His dialogue is unfuckwithable and in The Ask is a grand realization of the promise Homeland delivered on originally: what in this goddamn life is worth it and what is "it"?

BEST NOVEL BY SOMEONE WHOSE STORY COLLECTION I FUCKING LOVE

[The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson]

[Barely edging out Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, which is brilliantly constructed and written and worth it]

The comparisons to The Royal Tennenbaums are unavoidable, but when it comes down to the meat and mystery of the book, the similarities drip away. Whereas The Royal Tennenbaums was a family torn apart and eventually reassembled by its figurehead, The Family Fang is a family torn apart by art and reassembled by it in a completely different way. The abstractions are big, but Wilson's smart enough to not let them drive the story. I don't think it's as good as his collection Tunneling To the Center of Earth, but I don't think many books are. The point here is that The Family Fang delivers.

BEST CHAPBOOK I CONTINUE TO TAKE EVERYWHERE WITH ME

[Less Shiny by Mary Miller]

It's a tiny, perfect thing. I keep it in my computer bag and use the book more than I use my computer. Everything Mary writes seems like a streamlined play-by-play into a real woman's mind. There's impulse and focus and the magic is that I can see them and not understand them. This book could be a thousand pages and I'd know nothing more and be no less captured by it.

BEST OTHER BOOK BY MARY MILLER I'M LOOKING FOR AN EXCUSE TO PUT ON THIS LIST

[Big World by Mary Miller]

I ordered Big World and spent two days at my shitty janitor job reading it, sneaking off to unmonitored offices to devour it. It makes me want to call up all of my ex-girlfriends and then hang up the phone right away and then do it again. Is there higher praise?

BEST BOOK I DIDN'T REALLY UNDERSTAND

[The Book of Freaks by Jamie Iredell]

[Barely edging out Variations of a Brother War by J.A. Tyler, which I understood a bit more and liked just a bit less than The Book of Freaks.]

I read other books this year that I liked more, but few of them were as interesting as The Book of Freaks. Iredell's a wizard. It's not unlike Louie in the ways in which it shows how each of us, if you move slowly and look hard enough, are special. Louie tends to focus on the ways in which we are individually incredible, whereas The Book of Freaks is a stripped-down outing of just that: freaks. Meaning, of course, all of us. The narrative junkie in me wanted more of a story-story or a character to latch on to, but even those things emerged in time. The story is my life, the character is everyone. I'm not claiming to understand it or its fucked up bits-and-pieces structure, but thinking about this book is one of my favorite things to do.

BEST BOOK ABOUT BASEBALL AND THE MIDWEST

[The Iowa Baseball Confederacy by WP Kinsella]

Baseball stories are great and the Midwest is great. And, except for the time when he ends up sounding like Garrison Keillor--Box Socials fucking sucked--W.P. Kinsella is great as well. This definitely revisits the sort of magical realism of Shoeless Joe (the Field of Dreams book), which is the sort of magical realism I can handle.

It's hard for me to sit through an entire sporting event, but I'll read a good sports story any day. This is one of them.

BEST BOOK I FORGOT I READ UNTIL LOOKING BACK OVER THE LIST OF WHAT I READ THIS YEAR

[The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera]

Not only did I forget I read it, I forgot entirely what it's about. Let me take a shot at this:

A young/old man has a sort of existential crisis regarding his age or relationship. A somewhat-tangential side-story about sexuality/politics runs through the entire book and becomes less and less tangential for some odd, philosophical reason.

Close? Probably. I liked the book, but I don't think Kundera's going to blow me away like he did back when I first read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I gave up on expecting the sort of love I was in at age 20 to keep coming back, and I'm giving up on Kundera "really opening my eyes, man" now that I'm almost 30 and living in a basement and haven't had a blowjob in like five years.

BEST BOOK THAT COMPLETELY CHANGED THE WAY I WRITE SHORT FICTION

[Stories In the Worst Way by Gary Lutz]

Those sentences. Holy fuck. I read A Partial List of People to Bleach before this and liked it, but I wasn't blown away. It took a whole book of Lutz to show me that his compact non-sequiturs run so deep they end up meaning more than any narrative. If Barry Hannah made it off feeling and style, Lutz makes it off style and more style. People complain that he's all voice and no story (on the rare instance I hear people complain about Lutz), but those sentences. Holy fuck. What else is there?

BEST BOOK THAT MADE ME HAPPY I WAS YOUNG AND EVEN HAPPIER THAT I'M NOT ANYMORE

[Legs Get Led Astray by Chloe Caldwell]

[I reviewed this at length over at [PANK].]

Chloe and I have led vastly different lives in terms of sexuality and experimentation, but her feelings are so big that I see myself in these essays--in my early-twenties, not waiting, but actively searching for the next thing that will change my life. Every five minutes.

It's manic and impossible and real and only getting better from here. I think one of the reasons the book works is that those big feelings are their own end at this point, the period in life Coco's writing about. Eventually, she'll have to learn to process all of that into a bigger meaning, tighten things up and strip away the listing and the sections that feel like journal entries, but in Legs Get Led Astray, there's a ghost with too much energy making it all fit together in the scariest, most joyous of ways.

BEST BOOK OF POORLY-DISGUISED AND HIGHLY-EFFECTIVE WITCHCRAFT

[Tongue Party by Sarah Rose Etter]

Sarah, dear, you freak me the fuck out. Never go to Salem or read me a bedtime story. Also, never stop writing, because these stories are like rock candy the dark house on the street gives out on Halloween, and I couldn't be more thrilled about it.

BEST LONG BOOK I DIDN'T THINK I'D FINISH BUT ENDED UP NOT BEING ABLE TO PUT DOWN

[Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S by Jeremy Leven]

Satan getting psychotherapy, as narrated by Satan, who is embodied in a hand-assembled super computer. (This book came out in the 70s). For like 500 pages. I wouldn't have picked this up on my own, but a friend with excellent taste (aside from his dislike of Rush) sent it to me insisting I read it. And he was right. It's excellent and worth the time.The narrative aside from Satan shows the effects of fate and happenstance as they fight against human-made decisions, as embodied in the life of one man, the aforementioned unfortunate Dr. Kassler. All of it together is a solid mix.

BEST BOOK WHERE SOMEBODY DIES IN PRETTY MUCH EVERY STORY

[Phantasmagoria by Thomas Cooper]

Life is a dream and you wake up when you die. Either that or the exact opposite are true. Phantasmagoria doesn't answer the question, but there's so much loss, so much funny magic, that it makes the question an enjoyably honest one, if not full of odd hope. Stories like this made me start to understand flash fiction back when I was just starting to write it. The only ting better than unpacking these stories for study is simply reading them for the reasons I'd take in any sort of a masterwork.

BEST BOOK THAT MADE ME REALLY EXCITED FOR CONTEMPORARY SHORT FICTION AGAIN

[Short Dark Oracles by Sara Levine]

[I reviewed this at length over at [PANK].]

With everything being on the internet, I'm just like everyone else in that i read tons o awesome stuff and tons of bullshit. Every once in awhile, whn the bullshit outweighs the good stuff, I start to wonder if people are interested in writing pure fiction anymore. (I don't mean sci-fi or fantasy, which I've heard people argue is the "real pure fiction" because these people are assholes.) Sara Levine's writing is vibrant and creative and funny and there's a goddamn story there. It has nothing to do with oblique narratives or writing from a constructed personality. Let's hope she writes forever.

BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL I FINALLY GOT AROUND TO READING

[The Watchmen by Alan Moore]

I'm the last person in the world to read this. I think it's great. Go somewhere else for real thoughts.

(Except this one: who picks a fucking owl as their superhero character? Come on.)

BEST BOOK THAT I WROTE THAT WAS PUBLISHED

[Shake Away These Constant Days by Ryan Werner]

I sold a few of these. I think people were mostly neutral towards it. Mostly, I really like the book.

MAYBE YOU SHOULD ORDER ONE FROM ME.

I also read and wrote a ton of garbage this year, but let's try to be positive, all right?

RW

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I don't have shit going on to promote of my own, so here's a few rad things other folks have going on.

Matt Burnside has a continuation of his sage writing advice up at [PANK]. This is "11 More Inflexible Rules For Upstart Writers." The title is either misleading or I actually (sadly) know less than I thought I did, because I'm learning things, too, from reading this. Matt's fucking funny on top of being a super appreciative weirdo, on top of being incredibly smart, on top of being an exciting, solid writer. Some guys have it all. I bet he's got a dick like a Pringles can, too.

Anyways, here's my favorite of this newest batch of inflexible rules:

RULE: Fight the urge every day to be cynical

It’s easy to be cynical, but better to keep your sense of humor/humanity through it all. There are days I wake up and want to beat up a phone booth, but if I can stand back long enough to realize how bad it really isn’t, I can find it in my heart to forgive that phone booth. Cynicism is a virus from hell. It may feel good to blast the world for all its bullshit, but where does that get you, really, in the end? It gets you beating up phone booths, and they hardly deserve it. Negativity has never and will never be sexy. Not only that, cynicism has a way of digging its nasty nails into your work. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We certainly need that in literature, and I’ve written a lot of cynical stuff, but of late I’ve found it’s much harder and rewarding to write something more earnest because the stakes are higher. Work that approaches the heart of things without all the venom and razors – like walking through a minefield where the slightest misstep could result in sentimentality – is more risky than writing something extremely dark and nihilistic and full of fucks and death and postmodern lines like: LANGUAGE WON’T SAVE US, which I’ve literally written in my work maybe five times now. Because the thing is, language will save us. I think as a writer you’ve got to believe that, even as you suspect how foolish it may be.

Read the rest right here at [PANK].

And speaking of [PANK], they've got a cool holiday deal going on where you can a bunch of stuff for like $50 shipped. I think it's three print issues, a shirt, a book, a sticker, and a button.  You'll save a little over $20 and all that stuff should be pretty rad. Myfanwy Collins (Hey, anyone reading this: What the fuck is with that name? I don't want to e-mail her and ask because I'm sure she's been getting shit about that name forever. Can a third party explain this to me? Welsh? Is it Welsh?) wrote the book, called I Am Holding Your Hand. I bet it rules, because Randall Brown said it does and he rules. Simple math. And the shirt's got a typewriter, so, you know. Whatever.

Buy all the things right here.

Chloe Caldwell of Legs Get Led Astray fame and general fucking awesomeness has a new eBook over at Thought Catlog. It's called "The New Age Camp" and I can't read it because I don't have a Kindle. I'm working on getting a PDF or whatever guys like me who still do stupid shit like listen to music on Windows Media Player need to read non-Kindle eBooks. But you should buy it and read it if you can. When has Chloe ever let you down? (I mean that as it pertains to the realm of literature. If she owes you money or puked on your rug or something, I'll apologize right now on behalf of her.)

Buy Coco's eBook right here at Thought Catalog.

(EDIT: If you don't have Kindle, download Cloud Reader and you're all set. Not sure if they have it in a fancy alpine white iPhone color, but use your imagination.) (Dickhead.)

Steven Gillis has a new short story collection out called The Law of Strings and it's worth reading, worth obsessing over. My full review for Heavy Feather Review went up Monday. Read this opening section to his story "The Society for the Protection of Animals."

Uniss had a plan. The situation was dire. No one refuted this, though we knew at first only what Uniss told us.

In her cage, on the floor of our apartment, Uniss did her best to turn. She said it was important to feel as they did, to better understand. I questioned the necessity, wondered, “If we’re supposed to be sympathetic, shouldn’t we be motivated more by instinct?”

Uniss told me to “Think about what you’re saying. How can you understand what you haven’t experienced?”

I could have argued the point, said many things were intuitive, like hunger and love and the want to survive, that understanding them was overkill, but I knew what Uniss would say. She had a way of moving inside her cage, naked and on all fours, up on her toes and fingers, her spine arched as she had learned to do, leaving room so when invited I could scoot flat on my back and lay beneath her, staring directly at whatever she chose to offer.

Wasn't that wonderful? Of course it was. Order the book from Atticus Books right here.

The only story I've got floating around right now is a 1300 word story called "Go Says No" about old men and pinball and being 27 years old. I didn't realize the title was so similar to Monster Magnet's (not that great) album God Says No, but I'm not too worried about it. It can get rejected on its own merits instead of having an ill-conceived title.

I felt good after I wrote it, but I'm worried about the same shit I'm always worried about, namely how many fucking times do I need to write about being lonely and innocent in the Midwest? I realize that lots of writers I like wrote the same thing over and over again: Carver, Updike, Bukowski, Dubus, Ford, Munro (to some extent). I also realize that reading an entire collection by them is often an endurance test comparable to waterboarding.

I don't know about the other ones, but I've read Bukowski's early letters--the ones before he hit it big with Post Office--and he was definitely aware of the ground he was treading, if not worried about wearing it thin. I seem to recall him lamenting over writing another racetrack story or writing in a frenzy to create a dozen or so drunk love poems. Still, he was writing them, and aside from a few journeys into noir, that's all he wrote.

Should I give a shit? Is this sort of deep, unavoidable rumination on a theme a bad thing? It becomes taxing on the reader after awhile, and definitely on the writer, but even if the ratio of good-to-bad ends up looking like shit, the hyper-focus might be its own end. Not Look closely, but look forever.

It's possible that my Midwest is Richard Hugo's Montana, Grace Paley's New York City, Flannery O'Connor's dark south. And I'm fine with that.

I started working on the pro wrestling chapbook I've been threatening to write. The first story, "A Comprehensive List of the Least Worst Way To Do Everything," is done. Here's the first section:

I watch my dead brother’s wrestling matches and try to count the number of times he gets hurt for real. In one, a wispy tattooed man named Slash Blast hits him with a monitor from the commentary desk. In the rematch, he hits him with the commentary desk.

I’ve got one of his boots on either side of the television. Maybe there’s a heart attack resting in my chest, too.

I know that only so much of anything is true, but I get lost watching the matches. Rodney knew how to honestly tackle delusion from both sides and I just can’t do it.

Until a lump forms between the top of his trapezius and his Adam’s apple, I really am convinced that nothing is wrong when a hulking Japanese man uses the side of an open hand to knife-edge him a dozen times in the neck.


The thing I'm going to have a hard time with is not boring that wrestling fans--as if any of them will end up reading it anyways--and not going over the head of the non-wrestling fans. (Who also won't read it.)  The other stories are "Waiting For Andre" (about how the tangential trivia of Samuel Beckett giving Andre the Giant rides to school severely alters the relationship of a young couple) and "The Road Becomes What You Leave" (about a "loser leaves town" match with more at stake than the results of the match itself). The former will be shorter and the latter will be longer, but either way I'm hoping to have at least two more stories in the collection.

I'm going to go eat ice cream. In honor of the rad date I had Monday with a charming redhead, here's my revised Top Five Fictional Redheads list.

1) Jessica Rabbit
2) Jean Grey
3) April O'Neil
4) The girl on the cover of Candy O
5) The Little Mermaid

Be wonderful,

RW