tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81812041397209440372012-02-02T17:50:36.846-08:00Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.comBlogger811100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-43692973578300931472012-02-02T17:50:00.000-08:002012-02-02T17:50:36.861-08:00

Philip Glass: In order to arrive at a personal style, you have to have a technique to begin with... You have to have a place to make the choices from.  If you don't have a basis on which to make the choice, then you don't have a style at all. You have a series of accidents. The difficulty we have is...you get to a certain point and...spend the rest of your life changing gears in the same way

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-48572619208991039762012-01-26T20:16:00.000-08:002012-01-26T20:17:56.067-08:00

The shelves of books we haven't written, like those of the books we haven't read, stretch out into the darkness of the universal library's farthest space. We are always at the beginning of the beginning of the letter A. -Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-35884264660311470062012-01-16T09:15:00.000-08:002012-01-16T09:15:06.529-08:00

"To write down one's impressions of Hamlet as one reads it year after year would be virtually to record one's own autobiography, for as we know more of life, so Shakespeare comments upon what we know." -Virginia Woolf, "Charlotte Brontë"

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-76140202068503162722012-01-04T20:58:00.000-08:002012-01-04T20:58:50.533-08:00

I am very excited to announce that my novel, Shadow Man: A Biography of Lewis Miles Archer, will be published this November by Civil Coping Mechanisms.  [The picture above is me, entering Stockton Tunnel at the bottom of Burritt Alley in San Francisco, where Miles Archer's body is discovered in The Maltese Falcon. More to come.]

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-90672910766906826372011-12-28T11:34:00.000-08:002011-12-28T11:34:01.612-08:00

It is true that you can't get from form to content, but it is also true that without form, content cannot emerge. When it comes to formulating a proposition, form comes first; forms are generative not of specific meanings, but of the very possibility of meaning. Despite the familiar proverb, it's not the thought that counts. Form, form, form, and only form is the road to what classical

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-90255026005884741082011-12-22T14:20:00.000-08:002011-12-22T14:20:12.299-08:00

The shaded, gray area indicates the intersection of sets A and B.

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-10088439299523305742011-12-21T08:59:00.000-08:002011-12-21T08:59:15.852-08:00

The loop might be best thought of as a Möbius strip.

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-48337647683164640972011-12-20T07:33:00.000-08:002011-12-20T07:35:55.121-08:00

[Not pictured: Walter Pidgeons]

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-959415313360781822011-10-09T14:53:00.000-07:002012-01-16T09:15:32.697-08:00

The first issue of Uncanny Valley is out, featuring work from Brian Oliu, Tim Dicks, Roxane Gay, Laura LeHew, Roxanne Carter, Samuel Smith, Robert Alan Wendeborn, Candra Kolodziej, Rachel Adams, and Blake Butler, as well as my short fiction, "An Interpretive History of Addition." The print edition is really, really nice, with a format similar to Re/Search (or the sadly defunct Your Flesh

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-77210376459103560462011-09-28T19:06:00.000-07:002011-12-20T07:34:10.976-08:00

I am very excited to announce that my collection of essays and fictions, Critique of Pure Reason, will be published by Noemi Press in the fall of 2012. Already, a blurb: "Dry, obscure, in conflict with all customary concepts and also wayward." -Immanuel Kant

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-57702232167833129052011-09-24T13:54:00.000-07:002011-09-24T13:54:04.862-07:00

Environments are not passive wrappings, but are, rather, active processes which are invisible. The groundrules, pervasive structure, and over-all patterns of environments elude easy perception. Anti-environments, or countersituations made by artists, provide means of direct attention and enable us to see and understand more clearly.  -Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-82532769747546175242011-09-15T09:30:00.000-07:002011-09-15T09:30:02.133-07:00

September's issue of The Collagist marks my one-year anniversary as book review editor, and I couldn't be prouder of all the smart, often beautiful reviews I've been fortunate to edit; of course, the reviewers did all of the work and deserve all of the credit. So, in alphabetical order, my sincere thanks to: Greg Bem Jeremy Benson Josh Billings Paula Bomer Adam Parker Cogbill David Cotrone

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-22659251394064856422011-08-26T09:39:00.000-07:002011-08-26T09:39:36.821-07:00

My essay-in-tweets, "A Crackle of Crickets," about the short career of Buddy Holly's replacement in the Crickets, David Box, appears in Housefire Publishing's Nouns of Assemblage alongside work from a truly exemplary list of writers: Matthew Simmons, J. A. Tyler, Megan Lent, Robert Duncan Gray, Caitlin Laura Galway, Tyler Gobble, Jarrid Deaton, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Matty Byloos, Colleen

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-26023248917004498022011-08-22T10:59:00.000-07:002011-08-22T10:59:59.287-07:00

There's something comforting, almost soothing, about realism, and it's nothing to do with shocks of recognition -- well it wouldn't, since shocks never console -- or even with the familiarity that breeds content, so as much as with the fact that the realistic world, in literature, at least, is one that, from a certain perspective, always makes sense, even in its bum deals and tragedies, inasmuch

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-76020074063194728732011-08-10T13:33:00.000-07:002012-01-16T09:15:51.832-08:00

The new double issue of Puerto del Sol (Vol. 46, No. 1 & 2) is out, featuring a reprint of my story, "A Night at the Opera."† As befits a double issue, I also have a review of Lance Olsen's Calendar of Regrets in it, and since I've already excerpted "A Night at the Opera" here, I'll give you a taste of the review instead: The discomfort of the traveler is inbuilt with meter and rhythm. Why

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-49274881374712123242011-08-02T08:57:00.000-07:002011-08-02T08:57:03.736-07:00

Each fiction contaminates the imaginary purity of everyday life by denying the privileged authority of immediate, lived context and that context's subsequent "authenticity" of experience.Because fiction "occurs" in a world simultaneous to and "outside" everyday life, it interrupts the narrativity, the linearity of that life. The weaving of fictive genres throughout this linearity lends to

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-36672816843865082292011-07-23T15:50:00.000-07:002011-07-23T15:50:56.191-07:00

Tim Horvath is Necessary Fiction's Writer in Residence this month, and his project is to "bring to you some writers who are playing with science in their work, but also, of course, with things other than science." I am lucky to be one of those writers; Tim very generously asked me to contribute a story AND to do an interview with him, and both are now up. The interview deals with a story that was

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-83331435782600715802011-06-28T09:55:00.000-07:002012-01-16T09:16:18.896-08:00

My short fiction, "Solve for x, when x is an integer such that x>0," is up now at JMWW, part of their summer 2011 issue, unfortunately the last for flash fiction editor John Madera. John has assembled some awesome issues, and I am so pleased to be in such great company: Cooper Renner, Andrew Borgstrom, Luca Dipierro & Leni Zumas, John Dermot Woods, David Peak, Michael Leong, Ken Sparling, Davis

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-91101155346258302322011-06-24T09:54:00.000-07:002011-06-24T09:54:16.294-07:00

From Mike Meginnis, at the Uncanny Valley blog: It's been almost a year since Gabriel Blackwell first sent me this wild, funny, strange, rich story. In the time since then, he has slowly, painstakingly reinvented its form with a series of additions: YouTube videos, audio recordings, old-school ads, and general strangeness. Neverland uses the medium in which it exists more extensively than

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-91903017887655889572011-06-20T13:43:00.000-07:002011-06-20T13:43:02.719-07:00

Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is not spinning webs or building dams, but telling stories, and more particularly concocting and controlling the story we tell others -- and ourselves -- about who we are. And just as spiders don't have to think, consciously and deliberately, about how to spin their webs, and just as beavers, unlike professional human

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-75199773992344146072011-06-01T08:12:00.000-07:002011-06-01T08:13:52.312-07:00

My fiction, "The Whistle of the Knife-Sharpener," a cutup of William S. Burroughs's 1985 introduction to Queer, the epilogue to Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and a few other things, was published today in Super Arrow 4. Here's a bit from the beginning: We—who are we? I was born in 1914 to a large fortune; my wife could not have said the same—we were down

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-26923392373306414712011-05-26T22:21:00.000-07:002011-05-26T22:21:07.294-07:00

My contributions to Short Story Month 2011 came in the form of a series of posts at the Uncanny Valley blog. If for some reason you actually want to read these things, here is a list of the four posts, one for each week of May: The Way Things Work, The Way Things Don't Collection and Collections The Genres of Length The Shape of Short Fiction Thanks to Mike and Tracy Meginnis for allowing

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-79312360157503625702011-05-17T12:16:00.000-07:002011-05-17T12:16:58.728-07:00

Conjunctions 56: Terra Incognita is out and, as always with Conjunctions, is spectacular. My story "The I and the It" appears alongside work from Benjamin Hale, Susan Steinberg, James Morrow, Kyra Simone, Howard Norman, Stephen Marche, Cathy Park Hong, Kathryn Davis, Charles Bernstein, Alexandra Kleeman, Joanna Scott, Donald Revell, Jonathan Carroll, Tim Horvath, Nomi Eve, Andrew Zawacki, Robert

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-23731011761081050702011-05-09T17:34:00.000-07:002011-05-09T17:34:45.171-07:00

Robert Lopez, author of two fantastic novels (Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River) and the collection of short fiction Asunder, was kind enough to ask me to participate in his "No News Today" project. My contribution went up today, joining entries from a host of incredible writers. Thanks to Robert for including my (non)fiction on tanning booths, starlight, and the law of the

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-32825468595132578542011-05-03T08:33:00.000-07:002011-05-03T08:33:13.406-07:00

Isn't it that one wants a thing to be as factual as possible, and yet at the same time as deeply suggestive or deeply unlocking of ares of sensation other than simple illustrating of the object that you set out to do? Isn't that what art is all about? -Francis Bacon

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-87856383754366964942011-04-20T07:23:00.000-07:002011-04-20T07:23:05.401-07:00

The phone rang and he stood up. But it was only a birthday telegram arriving. The postmistress wrote it down and confirmed it word by word. Bloch walked back and forth. One of the mailmen had returned from his route and was now loudly reporting to the girl. Bloch sat down. Outside on the street, now that it was early afternoon, there was no distraction. Bloch had become impatient but did not show

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-83459644622044727072011-04-04T14:32:00.000-07:002011-04-04T14:33:26.188-07:00

I am curating a new weekly series over at Smalldoggies Magazine called One Note. In it, I ask my favorite writers what they're reading and why they're reading it. Response so far has been terrific, with Notes from Jamie Iredell, Shya Scanlon, Evan Lavender-Smith, Amber Sparks, and Amanda Goldblatt. I've got a lot of fine writers lined up for the weeks ahead, so be sure to check in every

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-10842738858246572362011-04-01T10:52:00.000-07:002011-04-01T10:52:58.005-07:00

 On April 9th, Dzanc will be hosting its second annual National Workshop Day, with workshops in 20+ cities all over the country. Most workshops are just $30, and are being taught by a variety of professional writers and editors, in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. Sign up today!   And The Collagist is taking submissions for our first chapbook contest

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-13972640040072268462011-02-28T06:39:00.000-08:002011-02-28T06:39:22.835-08:00

Issue 11.1 of DIAGRAM is out, featuring Hybrid Essay Contest Winner Peter Jay Shippy, as well as Jon Cotner & Andy Fitch, Tamiko Beyer, Eleza Jaeger, Jeff Alessandrelli, Lightsey Darst, Keith Leonard, André Braga Cabral, Paul Cunningham, Jesse Priest, Simon Perchik, Meghan Martin, Rebecca Elliott, Kevin McClellan & Steve DeMaio, and Thomas Patrick Levy. My (non)fiction, "Latitude 33° 11' North,

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-66942157626092951822011-01-28T09:28:00.000-08:002011-01-28T09:28:25.302-08:00

Puerto del Sol Volume 45, Issue 2 is out and shipping! Incredible new work from Michael Martone, Rachel B. Glaser, Rick Moody, Grace Krilanovich, Robert Lopez & Samuel Ligon, Joshua Cohen, Brian Conn, S. J. Culver, Masha Tupitsyn, a play from Sam Pink, an interview with Danielle Dutton courtesy of Angela Stubbs, poetry from Samantha Stiers, Erik Anderson, Sarah Blackman, Abraham Smith, Jenny

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-7619106770382084412011-01-24T14:18:00.000-08:002011-01-24T14:18:40.091-08:00

My erasure of the first postulates of Charles Fort's Book of the Damned, "  OK THE DAMNED," is now up at On Earth As It Is, a wonderful collection of prayer narratives curated by Matthew Simmons and Bryan Furuness. The site also features some beautiful work from Brian Oliu, Matthew Olzmann, Amy Minton, Matthew Specktor, Ken Baumann, Melissa Broder, Alicia Jo Rabins, Aaron Burch, Kirsty Logan,

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-38748041154185712742011-01-21T10:20:00.000-08:002011-01-21T10:20:57.297-08:00

Issue 18 of The Collagist is up! Fiction from Michelle Latiolais, Roberta Allen, Nick Kocz & Jenniey Tallman, and Jensen Beach. Poetry from Melissa Broder, Laura Van Prooyen, Gary L. McDowell, and Daniel D'Angelo. Nonfiction from Kyle Beachy. Novel excerpts from Bradford Morrow's The Diviner's Tale and Roy Kesey's Pacazo. And reviews of Gretchen Dane Mazur's Hinges by Amy Minton, John Brandon's

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-16086105065433983152011-01-05T08:25:00.000-08:002011-01-05T08:25:02.647-08:00

I realized there was no hurry to do anything-- it's always enough to tell one story, shoot one film, or paint one picture at a time for all pictures and stories to be present. Behind every work of art there are two things intermingling, each referring to the other: the face of the author, the features of which are drawn from the universe at large, and the universe, which appears in the mirror of

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-85573834424229165382010-12-15T10:36:00.000-08:002010-12-15T10:36:25.292-08:00

The Collagist Issue 17 is live, and it's a fantastic issue. There's fiction from Brian Kubarycz, Susan McCarty, Mike Young, and Jarrett Haley, poetry from Jenny George, Keith Montesano, Justin Bigos, and Bruce Cohen, nonfiction from Rachel Yoder, excerpts from Mathias Énard's Zone, Nadia Kalman's The Cosmopolitans, and Thaddeus Rutkowski's Haywire, and book reviews from Charles Holdefer (Andrew

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-47977801491660100832010-11-30T06:32:00.000-08:002010-11-30T06:32:53.959-08:00

 My "Story (with Dog)" is up at Metazen today. Here is the first postulate: @font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } IF a character A exists SUCH THAT character

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-46719530372154993082010-11-15T05:51:00.000-08:002010-11-15T05:52:40.529-08:00

Issue 16 of The Collagist is out now. A Classic Reprint of Amy Hempel's story "The Most Girl Part of You," introduced by Blake Butler Fiction from Andrew Borgstrom, Erik Anderson, Kellie Wells, and Gavin Pate. Poetry from Maya Janson, David James, A. Van Jordan, and Cathy Linh Che. A Novel excerpt from Charles Dodd White's Lambs of Men. Nonfiction from Chad Simpson. And reviews of Frederick

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-46870482696570606792010-11-10T06:18:00.000-08:002010-11-10T06:18:58.657-08:00

From Ferdydurke: How different would be the attitude of a man who, instead of saturating himself with the phraseology of a million conceptualist metaphysician-aestheticians, looked at the world with new eyes and allowed himself to feel the enormous influence which form has on human life. If he still wanted to use his fountain-pen, he would do so, not in order to become a great writer and create

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-52162792150399729862010-10-22T08:11:00.000-07:002010-10-22T08:11:19.149-07:00

Praise this world to the Angel, not the unutterable one. You cannot impress him with the splendor you've felt, for in the heaven of heavens, where he feels so sublimely, you're but a beginner. Show him some simple thing, then, that's been changed in its passage through human ages till it lives in our hands, in the shine of our eyes, as a part of ourselves. Tell him things. He'll stand more

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-90827239653522790532010-10-15T17:27:00.000-07:002010-10-15T17:27:27.940-07:00

October's issue of The Collagist is now live, featuring fiction from Mary Hamilton, Ryan Call, Eric Bosse, and Lito Elio Porto, poetry from Hilary Varner, Ross White, Matthew Nienow, and Traci Brimhall/Brynn Saito, nonfiction from Jeneva Stone and Amy Holwerda, an excerpt from Peter Geye's Safe from the Sea, and reviews of Rachel B. Glaser's Pee on Water, Tina May Hall's The Physics of Imaginary

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-27959553773528239252010-10-12T11:17:00.000-07:002010-10-12T11:17:15.741-07:00

Shome Dasgupta's i am here And You Are Gone, the winner of the 2010 OW chapbook competition, is now available for pre-order from Outsider Writers Press and should be shipping really soon (e.g., you should order now if you want to be the first on your block). You can read some of Shome's recent work at LIES/ISLE and Everyday Genius, and you should because those stories are fantastic. From the

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-64807749866720769042010-09-15T09:27:00.000-07:002010-09-30T20:28:31.858-07:00

My brief history, "An Artists' Interregnum," has been posted at Necessary Fiction as part of Amber Sparks's "Excavating the Ancient City." The piece in the photograph above is the so-called Revolutionary Fist, found in the Ruined City layer of the Ancient City (though very possibly cast in the Golden Age of the City). An excerpt: Truly, an inconceivable caliphate: everything would seem off,

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-74754601154765218802010-08-30T08:42:00.000-07:002010-08-30T08:42:59.151-07:00

"Gould Meets Gould," 5th of Francois Girard's "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould," written by Gould himself. The most illuminating disclosures usually derive from areas only indirectly related to the interviewee's line of work... To me the ideal audience-to-artist ratio is a 1-0 relationship...The artist should be granted anonymity. He should be permitted to operate in secret, as it were,

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-10881678821198669562010-07-30T09:13:00.000-07:002010-07-30T09:13:38.018-07:00

Clip from Robert Hughes's "The New Shock of the New." @ 2:40: Hockney says of the camera, "You're more aware of what's at the edges, what's not there. It is forced to be a certain kind of picture." (More of Hockney on this subject in Lawrence Weschler's excellent compendium of interviews with the man, True to Life) Then, from the introduction to the 1991 edition of Hughes's The Shock of the

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-15356092519685588662010-06-19T21:37:00.001-07:002010-06-19T21:47:05.861-07:00

David Hockney, talking with Lawrence Weschler in 1984 (from Weschler's collection, Vermeer in Bosnia):There was recently a remarkable 'Essential Cubism' show at the Tate, and I spent hour and hours there during my last trip to London. That show forced you to slow down. If you just glanced quickly, you didn't see anything. But, when you did slow down, the paintings just grew and grew. Your eyes

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-22105303818688437272010-05-26T09:35:00.000-07:002010-05-26T09:58:26.333-07:00

From John Ruskin's Modern Painting:It is not as the creating, but as the seeing man, that we are here contemplating the master of the true grotesque. It is because the dreadfulness of the universe around him weighs upon his heart that his work is wild; and therefore through the whole of it we shall find the evidence of deep insight into nature. His beasts and birds, however monstrous, will have

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-9022096017548215312010-05-09T05:00:00.000-07:002010-05-09T19:45:27.376-07:00

In order to get the mirror to admit to its falsehoods, the onlooker must not fall prey to its steady reflection. Just as an echo abbreviates and alters the direction of a sound, the reflection caught in the corner of the eye offers an alternate path of vision, revealing new angles while at the same time ensuring a kind of symmetry, albeit an imperfect one. The object and its reflection cannot be

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-27347399749308001222010-04-17T07:32:00.000-07:002010-04-17T07:51:08.770-07:00

From William Gass's On Being Blue:It is not simple, not a matter for amateurs, making sentences sexual; it is not easy to structure the consciousness of the reader with the real thing, to use one wonder to speak of another, until in the place of the voyeur who reads we have fashioned the reader who sings; but the secret lies in seeing sentences as containers of consciousness, as constructions

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-29758682697799155122010-04-02T12:57:00.000-07:002010-04-02T14:07:03.004-07:00

From Evan Lavender-Smith's From Old Notebooks:Some writers avoid writing about themselves at all costs. And we say to ourselves of such a writer, He is thinking only about himself!The book has nothing to do with the author's life, but only with the author's life in the book, that is to say, with the reader's life. No matter what I'm reading now, I misread it in order to make it apply to From Old

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-63895280151023136712010-03-30T11:24:00.000-07:002010-03-30T11:42:56.410-07:00

From Roland Barthes's Writing Degree Zero:A glance at the language of mathematics will perhaps enable us to grasp the relational nature of classical prose and poetry: we know that in mathematical language, not only is each quantity provided with a sign, but also that the relations between these quantities are themselves transcribed, by means of a sign expressing operative equality or difference.

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-54069068823535286452010-03-12T08:47:00.000-08:002010-03-12T09:09:46.164-08:00

So says Gerald L. Bruns, in his wonderfully illuminating introduction to Viktor Shklovsky's Theory of Prose (Dalkey, 1991). Bruns goes on to say:A poetic universe is...a universe of correspondences. In a poetic universe, every fragment is a luminous detail. It resonates with the supersensual. It is in perpetual transport from the everydayness of its material appearance to the sphere of the

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-20808254170166496662010-02-18T14:46:00.000-08:002010-02-22T06:50:22.186-08:00

Over at the LA Times great book blog, Jacket Copy Carolyn Kellogg writes about another case of appropriation, this time with somewhat more of a positive spin than others I've mentioned here in the past (as an aside, although I myself have (sort of) likened literary appropriation to Hip Hop, it is nonetheless a little disconcerting to find it derogated as "sampling" (for the record, she takes care

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-78350876765641360502010-02-12T08:31:00.000-08:002010-02-12T08:40:35.774-08:00

There's a short interview, ostensibly about my short piece, "Play" but I go off-topic, as usual, over at The Collagist's blog.

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-81358950365579932232010-01-27T15:26:00.000-08:002010-01-27T15:54:21.483-08:00

I have been reading and enjoying BIG OTHER, I guess, since it was started last October (just a few months ago-- really?).Recently, though, I have found myself in awe of A.D. Jameson's posts (particularly this one and this one, but they're all interesting; plus, he's got great taste in films, except for the whole "Austin Powers" thing). John Madera has brought together a really talented bunch of

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-70744564649070667032010-01-17T16:28:00.000-08:002010-01-17T16:59:54.558-08:00

"Play" is in the new issue of The Collagist, out now.Here's a bit, from the section entitled "Odds":"The Marks and David would have a decided numerical advantage-- obviously-- should the conflict, despite the participants' particular reticence, come to the taking up of pistols or swords. However, two of the marks are up in arms against each other, a result of their confusion as to the true

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-1122828507015045492010-01-13T12:33:00.000-08:002010-01-13T13:17:23.569-08:00

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."-Francisco Goya, Epigraph to "Caprichos 43"I was reminded of this reading Anthony Storr's Solitude (where it is quoted). From Storr:"In the field of science... there are two kinds of fantasy [he is speaking of hypotheses, which are a variety of fantasy, as he

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-17245982833811862322009-12-16T13:16:00.000-08:002009-12-16T13:38:28.341-08:00

While having the highest respect for the authors of realistic fiction, & envying those who are able to accomplish the successful reflection of life in narrative form, I am sadly aware through actual experiment that this is a province definitely closed to me. The fact is, that I have absolutely nothing to say where actual, unvarnished life is concerned. The events of life are so profoundly &

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-58035580515208358562009-11-22T16:32:00.000-08:002009-11-22T16:50:06.776-08:00

Here's Michel Houellebecq on H.P. Lovecraft, from H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (Believer Books):Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more. Humanity, such as it is, inspires only an attenuated curiosity in us. All those prodigiously refined “

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-21772234327215286122009-11-10T10:44:00.000-08:002009-11-22T16:30:27.919-08:00

Conjunctions: 53 "Not Even Past" is out now. Here's an excerpt from my story, "The Little Death," that appears alongside letters from Samuel Beckett and work by Roberto Bolano, Thomas Bernhard, Martine Bellen, Matt Bell... and that's just the B's.The problem with the Greene case was that it didn’t have a center. Or maybe that there was a hole where the center was supposed to be. Or maybe it was

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-11523475835905584912009-10-13T14:29:00.000-07:002009-10-13T15:31:32.696-07:00

From Manny Farber's "White Elephant Art Vs. Termite Art" (1962):Masterpiece art, reminiscent of the enameled tobacco humidors and wooden lawn ponies bought at white elephant auctions decades ago, has come to dominate the overpopulated arts of TV and movies. Three sins of white elephant art are (1) frame the action with an all-over pattern, (2) install every event, character, situation in a frieze

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-85925024426914672092009-10-07T18:08:00.000-07:002009-10-07T22:09:31.315-07:00

Idly paging through the latest (October/November) issue of AWP's The Writer's Chronicle tonight, I happened upon Ronald Goldfarb's (the AWP's legal counsel, according to their masthead) "Unfair Use" a short essay about the legality of new work incorporating elements of old work. I have no doubt that Goldfarb's legal opinion is much more informed than mine, but, still, I really have to take

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-55128110003971877932009-09-28T08:42:00.000-07:002009-09-28T09:01:35.846-07:00

From Sol LeWitt's "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" (1968):New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. There is nothing worse than seeing art that wallows in gaudy baubles. By and large most artists who are attracted to these materials are the ones who lack the stringency of mind that would enable them to use the materials

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-30541993906179636372009-09-01T09:39:00.000-07:002009-09-01T09:50:12.970-07:00

More Victor Shklovsky, this time from Literature and Cinematography (Dalkey Archive):In general, this is what usually happens. Having outlived the old forms, "high" art finds itself at a dead end. Everyone starts writing well, but no one is interested.Art forms become petrified and cease to be palpable. I think that in such a period not only does the reader not know whether he ever read a certain

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-6399978631325453192009-08-18T13:54:00.001-07:002009-08-21T20:31:19.948-07:00

(That's the world's largest birthday cake, by the way--celebrating Las Vegas, Nevada's centenary, but baked in North Carolina and trucked to Nevada)Michael has a new note over at Dzanc's new literary magazine, The Collagist (edited by Matt Bell), a new project starting up at Booth (Butler University's new literary magazine, with Prose Editor and fellow WW alum Bryan Furuness) called Whinesburg,

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-3588377723284121102009-08-03T10:56:00.000-07:002009-08-07T15:39:19.455-07:00

Came across this quote this morning, in a piece written by Viktor Shklovsky called "Five Feuilletons on Sergei Eisenstein," (a bit of a pet project of mine, too-- Eisenstein, not feuilletons) in Context:"Artists have certain freedoms when they draw from real life: they have the freedom to choose, they have the freedom to change, and they have the freedom to offend."Sums it up pretty well, I

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-11177729149913888282009-07-23T11:39:00.000-07:002009-07-23T12:14:19.340-07:00

My (really fairly long) short story, "The Little Death," will be appearing in the Fall 2009 issue of Conjunctions.Appearing in Conjunctions is a great pleasure, and a rare one indeed. Conjunctions is a fantastic journal: the lineup for the upcoming issue includes William Gass, Robert Coover, Thomas Bernhard and Francine Prose, as well as Mark Doten and Tim Horvath-- I could go on, but you should

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-15069487766818427282009-07-16T12:33:00.000-07:002010-04-28T07:55:33.109-07:00

Part 1 and part 2 of an interview with John O'Brien, founder of Dalkey Archive Press, over at Jacket Copy (thanks to HTMLGiant and Josh Maday).Dalkey Archive is and has long been one of my very favorite presses, and Mr. O'Brien proves himself to be as intelligent an interviewee as an editor, which is quite a standard. I found myself at odds only with these lines:But I absolutely do not think of a

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-71688717005108104952009-07-02T12:36:00.000-07:002009-07-09T14:25:21.952-07:00

The ruling came in yesterday: the judge in the case of Fredrik Colting, aka J.D. California, has extended her temporary injunction against the publication of 60 Years Later indefinitely. Pending the results of an appeal by Colting's lawyer, the book may never be published in America.This is a defeat, perhaps, perhaps a victory, for artists and writers in this country. The book, according to the

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-49175925087403834842009-06-17T11:58:00.000-07:002009-07-04T10:08:22.889-07:00

60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye by Fredrik Colting is getting the once over in a New York court right now, and it's a case I'll be following very closely.A quick primer (and hey, they use Catcher as an example) on what I've learned so far: copyright (for a work first published in the USA by an American) used to expire after 27 years, if not renewed. If copyright was renewed, it extended 47

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-40583115191687088602009-06-03T06:53:00.000-07:002009-06-03T16:31:18.498-07:00

That's a bin in my Mom's studio, and the title of this blog post.I'm just back from New Orleans and New Iberia. It's kind of a strange feeling to find that you're working on the same art-problems as your mother. Maybe it's only natural, given that she raised me, but it's still (mostly) uncharted territory for both of us, and seemed a weird coincidence. Maybe we're tapping into the Zeitgeist.Mom

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-65022116334451183222009-05-21T14:34:00.000-07:002010-07-15T09:17:11.156-07:00

Review of Adam Gallari's We Are Never As Beautiful As We Are Now, The Collagist, 07/15/2010On Reading, The Laughing Yeti, 05/16/2010Interview, The Collagist, 02/09/2010On Ross Macdonald, HTMLGIANT, 8/29/2009On Roy Lichtenstein, HTMLGIANT,4/17/2009

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-3944856154651925172009-05-06T12:55:00.000-07:002009-05-06T13:16:05.611-07:00

That's Auster in the chair, reading, and Lethem with the glasses, facing him.Jonathan Lethem's interview with Paul Auster, in the February 2005 Believer."This might come as a surprise to you, but I tend to think of myself as a highly emotional writer... what I’m constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-48795885250970964782009-04-20T14:31:00.000-07:002009-04-20T15:34:13.996-07:00

"The fundamental demand to be made of any bookstore is that its collection take a shape that is informative in and of itself; it must have a distinct identity, so that readers can tell easily what fits and what doesn't. A distinct identity attracts attention, and orients the person who is searching. This is the secret of the magnetic appeal of certain assemblages: noise becomes music; scattered

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-66811305097296940962009-04-16T10:33:00.000-07:002009-04-23T20:00:22.689-07:00

Paris Review: You seem primarily interested in bypassing the conscious, rational apparatus to which most writers direct their efforts.Burroughs: I don't know about where fiction ordinarily directs itself, but I am quite deliberately addressing myself to the whole area we call dreams. Precisely what is a dream? A certain juxtaposition of word and image.I've recently done a lot of experiments with

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-57658201685023780342009-04-06T10:02:00.000-07:002009-04-06T18:03:56.356-07:00

I'll be reading tomorrow night (4/7) at the Maiden, right here in Portland, as part of Chelsea Martin's Everything Was Fine Until Whatever release party.The reading starts at 8 pm, and will feature readings from Brandon Scott Gorrell and Matthew Simmons, and of course, Chelsea Martin herself. Brandon and Matthew both have books coming out very soon: Brandon from Muumuu House (June) and Matthew

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-85559525459779223432009-03-28T08:09:00.000-07:002009-03-28T08:18:52.839-07:00

Listening to some old Bookworms, came upon this one, with George Saunders.Toward the end of the interview, talking about creating and exploiting expectation and "incremental repetition" in writing stories, Saunders mentions Barthelme. Michael Silverblatt responds: "The pattern is based on jazz. That you're playing the melody and now we're going to have a whole series of variations, wilder and

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-6072992761557308652009-03-27T16:04:00.000-07:002009-03-27T16:40:03.094-07:00

This was supposed to be the second part of the post (Spirals, Pt.1) below, this time looking at another famous film "inspired by" Hitchcock's "Vertigo," Paul Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct."And, listen, there are many, many interesting correspondences, correspondences that circle in on themselves, even more than "La Jetee"-- "Basic Instinct" was meant as a companion piece, I think, rather than a

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-22786196690044192912009-03-23T12:52:00.000-07:002009-03-23T13:47:58.548-07:00

A sort of celebration of Underland Press: Brian Evenson (reading from his novel Last Days) and Jemiah Jefferson (reading from her wovel, "Firstworld") at Powell's.Someone from the audience gets up to ask about Jefferson's wovel while Evenson is at the microphone: substance of question-- "What about the book? Is it dead (because replaced by "the internet")?" A fair question, despite its Luddite/

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-21065115738152847832009-02-27T13:10:00.000-08:002009-02-27T13:22:53.052-08:00

"While I approve of athletic sports and games in general, I have only words of condemnation to utter against skating rinks. I condemn public skating because it is dangerous both to body and soul. Many receive injuries at the skating rinks from which they never recover. In skating the bones are oftentimes broken, limbs are twisted, and the body severely bruised. While the danger to the body in the

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-84643049232074598912009-02-26T14:53:00.000-08:002009-02-26T15:37:50.862-08:00

The Criterion DVD release of Chris Marker's justly famous "La Jetee" includes a video-essay (actually part of an episode of "Court-circuit," a French television show) which has, as its thesis, that Marker's film is actually an attempt on Marker's part, to insert himself into Hitchcock's "Vertigo."Lug Lagier, the director of this segment, adduces as proof Marker's deliberate echo of Hitchcock's

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-18898020550225906592009-01-08T14:01:00.000-08:002011-01-05T08:13:14.443-08:00

See Work tab above.

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181204139720944037.post-30534641993233114442008-12-03T10:37:00.000-08:002009-02-26T15:41:08.449-08:00

"The Behavior of Pidgeons" is up at Web Conjunctions. It is short, and has pictures. Go to Conjunctions and check it out.Update, 12/10/08:It is now in their archives, so if you go to the Conjunctions front page, just scroll down to find it. It was the feature for the week of December 3.

Gabriel Blackwellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10810434661231289700noreply@blogger.com1