Fables and Riddles

New work, many doings

2011-07-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

New work in Sein und Werden and The Cafe Irreal.

In six months, I will be done with the time-draining, energy-sapping fiasco known to the civilized world as "law school." Since September 2008, I have been going to my day job, taking evening classes in Contracts, Torts, Con Law, etc., while somehow finding a few hours each week (on a good week) to squeeze in my little literary endeavors. There has been a lot of sleep deprivation involved.

Somehow, I have managed (I think) to get through it all without turning evil. In fact, I think I am a better person now than when I started. But one thing I feared -- irrationally, I now realize -- when I embarked on this project was that law school would "ruin my creativity." This is something writers fear rather often. I know I do. One fears the effects of a competitive atmosphere on the Muse. I pictured her little winged form crushed under a mighty gavel of cold, hard reality.

Not so. In fact, going to law school has if anything caused my imagination to go even more happily off-kilter. This I think is partly due to the sheer rebellion of the subconscious over being subordinated for most of the daytime to analytical tasks. It could also be a reaction to the simple fact that the brain is doing more work. But above all else it demonstrates the importance of doing new things to have new ideas.

For a couple of years leading up to law school, when I was working a very easy, very boring (and badly-paying!) day job for the sole purpose of sustenance, I was starting to feel creatively dead. Having new ideas requires having a sense of hope, not just about one's writing but about life in general. I believe this is true even if you are writing about darkness and despair. Writing is an inherently positive, hopeful act. But I was getting to a routine where I felt too bored with my life to invent new worlds or characters.

That has changed, in a big way. I have met new people, and put myself in situations which I could not have imagined for myself before, and it is only just beginning. Furthermore, I will have a versatile job skill I can rely on for a wide variety of uses (to the extent that one can rely on anything in this collapsing economy).

Of course, I now almost completely lack for time to write -- almost. There has been just enough to scribble down some flash fictions, make dozens of outlines, and join a weekly workshop every now and then. Enough time to know that I can still do it, and that I am really looking forward to coming back into the literary world as a writer newly remade, with a better day job. And lots of new ideas.

I just thought I'd share that with any other writers out there. The Muse is more resilient than you think. The only thing that kills it is boredom.

Menda City Adieu

2011-04-23T18:56:00.000-07:00

After five incredible years, editor Terry Rogers has decided to call it a day with his online literary magazine, Menda City Review. The final issue (number 18) has posted just last week.

MCR was a truly exceptional publication, one that favored quality over quantity. It was named along with Clarkesworld as the "best new online literary magazine" of 2006 by the Story South Million Writers Award. For the following five years it continued to publish a wide variety of work, everything from traditional narratives to unabashedly experimental fiction and magical realism, including some of the best writers out there today. Its commentary section also included political essays and non-fiction memoirs.

Terry believed in every word of every story he published. Unlike most editors for online publications, he was unafraid of longer works -- MCR was one of the few online publications that would take submissions as long as 10,000 words. He gave meticulous, sensitive feedback to writers, collaborating with them until their work was in the best shape possible. I am proud to have been a part of it, serving for three years as associate editor of the commentary section. I am not proud of the fact that I still put two spaces after periods in my manuscripts, which he insists (I think correctly) is both unnecessary and unprofessional in the age of word processors.

Terry is also an exceptional writer, as you will see from his "Song of the Siren," included in this final issue, along with WJ Rosser's "The Robber" and my own "The Curtain". MCR was a huge time commitment for him, and I know he's looking forward to getting back to writing his own fiction. For myself, I am looking forward to reading it.

In the meantime, enjoy this last issue!

Welcome Willows Wept readers!

2010-10-29T05:12:00.000-07:00

I don't update this blog very often (too busy), but if you want to read more of my fiction, please check out the links on my publications page. Enjoy!

Van der Graaf Generator

2010-10-18T06:04:00.000-07:00

Because I can. Oh, yes. This does rock.

New work

2010-09-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

At long last, some new fiction. My short story "Starlings" can be found in the September issue of Toasted Cheese.

Also, I now live in Tokyo until the beginning of 2011. I feel...different. In a good way.

Bad Faith and Bad Music

2010-06-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd pass this along. Normally, I find that essays which mention (for instance) Lady Gaga and Existentialism in the same paragraph are total garbage, but this New York Times piece by Tufts philosopher Nancy Bauer is both rational and cogent.

Here, Professor Bauer takes on the dichotomy present in modern pop-culture "feminism" - as exemplified in this case by Lady Gaga - which proffers the notion that self-objectification can be empowering. Instead of the usual baby-boomer hand-wringing, Bauer provides a very useful analyis via Sarte and Simone de Beauvoir. It is refreshingly bereft of incantatory po-mo gibberish.

In defense of purple prose

2010-04-19T16:20:00.000-07:00

What’s wrong with purple prose? Usually, the issue is that it is “more than is necessary.” This can be a problem if it destroys narrative or thematic accuracy, if it obfuscates. But in other circumstances, it’s necessary to create the kind of antic giddiness – I would even say a nervous energy - which certain kinds of storytelling require. The notion that everything should be pared to a necessary minimum is a valuable conceit, but not universally valuable. We often under-appreciate that its intended effect is quite specific – to make reading an analytical experience as much as possible. But even in essays, there is a difference between analytical form and rhetorical form, and they have different formal demands.

Modernist literature discovered the power of the verb, and how rooting a narrative in carefully highlighted actions could create a “transparent” relationship to language – i.e., the reader ideally ceases to be aware of “text” and becomes wholly absorbed in narrative. We often forget that this is, historically, quite anomalous. Up until the end of the Victorian era, the reader’s awareness that there was a “text” – a creature unto itself with its own characteristics and desires - was an essential part of the storytelling process. As the reader of any Victorian novel knows, the author was expected to indulge in all kinds of discursions, ruminations, asides, and seeming non sequiturs, often piling up haystacks of adjectives, similes, and elaborate images in the process.

At the root of this modern animosity of M.F.A. students to “purple” prose, is, I think, an unacknowledged discomfort with raw, unmitigated emotion, with losing one’s moorings in impressions and subjectivity. There is also a certain politically-correct aversion to anything that seems coercive or intimidating.

For such writers, the cause could also be more personal – perhaps at a delicate, formative stage of their literary careers they were raked over the coals in a writing workshop for a heartfelt attempt at lyricism that fell flat with its audience. If the experience is humiliating enough, it could send the sensitive young writer into the safe haven of Raymond Carver-land forever, with all its requisite cynicism towards others who surrender to the seductions of the Muse.

A fantastic example of the virtues of Purple can be found in this famous excerpt from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.

I’ve you’ve been to the University of Iowa, this paragraph is a nightmare. Passive voice, in the very first sentence! And repeated in the second! And then we have “to see things eaten” followed by “to see things blackened and changed.” Well…which is it? But then it gets worse. A “great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world?” Pythons aren’t venomous. And holding a python is nothing like conducting an orchestra. “To bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history?” Oh please, this man has no restraint at all!

Anyone trying to write like this in a college workshop would be mocked and derided. In a graduate class, it would be worse – the pity for the author and his unquestioned incompetence would leave the room suffocating in silent torment. What can you even say about such dreck? I mean, we’re all adults here, aren’t we?

And yet…I think the paragraph is beautiful, absolutely perfect in every way. With its repetitions, its broad, destructive brush-strokes, its collisions of discordant images, its unmitigated sadism, it captures the terrifying giddiness of state violence under a fascist regime. Hemingway never did that, nor did Carver. Sure, they could put you “in the moment” and take you from one instant to the next with visceral realism. But Bradbury is attempting something else – he is describing a timeless event, something that is happening everywhere, at all times. He is invoking the mythic. This is not a time for tidy, polite rules about passive voice and killing your darlings.

Million Writers Award Notable Story

2010-04-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

Well, this certainly makes for a great start to the springtime. It seems that my story That Which Dreams Does Not Sleep, published last year in Thieves Jargon, is one among a long list of "Notable Stories of 2009" from the Story South Million Writer's Award. Huzzah! Many thanks to Jargon editor Dan Scannell for the nomination, and thanks to the judges for putting me on the list. I've been following the Million Writers Award for several years now, fervently hoping to see my work make the grade someday and discovering many other new and wonderful authors in the process. Who knew that a story about flying human genitals would be the one to put me there?

New flash fiction

2009-12-02T22:35:00.000-08:00

Two new pieces for December, in decomP and Toasted Cheese.

New story

2009-10-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

My latest short story "Echolalia" is now online in the new issue of Menda City Review. But before plunging into the story, I do recommend browsing through this and last issue's front pages, featuring some extraordinary photography by Felicia Simion (not to mention great work from the other contributors!).

New flash fiction

2009-08-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

My latest spasm of narrative weirdness will appear next week in the Webzine Wamack:A Journal of the Arts. It's called "After Ragnarok" and it takes places, well, after Ragnarok. For more on what that actually means, check this out.

Incidentally, the picture at the top of this blog is also borrowed from Norse mythology. It's a depiction of Yggdrasil, the world tree.

Needles & Bones update

2009-06-22T11:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a fresh link to purchase Needles & Bones from Drollerie Press. Go for it...you know you want to.

Also, "Echolalia" has been pushed back to the July or August issue of Menda City Review.

Needles & Bones

2009-05-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

New work is out, and more is in the pipeline.

First and foremost, Drollerie Press will be releasing their new anthology Needles & Bones tomorrow, which includes my novella "Swamp Angels" along with the work of numerous other writers. I have not yet read the whole thing, but from what I've seen so far I'm in good company. DP is a great press to work with - excellent editorial input, very author-friendly and professional.

My own contribution to this volume is a sort of comedic-erotic dark fable about the discomfort of adolescence taken to the Nth degree. My hope is that readers will find it both spiritual and blasphemous in equal measure.

If all goes well I'll also be participating in Drollerie's monthly "chat" on Thursday the 21st at 10pm Eastern.

It's been a long time since my last update (I am in law school, so that's a major time-eater), so, by way of catch-up, let me point to two recent flash fictions published over the past month: "Frozen Foods" in Word Riot and "The Entropy Room" in decomP.

A longer piece - a full-fledged short story this time - will be appearing in Menda City Review next month as a sort of final farewell to that publication, where I've been Associate Editor for the last two-and-a-half years. My primary responsibility during that time was the solicitation of non-fiction pieces for the "Commentary" section, but I did manage to direct a few fiction-writers to MCR as well. Time constraints and longer writing projects of my own have made it impossible for me to keep up with this, but it's been a terrific experience. Editor Terry Rogers is an adept, supportive, and appropriately merciless editorial critic. His publication is probably one of the most elegant, high-quality literary publications out there, online or otherwise, and it's been a real privilege to be a part of it. Going out with this story makes for a nice coda, I think (I'll still be "helping out" for the remainder of the year, here and there as I can, but my full-capacity involvement is at an end). So look for "Echolalia" in the June issue.

Other works in progress are nearing completion (finally!) including two more novellas and a re-draft of a novel, as well as a big handful of flashes which will go out into the twilight zone of submissions-land in the coming weeks. Time permitting, you may even see some new political commentaries from me in the next month or so - I had sworn off for a while due to election-year burnout, but some ongoing issues have my pagan heart fuming. I'll let you know if and when I find a venue for them.

New work, etc.

2009-04-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

A new short story called "That Which Dreams Does Not Sleep" is up at Thieves Jargon. It's rather on the naughty side. Somewhat less naughty work will appear in the weeks ahead in decomP and Word Riot.

New flash fiction

2009-01-07T20:50:00.000-08:00

This one's up at Monkeybicycle. I hope it puts things in perspective for the new year...

New essay

2008-12-23T09:58:00.000-08:00

My latest political diatribe is up at Menda City Review. Happy holidays!

More new work & Pushcart

2008-12-03T21:23:00.000-08:00

The monotony of Christmas music. The threat of unemployment. The daily sight of your retirement plan plunging downwards into the light-less elevator shaft of ruin and despair...rest assured, I'm there with you. Since misery loves company, I offer you my latest jar of acid - something to throw in the face of adversity. It's a little flash fiction called The Flat Hour, in the December online edition of Underground Voices.

In other news, I received notice a few days ago that my story "Why The Letter To Your Congressman Will Not Be Read," from this summer's Mud Luscious, is now a Pushcart nominee. Also nominated from Mud Luscious are "an excerpt from Degenerescence" by James Chapman and "Reading to Sleep" by Jack Martin. Both are luminous and haunting. They are in issues #5 and #4 respectively. I recommend a visit.

New story

2008-10-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

My latest story, "The Fourth Room," is in the new October issue of The Dream People. This one represents an early example of something I've been experimenting with recently - embedded mythology. Another experimental flash-fiction story of mine will be appearing in the December issue of Underground Voices.

I seem to be sharing a lot of space recently with the talented and ridiculously prolific J.A. Tyler. My story "Why the Letter to Your Congressman Will Not Be Read" appeared in his online lit mag Mud Luscious earlier this year, and he has a piece called "Horse" in the latest update to Menda City Review, where I'm associate editor. And now here we are together in The Dream People! Of course, if you check out the list of publications on his website, you'll see he's been in about a bazillion publications, so he's pretty much inescapable. His work is vivid and distinct, and definitely worth tracking down.

Latest Publications

2008-07-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

Two new micro-fictions, one political essay, and one book review all out since the beginning of June. The fiction appears in the newest online issues of Sein und Werden and Mud Luscious. My review of The Book of Rude and Other Outrages: A Queer Self-Portrait by Stephen Sure, is in the latest issue of American Book Review (print only), and I contributed an essay about the Supreme Court's decision on the Indiana voter ID law to the June issue of the Cold Type Reader, available as a free PDF.

New stuff

2008-03-11T19:54:00.001-07:00

New short story out on Pindeldyboz, and a book review of Stephen Duncombe's Dream in the latest issue of American Book Review (print only).

Recently read

2008-01-31T22:30:00.000-08:00

Atom by Steve Aylett
The Zap Gun by Philip K. Dick
Inter Ice-Age 4 by Kobe Abe
Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Cerebus by Dave Sim
Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
On the Genealogy of Morals by Freidrich Nietzsche
Shooting War by Dan Goldman & Anthony Lappe

Thoughts on some of the above...Solaris was better than the movie with George Clooney by many orders of magnitude. I was under-whelmed by Soderbergh's film when I saw it five years ago - now that I've read the book, I think the film was a travesty. It left out everything that the book was about. It is literally like making a movie of Moby Dick, and leaving out the whale . Surfacing is an early Atwood novel, and shows some of the requisite early-novel weaknesses, such as two-dimensional characters and unruly, free-associative prose. The book was compelling however, and I was surprised how much I kept dwelling on it afterwards. Her control of the symbolic layer of the narrative - which is where she put most of her energies on this one - is very disciplined. Aylett's Atom was hilarious, muddled, at times almost impossible to follow, but nonetheless utterly fascinating. Aylett is a true original, a sort of cyberpunk-dadaist - the only writer who can make me laugh out loud, in public, in sometimes inconvenient circumstances, and the only writer capable of describing a politician "deep-throating" a python. Aylett also has the distinction of authoring what I contend to be the funniest short story in the English language: "If Armstrong Were Interesting." It's a four page story (not in this book, but rather Toxicology) about the astronaut Neil Armstrong, and what he would've done during the moon landing had he been "interesting." It takes an hour to read, because you have to stop at the end of each paragraph to catch your breath.

The Zap Gun was above-average PKD. Like almost everything he wrote in the sixties, it has the hurried quality of something pounded out in a rapid, amphetamine-induced blur. This, however is a great book for discovering one of Dick's more under appreciated talents; dialogue. There is also a surprisingly effective love-story at the core of this one. He's done this before of course, but it often amounts to little more than damp fodder for the machinations of the plot. But here, there's a genuine pang of heartbreak and longing. Dick, incidentally, has been done a certain disservice by the film Blade Runner, which was based on his novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" This is not so much a criticism of Ridley Scott's semi-masterpiece, as it is a recognition that the film does not in any way capture the style of a Philip K. Dick novel, even though it has become the cinematic standard on which all other PKD adaptations are modeled. If you've never read his books, and only seen Blade Runner, you'd think that his style was brooding, dark, and incredibly somber. And this, of course, is a serious misdirection, since Dick's writing is actually very witty and satirical, as well as rapidly-paced. His plots are full of details that whiz by as if shot from a fire hose, rich with ideas but mostly bereft of the rococo visuals found in the Scott film.

Cerebus is brilliant and beautiful beyond my wildest expectations. It's one of those absurd ideas that shouldn't work but does. I'm still in the middle of volume 1, so I won't say more until I've absorbed more of it. Dave Sim...what a blessed nut.

Shooting War is reviewed in full, here, in the latest issue of Menda City Review. Which, incidentally, is full of lots of other good stuff - essays and fiction - which you should also read. Now.

Recent publications

2007-10-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

My interview with New York novelist Arthur Nersesian is now out both online and in print in the October issue of The Brooklyn Rail. Arthur has been a favorite writer of mine for years, and it was an unexpected but welcome surprise that I was able to meet him in person last January at an event at the KGB bar. He is currently getting ready to do a promo tour of his new book, Swing Voter of Staten Island, which promises to expand his inimitable, edgy narrative style into Philip K. Dickian territories. I'm very much looking forward to reading it.

Also - just keeping you up to date here - my latest political essay went up a few weeks ago at Cyrano's/TPC. Speaking of my political diatribes, I will soon be adding a third section to the publications page called "political essays" which will include links to my essays which have been published somewhere other than a print or online journal (i.e. blogs).

It is October 20th, and the leaves are only just now starting to change color. Am I the only one who finds this a little bit odd?

More on the Million Writers Award

2007-08-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

I have been remiss. Were my life not insanely busy at the moment with numerous simultaneous projects - some of which have deadlines other than those I foolishly impose on myself - I would have put the following article up here much sooner.

This interview with Jason Sanford, the creator of storySouth and the Million Writers Award comes to me by way of Simon Owens, the founder of Bloggasm. This brief but inspiring article hits on many of the points which I consider to favor writers in the new century.

There is no question now, in terms of getting exposure, the Internet is the place to go to publish a short-story. Oh, sure, online publications are still struggling to gain "legitimacy" (whatever that actually means) for readers of the Paris Review and The New Yorker. But does anyone seriously believe that this will still be the case five years from now? Or ten?

At present, it is no doubt the case that getting a short story published in a top-tier is the biggest break for a writer (aside from publishing an actual book). But, unless one is getting a "professional rate" - can getting published in a small print mag be preferable to an online publication? The latter grants one much wider circulation, permanence, and a potentially more varied audience. There's also a much wider variety of markets for online fiction - innovative storytellers who would never make it into the stuffy world small-press print-lit are getting an audience.

This has all been said better elsewhere, of course. But I'd just like to make this additional observation - only internet publishing has the potential to revive the old tradition of the lunch-break read. Imagine that bygone era, 50 years ago, when short fiction was mainstream. All those magazines at the drugstore and the supermarket - marketed to actual adults, mind you, not libidinous celebrity cultists - contained fiction, some of it of a remarkably high caliber. So popular was the short story back then, people could actually make a living by writing them. Yes, for real. It actually happened.

That era is long gone, of course, and it ain't coming back. Writers are going to be poor hobbyists, despised by their neighbors and consigned to the curb to beg for scotch for the foreseeable future. But perhaps not forever. Because everyone eats their lunch at the office computer, and CNN news and funny animal videos get pretty effing boring after a few years of salary feudalism. There may come a day, just maybe, when the lunch-break becomes a time once again to read a story. Should that day come, I guarantee that this new breed of fiction aficionado will not be dribbling her ranch dressing onto the pages of the Paris Review. You know what I'm sayin'.

Recent developments

2007-08-05T14:18:00.000-07:00

As a result of my political blogging, I am now a "featured writer" and a Contributing Editor at the lefty political website Cyrano's Journal Online. A word about Cyrano's, and about my politics in general. I do not agree with or endorse everything you see on this website. Nor do I not endorse it, necessarily. There are literally dozens of writers there, and dozens more at Thomas Paine's Corner, which is where my essays usually show up first. Some of them have written some wonky stuff, and some of it is excellent.

I am not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, or an animal rights activist. I do not consider myself to be a radical. I am not anti-anything. I am not a post-modernist, or a member of an agit-prop group. And, to be perfectly honest, I hate going to anti-war protests. I've done it, to be sure, but I don't like it. If I were living in France, or Japan, or Sweden, my politics would probably be regarded as centrist or center-left (though I am a civil and social libertarian). But as an American citizen, the very same set of beliefs - I favor a secular, green Social Democracy run on Enlightenment principles rather than political theory, ideology, or religion - consign me to what is laughingly considered to be the American left-wing. I even used to refer to myself as "left-wing," until I realized that, in the U.S.A, this simply means that I favor social democracy, and consider both mainstream parties to be corrupt. (Many people in my situation have become "big L" Libertarians. I sympathize, but I can't go down that route. Just because our government has failed to represent the people who support it and pay for it doesn't mean we should reject government. Libertarians fail to realize how counter-productive their efforts are. As their ideas entered the political mainstream of the GOP starting with the Reagan era - such that now even Democrats must complete for the anti-government vote - the resultant selling of alienation has discouraged the mainstream from political engagement. To put it bluntly, all this anti-government talk encourages apathy, and causes people to stop paying attention, thus allowing the government to actually grow more secretive and intrusive. It's no coincidence that the average European social democrat does not have to live with these fears of a high-surveillance police state. In France, the government fears the people. In the U.S., the opposite is true, despite our precious 2nd Amendment).

Anyway, there I am with such famous luminaries as Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, and Uri Avnery, not to mention everything from the postmodern cultural essays of Slavoj Zizek to the hilarious and beautiful literary essays of Joe Bageant. Joe Bageant I like. Zizek I don't.

Frankly, I don't know how I ended up on the same page with these people. Noam Chomsky?? Mind you, I'm not dissing on the Chomskinator. I think he's great, and often unfairly maligned. But I am basically a fiction writer who does politics on the side - though the "side" has been getting larger recently as my country continues to go down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, etc., ad nauseaum. I will see where this leads. I am more of a debunker that a crusader, though, and most of my essays are motivated by the urge to expose lies and deception than they are to promote an agenda. If I have a "cause," it's personal freedom, social tolerance, and humility. All very radical stuff, no doubt.

New essay

2007-06-16T16:02:00.001-07:00

My latest political essay, "Outing the L-Word Part 3: What is Money?" can be found on Oni-Goroshi's Bleeding Heart.

Upcoming reading

2007-06-03T19:55:00.000-07:00

For all of my fans and groupies in the New York City metropolitan area (if any), I will be doing a short reading next Sunday, June 10th, at the Gallery Bar on 120 Orchard Street (which is somewhere in the Lower East Side). I am just one of many writers, artists, musicians, animators, stand-up comics, and other blessed lunatics contributing to the "Fundraising Extravaganza" for Mad Hatter's Review. This event, which promises to be extremely surreal, begins at 5pm and goes until forever. Details can be found here.

Be there, or be rhomboid.

Latest fiction & news updates

2007-05-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a great week so far. The biggest and most exciting development is that Menda City Review, where I serve as associate editor, has won the Story South Million Writers Award for "Best new online magazine or journal." We are sharing this honor with Clarkesworld Magazine, with an "honorable mention" going out to Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly. Major congrats to MCR editor Terry Rogers, whose commendable efforts have brought this new and, in my humble opinion, entirely unique publication to the forefront, where its readership is rapidly growing each month. Congrats also to assistant editor Dan Bachleda, whose haunting and beautiful"Bad Effigy", is one of no less than four (count 'em, four!) MCR stories listed as "Notable Stories of 2006." Also sharing in the huzzahs are Andy P. Jones, Lori Hahnel, and Aaron Hellem, whose excellent stories may be found linked, along with all other "notables", here. Please read them - they rock.

As far as my own scribblings are concerned...my latest short story, "The Paper Fable," is now online in the May 9th issue of Pindeldyboz. This follows hot on the heels of "A Word From Our Sponsors," which came out May 1st in The Cafe Irreal.

Readers of my political-philosophical-cultural blog Oni-Goroshi's Bleeding Heart can check out my latest essay, "Outing the L-word Part 2: Nature, Power, and Hierarchy" at Thomas Paine's Corner. This is part of a planned series of 5 essays about the influence (both good and bad) of free-market Libertarian thought on modern political discourse. (And just in case there's any confusion on the matter; I am not a Libertarian, God forbid).

Latest fiction

2007-04-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

My latest piece is now up online at The Cafe Irreal.

"A Word From Our Sponsors"originates from a much longer work I wrote a couple of years ago - a largely unpublished experimental novel assembled out of numerous short stories, song lyrics, critical essays on non-existent art, and other bits. A few of the other pieces have been published in various online journals, the links to which can be found on my publications page, along with other unreleated fiction and non-fiction pieces.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1922-2007

2007-04-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

This was a hard one. I'd always hoped I'd meet him someday, just long enough to tell him "thank you." His was not an easy life, and I think the simple act of surviving it was accomplishment enough. But he did much more than survive - he told imaginative, brilliant stories that showed us the awful truth about about ourselves. Yet even that does not do it justice.

Vonnegut's work was full of humility and love. He did not lecture. He did not pontificate. His craft was invisible. The writing was so accessible and conversant, it was easy to believe that there was no labor behind it, that he simply stared out the window and put his passing thoughts to paper. You'd close the book after turning the last page and think "Well, there wasn't so much to it. Some clever images. Some funny jokes. What's the big deal?" And that's when it really begins to work on you. Somehow, those "simple" stories just don't seem to go away. A year, five years, ten...and not a week goes by you don't think about the frozen oceans, the cat's cradle, the fire-bombing in reverse, the unknown allied collaborator who won the war but lost his identity. Those simple phrases and images arise, unbidden, at odd moments. And at some point, you realize that you'll never put it behind you, that everything you've ever read by him will be restlessly churning around inside your brain for the rest of your life. Vonnegut gave you the truth, made you feel like you discovered it for yourself, and showed you how to keep on going. And he kicked you in the ass if you dared take yourself too seriously. Don't let that revelation go to your head, kid!

Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut. And farewell.

Questions of religion

2007-03-04T19:02:00.000-08:00

I found this New York Times article via The Edge. I've read some of the recent works speculating on the neuro-biological origins of religious belief, such as Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell. This often makes for great reading, but I often think that the question is not always properly framed. Briefly, here are my two main issues.

1. I'm not sure that the beliefs associated with religion are necessarily different enough from other more mundane beliefs (patriotism, for instance, which is also expansive, spiritual, and communitarian)- which may involve their own distortions and misapprehensions - such that religious belief requires some special explanation. It seems to me that someone should at least attempt to demonstrate that there is a difference before they go about explaining the source of this difference.

2. Wouldn't we need to find a neuro-biological basis for atheism?

My own sense of the matter is that religious beliefs, which most students of consciousness studies claim arose at the very early stages of human evolutionary development, coincide with the development of the human capacity to form imaginary narratives in general. This, too, would have originated early, along with the development of language and intelligence. The ability to form a narrative is, as I see it, the basis of reason (and un-reason), since it allows the mind to organize facts and ideas outside of the flow of external time. The willful organization of internal (i.e.mental) time is the basis for self-awareness and speculation. Even simple math and logic problems are forms of narrative (a statement that 2 + 2 = 4 takes a simultaneous reality and lays it out in a sequence, which is how it becomes comprehensible as an abstract concept). I suspect that the non-fictional narrative (how Throg killed the buffalo) was followed rather quickly by the fictional narrative (how Throg killed an even bigger buffalo when no one was looking) once the power of narrative to create socially influential ideas became clear to early storytellers.

Religion is not just a set of rules, institutions, and social prohibitions. These are merely the consequences of religious belief. Fundamentally, religion is based on stories, myths, fables - in short, on narratives. Religious mythology, in fact, is in a sense the ultimate narrative, because, whether implicitly or explicitly, all of humanity is a character. It is an inclusive, interactive narrative. To get to the heart of why religious belief endures, I think it is necessary to look more generally at the relationship between narrative and consciousness.

I often find that these debates are overly fixated on belief in the supernatural, and as a result misuse (in my opinion) the word "illusion." Internal narratives are, by definition, "supernatural," precisely because they allow for effortless visualization of impossible occurrences. They are above and beyond the strictures of the natural world, which is why they are useful. A correct interpretation of the external world only comes about after contemplating many incorrect interpretations. All of these must be weighed against actual observations. The mind would not be able to reason if it could not un-reason. The ability to imagine the supernatural is a prerequisite for understanding nature.

The corollary here, regarding the nature of "illusion", is that the word is stigmatized by its synonymous relationship to "false" or "mistaken." This is where I think some cognitive scientists are guilty of a misleading error. A perception exists, period. The perception may be an accurate analogue of external reality, or it may not be, but the inaccurate perception is no less a part of the real world than the accurate one. I think I see a unicorn, but it turns out to be a motorcycle. For convenience's sake, we would usually say that I was "mistaken", but that is because in everyday life, our goal is to apprehend external reality. Nonetheless, the electrical blips in my visual cortex that created the "unicorn" are every bit as real and physically measurable as those that register the motorcycle. What happens, then, when the perception is its own purpose, as it often is in spiritual experience? At what point can mythological or psychological symbolism be treated as mere illusion, as opposed to a separate reality?

Three Films

2007-02-21T22:29:00.000-08:00

David Lynch is dismissed as often as he is praised for his self-stated "intuitive" style of film making. We believe, as he seems to want us to believe, that his films are essentially uncensored, unstructured indulgences of his undisciplined imagination, of which the filmmaker himself has little genuine understanding. This is why some critics brush off his work as "self-indulgent", and even fans sometimes view him as some sort of bizarre idiot-savant.

Don't be fooled. David Lynch is one of the most deliberate and restrained filmmakers working in Hollywood today, and his latest, Inland Empire, is possibly his greatest film yet. But, before I explain why I think this film is so monumental and wonderful, I'd like to address this oft-propagated view of Lynch as some unthinking conjurer of the subconscious.

Filmmakers love to bewitch us, and the best of them have a certain sadistic element to their personalities that causes them to enjoy the fear and uncertainty they inflict upon their audiences. Such filmmakers also understand the masochistic nature of the passive audience; we go there, into that dark space, to surrender control, to feel lost for a while, and then to be guided back to the light by the authoritative hand of the storyteller to whom we have entrusted the full focus of our conscious attention. Hitchcock - one of Lynch's great heroes - understood this, and understood also (as most certainly does Lynch as well) that his role as a filmmaker did not and could not involve explaining the mysterious and bewildering labyrinths he worked so hard to build. Once, when asked if there was any "symbolism" in North by Northwest, Hitchcock replied, simply, "no...Oh yes! The last shot - the train entering the tunnel after the love scene between Grant and Eva-Marie Saint. It's a phallic symbol. Don't tell anyone." Of course, Hitchcock's films are among the most tightly constructed in the history of cinema, and are as such are full of symbols, but we would have been disappointed if, at any point, Hitchcock had come forth and, like some zealous film professor, disgorged into the plain light of day all the analytical machinations that went into them. He cared enough about our experience in the theater to preserve the purity of that experience, and he knew that the disarmingly affable persona which he presented as his public face was the best preparation for us to be thrilled and shocked by his films.

Lynch works the same way. Not only do his films have overtly Hitchcockian qualities in ways too numerous to count, he, like Hitchcock, expertly talks himself down and deflects any possibility that he will help you understand his work. This is not pretension - quite the opposite. He respects the experiences of the viewer enough not to ruin it with his own "explanation" of it - something which would in fact come to him quite easily, but which would ultimately spoil our experience of his films. It is his humility before the audience that prevents him the easy-self-indulgence of explaining his own work. Only among the best filmmakers do you see this public restraint; think how often we've seen Hollywood's second-tier talents on Charlie Rose, going on at such great length about how brilliant they are, and how quickly that becomes tiresome.

The reason for this roundabout arrival at the actual subject at hand here - my interpretation of Inland Empire - is that I want you, the reader, to know and believe that there is something specific to be interpreted here, and that I am not just indulging in my own cleverness. I do in fact believe Inland Empire to be more than just a clever, well-constructed film, but also a very important one. This is a film with something to say about who we are as culture.

SPOILER WARNING The "inland" referred to in the film's title is our imagination, and the "empire" is Hollywood. This is a film about how our minds have been conquered, colonized, and subjugated. It is a film which burns with a great deal of anger and resentment, but which also offers hope. It is probably Lynch's most personal film, as well as his most moving. Although many have no doubt argued that much that occurs in the film is arbitrary, there is in fact a very clear narrative which can be navigated without too much difficulty, if you start from the right place, with a properly calibrated compass.

The single most important thing to realize about Inland Empire is that the plot is elliptical, not linear. We are not to look for a beginning, a middle, and an end, but rather an inside and an outside, and understand that the passage of filmic time represents the passage through the outer to the inner layers, and finally back out again. The film is essentially spiraling through a collapsing orbit. The "outside" of the film is seen at the very beginning, then end, and at certain moments throughout - it is the young woman who sits on the edge of her bed, watching television with tears in her eyes. The innermost layer is that dark living room inhabited by the family of humanoid rabbits, seem to populate the set of a haunted sitcom, in which lines of noninflected, humorless dialogue are punctuated at random moments by a crude laugh-track. The plot of the film - in which Laura Dern stars as an actress in a film-within-the film, a supposed remake of a failed German project whose "cursed" set led to the deaths of its leading actors - takes us methodically and hauntingly through the many layers that lead from the sad, lonely viewer to the empty machinations of the sitcom. Included in these "layers" are the film making act itself, as well as various symbolic representations of the "actor's journey" including the merciless exploitation of their own psyche in the formation of a character, a process the film repeatedly and explicitly likens to prostitution.

As Laura Dern's Niki goes deeper and deeper into this subconscious realm, she is pursued by a nameless killer, whose meaning in the film is his very meaninglessness. No, this is not some cheap tautology; consider how many films use "the device" to create suspense in an otherwise shallow plot-line. Here, the device is a kind of faceless beast, a blank shadow which we fill in with our own preconceptions and fears, and it is the moment at which this beast is killed that viewer is finally liberated. If the killer is a symbol of something here, it is a representation of the Hollywood mechanism itself - the undying, meaningless fear of power that traps us within endless iterations of an empty formula.

This is an anti-Hollywood film made by a man still enamored and awed by it's many enchantments (it would not nearly so interesting or effective otherwise - Lynch's sense of conflict about his chosen profession is what makes this film so wonderfully genuine). This is a film which pukes and bleeds, literally, on the Hollywood Walk of Stars, and still delivers a happy ending, with song and dance - and means it. And it works. Brilliantly.

Another film which I came to recently - all too late, since it has been on DVD for while - is Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man. Briefly, this is a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor who spent much of the last ten years of his short life amongst a population of grizzly bears in a remote, uninhabited section of Alaska. His love for these animals was deeply reverent, even spiritual, not to mention quite insane (in other words, we are deep within classic Herzog territory). Treadwell routinely slept alone in the grizzly's habitat with out any weapons for protection, and a bare minimum of camping equipment. He walked with them, touched them, and spoke to them as if to another human (or, perhaps, as if to a god). He was an educator and an activist, who appeared in venues ranging from the local elementary schools to Late Night with David Letterman, to speak on behalf of the "endangered" bears, even though the consensus amongst even other conservationists was that the bears were not under any threat at all. Treadwell and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, both died during one of their expeditions, when a chance circumstance caused them to stay later into the autumn than they were accustomed, and an unfamiliar grizzly, made hungry and temperamental by the approaching winter, mauled them to death and ate them.

During the last few years of his life, Treadwell kept a video diary of his expeditions, and through this extensive footage, along with interviews with Treadwell's friends and associates (though he did not have many) Herzog ravels together an extraordinary discourse on man's relationship to the natural world.

"I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder." Herzog, in opposition to Treadwell's hippie conceits, intones these words over footage of Treadwell bemoaning the death of a friendly fox, itself a victim of another hungry bear. What impresses me here is how this film, deliberately and overtly reveals so much about Herzog's own preferences as a filmmaker, and how his avowed existentialism seems to lead, not to cynicism, but rather a kind of humane sympathy for his subject. Furthermore, it has led to his sense of responsibility as a filmmaker and as a member of human society - his belief that certain boundaries should not be crossed.

The existence of such boundaries is a recurring theme in this film. It shows up most prominently in Herzog's observations of Treadwell himself. He notes that the realm of the grizzlies was, for Treadwell, something of a self- discovered Eden, a place where human an animal spirits co-exist without boundaries. Perhaps the greatest emotional core to be found in Grizzly Man is the thrilling dialectic that occurs as the viewer seamlessly and repeatedly sees the imagery through Herzog's eyes, then Treadwell's and then Herzog's again. We quickly realize Treadwell's foolishness - the essential characteristic of Eden is that we can never return - and yet we also see, through some of Treadwell's astonishing footage, how tantalizingly close that dream does at moments seem. In one heartbreakingly beautiful sequence, Treadwell films himself running playfully through a field with a wild fox, and for a moment we truly feel that he has found his eden - and then the fox retreats, the moment recedes, and only then can we truly feel that Treadwell's end was genuinly tragic - and we can say so without a shred or irony.

But there are other boundaries as well. This film, roughly half of which consists of footage shot by Treadwell, rather than Herzog himself, deliberately and overtly reveals so much about Herzog's own preferences as a filmmaker, via the latter's navigation of the boundary between Treadwell's vision and his own. And I am not just speaking here of his aesthetic approach, of which many obvious connections exist, but also Herzog's sense of a filmmaker's moral responsibilities. This comes through most movingly when we learn that sound from the moments of Treadwell and Huguenard's violent death was recorded on Treadwell's capped video camera. The details of this recording are recounted in some detail by the coroner who performed the autopsy on both victims. Through our imaginations, the darker hungers of the audience for sensationalism and "reality" are appealed to by this account. But, when Herzog himself visits Treadwell's old associate and friend Jewel Palovak, who holds the only copy of the tape, he listens to it on headphones, while we observe in silence (notably, this is the only moment in which we actually see Herzog, who narrates the film, and here he is turned away from the camera so we can see Jewel's face as she watches his reaction). After less than a minute has passed of the six-minute encounter, he bows his head and, visibly shaken, asks that the tape be shut off. "You must never play this tape," he tells Jewel. "I think you should destroy it." It's an incredible moment, because we realize we've witnessed a instance of moral rectitude that is never demonstrated by Hollywood. Herzog has shown us that film, beyond voyeurism, must also have a sense of what is sacred? There are certain lines must not be crossed (the notion of such boundaries, in fact, is central to the tragedy that is the subject of the film). His decision and advice are spoken not solely in the interest of Ms. Palovak, but also for the audience. Had any moment of this recording been included in the film , it would've overshadowed the shattered the delicate mood that has been established, and violated Treadwell and Amie's last moments for raw sensationalism. I don't think I've ever respected a filmmaker more than I did Herzog in that moment of the film.

The third film I'd like to mention briefly is Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima. Eastwood is another filmmaker who is easy to underestimate. To say that his films - especially his later work - are "understated" is itself an understatement. He is a filmmaker whose most treasured instruments are silence and emptiness. Eastwood deliberately avoids the kinds of things that most filmmakers, even the very best, strive for. He steers clear of crackling dialogue and tempestuous emotions as if they were landmines. Catharsis is avoided like the plague. Even in this, a three-hour film about Japanese soldiers making a last, hopeless stand in the face of an overwhelming American onslaught, there is not a single scene depicting camaraderie or male-bonding of any kind - and this is Japan, in WW2. Every narrative step is taken either by one man speaking alone with another man, or by one man acting alone. In a film where nationalism and love of one's god and country are at the very heart of the events which unfold, we are left to witness the inner struggles of a small handful of individuals, each in their own very unique state of loneliness, isolation, and doubt. And not for a moment does this ring hollow.

Eastwood, like Herzog, has a talent for restraint at odds with our expectations - programmed by Hollywood as we are for tears or nausea on cue. There is a moment fairly early on in Letters when, immediately following the first Allied bombing-run over the island, one young misfit soldier finds an officer apparently sitting casually outside the camp as the rest of the soldiers are fleeing for the interior of the hills. He puts his hand on the officer's soldier, and only then sees half of his face is missing. In most any other war film, this scene would've been milked for all its worth in shock- value, pathos, and tragedy. Here, we witness in this young soldier's expression that he has seen something which, for him, is utterly mundane. The scene plays through without provoking any emotional release from the audience at all - the event passes and is not dwelled upon. All of the most emotionally-loaded moments in the film are played out the same way - the capturing of an American soldier and the attempt by an officer to befriend him, the reading of his letter home after he dies from his injuries, a scene in which the aforementioned young soldier is nearly beheaded for insubordination, all of these moments play out in an unforced manner. The dialogue is almost deliberately banal. In the hands of any other filmmaker, this material would either be maudlin or boring. But Eastwood, gifted with the contributions of a first-rate, is in total control of the film's rhythm and tone. He Gives us the freedom to experience emotions in a way far more genuine than in most films - he allows them to slowly well up and emerge at unexpected moments. Thus, we witness the violence with a certain detachment, we see rage and suicide and it almost seems natural, a fact of normal life. And then, in one scene, a cheerful little song is heard through a tiny radio speaker, and it is devastating.

Ultimately, Eastwood's true genius here is to show us that, no matter whom we are fighting, or who we are fighting for, we ultimately do it alone. This is something we might expect of a western (and Eastwood has made many), but it is not exactly the direction usually taken in an American film about WW2, especially one directed by a California Republican. Others have noted how rare it is for an American filmmaker to take on WW2 in a way that sympathizes with "the enemy." But the true lesson here, of course, is to ask - if we are all going to battle alone, who is the enemy?

Publications

2007-02-21T22:17:00.000-08:00

NOVELS & NOVELLAS

Swamp Angels, Needles & Bones, Drollerie Press, 2009 buy

SHORT STORIES & FLASHES

Some Things That Happen in the Future, Sein und Werden, July 2011 read

Qualia, The Cafe Irreal, May 2011 read

The Curtain, Menda City Review, April 2011 read

Within Reason, Willows Wept Review, Fall 2010, read

Starlings, Toasted Cheese, September 2010, read

Punctuation, Toasted Cheese, December 2009, read

Weather Report, With Commentary, decomP,
December 2009, read

Echolalia, Menda City Review, October 2009 read

After Ragnarok, Wamack:A Journal of the Arts, August 2009 read

The Entropy Room, decomP, May 2009 read

Frozen Foods, Word Riot, April 2009, read

That Which Dreams Does Not Sleep, Thieves Jargon, April 2009 read

God's Corner: A weekly advice column from the Supreme Being, Monkeybicycle, December 2008 read

The Flat Hour, Underground Voices, December 2008 read

The Fourth Room, The Dream People, October 2008 read

Why The Letter To Your Congressman Will Not Be Read, Mud Luscious, June 2008 read

Dark Planet, Sein und Werden, June 2008 read

The Undiscovered Country, Apparently, Pindeldyboz, March 2008 read

The Paper Fable, Pindeldyboz, May 2007 read

A Word From Our Sponsors, The Cafe Irreal, May 2007 read

Seven Faces of the Assassin, Mad Hatter's Review, October 2006 read

The Poison Fable, Menda City Review, July 2006 read

The Node , Pindeldyboz, March 2006 read

Ten One-Sentence Stories, Promethean, 2005

Dust #2, Promethean, 2004

How the Woods Were Made, Peridot Books, Vol.17, Summer, 2003

The Assassin's List, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March 2001

NON-FICTION*

How and Why to Regulate the American Corporation, Dissident Voice, September 2010 read

A Good Stranger, a review of The Book of Rude and Other Outrages: A Queer Self-Portrait, by Stephen Sure, Charles Suhor, ed., American Book Review, July/August 2008

The Voter Fraud That Didn't Exist, Cold Type, June 2008 read

Book Review: Dream by Stephen Duncombe, American Book Review, March/April 2008

Book Review: Shooting War, Menda City Review, February 2008 read

Arthur Nersesian with Andrew S. Taylor, Brooklyn Rail, October 2007 read

Sicko 2: Moore vs. Gupta, TPC/Cyrano, July 2007 read

Sicko: Framing the Debate, TPC/Cyrano, July 2007 read

Marriage and Civilization, Menda City Review #7, March 2007 read

Moral Mathematics in the Post-Enlightenment Era, Menda City Review #6, December 2006 read

At War With an Abstract Concept, Menda City Review #5, October 2006 read

La Dolce Vita, a review of The Blind Man and the Beauty by Arturo Loria, American Book Review, March/April 2005

Starving Artists, a review of Chinese Takeout by Arthur Nersesian, American Book Review, March/April 2003

*partial list

Honors and Awards

Pushcart nomination for "Why the Letter to Your Congressman Will Not Be Read," 2009

Million Writers Award for "Best new online magazine or journal," (for Menda City Review), 2006

Meyer Cohen Graduate Essay Award in Literature, The City College of New York, 2005

Alice B. Stark Award for Short Fiction, The City College of New York, 2003

The Albert Friend Award for Excellence in Medieval Studies, The City College of New York, 2002

Honorable Mention, Best American Mystery Stories 2002, (ed. Otto Penzler and James Ellroy)

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What this is for...

2007-02-21T21:23:00.000-08:00

This is a first step in an overall re-working of both my author website, Fables and Riddles, and my political website, Oni-Goroshi's Bleeding Heart. My long-term goal is to combine these into a single blog/site (blite?), which will free me from the already-constraining format of having one site that is all-politics all the time (very tedious when I want just as often to write about literature, cinema, philosophy, and life in general), and the other which requires a whole lot of annoying HTML every time I want to put up a new essay, or just a few thoughts and updated.

My plan, then, is to begin by using this blog as my one and only general purpose blog, and as the front-page of my author website. Political posts will still go to Oni-Goroshi for the time being, but everything else - including updates and new about my publications - will be here. Eventually, the political essays will most likely show up here as well.

For now, this page will serve as the front-page of my pre-existing website, with all the same links to the other pages therein. Let's see how it goes...

Fables and Riddles

New work, many doings

Menda City Adieu

Welcome Willows Wept readers!

Van der Graaf Generator

New work

Bad Faith and Bad Music

In defense of purple prose

Million Writers Award Notable Story

Recommended reading

New flash fiction

New story

New flash fiction

Needles & Bones update

Needles & Bones

New work, etc.

New flash fiction

New essay

More new work & Pushcart

New story

Latest Publications

New stuff

Recently read

Recent publications

More on the Million Writers Award

Recent developments

New essay

Upcoming reading

Latest fiction & news updates

Latest fiction

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. 1922-2007

Questions of religion

Three Films

Publications

What this is for...