The Elegant Variation

TEV GUEST INTERVIEW: WIGLEAF EDITOR SCOTT GARSON

First there was the Best American Short Stories series. Then came the storySouth Million Writers Award for notable fiction published online. Now there's the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2008.

The what?

Wigleaf is a relatively new online literary magazine dedicated to the art and craft of short fiction helmed by Scott Garson. His fiction has won awards from Playboy and from the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation and has appeared in many journals. He lives with his wife and two young kids in the Southern Midwest. He was gracious enough to answer a few questions about this bold new enterprise.

TEV: What made you decide to publish an online magazine primarily devoted to flash fiction?

SG: There are a few different ways to tell this story. Here's one: In '06 I was writing a lot of fiction in the 500-1,000 word range. But I wasn't reading any -- not until I placed a short in the print journal Quick Fiction and my contributor's copy arrived in the mail. That sort of changed my life. In Quick Fiction (and on the internet too, I soon learned, in places like elimae, Smokelong Quarterly, FRiGG, Juked, and NOO Journal), people were doing amazing things. There was this clear vitality and openness. It seemed to me that what I was seeing in the very short story was something still new, something still being wandered, explored. Some of my first thoughts about Wigleaf came out of wanting to be a more direct part of that.

TEV: Why "Wigleaf"?

SG: Why "Google"? That's what I was asking myself. Every domain name with forthright meaning -- with commercial potential, that is -- had been snagged by prospectors. On my way to pick up my kid from a playdate one day, I came up with the name 'Wigleaf.' I liked the 'wig.'  I liked the 'leaf.'  I liked to think of the leaf wigging.

TEV: Why do you think we're seeing more outlets for flash fiction? Do you think more people are writing and publishing flash for artisitic or pragmatic reasons?

SG: If there's a boom, the internet has fueled it. Launching a web journal is cheaper and easier than ever before, and when it comes to reading fiction on a computer screen, people are more likely to commit to shorts than to longer pieces.

As for artistic or pragmatic reasons? I love this question. It's huge. It's a beast.

There are definitely pragmatic reasons for writing, publishing and reading shorts. They're short! Our lives are busy! But there are artistic reasons too, and I'm more interested in these. One of the chapters in my unwritten book on this subject concerns the short's cousin, the formal short story. People who take classes in fiction writing are schooled in the short story, whether they know it or not. And they absorb plenty of rules. For the short story, there are these very clear expectations, ones that you either have to work with or against. I don't think the same is true of the short short. It's really wide open. If you're a writer, you love this. You get to put vision first.

I think readers may be responding for a similar reason. Joe Wenderoth has this line -- I think it's his line -- "Interpretation is a banishment ritual." Interpretation is a fussy activity, for sure. People learn it in high school, and it takes the fun out of the short story for them. If they understand that they don't 'understand' a story exactly, how can they like it?  Short shorts, I think, let some readers sidestep all this. They read for the sake of reading.

TEV: All editors love good writing, but what do you look for when you decide what to publish? What makes an exceptional piece of flash fiction irresistable?

SG: Life and craft. For me, it's pretty much that simple. Life and craft. Sometimes you get neither. Sometimes you get one but not the other. Sometimes you get both -- and these are usually fine stories -- but there's a little less of one than the other. When you get both in high measure (borrowing from ESPN's Stuart Scott here) -- "BOO-YAH!"

TEV: What's been the biggest surprise you've experienced as an editor thus far?

SG: That's an easy one. The submissions. I never imagined that I'd get such great stories so quickly. I solicited a few writers before Wigleaf launched; later, when submissions started coming, I braced myself for what I thought was going to be a great quantity of novice writing.  But there wasn't a great quantity. And it wasn't novice, or most of it wasn't. I think I accepted the second story that arrived in the inbox.

TEV: Tell me more about your Top 50 project.

SG: The Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2008 will be an annual, more in the mode of Houghton Mifflin's Best American Short Stories than Pushcart. As Series Editor, I come up with the 'Long Shortlist' -- 200 worthy shorts that have appeared in web journals during the previous calendar year. From that list, the Selecting Editor chooses the Top 50. Links to these stories will be up on our site between May/June and August.

This year's Selecting Editor is Chad Simpson, and he did just a great job. We're both excited to be able to bring more attention to work we think really deserves it.

A small confession now: the idea for the Top 50 is at least as old as the idea for Wigleaf itself. I've been reading Houghton Mifflin's BASS for just about ever, and in late '06 I started saying to myself, Somebody should really do this for flash fiction. I actually drafted a letter to Meg Lemke at Houghton Mifflin, proposing a Best American Flash Fiction. Then I thought, My arguments will be more convincing if I can show her some work from a shortlist I'm keeping. Then I thought, Am I nuts? Houghton Mifflin isn't going to respond to this letter, no matter what I decide to put in it. But by that point I was already keeping a shortlist. And I liked doing it. So I decided to give the Top 50 to Wigleaf. Which meant I no longer had a choice: I had to bring Wigleaf to life.

THE ELEGANT VERMIN'S BIG BAD LIST OF GOOD THINGS THAT COME IN SMALL PACKAGES

All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go by Bucky Sinister from Gorsky Press: This combines Sinister's sold-out book of poetry Whiskey & Robots with an epic poem about a San Francisco squat. The son of an Arkansas preacher, Sinister brings brimstone and belly laughs to the foibles of the human condition.

All Over by Roy Kesey from Dzanc Books: One of the most gifted, hard-working, and diverse short story writers working today. There was a time when Roy Kesey's greatness was a secret known to a handful of admirers, but those days are all over.

Bear Parade: An odd collection of e-books from poets. From Michael Earl Craig's "Seahorse": "...someday / I will get it all together, / and not drift so blindly / like the seahorse with his throat slit, / leaking a dark scarf across / his moonlit corral homeland."

Big Lonesome by Jim Ruland from Gorsky Press: You didn't think I'd go five days without plugging my own book of short stories did you? The stories aren't really all that short, but the book itself is only 6.8 x 5 inches. Puny, really.

Bill's Formal Complaint by Dan Kaplan from The National Poetry Review Press: An eclectic chapbook of linked poems in various forms and (dis)guises centered around a hapless, hopeful and all-too-human everyman.

Duck and Herring Field Guide: A quirky, seasonal literary magazine out of Atlanta that fits in your pocket.

A Field Guide to the American Family by Garth Risk Hallberg from Mark Batty Publisher: With it's mish-mash of styles, the book resembles a photography house's overdesigned annual, but the illustrated novella-in-flash is unexpectedly astute. Perfect for road trips with people you hate.

Flasks: A flask is like a good dog or a sturdy walking stick in that every writer ought to have one, but flasks are better because they're filled with whiskey and won't piss on the floor.

Future Tense Books: A "micro-press" run by acclaimed indie author and bookseller Kevin Sampsell that has published Gary Lutz, Myriam Gurba, and Elizabeth Ellen.

Hotel Crystal by Olivier Rolin from Dalkey Archive: 43 descriptions of hotel rooms from around the world scribbled on post cards, end papers, and odd bits of scrap by someone who may or may not be a spy but most certainly is a rogue.

Howl by Allen Ginsberg from City Lights: #4 in the Pocket Poets Series. Intro by William Carlos Williams. 57 pages. Has there ever been a more important pocket paperback in the West?

It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature by Diane Williams from FC2: This master minimalist is at the height of her powers and somehow manages to be screamingly funny even when it's not obvious what the hell is going on.

J&L Illustrated: Extremely irregular literary and art journal with odd stories and black and white illustrations. One of my all-time favorite short stories was published in the first volume but, alas, it's out of print.

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock: There are few sympathetic characters in these very short stories and a catalog of their sins would read like a season in hillbilly hell. I disagree with just about every review I've read: there's nothing resilient or redemptive about the people of Knockemstiff, OH, but Pollock goes into a story like gangbusters, making this an unputdownable collection.

Letters from Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth from Verse Press: Have you ever sat in a fast-food restaurant late at night and thought about writing a long-ass letter to its fictional figurehead on the backs of hundreds of customer comment cards? Wenderoth: did it. You: ordered fries.

The Musical Illusionist and Other Tales by Alex Rose from Hotel St. George Press: A compendium of fake maps, incomprehensible diagrams, and fantastic libraries, The Musical Illusionist displays the Victorian compulsion toward taxonomy and love of a good hoax. Turning its pages is like taking a visit to The Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Sailor's Holiday by Barry Gifford: Four short novels about Sailor Ripley and Lulu Pace Fortune of which Wild at Heart is the first. The novels are episodic and made up of short bursts of prose that are both hilarious and intense. Smartly written crime fiction from a vastly underappreciated American writer.

Seashells. You find them on the beach. They're pretty to look at. They whisper in your ear. You put them in your pocket. Years later, waves of nostalgia. 

Smokelong Quarterly: An online literary magazine devoted to short short fiction, i.e. stories one can read during the course of a cigarette. Each issue is shepherded by a new guest editor.

The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy from Turtle Point Press: There's something endearingly outre about the protagonists of these short short stories that I can't quite put my finger on. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to discover they were written 40 years ago by a Belgium philosopher who was last seen on the back of a camel somewhere in the Sahara.

TEV GUEST INTERVIEW: ROSE METAL PRESS EDITOR & PUBLISHER, ABBY BECKEL & KATHLEEN ROONEY

This week we've spent some time with writers who do good things with words, now let's get to know some people who make the packages.

Rose Metal Press was founded relatively recently in 2006 by Abby Beckel and Kathleen Rooney. Although the press is based out of Boston, the co-founders, both in their late 20s, live elsewhere. Abby Beckel is the Managing Editor of a business magazine for physicians in Washington, D.C. Kathleen Rooney is a Democratic Senate Aide in Chicago. Together, along with the help of a team of talented designers, interns, and printers, they comprise Rose Metal Press.

Their latest offering, A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness, is a mega-chapbook that combines the manuscripts of the winner and three finalists of the Rose Metal Press First Annual Short Short Chapbook Contest. It's a fascinating concept and a great value. It's also a very strong indication that more writers are turning to short short fiction. Rose Metal Press is committed to bringing their fine work to light.   

QUIZTUNES FOR ABBY BECKEL & KATHLEEN ROONEY OF ROSE METAL PRESS:

TEV: How did you two meet? What made you decide to launch a press together?

A&K: We met in graduate school at Emerson College in Boston. Abby was in the MA program in Publishing & Writing and Kathleen was in the MFA program in Writing, Literature and Publishing. We met while working on the graduate literary magazine, specifically right at the time around 2003-2004 when it was in the process of being re-launched, transforming from the old Beacon Street Review into the new Redivider, which has since gone on to have a series of wonderful editors, each of whom has added a series of wonderful features. Over the course of our time at Emerson, we realized that the two of us had this sort of alchemical ability, when we worked together, to become somehow greater and more effective than when we worked apart. Abby became the Managing Editor of Redivider and Kathleen became the Editor-in-Chief, and we realized even more fully how well we complemented each other in our working relationship. Inevitably, we graduated and could no longer work on the journal together, so—since Abby had always dreamed of starting her own press—in 2006 we embarked on founding Rose Metal. We felt that as a team we had a much stronger combination of publishing, editorial, and literary knowledge—plus, it's a lot more fun to navigate the pleasures and pitfalls of indie publishing with a partner in crime! And we're lucky enough to share a vision about the kind of books we think are important to publish and a dedication to beauty in both the writing and the book design.

TEV: It seems as if your slogan could be (with apologies to Emma Lazarus): "Give me your quirky, your irregular, your unconventional manuscripts yearning to break free."

A&K: Rose Metal Press is interested in writing that successfully uses hybrid and non-traditional forms. In grad school, we found that we shared a fascination with books such as Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red and Joe Wenderoth's Letters to Wendy's, that didn't seem easily categorized into—or bound by the rules, conventions, and expectations of—a single, easily identifiable genre. We wanted to help more books of this sort find their way into the hands of readers. Put another way, we are interested in works that take their form as a primary concern and match it to their content. So far, this has meant that we have done a lot with short short fiction—in our first anthology Brevity & Echo, our latest collection A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness, and our annual Short Short Fiction Chapbook Contest—the novel-in-verse in the form of Peter Jay Shippy's How to Build the Ghost in Your Attic, and prose poetry in the form of the forthcoming Tinderbox Lawn by Carol Guess. But it has also meant that we have picked up books—like Adam Golaski's forthcoming Color Plates—that fit into no readily handy category.

Also, when we were deciding what exactly—beyond just "starting a press"—we wanted to focus on, we knew that there were many, many excellent independent presses out there, publishing many, many excellent books. Right from the start, we wanted to be sure that we positioned ourselves to fill a niche that was not already being filled by many skillful and dedicated others.

TEV: What does "Rose Metal" signify?

A&K: "Rose Metal" (aka "Rose's metal" or "Rose's alloy") is an alloy with low melting point made of 50 percent Bismuth, 25–28 percent Lead and 22–25 percent Tin. [Editor’s Note: I knew that.] Its melting point is 100 °C or 212 °F. Also (and here's the really significant part), Rose Metal is typically used as a solder. [Editor’s Note: Okay, I didn’t know that.] Since the press focuses on hybrids, we thought that it made sense to name ourselves after something that is itself a hybrid, and that works as a link or mechanism by which different things are fused together into one new whole. To give credit where credit is due, the name was suggested by our fellow Emerson College alum Caryn Lazzuri.

TEV: What's been the biggest surprise you've experienced thus far?

A&K: Well, there have been many surprises. For one, we didn't expect to have so many amazing entries to our first annual Short Short Chapbook Contest that we'd be inspired to put out four of our favorites under the cover of A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness.

Also, because most of our books are printed in the standard offset way, we didn't realize what a huge undertaking it would be to hand-sew every one of the 300 copies of the letterpress-cover, limited edition of the first contest winner's chapbook, Claudia Smith's The Sky Is a Well. Fortunately, we love the collection and it was worth every stitch, and we are eternally grateful to our friends and supporters in Boston who volunteered hours and hours of their time helping us get the job done correctly and quickly. We've had to allot our time resources a little differently this year, though, so although we are letterpressing the winning chapbook covers again at the Museum of Printing in North Andover, MA, we'll be saving our fingers and having the chapbooks bound for us professionally.

We are also continually pleasantly surprised at the generosity of our collaborators—our designers Rebecca Krzyzaniak and Melissa Gruntkosky, our intern Lauren Kouffman, and our web designer Aaron Sweet. These people and many others, too many to be named, have made us feel really lucky to be part of such a thoughtful and vital independent writing and publishing community.

Perhaps the greatest surprise—the outpouring of appreciation for our support and promotion of hybrid genres—should have been the least surprising since the reason we chose to publish the kind of writing we publish is because we knew the opportunities for those writers and their work were so limited. And yet, we never imagined there were SO many writers out there pushing the boundaries of genre and form, and in such amazing ways.

TEV: Let's talk about A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness. What led to the decision to combine the work of four writers in a single book?

A&K: As we mentioned above, it all stemmed from our first annual Short Short Fiction Chapbook Contest. When we gave the anonymous stack of finalists over to Ron Carlson to judge, we could honestly say that there were none in the pile that we wouldn't be proud to publish. We were thrilled when he picked Claudia's manuscript, but then, as we got ready to send out the inevitable batch of rejections, it occurred to us: we weren't bound by the limits of our own contest; we didn't have to publish just one. So we went back through the pile and found the manuscripts that we felt that it not only made sense to publish, but also that it made sense to publish together. The title of the book comes from Elizabeth Ellen's short short "Eastern Standard," from her chapbook Sixteen Miles Outside of Phoenix, and it speaks to an intangible quality that we felt drew all four chapbooks together. They all seemed to share a certain ineffable giddy energy. There are lots of things that you could say the books share in common: they are all incredibly well-written, they are all by female authors, they are all decidedly quirky and frequently funny-sad, but the overarching thing that inspired us to want to put them all on stage under the same spotlight was the distinctive—the peculiar—tone and atmosphere with which they are infused. We've noticed that short shorts can be very poetic in that way, that creation of a tone, and all four of these collections—Amy L. Clark's Wanting, Elizabeth Ellen's Sixteen Miles Outside of Phoenix, Kathy Fish's Laughter, Applause. Laughter, Music, Applause, and Claudia Smith's The Sky Is a Well—operate in this kind of poetic register.

TEV: How did the writers respond to sharing the stage, so to speak, with other?

A&K: Personally? They responded really well and are truly supportive of each other's work. Amy, Claudia, Elizabeth and Kathy are all extremely generous, gracious, and a pleasure to work with, and—fortunately for us—they all agreed readily to be a part of this project. Another surprise we've found through our forays into the field of hybrid genres is that the community of people writing short short fiction is tight-knit, talented, vocal, and super tech-savvy. These four authors all have histories of being involved in online communities or having online presences relating to the realm of the short short, and that has been an excellent network to learn about and begin to tap into. The short short is a remarkably flexible and versatile form, and it has a great number of much-deserved fans and practitioners who've done a lot to help support Amy, Claudia, Elizabeth, and Kathy, and the press. We've been setting up readings all over the country for Amy, Claudia, Elizabeth, and Kathy, sometimes in their respective hometowns and sometimes further afield, and their great performances at those readings have been immensely helpful in spreading the word about A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness.

TEV: What's next for Rose Metal Press?

A&K: This summer, we're excited to be publishing the winner of the second annual Short Short Fiction Chapbook Contest, In the Land of the Free by Geoffrey Forsyth, selected by Robbie Shapard. The chapbook consists of 10 very short fictions, and from the night a baby is born onto a cutting board in his mother's kitchen, to the day a rhinoceros mysteriously escapes from the zoo, to the morning a young man wakes to find his mud-covered relatives back from the grave, each story is funny, sad, and very strange.

This fall we're happy to be publishing Tinderbox Lawn, a collection of prose poetry by Carol Guess that is set on the margins of Seattle—beneath bridges and on the banks of waterways, in strip clubs and flooded farmland—and illuminates the intersection of domesticity and bohemia.

And next year, we are thrilled to be publishing Adam Golaski's Color Plates, which essentially captures how it might feel if you were able to read—not just walk through—a whole museum. We're also in the midst of compiling a new anthology for 2009 called The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field and edited by Tara L. Masih. This collection features essays by Ron Carlson, Pam Painter, Robert Olen Butler, Peter Orner, Vanessa Gebbie, and many others.

WHAT WAS SHE SMOKING?

Frankly, I'm baffled by Janet Maslin's review of Bright Shiny Morning, James Frey's *cough, cough* fiction debut. It's written in Frey's curiously incoherent style and is either a low-water mark for book reviewing or a harbinger of the ascendancy of sentence fragments in adult discourse.

I think The Vulture, who predicted Maslin would review Frey favorably, gets it exactly right:

At first we were annoyed, but then we realized that's just good customer service on Maslin's part — we found the style so off-putting that it curbed any desire we might otherwise have had to read James Frey's novel and decide for ourselves whether it's any good.

Frey has his fans, namely social misfits who haven't graduated to Chuck Palahniuk. One supposes that they should be marketed to, but do we have to make them dumber in the process?

Even more troubling is the subject of Frey's novel: Los Angeles. For a certain kind of writer, L.A. is like a mirror in a strip club that gives back exactly the image the dancer is looking for. Frey is that writer. He's padded his bank account with duplicitous projections. Why should this book be any different?

If you're going to read a book about misfits this summer, make it this one. 

TEV GUEST REVIEW (AND INTERVIEW): KIM CHINQUEE'S OH BABY

Oh Baby
By Kim Chinquee
Ravenna Press Books
88 pp
$13.95

GUEST REVIEW BY JIM RULAND

Kim Chinquee's remarkable debut collection of short stories is next to impossible to classify. Many magazines designate short stories under 1,000 words as "short-shorts" or "flash fictions," while those that are considerably shorter than 1,000 words are called "micro fictions."

The stories in Oh Baby fit all of these categories: nuggets of prose that are difficult to penetrate, short fictions that gush onto the page, stories structured in the traditional mode but in an abbreviated way. So what do we call it?

Perhaps a clue to Chinquee's preference can be found in the name of her online writing group: Hot Pants. A garment that is neither skirt nor pants, shorter than short so as to be barely there at all, but leaves a distinct impression.

There are two things that strike me about Chinquee's stories: they always feel real and they always feel complete. The completeness is impressive because most of her stories are extremely short, anywhere from a few hundred words to a few dozen, and it's really difficult to convince readers that you've said everything that needs to be said with so few words.

For example, in a story called "Hoe" a woman pulls weeds from a lover's ex-wife's garden. The final line is "She thought it was dead, but it wasn't" can mean a dozen different things (about the weeds, the marriage, things flowering where they ought not to, the narrator's own heavy heart), but does anything else need to be said after a line like that?

As for the realness in Chinquee's fiction, this is, of course, an authorial fallacy, but there's an intimacy at work that carries the potential to comfort and shock. The tension comes not so much from the unexpected but our dread of the inevitable.

There's another word for fictions that feel real but thankfully, devastatingly are not: our dreams.

QUIZTUNES FOR KIM CHINQUEE

TEV: When did you start writing flash fiction?

KC: My first piece was in Mary Robison's workshop at the University of Southern Mississippi. She asked us to write flashes for one of the classes and I wrote a piece called "Pure Gold," which was later retitled "The Top Shelf," and was my first piece published in NOON. That was in early 2000.

TEV: What draws you to the form? Is it a case of the form defining they way your stories are expressed or does the story dictate its shape?

KC: I like the efficiency of the form. I think it's a case of both: the form both defines the way my stories are expressed and the story dictates the shape. Many times the stories are longer, and I get down to the essence of the story through cutting, and that's where I find the core, and in some ways I feel only the core is necessary in certain pieces. The form allows me to get rid of the extra, so to speak.

TEV: You've been in just about every issue of Noon. What is your relationship with Diane Williams like?

KC: NOON's first issue was in 2000, and my first appearance was in 2002, and I've been in every issue since that. I admire Diane Williams! Her work inspires me. And I've really learned a lot by seeing the ways in which she edits my work, and also through our conversations. We once had a phone session, where she took me through a few of my stories word-for-word, and she told me why each word worked for her or didn't. That taught me a lot. I study her edits and they teach me a lot--they're gifts and I'm grateful. She doesn't accept mediocrity and I appreciate that.

TEV: Over the course of Oh Baby, images repeat, themes recur, scenarios are revisited. Would you say your work is unabashedly autobiographical or do certain ideas return again and again because you want to add, develop, expand?

KC: I'd say all of the above--the work is somewhat autobiographical--I grew up on a farm, I was in the military, I'm a single mom, etc. I draw upon my experiences, and sometimes I make things up and then get certain ideas from my make-believe, and then return to them in pieces. Sometimes my prompt words will take me back to a certain story or experience and I'll draw from those and write another piece. I like working that way--it doesn't commit me to a certain idea or experience, and it allows me to make the autobiographical unreal.

TEV: Establishing the order in which the stories will appear in a collection is one of the secret torments of publishing a book of short stories. What was it like organizing over 40 stories? Did you work with publisher?

KC: I'll have to credit Cooper Renner for that. I didn't put the stories in any particular order--I did that more on instinct. And then Cooper wrote and asked: How about we put this one there, or that one in this spot? He thought "Batter" would be good as the first story, since it set up a lot of the themes of the book. It sounded good to me and I went with it.

TEV: The cover image is striking and unsettling. At first glance, it looks almost medieval. Then one takes note of the American flag, which makes it more mysterious. What's going on here?

KC: Pier Rodelon designed the book and he found the image and I loved it. I like the masks because they speak to me of repression, of a covering up of sorts. And I liked the flag because it symbolizes something. And the women there are working. The image seems to represent many themes of the book.

TEV: You are masterful at crafting endings. How do you approach the last line? Is it something you have in mind when you're writing and you work towards it? Do you intentionally re-shuffle so that the strongest images and words appear that the end? What makes a good ending in your opinion?

KC: Thanks! Endings are hard for me. I do intentionally re-shuffle, and never have the ending in mind when I'm working toward it. Usually it gets sliced, like after the first draft I'll shave lots of extras from the ending until I cut it to an image. Or I'll take a sentence from an earlier part of the story and tack that onto the end and see how that works. A good ending, in my opinion, leaves the reader with an image or a sense that provokes, that doesn't give all the answers.

TEV: Lastly, do you have a favorite in the collection? A least favorite?

KC: That changes all the time. There are stories in the book I've revisited and am dying to edit again, mostly endings. I think my favorites are "Olives and Fruit," and probably "Oh Baby." Least favorite? Maybe "Viral" or "They Took Deep Breaths." I'm happy with them, but they're still nagging at me, like there's something more to say.

TEV GUEST REVIEW (AND INTERVIEW): MATTHEW SIMMONS’S CREATION STORIES

Creation Stories
By Matthew Simmons
Happy Cobra Books
40 pp
FREE

GUEST REVIEW BY JIM RULAND

There's a revolution afoot. In the fast-paced, billion-dollar industry of literary chapbooks, eletronic books or making substantial inroads.

That was a joke.

Sort of.

Electronic books are becoming an increasingly legitimate option in the DIY writers playbook. They're the new blog. Readers accustomed to buying and talking about books online, encounter electronic books in spaces where they are on equal footing with books printed on paper. In fact, I encountered Matthew Simmons's Creation Stories on Good Reads. It received a review from one of my acquaintances on the site that made me curious to read it. Did I feel cheated when I clicked on the link and discovered a pdf file that I could download for free? Of course not. I was thrilled; ten minutes later is was sitting on my desk and I read it in the park that afternoon.

So what is it? Creation Stories is a curious mix of "short prose things." It doesn't really matter what the form is (joke, prose poem, blog post) they all have a beginning middle and end. Ergo: stories.

The stories are easy to enjoy, but afterwards you'll be hard pressed to say what they're about. Simmons has a playful yet earnest approach to fiction. He uses repetition and pays careful attention to syntax to erode the received wisdom of words and create new meanings for them in the context of his stories. This is not easy to do without going down the wormhole where Samuel Beckett and Getrude Stern play ping-pong with language for eternity, but Simmons pulls it off.

QUIZTUNES FOR MATTHEW SIMMONS:

TEV: Tell me about Happy Cobra Books.

MS: Tao Lin has a poem about wanting to start a band with the poem's reader. So I wrote to him and told him we should start a band. He sent me some recordings of himself playing the drums—and one full song—and I made some guitar noises and keyboard noises and vocal noises over them, and we put them up on a Myspace page. We went back and forth on a name, and eventually it came down to coming up with a silly sounding moniker that implied two characters in opposition to one another. He was Sad Bear. I tried to come up with the opposite of a sad bear, and landed on Happy Cobra. So, Sad Bear vs. Happy Cobra.

When I met Tao on a book tour, he told me I should make a chapbook. I'd never really considered doing so, but realized that I had a bunch of short pieces and old, buried-in-the-archive posts from The Man Who Couldn't Blog that I really liked. I also had a computer at work with InDesign, an hour for lunch, and absolutely no training in either the software or graphic design in general. I had, though, read and really enjoyed David Barringer's book, American Mutt Barks in the Yard. So, off I went. For the sake of continuity, I used the Happy Cobra name.

TEV: Technically, isn't a book something that's been "printed" and "bound"? Do you comprehend my 19^th century lingo?

MS: Sure. In fact, I have a few printed versions of Creation Stories. I've made 25 of the 50 I intend to print. I decided to give it away as a pdf because I said I was working on the book on my blog, and a few people were interested. But having no training in InDesign, I couldn't figure out how to make page spreads (turned out to be really freakin' easy in the end), and the file was just sitting on my computer. One day, I just decided to put the file on a website, and let people have it. I was going to give it away for free, anyway. People who have the small number of physical copies were only required to make something for me in return.

I work in a bookstore. I love books as physical objects. And sure, maybe there's some new word we need to come up with to describe deliberately collected pieces of writing bound by some sort of digital means. We could—here I'll borrow the way Barringer makes certain kinds of distinctions in American Mutt...I steal from that book all the time—go with printed books as books(p), and electronic books as books(e). But, then, a pdf file like Creation Stories or the books on Ubuweb don't have links in them, so they aren't hypertext. Maybe then we go with book(pdf) for one and and book(e) for the other. But the books on Bear Parade don't embed links in the text, still want to mimic the uninterrupted page to page flow of a book, so then we could have book(p), and book(pdf), and book(h), and book(e). Then there are those ebook reader things, which don't allow the audience to be distracted by email or two to three open windows. Book(p), book(pdf), book(h), book(e), book(r)? Seems like this could get really complicated.

TEV: What are the dimensions of the book(p)?

MS: It's about 4 1/4" by 5 1/2", but each one is cut by hand, so they are all slightly different.

TEV: And it's free?

MS: Yes.

TEV: By free do you mean "no charge"?

Yes, of course, but if readers like it, and feel at all inclined to compensate me in some way, I'd love it if they'd consider donating even a very small amount to the Puget Sound Race for the Cure. I'm running and have a donation page.

TEV: The title of your collection of "short prose things" is Creation Stories. The title implies truthiness and the subtitle won't commit to fiction. What's going on here?

MS: I tried to think of a good way of referring to the many different types of prose writing in the book(pdf)/book(p).

TEV: Could you please stop that?

MS: OK.

TEV: You were saying?

MS: Short-short fiction, prose poetry, list—some of them are just jokes, really. The connection was that they were all prose, all flush left, and I only really had a few words in which to describe them if I wanted to keep the cover uncluttered, so I defaulted to "short prose things." Maybe "stuff flush left" would've worked...Creation Stories 2: stuff flush left, maybe.

The desire for a not-so cluttered cover comes from my day job. I write the descriptions for author events at our store. Subtitles are out of control right now. Sometimes I wonder why a reader needs me at all—the subtitle says it all. Like that recent Onion joke about the Iron Man trailer covering what appears to be the entire plot of the movie. Laparoscope: One doctor's journey through the minds, lives, and intestinal tracts of his patients, with revelatory results in his personal and family life.

At first, there was a comma between "creation" and "stories" in the title. But I didn't like the way it looked, so I took it out. I think the title refers just as much to the cover image as the content. That's a drawing by an artist named Joseph Biel. It was hanging at the same gallery my brother shows at in Seattle, the Greg Kucera Gallery. It's on my wall right now. It reminds me that sometimes writing is a form of self-inflicted torture.

TEV: It is, isn’t it? In many stories you employ repetition to chip away at the meaning of words. Repetition is a kind of torture, but here you're encouraging the reader to pay attention to the way the words sound.

MS: I write longer stories, too, and there, I'm conscious of language, but it isn't necessarily the focus. When I write in a short form I like to think about the sounds of words and sentences. The impact of a short piece can't really come from the movement through a narrative arc; it doesn't come from an obsessively, intricately drawn character; it doesn't come from a full examination of the state of someone's being. For me, it comes from the language. That's almost always where I start anything I write, too: with a word or a phrase.

TEV: Some of these stories come from your blog, The Man Who Couldn't Blog, and while they have a peculiar relationship to blogging, they're stories. I think.

MS: They're something, anyway. I started the blog with this idea that it would have a simple constraint (that everything be a description of why the blogger couldn't blog that day), but I've gotten looser with the constraint as time has gone on. The Man Who Couldn't Blog is updated every Monday...or Tuesday depending on how much I had to do over the weekend. So, if the "can't blog" element seems tacked on, it's usually because it was. Sorry. I hope the rest of the piece makes up for the "tackiness."

TEV: What's next for Matthew Simmons and Happy Cobra?

MS: I have a book of short stories that I am editing and adding to. Most of the stories are out and in the hands of editors at literary journals right now—or in their slush piles, to be precise. One of them will be in the Sycamore Review at the end of the summer. It, I am happy to report, won their Wabash Fiction Prize. Beyond that, it's send out story, get rejection letter, send story somewhere else, get rejection letter, etc. for a while. But I think the book will be in good shape by fall, and I'll start looking for small publisher or short story collection prize. But, heck, maybe no one will want it. I might just put it out myself, eventually.

Happy Cobra Books has a second book in the design stage. It's a collection of stories by three writers: Chelsea Martin, Catherine Lacey, and Ellen Kennedy. I'll sew together 50 of those, give most to the writers, and then release the pdf book a little later. I make really ugly designs for really good interviews that I edit for Hobart, and there are a couple more of those in the works. Justin Dobbs and Blake Butler are collaborating on something for me. I'm also hoping to get a couple of short essays from my friends Josh Billings and Seth Pollins, but they are in the thick of their MFA work, and are likely pretty busy right now. I told Tao I'd like him to make a graphic novel for me. We'll see. Maybe only one or two of those things will happen.

THERE'S A RAT IN THE HOUSE...

Welcome to The Elegant Variation Vermin!

Most of you know me as the host of the irregular and irreverent reading series in the dark heart of L.A.'s Chinatown, Vermin on the Mount. At our most recent gathering, it was my pleasure to celebrate the publication of Harry, Revised with a small party. Mark served as guest curator and I relinquished my duties for the evening and now I get return the favor by guest blogging while Mark is on tour.

So what can you expect? There will be no posts about drug fiends in tight shorts professional cycling, James Bond, or The Beatles. I've got some book reviews and interviews that I'll share with you throughout the week organized around the theme of Good Things in Small Packages. In other words, I'm going to take a look at some books that are unusually small in terms of scope, genre, form and/or size. Books that defy conventions, are hard to classify, or just plain strange.

I'll also speak with some publishers and editors, share a long list with you, and reveal my all time favorite book in the Good Things in Small Packages category.

First, a remarkable short novel as haunting as Camus's The Stranger...

TEV GUEST REVIEW (AND INTERVIEW): PAMELA ERENS’S THE UNDERSTORY

The Understory
By Pamela Erens
Ironweed Press
142 pp
$11.95

GUEST REVIEW BY JIM RULAND

Don’t be fooled by The Understory’s low page count or the fact that it begins at a Buddhist monastery in rural Vermont. Pamela Erens’s novel is a letter bomb of a book, pulsing with savage potency. Its elegant prose, deliberate descriptions, and unhurried pace mask the sinister sensibilities percolating within the protagonist.

The Understory describes Jack Gorse’s eviction from his apartment in New York City. For most novels, this would mark the beginning of the story, but here it comprises the entire narrative arc. Erens reveals the details with care and deliberation so that we can absorb the implications—even though they elude the protagonist.

Gorse is a strange fellow ruled by obsessions. A former lawyer, he spends his days reading books and wandering New York’s Central Park, but he’s anything but carefree. His days are ordered by a rigorous schedule to which he is compelled to adhere. His interests--from horticulture to twins—invariably become subjects of intense infatuation. When a friendly architect who has been hired to renovate Gorse’s building makes an uncharacteristically kind gesture, Gorse unwittingly draws him into his web.

Because his compulsive behavior feels normal to Gorse, it feels normal to the reader as well – in much the same way that Meursault’s actions in Camus’s The Stranger seem exceedingly ordinary even when they are not. Gorse’s restless imagination provides the reader with a plethora of information about a wide range of subjects even as it drives the story to its grim conclusion. The Understory is both an ode to New York City and a psychological portrait of a life on the margins.

QUIZTUNES FOR PAMELA ERENS

TEV: Tell me about The Understory's path to publication.

PE: It has to have been one of the least auspicious ever, except maybe for that Confederacy of Dunces guy who killed himself. At least I'm still walking around.

When I look now at the manuscript that I sent around, if I were an agent I wouldn't have accepted it either. I got a lot of what I'd call "the nice letter" from agents. You know, "beautifully written, blah blah." But no takers. So I started to submit directly to small presses. Ironweed Press was running a competition that offered a contract and a small advance as the prize. I entered and won. I was lucky the competition judge saw something in the work.

By that point, I'd had some real time away from the manuscript, and I think my craft developed a lot during that period. My editor had some suggestions for revisions, and when I went back to the work I just tore it apart. I saw more and more that I wanted or needed to do. The revision kept taking longer and longer, but my editor was willing to wait and was open to all the changes. In the end, I had pretty much written a brand-new book.

TEV: Your protagonist spends an enviable amount of time in Central Park. Do you share his passion for the place?

PE: I love Central Park. I lived in New York City for many years and every day I walked from the West Side to the East Side through the Park to my job. The story of the creation of Central Park is incredibly inspiring, and part of that story is told in the novel. It's one of the rare examples of the right thing getting done against all the odds. That the city would agree to take a huge swath of prime real estate during a building and population explosion and set it aside for the recreational use of poor and rich alike--that's amazing. There were so many chances for the project to be derailed and it managed not to be derailed. The making of Central Park was extremely expensive and extremely challenging and extremely time-consuming. And now it is and for 150 years has been a beautiful expanse of of walks and lawns and bridges and flowers and trees and hills and secluded areas.

TEV: Gorse knows a great deal about horticulture. Did you have to learn what Gorse knows or are you a green thumb yourself?

PE: I'm a big faker. The plant world interests me, and I love the woods and this time of year on the East Coast when the cherry blossoms and azaleas and lilacs all bust out. But my actual knowledge is sketchy. I did a good bit of research for the book. My husband is a gardener, and some things I got from watching him or asking him. I just always felt that Gorse would have this passion that combines the natural/sensual and the analytical. The analytical part is his preoccupation with taxonomy, the way plants are categorized.

TEV: The world comes at Gorse through smells and sounds and he's in tune with the cycle of the seasons. Despite the fact that he spends his days reading and studying, he's animalistic in a way that's almost primitive. Was this your intention?

PE: I never thought of it in exactly that way, but I like how you put it. Yes, there's a contrast there. I think it has to do with the fact that Gorse lives, in his own words, "close to the ground" and without a lot of technology.

It's probably impossible for a human being to live without some sort of sensual life. Human contact and human sensuality are too threatening for Gorse, but he's able to enjoy touch and sight and smells through his connection to plants. He pays very close attention to plants--the same attention people will pay to a lover.

TEV: One of my favorite movies is Barton Fink and what makes the film so entertaining to watch over and over again are the facial expressions of the other characters whenever Barton goes off on one of his rants. It underscores that gap between how he sees himself and how he is perceived by others. One of the fascinating things about Gorse is that his mind appears quite orderly, but the reactions of those around him suggest that something's not quite right.

PE: I saw that movie a long time ago, and you've made me want to go back and watch it again. I'm glad the novel had that effect on you. That's what I wanted--for readers to glean things about Gorse from how other people react to him. At the same time I didn't want it to be indisputable that something's "wrong" with Gorse. There's that scene where he goes into the bookstore and the owner kicks him out. We never know why. We never know if there really is something disgusting about Gorse's physical presence, or whether the owner mistook him for someone else or was crazy himself. The important thing for me in that scene is the way Gorse reacted--it made him perceive something criminal in himself. Another person would have brushed off the insult as absurd, or would have gotten angry.

TEV: That's very true because in the middle of the book, a Buddhist monk counsels Gorse: "There's nothing more interesting, is there, than everyday life. Mistakes, oversights, misunderstandings. Every day we testify against ourselves." The key to the book, and to Gorse, is right there, but he doesn't really grasp it, does he?

PE: No, and that's the point, isn't it? All of us constantly overlook the clues we're leaking. As Gorse describes his various daily activities, the reader can presumably see some of the impulses, needs, and conflicts that drive him, but he isn't always aware of them. But I'm not entirely sure that having been more aware would have led to a different outcome. I'm a bit pessimistic that way.

TEV: You were recently named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. What's next?

PE: I'm working on two new novels, toggling between them, which may be a really stupid idea. I guess I'll find out. One is another novel for adults and one I see as a young adult novel. I've wanted to see if I can write a book for pre-teens and younger teenagers without sacrificing anything in emotional depth or resonance of language. The ideal would be a book that younger readers would enjoy but that adults could find up to snuff, too. I'm thinking of the way that Carson McCuller's The Member of the Wedding is read by junior high school students but reveals its full gorgeousness only to an adult. Sounder is another "kid's" book I read recently that just blew me away with its beauty. I think it's incredibly difficult to write a novel that can work on both the older-kid and adult levels. I'd love to pull it off.

As for The Understory, it would be nice to believe that the nomination will help more readers make their way to the novel. You never know, though. It's a small-press book. People have to dig a little to find it.

REMINDER

This week I am in Portland, New York and Boston and so will only be posting intermittently from the road.  But Jim Ruland has some real goodies lined up for the week, so do make sure to check in on what he's doing.  Hope to continue to see you all out there on the road.  I only wish I had time to swing by Philadelphia, too (if only to say thank you in person).  Dispatches and updates to follow.

TEV GIVEAWAY: THE WAR AGAINST CLICHE

One of our recent commentors challenged us for having joined the Martin Amis "pile-on."  We respectfully challenge that assertion on a few levels, the key being that "pile-on" has a connotation of an unfair wrong perpetrated against a defenseless creature.  If there is a critical mass of folks criticizing Amis (and we're scarcely alone), we suspect it has a good deal to do with the frequency and the idiocy of his public pronouncements on global politics.  Now, to some extent, this is unsurprising.  Anyone who even skimmed Amis's risible Koba the Dread came away with a sense that when Amis ventured into global politics, he was on decidedly unsure footing.

But what makes it all the more disappointing (for us, at least) is as a measure of how far he's fallen.  Although he might attribute his lapses to "thought experiments," we continue to come across tin-eared sound bite after tin-eared sound bite from a man who has so publicly and intelligently declared war on the cliche - cliches that now constitute his armaments.  Put another way, if his literary criticism weren't so goddammned wonderful, his recent foolishness wouldn't disturb us quite as much as it does.  But he is capable of wondrousness.  Consider, for example, his wonderful review of Underworld, included in his magnificent collection The War Against Cliche:

''Underworld'' surges with magisterial confidence through time (the last half century) and through space (Harlem, Phoenix, Vietnam, Kazakstan, Texas, the Bronx), mingling fictional characters with various heroes of cultural history (Sinatra, Hoover, Lenny Bruce). But its true loci are ''the white spaces on the map,'' the test sites, and its main actors are psychological ''downwinders,'' victims of the fallout from all the blasts -- blasts actual and imagined. DeLillo, the poet of paranoia and the ''world hum,'' pursues his theme unstridently; he is tenacious without being tendentious. Yet even his portraits of bland, hopeful, pre-postmodern American life -- his Americana -- glow with the sick light of betrayal, of innocence traduced or abused. The ''great thrown shadow'' has now receded and terror has returned to the merely local. MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) was exploded; and the bombs did not detonate. Still, the press-ganged children who wore the dog tags must live with a discontinuity in their minds and hearts. DeLillo's prologue is called ''The Triumph of Death,'' after the Breughel painting. In the end, death didn't triumph. It just ruled, for 50 years. I take DeLillo to be saying that all our better feelings took a beating during those decades. An ambient mortal fear constrained us. Love, even parental love, got harder to do.

Breathtaking.  From there, we've somehow come around to "Islam must get its house in order."  Hence our profound and continued irritation with the 2008 edition of Martin Amis.  He has, it seems, fallen on the battleground of his own war against cliche.

But we prefer our fond memories of the Amis continued in this volume (and in Experience), and so we are happy to offer up a lovely hardcover edition of this excellent collection of literary essays for your enjoyment.  Rules, rules, rules.  We'll take all emails, subject line "A HIT OR AMIS" (ouch, sorry), until 9 p.m. PST.  Please include your full mailing address, and previous winners are ineligible.  We'll turn to the RNG to select a winner and post the details when we're back from the trip.

TOUR DISPATCH: SEATTLE

Checking in very quickly from a pleasant cafe near the University of Washington on my only two-fer day of the tour - I had morning event in Pleasanton and I read tonight here in Seattle.  But I wanted to send you over to the Powells Blog, where I recently answered a question sent over by the wonderful folks there - namely, tell us something you're passionate about.  My answer - which has nothing to do with books - is up there now.

Elsewhere, Time Out New York gives Harry a little bit of love.

Finally, two items of note.  Next week, as I am tooling around the US, TEV guest host/reviewer/interviewer Jim Ruland has a load of interviews, reviews and other surprises planned.  Those who know him will attest that Jim always shows you a good time, so please do make him welcome.

Also, tomorrow's giveaway (yes, I will manage them even from the road) will address the Martin Amis question that continues to roil the backblog, so do come on by.

THURSDAY MARGINALIA: THE "ON THE ROAD" EDITION

* Yann Martel's Life of Pi has captured Abe Books' Best of the Booker survey, edging out Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

* LA City Beat calls Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends "a treasure trove of intriguing and revealing looks at where Chabon goes to make up his worlds and how he tells his fables of the reconstruction."

* Steve Wasserman's book review section for Truthdig - to which we have proudly contributed - has won a Maggie Award.

* Martin Amis is collaborating on a screenplay adaptation of London Fields.  (We support any venture that prevents him from holding forth on geopolitics.)

Amis is working on the screenplay with Roberta Hanley, co-founder of Muse Productions, the film production company behind indie hits such as as The Virgin Suicides, Buffalo 66 and American Psycho. It's a good fit for Amis's novel, which was omitted from the Booker prize shortlist in 1989 amid fierce debate after two of the prize's judges deemed it misogynistic. The novel centres on the character of Nicola Six, a femme fatale who foresees the exact date and manner of her own death in a dream. Not knowing who the future "murderer" might be, she manipulates three potential candidates - crook Keith Talent, rich banker Guy Clinch and terminally ill American author Samson Young - into meeting at the Black Cross pub in west London's Portobello Road for her impending death.

* We propose a moratorium on the designation "unknown writer" which seems, will, sort of cold.  D. Hooijer is, presumably, known to her publishers, readers and even family.  And now she's won a big, fat prize.

* Always worth your time - the wonderful Laila Lalami on Thomas McCarthy at The Nation.

* Serious props to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.  In an era when books struggle to be reviewed at all, they actually return to Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero to give it a second consideration, which puts us in mind of something we believe John Freeman recently said, to the effect that Tree of Smoke deserved more than the usual milisecond of critical consideration given the time that went into its creation.  And, it turns out, in this case the reviewer in question is pleased.  (OK, it's short, but it's the thought that counts.)

* Ngugi wa Mirii, who was recently killed in a car accident, is remembered in an allAfrica.com editorial.

As a culture worker and artist, writer, playwright, and film-maker, Ngugi wa Mirii encouraged personal introspection and dynamic thinking which he hoped would contribute to African unity through social and cultural ideas.

"The musicians must of necessity compose lyrics that not only entertain but should educate and inform, the playwrights must dramatise the drama of life, journalists should report without fear or favour. Novelists, actors, film-makers are called upon to shed light through historical analysis," he wrote.

* And, finally - James Bond reads Benjamin Black.  Who can resist?  We sure can't.

TRAVEL DAY

I'm on the road now, first to San Francisco and then Seattle, for some readings.  I will update as opportunities present from the road, but in the meantime, topping the list of things far worse than recent travails, a writer could have his mother talking smack about him day and night to the press, which is exactly what Madame Houellebecq continues to do, to anyone who will listen:

Then, in 1998, when Houellebecq was at the height of his fame, she says she stumbled upon an article about him winning a literary prize for Atomised. (In the photo he was wearing "the same anorak he had been wearing for years".) She went to a bookshop, picked up Atomised and was furious. "I said, 'Fuck, it's not true.' He described me as a kind of whore, kept by I don't know what American. That's slander. All my life I've toiled to earn money for other people. I want him to apologise. If I was law-suit minded, I would have sued him and won."

I'm not expecting problems, but MOTEV is bound and gagged in the cellar for the duration.  Just to be safe.  (She's Austrian.  It makes a certain kind of sense.)

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING?

A self-published author is among the finalists for the Frank O'Connor international short story prize.

Jhumpa Lahiri's latest collection, Unaccustomed Earth, recently topped the US book charts and has been immediately pegged as the frontrunner. But the prize for the year's best short story collection in English has a record of rewarding new talent over established names - so Mary Rochford's self-published volume, Gilded Shadows should not be written off too quickly.

The article includes the complete long list, which features the likes of Benjamin Percy, Jim Shepard and Anne Enright.

INDIAN CLERK IN THE NEWS

David Leavitt's wonderful The Indian Clerk - to which we recently devoted an entire week - is a PEN/Faulkner award finalist.

Although a novelist who chooses real people and events has much of the details already available, Leavitt finds that "the main challenge to that kind of book is to write about a world you were not around to witness. You can't rely on your sensory experience as you can with a contemporary novel. Still, it's fun to imagine what it was like."

The ceremony will be held on Saturday in Washington, D.C.

PANT, PANT

Clearly, there's a pattern emerging here and it's likely to afflict us throughout May - book signing the night before, mad delayed scramble to get posts up the next day.  We've got to make a quick DMV-related court appearance (speeding, traffic school) and then we'll be back here posting away in the late morning.  Until then, drive safely ...

LA TIMES & READINGS

You've probably already seen this Q&A in today's LA Times Calendar section but linking to it is a good excuse to remind you to pop out to Vroman's this evening and say hi.  And if you are a westsider, please do make the extra effort to come support Village Books in the Palisades tomorrow - I don't think I can bear losing another westside independent.  Details here.

DEPARTMENT OF GOOD THINGS HAPPENING TO NICE PEOPLE

We are pleased as punch to note that our dear friend Maud Newton has won second prize in Narrative Magazine's 2008 Love Story Contest for her story Conversations You Have At Twenty.  You can see what she has to say about it here.

COULD WE, PERHAPS, KEEP OUR RESPONSES TO OURSELVES?

Let us all share a collective tear for Martin Amis who, according to the Globe and Mail, is "feeling vulnerable" ...

Amis sighs, or least lets out an exasperated breath. He's had more public lashings than most critics have had free lunches, and you sense this latest won't finish him off. “Is the discourse so limited?” he asks. “Is there not room for this? I make no recommendations in this book, I propose no actions. This is just the novelist in the street having a response to an enormous development.”

NOBODY SAYS "FATUOUS" QUITE LIKE A NABOKOV

Dmitri Nabokov sits for a New York Times interview to discuss his decision to publish The Original of Laura.

Why would your father have wanted “Laura” destroyed?

In a calmer moment, if he were no longer in a race against death to complete the work, I think, sincerely, that he would not. By the same token, if one wants to finish something before dying, one perseveres to the utmost, rather than destroying it. This should be an obvious answer to a rather fatuous question some have posed: Why didn’t he burn it well ahead of time and have done with it?

CRACE ARCHIVES TO AUSTIN

The archives of Jim Crace - author of TEV favorite Being Dead - have been acquired by The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

The archive contains all of Crace's manuscripts, not just of his novels but of stories, plays and essays. The collection also includes notes and outlines for works, reviews, trade journals, radio plays, art work, recordings, press clippings, juvenilia, correspondence and a proposal for two novels, "The Finalist" and "Archipelago."

The juvenilia bit is especially interesting just now as we've been considering a garage purge and are agonizing over what to keep.  How many writers, we wonder, keep everything?  Are you hoarder or a streamliner?  Advice and perspectives welcome.

DEEP BREATH

We are totally fried from a wonderful weekend of book fun, including Saturday night's Skylight reading and last night's Vermin on the Mount launch, which featured some truly memorable readings by Marisa Silver, Marianne Meyerhoff and Teresa Carmody.  Many thanks to all those who attended.

There's plenty of literary news beyond the Times, but we're completely exhausted from celebrating, so posts will be delayed until around lunch.  Until then, however, David Milofsky namechecks a few familiar blogs in his column on what the web can offer to the future of reviewing, but of special note is the attention he pays to the Barnes and Noble review:

Perhaps the most significant new outlet for reviews is the Barnes & Noble Review, which was launched just last October. In addition to being more nicely designed, the Review has the added advantage of many brick-and-mortar B&N bookstores to help promote it.

Jim Mustich, editor in chief of the B&N Review, said in an e-mail message, "We run one new 1,000- word review every weekday. In addition, we also review six titles in our Spotlight section and feature 50 titles with brief annotations in our Long List Section."

We've said it before, we'll say it again - this is the future, so pay attention.  Back in a few hours, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

TEV GIVEAWAY: HIS ILLEGAL SELF

Now, it's true as some of you might recall, that we didn't exactly love Peter Carey's His Illegal Self and we more or less said so (albeit respectfully) in the Dallas Morning News.  But plenty of others did love it and, after all, every review is just one person's opinion.  And we know there is no shortage of Peter Carey fans out there - among whom we would still happily stand and be counted - and so we're pleased to offer a copy of His Illegal Self for this week's TEV giveaway.  Here's what James Wood had to say in the New Yorker:

Carey’s often beautiful novel, one of his best recent works, has the bruising tang of all his fiction, in which crooked colloquialism (frequently Australian vernacular), and poetic formality combine. The result is brilliantly vital: the world bulges out of the sentences. A man is described as “not hurrying, but prancy in bare feet.” A boy feels “squiffy in the stomach.” A beat-up car has a “busted sunken boneless backseat.”An Upper East Side matron brings back to her apartment her “powdery friends from the English-Speaking Union.” An Australian shack has a veranda “where bats hung like broken rags.” When the novel’s heroine is unhappy, her mouth turns down: “She didn’t know he saw that, the way the whole of her lower face could lose its bones.”

And so, you know the drill.  Drop us an email, subject line "WHAT THE HECK DO YOU KNOW, ANYWAY?"  Please be sure to include your full mailing address and, yes, previous winners are once again ineligible.  (We forgot that one last time.)  We'll take all entries until 7 p.m. PST and then the Random Number Generator will do the deed.

Until then, please do check out the post below and try to come by for one of the Harry, Revised events around town this weekend.

UPDATE: The RNG anoints Cheryl Klein of Los Angeles - congratulations!

TOUR BEGINS

Well, the official Harry, Revised tour gets underway these weekend with four events here in town before I hit the road, and I'm hoping to see as many of you as possible.  Here's the skinny:

For Hollywood and Central L.A. - I'm kicking off the tour with a reading at Skylight Books on Saturday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m.  I hear there might be cupcakes in the house ...

For Pasadena and the Eastside - I'll be reading at the venerable Vroman's on Monday, May 5 at 7 p.m. 

For the Westside - I will be reading right here in my home neighborhood on Tuesday May 6, when I appear at Village Books in the Palisades at 7:30 p.m.  I'd like to make a special pleading to my westside friends and readers - Village Books has been having a rough time of it, and we can't afford to lose another westside bookstore.  The Palisades only seems far - it's really just up the hill from Santa Monica.  And I was in there today and they have a nice big pile of books waiting for you - so please, all of you in Venice, Palms, the Marina, Brentwood, Santa Monica - do make the extra effort for them.

The Launch Party - And all of you, no matter what part of town you live in, are invited to a very special installment of Vermin on the Mount, which Jim Ruland has rechristened Vermin, Revised. There is a great lineup of really interesting readers who I had a hand in selecting - Marisa Silver, Marianne Meyerhoff and Teresa Carmody.  The wonderful artwork is below, and I'm told there will be cake and all sorts of planned merriment and embarrassment, so please do come on out to celebrate on Sunday night.

Details on all the tour stops can be found here.  I'm off to the races ...

THURSDAY MARGINALIA

* The only drag about starting up a book tour now is missing the wonderful PEN World Voices festival in New York.  Fortunately, MetaxuCafe is rounding up the reports.

* NPR speaks to Dmitri Nabokov about The Original of Laura.

* Good things happening to nice people: Ron Currie, Jr. wins the Young Lions Award.

The end of the evening brought us back to the reason for being there. Ron Currie, Jr., won for his novel God is Dead, and he hugged his mom for a