Things as Signs, Things as Things

In 2010, I took part in one of Naropa University's Summer Writing Programs. That summer, one of the program's visiting faculty members was Vanessa Place, an author, publisher, defense attorney, and practitioner of conceptual poetics. But before I finish that thought--

What is conceptual poetry?

The best definition I've heard is simply this: conceptualism treats language as an object, not simply a collection of signs denoting other objects. In other words, a traditional reading would view "A" as an indefinite article, indicating a singular noun will soon follow. But conceptualism may view "A" as a material object, a thing rather than symbol. "A" is as much a teepee with a crossbeam as it is a signifier.

That's not the entire definition of conceptualism, but this idea of the "physicality" of letters and language is what fascinates me.

Back to that thought about Vanessa Place. At Naropa, she read a piece entitled "you." It goes like this:

you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you

I may have miscounted the number of you's, and there may or may not be punctuation in there, but that's the piece as I remember it from three years ago. Ms. Place read the piece in a slow, monotonous way that sort of dulled the word over the course of the reading. At first, the word "you" performed its duty as a personal pronoun--interrogative, perhaps, or accusatory--but the repetition blunted the word's significance until by the end it was just a repetitive sound. Meaningless.

Someone on Twitter accused Vanessa Place of killing poetry. My own take is this: she is reminding us of language's artificiality, its constructed-ness.

I'm interested in prose writing that uses language as more than simply a tool of conveyance. I'm interested in language that also functions as an object (take a letterpress printing class; you'll see what I mean). That's why some of my writing over the last few years has explored language as a set of graphic objects--things that can be moved, manipulated, juxtaposed, and generally arranged in ways we associate with visual art. The Backroom Diaspora, for instance, includes numerous font types, overlapping letters, paragraphs at 90 degree angles to other paragraphs, pictures, and color gradations creating the effect of appearing and vanishing language. Not only was the book a lot of fun to write/assemble, it relied on these visual considerations. It wouldn't work any other way.

More recently, I published a piece called Honest Expression for a Tranquil Now! on Scribd. (You can read/download it here.) Once again, the piece features overlapping words/narratives and other graphic elements. I published it on Scribd because I couldn't get it published in any lit mags.

There are plenty of reasons a piece may be rejected by a lit journal. Maybe it doesn't meet the needs or aesthetics of the editors, maybe the journal doesn't have the resources to format and print such an unusual piece, or maybe the piece just sucks. (It could be the last one; I think the story's pretty good, but I'm not a reliable judge of my own writing.)

Another possible explanation for the piece's rejection may be that some writers/editors are anti-weird formatting. One author I respect blogged that good writing doesn't need graphic/formal variations. The text should be strong enough to stand on its own.

I disagree with that idea, and if you read either of the two pieces I mention, you'll see why. Certain things become possible when an author experiments with text-placement, font selections, colors and shading and overlapping and other strategies. This is not to say all authors should write and format works like Mark Danielewski does. There's no substitute for good storytelling, and if an author uses fancy graphic elements to spruce up a mediocre piece, the reader will know.

Still, I think there's a place for such visual experimentation--when appropriate to the story. If I continue to play with such formal elements, I'm pretty sure it won't "kill" storytelling. I'm pretty sure the worst that will happen is I'll see more rejection emails in my inbox, and I get those either way.

Selected Commentary on Marie Calloway's what purpose did i serve in your life

Just finished Marie Calloway's what purpose did i serve in your life. Her book, like the stories of which it's comprised, has generated a lot of controversy. Sometimes the conversation about the book is more interesting than the book itself. I've collected snippets of talk from various blogs, lit magazines, Amazon reviews, and discussion boards. 

Here are a few favorites:  

"The most touching chapter involves a gentle British man easing Marie into prostitution."

"Marie has written the book we all want to read in this era of internet stalking and reality TV."

"Marie Calloway is being given Publishing Deals for Hardly doing Shit" 

"Much in the same way that the girl on her knees getting facefucked is running the entire show, Marie applies the rules of BDSM to the author-reader relationship"

"perfectly suited for the contemporary attention span."

"Calloway’s novel contains a number of image macros ripped from her publicly shared gdoc diaries. These contain facebook chats, criticisms pasted over nudes of herself, and cyber-sex re-pastes. When reading, one may feel like part of a wound gaping about Calloway’s body."

"The nastiest most fucked up sex of your life will not occur with random strangers, no matter how hard you try. It will occur with people that you love and trust, who expose the darkest weird shit of their souls."

"Unadorned depictions of rough (+ occasionally vanilla) scenes of intercourse proved the least interesting"

"Would like to read about her experience as a biography that is continuous and not as broken up."

"No one cares about her ‘talent,’ …What people care about is youth. And I sincerely hope that Marie Calloway is strong enough to withstand the next five years of people telling her that she’s ‘talented’ when what they mean is ‘young.’"

"The Poor Girl has so Much Self-Loathing! And the Naïveté! Is this where an American Sx Education gets you?"

"People saw what they wanted to see in the blankness, which, to mix metaphors, was primarily a reflection of themselves. So no one was really interested in writing about Marie Calloway." 

"There is no real arc or moment of growth or revelation at the end." 

"The Book is a Blip, my Friends, a Can of Beer, a 25 Minute Porn set in a Blank Apartment featuring Blank Actors Zero Passion Obscured Genitals and downLoadable for Free off the Web"

"the Pics are Shitty Quality and Black and White" 

"Personally, I don’t find any of these qualities to be particularly problematic"

-

I'll let this stand on its own, rather than offering my own review/opinion piece. The last thing we need is another one of those.

The Novel Has Arrived. And Its Free.

My novel, The Backroom Diaspora, is now available online as a PDF. It's free, and I hope people will read it. It's a fun read, I think, and it's basically about porn.  

I'm interested in the tension between literature and technology. I believe the form and vernacular of digital media can be applied to the novel in a way that doesn't just dress up the story to look contemporary but reshapes the narrative on a fundamental level. The Backroom Diaspora is a novel-blog hybrid, with textual/graphic play in the tradition of Mark Danielewski and Marie Calloway. At its core, my novel is an addiction story, but instead of focusing on addiction in the usual sense, it explores its characters’ relationship to the most abused substance of the digital age: information. 

I'll admit, the word "blog" is off-putting to many readers. As formal techniques, blog posts, instant messages, and other modern epistolary forms have been overused. With that said, I think my book approaches these forms in a different way. I promise this: the book is not what you expect. Okay, that's all I'll say about it. Hope you'll read it. 

Like I said, there's porn.

If Anyone is Reading This

I started this blog as a place to promote my writing, my writerly identity, and to provide links to various online journals that have published my work or work by other authors whom I like. Like any good blog, it's a fundamentally narcissistic endeavor.

I have three followers and they're all Google accounts I own. Someone needs to come like or follow or comment on my blog.

Do I really want to commit the time necessary to keep a blog and build up a following, or will this be both the first and last post I ever do on what--let's face it--doesn't usually offer much of a return on investment, so to speak.

My writing is available in the publications section above. Check it out, if you want.

As far as blogging goes--this is exhausting. Maybe I'll try Twitter. But probably not.