Drain

BLANK in Forbes.com and HTMLGIANT

2011-02-14T09:34:00.000-08:00

Jaded Ibis Press, full-spectrum publisher, who is bringing out cool books by Lily Hoang, David Hoenigman, John Dermot Woods/J.A. Tyler, Janice Lee, Anna Joy Springer, Christopher Grimes, and me (BLANK, w/ tracks from Dj Spooky), got the grand treatment in Forbes.com last week.

Go, Debra Di Blasi.

***
Also, BLANK caused some discussion in two strands at htmlgiant.com, from posts initiated by Roxane Gay and Christopher Higgs, respectively.

BLANK: Spring 2011 appearances, readings, etc

2011-01-14T19:39:00.000-08:00

BLANK, new from Jaded Ibis Press, March 2011

DRAIN, sort-of-new from Northwestern U Press, June 2010

Upcoming appearances:

Revolution Books

January, 27 / 7 pm

1103 N. Ashland Ave, Chicago 60622

AWP Off-Site

A Literary Evening With Debra Di Blasi, Davis Schneiderman, Mіchael Martone and Yuriy Tarnawsky
Thursday, Feb 3 /6:30 pm

Embassy of Ukraine, 3350 M Street N.W., Washington, DC 20007
Kindly RSVP to litevenings@yahoo.com

AWP Off-Site

Table X

Friday, Feb 4, 7 pm

Ugly Duckling Presse, Barrelhouse, Futurepoem & Greying Ghost, SUPERMACHINE, Sidebrow, Jaded Ibis Press, Poor Claudia, Les Figues Press, Small Fires Press, Lunar Chandelier, Counterpath Press, Projective Industries & DoubleCross Press

Series A

Davis Schneiderman and Cris Mazza

DATE, TBA

All readings are free and open to the public, run from 7:00-8:00 p.m., and are held at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue Chicago, IL. (map it)

University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP)

Visiting Artist/Scholar

March 9-11

9-11 rue de Constantine

75340 Paris Cedex 07, France

téléphone +33 (0) 1 44 11 73 83/76 fax +33 (0) 1 45 50 31 55

Chicago Publishers Gallery

with Gina Frangello, Cris Mazza, Davis Schneiderman, and Zoe Zolbrod.

Wednesday, March 30 / 6-8 pm

Chicago Publishers Gallery
Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington St., 4th floor
Chicago, IL 60602

Red Rover Series

{readings that play with reading}

with Lidia Yuknavitch, Cris Mazza, Davis Schneiderman

Saturday, April 2 / 7 pm

curated by
Laura Goldstein & Jennifer Karmin
at Outer Space Studio
1474 N. Milwaukee Ave, 3rd floor

So You Think You Have Nerves of Steel!
with Josh Corey.
Tuesday, April 5 / 8 pm
Hungry Brain,
2319 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago

UC San Diego

Details TBA

Tuesday, April 12

Missing Pieces: A Multi-Media Collaboration

Google Earth project with Teresa Carmody and Alexandra Chasin

Tuesday, May 3 / 6:30 pm

Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
New School
Arnhold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
NYC

DRAIN world tour 2010: upcoming fall dates

2010-09-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

September 12 (Sunday): The Neutral Zone, Ann Arbor, MI, 7:00 pm

w/ Cris Mazza / Davis Scheiderman / Zoe Zolbrod / Gina Frangello /

The Neutral Zone

310 E. Washington

Ann Arbor, MI

September 13 (Monday): Cherry Bomb Series, 6:30 pm (door), Grand Rapids, MI, 7:00 pm

w Cris Mazza / Davis Schneiderman / Zoe Zolbrod / Gina Frangello /

Corez Neighborhood Eatery & Bar

919 Cherry Street

Grand Rapids, MI 49506
(616) 855-2310

September 14 (Tuesday): The Ways of Connecting the Floor to the Ceiling, Chicago, 7:30 pm

Spoke Chicago
119 N. Peoria
Unit 3D
Chicago, IL, 60607
http://www.spokechicago.blogspot.com/

September 18 (Saturday): Center for Inquiry, Chicago, 7:00-11:00 pm

Part of "On Deities, Doctrines, Superstitions and Other Things to Die For"

In Wicker Park at "St. Paul's" Cultural Center

2215 W. North Ave.

Chicago, IL

September 19 (Sunday): What to Wear During an Orange Alert Series, Chicago, 6 pm

the WHISTLER

2421 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647
773-227-3530

September 27 (Monday): Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, 8 PM

Engineering Auditorium EB 110

Binghamton University

State University of New York
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000

September 28 (Tuesday): University at Buffalo/Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY, 7 pm

Exhibit X: Fiction and Prose

341 Delaware Ave.

Buffalo, NY 14202

716 854 1694

http://www.hallwalls.org/perflit/4872.html

October 24-ish (Sunday), The Nervous Breakdown, Chicago TBA

November 5 (Friday), at Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI, 7pm

w Cris Mazza / Davis Schneiderman / Zoe Zolbrod / Gina Frangello /

2559 N. Downer Ave at Webster Place

Milwaukee WI 53211
414-332-1181

November 10 (Wednesday): University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN, 7:30 pm

Hammes Bookstore

University of Notre Dame Catalog

1610 N Ironwood

South Bend, IN 46635

(574) 287-6954

nd@bkstr.com

November 11 (Thursday): Central Michigan University, Mt, Pleasant, MI, exact time and location TBA

1200 South Franklin Street
Mt Pleasant, MI 48859-0001
(989) 774-4000

Davis Schneiderman's DRAIN Book Sink (Not Launch) Party

2010-07-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Davis Schneiderman is releasing his new novel, Drain, at his book ~~launch~~ sink party at the Part Time Gallery (5219 N. Clark. 3^rd Floor) on July 31^st.

And even better...there will be performances or readings by Steve Tomasula, Cookies & MILF (aka Kelly Haramis & Jennifer Boxrud), Don Share, John Beer, Rebekah Silverman and Tadd Adcox (reading a piece by Fred Sasaki). Artwork by Elizabeth Birnbaum, Karen Larson, Eli Robb and Mai Wagner.

The Gallery is also hosting the exhibit DISCARD in conjunction with the Book Sink Party. The art exhibit will open July 30th and feature pieces by Book Sink Party presenters and other local artists.

Doors open at 7:00 pm to a room full of entertaining art and artful entertainment.

FREE wine, free autographs, free love, free tiaras and freedom of speech.

Schedule (with special surprises throughout):

7:45: Steve Tomasula

8:20 Cookies and MILF: Kelly Haramis & Jennifer Boxrud

9:00 Don Share // John Beer

10:00: from Artifice Magazine: Rebekah Silverman & Tadd Adcox

10:40: Davis Schneiderman

DAVIS SCHNEIDERMAN

Davis Schneiderman is a multimedia artist and writer and the author and editor of eight books, including the novels Drain (TriQuarterly/Northwestern) and Abecedarium (Chiasmus) and the forthcoming blank novel, Blank: a novel (Jaded Ibis); the co-edited collections Retaking the Universe: Williams S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization (Pluto) and The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game (Nebraska); as well as the audiocollage Memorials to Future Catastrophes (Jaded Ibis). His creative work has appeared in numerous publications including Fiction International, The Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, and Exquisite Corpse. He is Chair of the English Department at Lake Forest College, and also Director of Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books. He edits The &NOW AWARDS: The Best Innovative Writing. He can be found, virtually, at davisschneiderman.com.

OTHER PERFORMERS

JAMES TADD ADCOX

James Tadd Adcox is the editor-in-chief of Artifice Magazine (www.artificemag.com). His own work has been published or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, PANK, Mid-American Review, and Quick Fiction, among other

places. He lives in Chicago.

JOHN BEER

John Beer’s first book, The Waste Land and Other Poems, has just been published. Appearing in some fine literary magazines, he writes on theater for Time Out Chicago.

JENNIFER BOXRUD

Born and raised in Texas, Jen fled to Colorado, where she majored in Broadcast Journalism. Now she's a nurse. Jen gets bored easily. As a child, Jen entertained friends and family (ok, herself) by giving her stuffed animals voices and personalities. As a grownup, Jen realized she needed more Playtime and began her Improv journey. And by "journey," I mean she opened a box of wine, Googled "Second City," drank said box of wine, thought, 'Hey, I love Improv! And boxed wine!' Then Jen clicked the "Sign Me Up" box and entered her 12-digit credit card number. Oh, and the three-digit security code on the back. Which, after a box of wine, is kinda hard to find. Jen is awfully glad she made friends with Kelly on the playground.

KELLY HARAMIS

A former Chicago Tribune reporter and editor, Kelly Haramis is a freelance writer and improv student at the Second City Conservatory and IO in Chicago, who is working on her first one-woman show. She spends the other 23 hours of her day running after her daughters Athena, 4, and Kallista, 3.

DON SHARE

Don Share is Senior Editor of Poetry magazine. His books include Squandermania, Union, The Traumatophile, and Seneca in English. Forthcoming are: a new book of poems, Wishbone, Bunting’s Persia, and a critical edition of Basil Bunting’s poems. His translations of Miguel Hernández, collected in I Have Lots of Heart, were awarded the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize, the Premio Valle Inclán, and the PEN/New England Discovery Award. He has been Poetry Editor of Harvard Review and Partisan Review, the editor of Literary Imagination, and the curator of poetry at Harvard University.

REBEKAH SILVERMAN

Rebekah Silverman is the managing editor of Artifice Magazine, which can be found in better-quality bookstores and online at artificemag.com. She is also the Director of Resource Development at Growing Home, a Chicago non-profit, where she sends emails and writes grants. Rebekah can be found online at rebekahsilverman.com.

STEVE TOMASULA

Steve Tomasula is the author of the novels VAS: An Opera in Flatland; IN & OZ; The Book of Portraiture; and most recently, TOC: A New-Media Novel, a multimedia novel about time, published on DVD (FC2/University of Alabama Press), which received this year’s Mary Shelly Award for Excellence in Fiction. His short fiction and essays on literature and art have appeared widely, and include stories in McSweeney's, American Arts & Letters, and The Iowa Review. In Chicago, he lives 3 blocks from this gallery, and is the director of the creative writing program at the University of Notre Dame.

ARTISTS

ELIZABETH BIRNBAUM

Elizabeth is the program coordinator for Environmental Studies at Lake Forest College. She graduated from Lake Forest in 2008 with a degree in Art History and Psychology. After college, she moved to Brazil, learned Portuguese, then came back to Chicago, where she went on to work for the Burnham Centennial.

Beyond that, Elizabeth’s life can now be completely traced through the blog site, tumblr. This summer she is the project manager for the campus garden (lfcgarden.tumblr.com). She is one of four co-owners of the Part Time Gallery in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood (theparttimegallery.tumblr.com). She also fancies herself to be a multimedia artist (paperandsound.tumblr.com) and an art collector (mercurialself.tumblr.com).

KAREN LARSON

Karen Larson is a senior at Lake Forest College where she is majoring in English creative writing and minoring in theatre. Since the age of five, she has been entranced by the art world, working extensively in theatre, dance, music, film, and writing and has more recently delved into photography. She is originally from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado and just returned from a semester abroad in South Africa. After graduation plans are anything but solidified--throw out the net and see what comes back.

ELI ROBB

Eli Robb is an inter-media artist, living in Evanston, IL. He is originally from California and has always been interested in art, among many other subjects. Eli received his B.A. with honors in Art Practice from the University of California at Berkeley. He received his M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003 and is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Lake Forest College. Eli has recently exhibited sculpture, video, installation, and performance work in venues in and around Chicago. His work approaches everyday objects and subject matter with serious formal considerations and a playful resignation to the absurdity of both art and life.

Technical Assistant: Niharika Jain

MAI WAGNER

Mai is an artist living in Chicago. He spends most days chasing after his 4 year old daughter while reading, writing and creating art. It’s a busy day…

Drain world tour 2010

2010-06-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

What follows is a list of appearances in support of my new novel Drain (TriQuarterly/Northwestern University Press). If you would be interested in having me read, live or via Skype, please get in touch here.

The novel details a near-past-then-future in which Lake Michigan empties of water — becoming an endless desert. A disenfranchised population that worships an arcane “World Worm” moves in, and the Quadrilateral Commission, a planned-community corporation, gradually supplants these people with towns not unlike Disney’s Celebration, Florida.

Yet all are not so easily supplanted. A partisan leader working against the Quadrilateral communities where she was born, the charismatic Dial-Up Networking leads the Blackout Angels gang in paramilitary activities. A second protagonist, the perpetually coughing Quadrilateral employee Washington Jefferson Lincoln Qui, combs the wasteland of old Lake Michigan in search of the memory of his burned sister, whom he knows now only as “blank hiss at the tape-end.”

I am also lucky to have great blurbs from Cris Mazza, Lance Olsen, Michael Joyce, Steve Tomasula, and Doug Rice. The book also has a critical afterword from Megan Milks.

Find Drain at Northwestern or Amazon.

June 4 (Friday), via Skype, "The Importance of Independents," Los Angeles, 7:30 pm

w Harold Abramowitz / Teresa Carmody / Alexandra Chasin / Gina Frangello / Davis Schneiderman / Mathew Timmons

a reading at w o r d s p a c e
3191 Casitas Avenue, #156 / Los Angeles, 90039

June 13 (Sunday), Printers Row Book Fair, Chicago, 4pm

Center Stage

"Chicago: The New Indie Publishing Capital" with Cris Mazza / Davis Schneiderman / Zoe Zolbrod / Gina Frangello / Moderated by Jonathan Messinger

June 16 (Wednesday), The Book Cellar, Local Author Night, Chicago, 7pm

w Cris Mazza / Davis Schneiderman / Zoe Zolbrod / Gina Frangello /

4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL 60625

773 293-2665

June 17 (Thursday), Big Other reading, Green Lantern (map), Chicago, 7 pm

w/ Davis Schneiderman, Kathleen Rooney, Rob Stephenson, Cris Mazza, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Jac Jamc, A D Jameson

Green Lantern

2542 W. Chicago Ave.

Chicago, IL

July 13 (Tuesday): Quickies! Chicago, 7:30 pm

w/ Davis Schneiderman / Alex Bonner / Jason Bredle / Allison Gruber / Chris Bower / Rebekah Silverman / Jill Summers /

Devin King

1935 W Thomas St.
(between Winchester Ave & Damen Ave)
Chicago, IL 60622

Neighborhood: Ukrainian Village

(773) 235-9795

July 22 (Thursday): Live from Prairie Lights, Iowa City, 7:00 pm

w Cris Mazza / Davis Schneiderman / Zoe Zolbrod / Gina Frangello /

Prairie Lights Books Store

15 South Dubuque Street.

Iowa City, IA 52240

319-337-2681

800-295-BOOK

August ?, TBA: The Nervous Breakdown series, Chicago

September 13 (Monday): Cherry Bomb Series, 6:30 pm (door), Grand Rapids, 7:00 pm

w Cris Mazza / Davis Schneiderman / Zoe Zolbrod / Gina Frangello /

Corez Neighborhood Eatery & Bar

919 Cherry Street

Grand Rapids, MI 49506
(616) 855-2310

September 19 (Sunday): What to Wear During an Orange Alert Series, Chicago

the WHISTLER

2421 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL 60647
773-227-3530

September 27 (Monday): Binghamton University

More dates, TBA

Un-Death of the Author and other work

2010-04-25T18:27:00.000-07:00

My review of Raymond Federman’s The Carcasses appears in the current issue of American Book Review, and can also be found here.

My work appears in several forms in The Mad Bunkers’ Review, a mash-up issue of two journals, Mad Hatters’ Review and Bunk magazine. 1) his mash-up of Karen Garthe’s “Hotel Sleep” and “Old City” and Melanie Brown’s “Matt dillon microfiche, ”with Joe Bisz, called “The Quick and the Lead.” 2) my longer mash-up with Megan Milks, of their own work, called “She is Hovering.”

I also launched a new project, “The Un-Death of the Author,” at Seven Corners poetry blog--run by the very cool Steve Halle--with two pieces, “Tyger Tyger” and “Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment.” Sounds familiar?

I'll write more about the Un-Death project as it develops

New stuff

2010-04-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

1) My review of Raymond Federman's _The Carcasses_ appears in the current _American Book Review_: http://americanbookreview.org/sampleReview.asp?Issue=16&id=34

2) AWP hijinks with long rope threaded through the crowd: http://yfrog.us/5ayn7z

AWP: Here, There, Everysquare

2010-04-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

Davis Schneiderman will be doing too much at AWP. Hope to see you--unless you are that one person who keeps annoying the piss out of me.

Throughout:

*Staffing the Starcherone Books table in support of advance printing of Raymond Federman’s SHHH: The Story of A Childhood.

Thursday, April 8:
*R145. Ellipsis as Art: Crafting Omission of Information in a Text. 10:30-11:45, Hyatt Regency, Granite Room

*R165. Shifting Grounds of Copyright: A How-to. Noon-1:15, Hyatt Regency, Agate Room.

*Northwestern University Press / &NOW BOOKS / Artifice Reading: 7pm-whenever
The Celtic Tavern, 1801 Blake Street

Northwestern University Press (7pm ish)
Indigo Moor (Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Prize winner)
Jehanne Dubrow
Aracelis Girmay
Davis Schneiderman

&NOW BOOKS (9pm ish)

Teresa Carmody
Blake Butler
Gretchen E. Henderson
Davis Schneiderman (reading Raymond Federman, from SHHH: The Story of A Childhood)
Mark Spitzer
Gina Frangello
Christian Bök
Jeffrey DeShell
Lance Olsen

Artifice Magazine (10 pm ish)

Neil de la Flor

Maureen Seaton

Andrew Farkas,

David Welch

Friday, April 9:

*Table X (for Sidebrow), sometime in mid-afternoon: 1-3 ish.

*A Reading: Switchback Books, Coconut, Tarpaulin Sky, and Artifice Magazine, 7:30 PM
Delaneys Bar, 1801 Blake Street*
Readings by: Kimiko Hahn, Simone Muench, Monica de la Torre, Bruce Covey, Kathleen Rooney, Gina Myers, Davis Schneiderman, Marisa Crawford, Kim Gek Lin Short, Andrew Farkas, Shelly Taylor, David Welch, Jen Tynes, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Amber Nelson

A Smashing Evening: Artifice Release Party

2010-03-01T16:25:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday was the Artifice Issue 1 release party in Chicago, and it was a blast.

Kathleen Rooney posted a nice roundup on her blog, so I won't rehash it here.

Rather, here's some photos of Kelly Haramis and me, reading our collaborative story "Backatcha," which culminated in our, ahem, dismantling of a VCR--which played the role of a robot from the future in our story.

All photos courtesy of master photographer Jacob Knabb.

Kelly and I commit lover's suicide onstage--pinning death notices to our shirts in a subversion of the event's party game. Many others later told me we had inspired them to take the same easy way end. Guess they never saw It's a Wonderful Life.

Kelly belts it out, and the back of our VCR robot displays the crucial acronym "YWYCFM"--You wish you could F*** me!

Take that!

And that!

Ah, ennui, after the deed is done.

Artifice does it again.

2010-02-18T20:52:00.001-08:00

Artifice #1 just gets cooler and cooler, with a design firm interpreting a # of the debut issue's stories. Michelle Mashon of Spudnick Press chose "Backatcha"--my story with the unsinkable Kelly Haramis, and you can see the other great pieces here.

Why not come out the release party and pick up the straight issue, the tricked-out image-phat version, or, individual prints.

CHICAGO (2/27/10): A release party at Loft 3A. Doors open at 7:00 pm. Free beer! $10 suggested donation at the door.

Readings by Issue 1 Authors:

A staged reading of "Police Procedural" by Andrew Farkas, which appears in Issue 1, featuring the voice talents of:

A gallery show of screenprints from artists affiliated with Spudnik Press, which illustrate and draw inspiration from pieces in Issue 1, including work by:

The unveiling of a limited edition of ISSUE 1 SPECIAL EDITIONS!

And - DJ Brett Randle will spin funk and soul starting around 10:30 pm.

Schneiderman at Bigother

2010-02-09T18:30:00.000-08:00

So, I've been invited to contribute to a cool collective blog called Big Other.

I'm not shirking my duties here, but will keep Drain for news and updates on yours truly, while adding my cultural two cents, for the most part, to Big Other. Well, except when I don't do this, and still publish all sorts of interesting things here.

Call me bi-blog-curious for now.

For now, I'm happy to have received Artifice issue #1, with my collaborative short story "Backatcha"--written with kick-ass writing dynamo Kelly Haramis; we'll be bringing it old skool to the Artifice release party on February 27, 7 pm, at Chicago's Loft 3A.

Open Letter to J.D. Salinger, on the occasion of his literary decomposition

2010-01-29T18:08:00.000-08:00

Some years ago, and I suppose it was around the turn of the century--I received an email invite to contribute a one-page letter to a Letters to J.D. Salinger project, which, now published, will no doubt no receive a spike in sales due to J.D's passing.

Being a young, hungry, overeager, graduate student type with a need for publication, I dutifully re-read the red-covered tome, and, well, my reaction differed from my teenage reading of years before.

The first time, 10th or 11th grade English lit class---just after I'd realized English was more than grammar and handwriting--I was far from blown away. I enjoyed the book in the way one enjoys high school English books: Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, etc. I suspected then--like Nostradamus predicting his own commodification as a new age prophet--that the whole thing was merely a bit of calculated ennui from the business class.

No doubt my teachers really believed in the transformative power of the novel--nay, even the transgressive power--but I suspected that if I kept Holden's lessons too close to my vest, I'd be playing the rinsed-out high-school teacher myself in a few years: prattling on about the power of Walden and Emerson and Hawthorne and America's greatest white-boy hits to legions of America's largely ambivalent high schoolers. (Yes, I am now a college professor...)

[Note: most transgressive moment of high school. 9th grade health class. Ms. Kerkoff (I kid you not on the name) asks us to complete this thought--a way to jag us about our inner feelings: "Adolescence is like _____." The class makes shift to answer--stalls--stares at the clock, until a school mate (later to head into Naval intelligence of some sort, but at this point, an unrepentant rabblerouser), takes the floor: "Mrs. Kerkoff...Adolescence is a lot like a (long pause) Twinkie, because inside, for us all, there waits a creamy surprise..."]

Anyway, I figured the teachers meant well enough, but there was something about the supposedly subversive message of Catcher, handed to me on a silver platter, that read, well, more "phony" than the diegetic antics of Caulfield.

The re-reading, for the anthology project, made the book just seem, well, silly. Sure, it's well crafted, and yes, accessible in the cum-hither-late-modernism sort of way, but by the standards of the early oughts it seemed downright tame.

For me, longevity in a novel comes not from its increased relevance to the current social clime or its reasoned assimilation into the mainstream of American thought, but its continued belligerence--its pervasive refusal to make sense of the word or let itself be used a mirror.

Naked Lunch still fascinates me because it never lets you get handle on it--the book refuses to give up its secrets; it's not even a "novel," really, at least according to anything Salinger would have approached. (It's epistolary in its genesis: cobbled together from letters, also, as Oliver Harris would tell you).

I'm 3/4 of the way through Marcel Proust, for the second time, and the time-distortion of these ridiculous parties...where it takes longer to read than experience, where the Hawthorne trees speak to this boy-man who explores human depravity and manipulation for the sake of an aesthetic ideal...well, that stuff still works for me.

And so, I sent in my "letter" to J.D. to the editors, and never heard back. Good thing, too, since the piece took on a second life (with my musical partner in crime Don Meyer) in Mad Hatters' Review some years later, and after that, as a main track on our audiocollage release, Memorials to Future Catastrophes.

Here's the link at MHR: enjoy, read/listen if you like.

And, J.D., wherever you are, don't rest in peace--try to raise the roof a little bit. On second thought, maybe don't take the words of no college prof nohow.

On the Literary Death Match: I'd rather watch a monkey than a sloth

2010-01-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

Artifice is on my mind

That is, the new Chicago-based journal of the same name from Rebekah Silverman and James Tadd Adcox.

First, they are publishing some cool work in their soon-to-be-released debut issue--from the likes of:

Carol Berg - Jessica Bozek - Blake Butler - Neil de la Flor - Andrew Farkas -Ori Fienberg - Elisa Gabbert - Kelly Haramis - Roxane Gay - Kyle Hemmings -Tim Jones-Yelvington - Gregory Lawless - Jefferson Navicky - Lance Olsen -Joel Patton - Christopher Phelps - Derek Philips - Cynthia Reeser - Kathleen Rooney - Davis Schneiderman - Maureen Seaton - David Silverstein - Susan Slaverio - Kristine Snodgrass - William Walsh

They will also publish the story "Backatcha" that I co-wrote with Kelly Haramis, my wife. It's her first fiction work, and they only one we've written together so far.

Our shocking interview on the subject of conjugal collaboration, new on the Artifice blog, is here.

Last week, as is now widely reported, I came in second in the Chicago ep4 Opium Magazine Literary Death Match. Coincidentally, Rebekah Silverman and I were opposed in the first heat, and while I let loose with my trademark literary wind (leaving the crowd, according to Opium founder Todd Zuniga, in a "bemused state of wonder"), Rebekah, representing Artifice, tried something more daring.

She read a piece "by" William Walsh, one my favorite literary provocateurs, from the forthcoming Artifice. The piece used every sentence in Joyce's Ulysses with the word "Conmee" in its order of appearance; her well-sliced copy of Ulysses, with the familiar cover, had every extraneous page prepped to scatter across the floor, which it did with delightful gusto.

No only did Silverman read a piece that was not hers (and perhaps not Walsh's either), but it set a Literary Death Match record for shortest reading. Additionally, the performance was anti-performative for this sort of event. The other three readers, all male, btw, produced differing versions of literary swagger--with IO-trained winner and young-adult novelist James Kennedy fully blocking his performance and almost matching me for sheer decibels in the process.

The judges chose my performance over Rebekah's to advance to the finals--where I lost, after a close match, in a drawing competition.

This leads to the larger question of performativity; we bring in many writers and speakers to Lake Forest College, both for our annual reading series as well as the annual Lake Forest Literary Festival--and I admit to being burned a few times on great writers who are boring fucking readers: real snoozers, I mean. Like sitting in a dark room after inhaling 10 mkg of Melatonin while you soak your feet in warm bathwater while reclining on a sleep number bed. That's a sure bet to turn off students already tottering in vain against the great void of collegiate numbness.

I'm no better. Some years ago at a Modernist Studies Association conference in Philadelphia, I sat entranced as motion sensor lights continually dimmed against a set of three died-in-the-worsted-wool academic blubbering on about the length of T.S. Eliot's fingernails as dug into a plateful of dung.

Except. It. Was. Really. Much. Less. Exciting.

Whenever I am invited to give a reading, I try to keep this in mind--and I will even let exhuberance overwhelm or determine literary content. I almost always read short pieces at readings--leaving the work of my sustained and usually complicated narratives to the space of the novel. I've also subjected audiences to strobe lights for flicker poetry, and asked another audience to push and pull an extension cord they were entangled within during another. I recently procured a mixer in the hopes of developing some live word-dj skills. I've engineered a suit that turns me a phosphorescent green every time I sputter a compound-complex sentence.

In other words, I'll bring the noise and the funk. Or try to.

An audience member at the LDM approached me at the break to thank me for the exhuberance of the reading and noted her dead-to-the-world dog-tiredness at the other sort of literary event. And thus, the question: does performance become a necessity for public readings?

The LDM model suggests as much--turning the reading into competition rather than recitation, and proclaiming itself as an antidote for the lugubrious game of yawn yawn yawn.

So what of those who are not natural extroverts (what would an Emily Dickinson reading sound like)?

Are they less likely to get the high-paying readings (har!), and what do academicians need to do to get students to see beyond the less-than-raucous delivery. I admit that in a climate of scarce resources, I only bring in those who I know can "rock the crowd" (as Ricardo Cortez Cruz calls it)--or the occasional unknown quantity whose work I admire.

Certainly, though, no second acts for the underwhelming.

Is this another version of video killed the radio star?

Literary Death Match, Thursday 1/14, 7pm, Chicago

2010-01-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

The Opium LDM Chicago is tomorrow, and I have some stiff competition.

Check it out, from the Opium Web site:

The Literary Death Match returns for LDM Chicago Ep. 4, an epic mid-winter battle that will electrify (and thus, somewhat, heat) the Windy City. The fundraiser event doubles as the midwest launch of Opium9: The Mania Issue. See readers James Kennedy (The Order of Odd-Fish) representing Featherproof Books, Rebekah Silverman representing Artifice, Andy Farkas representing Subito Press and Davis Schneiderman!

Plus, a trio of all-star judges that includes Kathleen Rooney (featured in Opium9), Girls Guide to Rocking scribe Jessica Hopper and Shawnimals genius Shawn Smith.

Hosted by Opium founding editor Todd Zuniga, co-produced by Paul Albano.

When: Doors at 7, show at 7:30, afterparty: downstairs at 9)
Where: Upstairs at Fizz, 3220 North Lincoln Avenue (map)
Cost: $10 (the first 35 guests will receive a free copy of Opium9: The Mania Issue). Free for Literary Death Match subscribers!

Bladerunner: Based on the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick

2010-01-11T19:26:00.000-08:00

Ok, so this is how the title would read of that super-cool film if we followed the model of Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire. Is this publishing-biz hubris or savvy marketing for the writer Sapphire?

I picture a gleaming faux-gem, some sort of replicant for Deckard to wear on his little finger while he decides whether to sleep with Sean Young. Now that's cross-platform marketing. Real synergy.

Yes, yes, I know the Sapphire (real name Ramona Lofton) comes from the slam poet world and she could picture the name Sapphire on a book cover more easily than Ramona Lofton--which does seem a bit less faceted (groan...). And yes, there was another 2009 film called Push, and so the name was changed to Precious to avoid confusion (which does not really explain the other stuff..)

So, no, I'm not picking on her nom de guerre.

Rather, it's pure marketing genius to get the novel's original name on the film title and the name of the author. Wouldn't you like to see, for instance...?

Iron Man 2: based on the novel my Facebook friend Alex Irvine wrote based on the script of the movie.

Or,

The Shining (1987), a crappy miniseries based on the book by Stephen King because he thought Jack Nicholson telegraphed his madness to the audience and that Stanley Kubrick really played loose with the supernatural elements of the story because everybody should f***ing know by now that this is Stephen King, baby, and the supernatural should be as ambiguous as a turd.

Maybe the film industry could just add in books it might be better to read when compared against a particular movie-going experience:

Jennifer's Body, based on a script by Entertainment Weekly contributor (alternating weeks: Stephen King) by Diablo Cody, all about the metaphor of female empowerment and demonic sexuality and well, hey, just read Kathy Acker and call the whole thing off already. Do you think we can get Megan Fox to star at Thivai in the adaptation of Empire of the Senseless?

Anyway, let me know how to get in on this thing for the inevitable movie adaption of Drain. It's a natural: Lake Michigan empties of water (good ecological disaster); worm-worshiping end-of-times cult moves in (cure ultra-violent William Hurt in patriarch role); ineffective corporate protagonist Washington Jefferson Lincoln Qui (I'm thinking Crispin Glover, Tom Cruise, or a reanimated and air-brushed Walter C. Scott) gets taken in...

Yes, I'm ready to make a deal. Let's hear it for:

Drain, based on the novel "Drain" by Davis Schneiderman

No wait, I want to sell tickets:

Drain, based on the novel "Pet Sematery" by Stephen King.

Much better. Let's do lunch.

The following preview has been approved for no audiences

2010-01-06T21:31:00.001-08:00

Ok, so the book is dying. Yay! Let's get ready for the augmented reality green revolution way-o-looking-at-the-word.

In the meantime, two trailers for print pubs have come my way recently.

The first, for William Walsh's short story "Barber vs. Heart Disease" in Annalemma magazine (issue 5, forthcoming). Could it get any cooler?

The second is for Dave Kress's fantastic forthcoming novel, Hush, from the middle-PA workhorse Mammoth Books, run by the inimitable impresario Tony Vallone. See it here:

Hush is already better than Kress's earlier books, Counting Zero and Martians--because those did not have trailers.

To tear or not to tear

2010-01-04T18:53:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-04T18:20:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-28T18:57:00.001-08:00

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?

2009-09-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-08-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

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

Cool New Journal: Artifice

2009-04-26T19:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Nothing to do with Watchmen or Barack Obama or sex with Rush Limbaugh

2009-03-08T18:19:00.001-07:00

Ok, that should get your attention.

I've been--let's face it--absolutely horrible at updating this blog, but, here's some recent stuff:

1) FIRST--for those in the and around da grate city of Chicago:

Schneiderman at Hull House: in the grand tradition of Jane Addams

Friday, March 13

Davis Schneiderman (2009 visiting writer at UIC) with Megan Milks.

Hull House, 800 S. Halsted St., 6 p.m.

--I may dress in an elaborate Peter Gabriel-era Genesis-like costume and/or commit treason onstage. Come, bear witness.

Here's the FB invite.

2. Salt Magazine has a big feature on my work this issue:

--Long excerpt from my ms. ScatØlØgically Yours
--Critical Intro by Megan Milks (University of Illinois-Chicago)
--Interview with me, also by Milks ("Davis Schneiderman and the Third Mind: An Interview with the Experimental Writer and Multimedia Artist"), about collaboration and my novel with Carlos Hernandez, Abecedarium.

3. William Walsh guest edited an awesome new issue of Keyhole.

--Best of all, there are some web extras you can check out now from Blake Butler, Sherrie Flick, Noam Mor, Josh Maday, Paul Long, Gillian Kiley, Sam White, Steve Katz (on Nabokov, Vonnegut, and Berryman), Davis Schneiderman (text and audio collaboration with Don Meyer), and a great podcast interview with Peter Conners on his new memoir, Growing Up Dead, conducted by Sam Ligon.

Schneiderman-ia 2009: This time it’s impersonal!

2009-01-30T19:44:00.000-08:00

That crazy Association of Writing Program conference makes its way to Chicago soon (February 11-14), preceded by the 5th Annual Lake Forest Literary Festival at Lake Forest College, north of the city.

First: Here’s the rundown on the Literary Festival, starring cool poets like Christian Bök and Stephanie Strickland. Events are free and open to the public.

Now: here’s a series of off-site AWP events in which I am involved. Check something out if you are in the neighborhood, and, if you care about the deep personal connection we experience together.

I mean, we really share something, the two of us.

[If you are a conference attendee, you can find me on two different panels (Friday and Saturday)—but you’ll have to flip through the massive schedule and sort through scads of “personal expression” readings...]

1) Wednesday, February 11: 6 pm
Chiasmus Press Reading and Party
Location: Barbara's Bookstore, 1218 South Halsted Street

A reading and wine party with Chiasmus authors Cris Mazza, Gina Frangello, Davis Schneiderman, Stephen Graham Jones, and Lily Hoang.

Bonus: You can cut-up, mark, or otherwise deface a copy of my novels Abecedarium (Chiasmus Press) and DIS (BlazeVox books) as part of the Deconstructing Books project. Visit the Packingtown Review table at the conference and enter a free raffle to win the books: Bonus bonus: Saturday’s book fair at AWP is open to the public: Hilton Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue.

2) Thursday, February 12, 8-11 pm Reading Between the Lines: An AWP Offsite Event, curated by Larry O. Dean
Location: Beat Kitchen (upstairs)
2100 W. Belmont, 773-281-4444

Join emerging as well as established writers from across the US for this intimate reading scheduled to coincide during the annual AWP Conference:

Shaindel Beers, Jessica Berger, Emma Bolden, Donald Breckenridge, Bruce Covey, Jacque E. Day, Lori Desrosiers, Laura Dixon, Eckhard Gerdes, Johannes Göransson, Sara Greenslit, Chris Hildebrand, Matt Markgraf, Pamela Johnson Parker, Ted Pelton, Brianna Pike Sarah Rosenthal, Davis Schneiderman, Karissa Sorrell, Roger Stanley
Richard Thomas, Chet Weise, Scott Woodham, Snežana Žabić.

3) Friday, February 13: 8 pm
A reading hosted by UIMA -- Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art
Location: 2320 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago Illinois, 60622

Readers: Ralph Berry, Eckhard Gerdes, AD Jameson, Lance Olsen, Davis Schneiderman, Yuriy Tarnawsky, Lidia Yuknavich.

Wish You Were Here

2009-01-20T08:15:00.000-08:00

Michael Kimball has a great project to write life stories on postcards, or, in postcard like forms.

Here's mine.

It will also be part of Keyhole magazine, issue #6, guest edited by William Walsh, where each part of the book will be "literature."

Weather beautiful, buy can't wait to return...

Davis

Hey, apply for this award: it's money, food, housing, and publication!

2009-01-09T10:56:00.001-08:00

Lake Forest College
Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer's Residency Prize (Prose)

Lake Forest College, in conjunction with the &NOW organization, invites applications for an emerging prose writer under forty years old, with no major book publication, to spend two months (February-March or March-April 2010) in residence at our campus in Chicago’s northern suburbs on the shore of Lake Michigan.

There are no formal teaching duties attached to the residency. Time is to be spent completing a manuscript, participating in the Lake Forest Literary Festival, and offering two public presentations.

The completed manuscript will be published (upon approval) by the Lake Forest College Press &NOW Books imprint.

The stipend is $10,000, with a housing suite and campus meals.

Send curriculum vita, no more than 30 pages of manuscript in progress, and a one-page statement of plans for completion to:

Plonsker Residency
Department of English
Lake Forest College
Box A16
555 N. Sheridan Road
Lake Forest, IL 60045.

Submissions must be postmarked by April 1, 2009 for consideration by judges Robert Archambeau, Davis Schneiderman, and Joshua Corey.

Memorials to Future Catastrophes

2008-12-28T09:01:00.000-08:00

It's out, finally, Don Meyer and my audiocollage CD: Memorials to Future Catastrophes, from Jaded Ibis Productions.

Here's the description:

Davis Schneiderman's and Don Meyer's extraordinary CD is the first phase of a multimedia collaboration that suggests catastrophes in a world increasingly cordoned off by the representative fears of terrorism, bio-disease outbreaks, and natural disasters.

Check out the track, Watermelon Man (Looped Version), at Mad Hatters' Review.

You can buy the disc at all the usual online places, including CD Baby, but if you email me at dschneiderman at lakeforest.edu, and cover shipping, I'll send you one for free while supplies last.

More soon, hopefully, about this and other collabs.

2009 resolution

2008-12-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

Ok, I never make resolutions--but, I do hope to publish to this blog more often.

My daughter, the narratologist

2008-12-02T20:08:00.000-08:00

My 2.5-year old daughter-genius--Athena--just told me that a piece of junk mail contained a story about her parents drawing a picture of a cow, jumping over the moon.

Who knew she was ready to have a character narrator (Athena) describe a story about character focalizers (me and Kelly Haramis, wife), describing a focalized object (cow/moon--which in itself is drawn from the rich cultural and morphological tradition that stands outside the entire narrative?

Federman, look out.

This is not a joke, but it's a damn funny one.

2008-12-01T19:14:00.000-08:00

So, one of my favorite writers (and fellow Binghamton University grad) Kass Fleisher, is teaching my novel Abecedarium (written with Carlos Hernandez), and she posed this question to me over email:

Is the book "just" a game? Why would she ask this, you ask?

Well, here's the "Note on Process" which opens the text:

A Note on Process:

The ten chapters of this “sudden” novel were composed collaboratively by Carlos Hernandez and Davis Schneiderman during five separate writing sessions. For each session, we would compose at separate computers located in the same small bedroom in Ithaca, NY.

After a period of simultaneous composition, we would switch seats to edit/overwrite the other author’s work, changing, altering, and adding whatever we chose.

Then, we would switch seats again and work similarly on our “original” compositions, repeating this process beyond these three iterations during a brief editing period (that occurred after all ten chapters had been produced as described).

In this way, we were thus encouraged to lose ourselves in the work so that a third mind that moves between us could develop.

That third mind is “Fex.”

**

Additionally, we had a few "guidelines" for each chapter: there should always be mention of a carnival dragon and foie gras, and, most importantly, as Carlos recently reminded me: Fex never loses.

I'll share my answer to Kass here:

I recall that the old Church of the Sub-Genius used to say, this is not a joke, but it’s a damn funny one. The method of Abecedarium produces results perhaps more quickly, through its constraint, than the writer in his garret staring at a blank page.

The ancient Greeks spent a good amount of time arguing about whether differently weighted objects would fall at different rates.

Well, Socrates, climb up on the roof and drop some shit.

This collaborative method is something to do, now, and is no more merely of a game than the works of the Oulipo, Joyce (think of colors and organs and charts in Ulysses), the Surrealists, Dada, and the screeds of all sorts of pomo authors from Burroughs, to Abish, to Nabokov, to Borges, to Raymond Federman, to Acker, to Steve Tomasula, to Shelley Jackson, to Joe Amato, to Fleisher, et al.

Because these types of texts often foreground their methodologies, and often use material-based tactics (cut-ups, pla[y]giarisms, etc), the works are sometimes dismissed as games because structures becomes more than background. This is a paradox: the best realist novels—let’s say even something like Sister Carrie—has a discernible structure that simply seems hidden because we don’t think about the structure of dominant narrative.

In other words, Abecedarium is a game in the same way as Dickens, Norris, Steinbeck, and everyone else. Let’s not even bring in Diderot, Sterne, Swift, etc...

Which is to say, it’s not a game, but it’s a damn fun one to play.

Bleed: Sowing Books

2008-11-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

The uber-cool Debra Di Blasi interviewed me for her BLEED project in 2007, and, voila, as she wrote me the other day, it's here.

Interviews from the Edge

2008-11-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

Carlos Hernandez and I wrote a book in 2.5 days--Abecedarium--and seven years later it was published. And a few months after that, we recorded a podcast interview for the Chiasmus Press series. And a few months after that, we redid it due to technical difficulties that erased the first one.

And is beautiful, thanks to the interview chops of Shane Hinton.

The Spruce Goose flies again

2008-11-06T10:40:00.001-08:00

I recently appeared at the very cool New Writing Series at the University of Maine, and here's a snippet.

rock is dead they say, long live rock

2008-11-05T13:01:00.001-08:00

davisschneiderman.com is dead, sort of, long live the blog version, ScatØlØgically Yours.

I'm so lax at updating my web site, that it seemed prudent to adopt a new form. I'm inspired by my colleagues--Bob Archambeau and Josh Corey--who manage to keep all the cool news about themselves contained to the blog format.

I also think this internet thing could really take off, and I want to get in on the ground floor.