To tear or not to tear

January notes:

Just finished Scott McFarland's dissertation draft: "Libraries Full of Tears". It's a compelling generative/constraint-based manuscript that offers a series of Oulipian games based upon the rhyming letters of the alphabet--b,c,d,e,g,p,t,v,z.

The tone of the 9*18 pieces suggests the wonderful automata-snark that characterizes the best mash-ups, but also, McFarland carries over a sort-of-aw-shucks-America thing from his other fascination with American film. Think Jimmy Stewart reworking Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World" while reading Coca Cola ads through the last century to the tune of the M*A*S*H theme song, etc.

I'll serve on his dissertation committee at University of Illinois-Chicago, so am perhaps biased...but McFarland is a writer to watch.

The double meaning of tear/tear also suggests a moment with my two adorable little children, Athena, 3, and Kallista, 2. I don't know what's gotten into them, but they are constantly ripping books apart.



Have they internalized the ripping/deconstructing/defamiliarizing that their old man daydreams about during much of his waking life? See here for Stephen Colbert, and here for the late Raymond Federman and the fantastic Lidia Yuknavitch, and here (above, also) for me just drilling the shit out of The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing. (Video shot by Lake Forest College student Ben Lundquist)

The chickens have come home to roost, because I've even applied for a summer student to produce a further series of videos, and am contemplating a dedicated YouTube channel.

Anyway, this is my first encounter with the yes-I-did-it-but-you-shouldn't-and-I'll-pretend-I-never-have and they are still toddlers. Imagine the trouble I'm in down the road.

In the last week I've discovered a potty training book with a signature removed, the back of a Pinocchio Golden Book completely severed as if by machete, loose pages of Dora scattered about the upstairs, and a Yo Gabba Gabba cover ripped into more small pieces than would be produced by an industrial shredder hooked to a small star.

No doubt this relates to Athena's growing skepticism about talking animals in general, but they've even come up with elaborate covers for their actions.

Last night: Who tore the book? Athena: me. Me: Then you lose the book. A: it was actually Cassie (the cat) Me: Kallista, who did it? Kallista: CASSIE!

The syndrome moves toward complex linguistic analyses:

At breakfast today: Athena eats yogurt. Kallista: I want yogurt too! Athena: Daddy, Kallista's copying me. Kallista: COPY! COPY! COPY! COPY!

This afternoon: Athena: Daddy, why is a cat called a cat? Why that word 'c-a-t'?

Must I purge all poststructural tomes from my library? Will I see A Thousand Plateaus shredded into an untoward net of flittering lines of flight?

Damn, these kids make me proud.

From Mad Hatters' Review

December 30, 2009

Dear Friends of the Mad Hatters:

In case you haven’t heard the buzz, our journal has decided to hit the cyber-streets on an annual basis.

Please be forewarned that our open submissions guidelines for Issue 12 (next in queue after THE MAD BUNKERS MASH, due to emerge in early 2010) is now posted on our front page, in the usual place, namely on the sidebar: Submissions Guidelines (http://www.madhattersreview.com/submissions.html). We’ll be reviewing submissions sent to us from January 1st through 31st, aiming to publish Issue 12 in January or February, 2011.

We have some old and new and juggled about staff members, namely:

Shirley Harshenin, webmaestress extraordinaire (nutheadproductions)
Alla Michelle Watson, Managing Editor
Gene Tanta, Art
Cartoons: Phil Nelson, assisted by Marja Hagborg
Visored Burgeonette (no kidding), Music/Audio
Ann Bogle, Creative Non-Fiction & Reviews
Marc Lowe and Matthew W. Maxwell, Fiction
Karen Garthe and Jefferson Hansen, Poetry
Amy Marie Bucciferro, Wit & Whimsy
Drama and Whatnots will be reviewed by yrs truly publisher.

Issue 12 will feature exhibitions of Visual Music presentations (edited by Jean DeTheux) and Moving Words (edited by Camille Bacos and Jeremy Hight).

All of our contributors, past and almost past (the Mash issue will be up in early 2010) are welcome to let us know about recent publications. We’ll be happy to include reviews, as long as we find reviewers (hint); alternatively, if you have your own reviewer, we will consider publishing the review as an exclusive to our journal. Please send publication news to madhr.12@gmail.com, subject line: CONTRIBUTOR’S NEW PUBLICATION.


Please consider surrendering a bit of currency or gold to keep our unique journal going and save the publisher from Empty Pockets Syndrome. If you pay taxes to the US government, your donations will be totally tax deductible. Find the donations link on the sidebar of our main/menu page. Click madly with passion and devotion and you’ll earn warmest thoughts and appreciations.

We’ll send another newsletter when the huge, mind-blowing Mad Bunkers Mash issue emerges.

New Year’s Cheers!
Carol Novack
Publisher
Mad Hatters’ Review

2010, the year of Drain

I'm gearing up for the release of my novel Drain, from Northwestern U Press in June 2010 and promise, as I do every year, to make this blog a more regularly updated locale.

 

So, I guess this is a resolution of sorts.

 

In the meantime, if you don't already know the super-cool site Sidebrow, it's time to get acquainted. Last spring, I taught a grad seminar on Collaborations as University of Illinois-Chicago, and curated a set of submissions for Sidebrow, under the theme of the "annual"—things that happen every year or once a year: exams, taxes, flowers, etc.

The journal took two pieces, mine—"Once a Year and Never Again," which included cut-up lines from the collaborative work of my students, and, a yet-to-be-posted piece by two talented UIC writers, Megan Milks and Andy Farkas.

 

I'll ask my students at Lake Forest College during spring 2010 to produce a new set of texts for submission, and we shall see what happens. Maybe the annual submission will become an annual tradition.

 

Have an idea for a piece? Get in touch with me by April 2010.

 

 

Hey, want a job?

Assistant Professor of English. Lake Forest College seeks a specialist in literature from the Early Modern period (1530-1780) to fill a tenure-track position. Preferred secondary specialization(s) in one or more of the following areas: the early novel, print culture, colonial/post-colonial/commonwealth literature, and dramatic literature. Applicants must have Ph.D. at time of appointment, substantial teaching experience, and a strong record of scholarly publication and promise. Submit letter of application, curriculum vitae, critical writing sample, and three letters of recommendation to Davis Schneiderman, Search Committee Chair; Box K-11; Lake Forest College; 555 N. Sheridan Road; Lake Forest, IL 60045. Screening of applicants begins immediately and continues through a postmark deadline of November 15, 2009. A highly selective liberal arts college located in a suburb of Chicago, Lake Forest College enrolls approximately 1,400 students from over 45 states and 65 countries. At Lake Forest College, the quality of a faculty member’s teaching is the most important criterion for evaluation. The College also expects peer-reviewed publication or creative works and active participation in the College community. Lake Forest College embraces diversity and encourages applications from women and members of historically underrepresented groups.

William S. Burroughs event in Chicago

I participated in a recent fundraiser for the Burroughs' film-in-progress, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, on August 28th.

The event let me share the stage with some greats: Peter Weller, Hal Willner, Anne Waldman, Penny Arcade, John Giorno, and scholar Bill Ayers, John Long, Tony Trigilio, and Kurt Hemmer.

Crain's has a cool little item about it all...

Who was that masked man?

Davis Schneiderman at Printers' Ball from Amy Guth on Vimeo.

Cool New Journal: Artifice

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

ARTIFICE MAGAZINE announces an open call for submissions for its upcoming
Issue 1, to be published in January 2010.

Submissions will be accepted year-round at
http://www.artificemag.com/submissions. Artifice Magazine is looking for
previously-unpublished stories, prose works, and poems, pieces that are
(as the name implies) aware of their own artifice: pastiche, mash-ups,
cut-ups, experiments gone awry, sly metafiction with a heart, and whatever
other sorts of text machines you can imagine. We want things that will
make us:

a. laugh and clap our hands with joy and surprise
b. sob silently and clap our hands, with a different sort of joy and surprise

We do not believe that postmodernism need or ought be heartless. But
neither do we require that every story wear its heart on its sleeve.

More information about Artifice Magazine can be found at
http://www.artificemag.com. Questions not answered there can be directed
to editors@artificemag.com.

Artifice Magazine is edited by James Tadd Adcox and Rebekah Silverman. You
can learn more about them at http://www.artificemag.com/about.