Wayward Couch

Someone Shoot Me

2006-12-21T15:04:00.000-08:00

For those of you familiar with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you'll recall the Vogons are reputed for having the second worst poetry in the universe. I don't remember who was supposed to have the worst, but it doesn't matter, because I've found the worst: Rosie O'Donnell. I don't know what's worse, her Prince-like strangling of the English language, or the fact that she actually thinks this shit is poetry. Now, normally I wouldn't call any attention to bad work, but when it's done this badly, by someone who has as much influence as she does, I just can't stay silent. I'm not even going to link to her blog, google her and you'll find it, but abandon hope, and poetic sensibilities, all ye who enter.

Y: The LOST Man

2006-12-20T12:39:00.000-08:00

If you're an uber-geek such as myself, then Christmas has come early this year, my friends. According to a myspace bulletin (yeah, that's right, I myspace; it's not just for Dane Cook and other perverts) Brian K Vaughn, the GENIUS behind the Vertigo graphic series Y: The Last Man (a staff pick by yours truly in Ellipsis #2) has signed on as Executive Story Editor for LOST. This is very, very, very, very good news. I envision a new cast member, a cute little helper monkey who won't leave Claire's side, and no, I'm not talking about Charlie.

I Cannot Forget From Where It Is That I Come From

2006-12-20T12:27:00.000-08:00

In all the holiday melee, perhaps you didn't hear that this week we lost two great men: Joseph Lodell, the creator of Green Lantern, and Jospeh Barbara, the latter half of Hanna-Barbara and creator of such notable cartoon characters as Tom & Jerry, The Jetsons, and my personal favorite, Yogi Bear.

Now I know some, maybe even most, people don't consider this literary news, but for those people I ask you this: what got you into writing? what was the first creative thing that inspired you? Without Green Lantern and Yogi Bear, I'd be selling insurance or working for my father. Both of which would suck, even compared to the penny-pinching lifestyle being a writer has afforded me. So this holiday season, tip back a glass of egg nog to two great men whose imaginations reached across the decades to influence a score of creative types. Including this one.

Ellipsis Contributor on Bookslut

2006-12-14T14:18:00.000-08:00

Check out this recent interview with renowned author and Ellipsis Vol. 1 contributor Laird Hunt on Bookslut.com. Take note he not only mentions fellow contributor Brian Evenson, but also the publication Marginalia, edited by Alicita Rodriguez, yet another contributor.

Small Penis Rule?

2006-12-14T13:35:00.000-08:00

Someone should really tell me about these things. Check out what a freak Michael Crichton is. Sheesh.

Great Books Make Great Movies (Occasionally)

2006-12-14T12:58:00.000-08:00

But the chances are always higher when it's a REALLY great book handled by REALLY talented people, ie The Coen Brothers and No Country For Old Men, or Jason Reitman and Thank You For Smoking, ie NOT Ron Howard's Da Vinci Code or Curtis Hanson's In Her Shoes. Here's an interesting combo. Note that the novel in question was on the Ellipsis Eight Great Debut Novel list in our first issue.

So Then Not Everyone Who Works in TV is Deaf

2006-12-13T15:54:00.000-08:00

Television is not the best medium to be an artist in. More so than Hollywood, content of network programming is controlled by advertisers rather than auters. So then it's no wonder shows like "Sex in the City," "Will & Grace," "Desperate Housewives" and other such inane tripe often topped Best Of Lists and won the awards. But there's one agency in Tinseltown that seems to still give a crap about quality work on TV, and surprise surprise, it's the Writer's Guild of America. Check out their nominees for this year's WGA Awards. Not a loser in the bunch, though a lot of underrated programs, some of which aren't even with us anymore.

Don't Throw Anything Away

2006-12-13T15:50:00.000-08:00

Sylvia Plath, TS Eliot, Hemingway - these are only a handful of prominent authors who have lived by the rule that anything written, no matter its quality, should never be thrown away. Here's a good reason why.

Sally Van Doren

2006-12-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

Illegible Resolutions

After Paintings by Twombly and Freud at the Dallas Art Museum

I will not wear feathers and beads.

I will not scribble white crayon on black-painted canvas.

I will leave my dusty ranch, but not the sight of the dirt under the cattle’s hooves.

I will put putty and terracotta in the lobby, beige on the baseboards, almond on the moldings, and honed French limestone in planks on the floor.

I will drive my Jaguar up Mockingbird Lane to the High Land Village, valet-parking in front of Chanel.

I will listen to Sonia’s advice at Neiman’s and choose the sequined toile by Valentino.

I will not be fat.

I will not walk into the next room where the man in the picture is nursing a baby.

I will wonder whether art is clothing, whether I am the subject, whether the simulation of writing is easy to reproduce.

I will not let a mister suckle my child. I will rip its head from his chest before he lets one drop of male milk sour the baby’s lips.

I will declare my sex to the curators, dealers, directors, artists, critics and designers who thrust their empty nipples into my open mouth.

I will wonder, what do they want with me anyway?

I will unwedge my Manolo heel from its crease in the poured cement.

I will write clearly in the manner of Ed Rusche and Jenny Holzer.

I will stack my words so that the finger flesh merges with the clitoris, expertly tucked away under three layers of La Perla.

Delayed Coherence

Nihilistic Islamic terrorism
did not exist when she stepped
naked onto the lawn of her
house on Andrew Drive in
Warson Woods, Missouri.
She was six. The strangers
who would come later
to pixilate her vision
did not appear that
July morning, nor did they
show their faces when
she lost her virginity
in the A-frame and weaned
her first-born son in Manhattan .
They chose to lie in wait
on the floral chintz on that sofa
in Webster Groves , where she
moved back despite her success on
Broadway. She had embraced
Allah and he promised her food
and a release from the empty nest.
She meditated like crazy
and sought to undo the stringent
Episcopalian directives
which had driven the likes of
Jonathan Franzen from
her safe mid-western kitchen.
She would not cook for him
nor would she ever admit
to being afraid. Her belief
in everything mirrored that
of Abraham Lincoln, who was
reported recently to have
been a suicidal depressive
prone to bouts of immobility.

Two Things

two things make me
this way ---

spacey, soft, undefined

even the bee does not
start me out of this

achieved bliss

Sally Van Doren's poems appeared recently in Boulevard, Margie, Parthenon West Review, Poetry Daily, and Snow Monkey. She lives in Cornwall, CT and St. Louis, MO where she teaches creative writing in city public schools and curates the Sunday Workshop Series for the St. Louis Poetry Center.

To Bibliography Or Not To Bibliography

2006-12-10T18:55:00.000-08:00

Interesting article here on the rising use of bibliograhies in works of fiction, and whether or not it's a necessary tool or an expression of the author's ego. Personally, I think bibliographies in fiction are a good idea. Not only do they provide further reading sources in topics of interest raised by the work, they can provide a very interesting insight into the author's process, what sort of work he was looking to forge by the models he used. But maybe that's just me.

A Proposition You Can't Refuse

2006-12-01T01:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, it's late, but this warrants immediate telling. There are two reasons to see the film The Proposition, aside from the fact that it's a great fucking film. 1) It's written by Nick Cave, of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, of the spectacular novel And The Ass Saw The Angel. 2) And this is the kicker, if you're me; it was reported in Variety this week that the director of The Proposition, John Hillcoat, has been named as the director for the big-screen adaptation of The Road, the latest and greatest novel by my own personal Jesus, Cormac McCarthy. And maybe it's late, maybe I'm being typically egregious, but after watching The Proposition, I can't imagine a director with a more stark, brutal or beautiful mise en scene to capture the gorgeous apocalypse McCarthy creates. Run to a video store. Now.

Our Living Literary Legacy

2006-11-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

Here's an interesting article from the Guardian on the possible literary legacy of our time when measured against movements of the past, specifically the last significant American literary movement, the Beats. Personally, I think the next recognized movement will be the collected but separate efforts of postmodernists like David Markson, David Foster Wallace, Paul Auster, Laird Hunt, Mark Z. Danielewski, etc. - authors who find ways to reinvent narrative structure while still demonstrating a mastery of old world storytelling, in a time when other media are becoming increasing formulaic and derivative. But that's just me. Any other ideas?

Jesse Morse

2006-11-20T17:11:00.000-08:00

I haven't done anything for Ellipsis the last couple months but now I am back and posting a personal greeting:

Hi. This is Jesse Morse. This is my personal greeting.

‘Echo Maker’ Wins Book Award for Fiction

2006-11-16T14:02:00.000-08:00

America's largest and most respected literary prize, the National Book Awards, announced winners last night in New York City. Richard Powers' Echo Maker - featured on this very blog's list of must-read fall fiction - took home the brass statuette and 10K cash award. Not too shabby for years and years of intense, introspective and solitary work, just for this novel alone. And how much does Jessica Simpson make a picture? An album? An appearance? Just curious...

Get the full story here.

Sorta Goes Without Saying...

2006-11-16T13:55:00.000-08:00

But this new O.J. book? The one where he "hypothetically" describes how he murdered his ex-wife and her lover? You'll hear it from most legitimate publishing houses and purveyors of quality literature drawing the public's attention, but I think you should hear it again, now - don't buy this shit. Don't let any of your friends or family buy it, and if you see someone out in public reading it, march right on over there and take it from them, replace it with something by Paul Auster, and give them your best glower before storming off. Seriously. Tell everybody.

A Room of One's Own

2006-11-15T14:58:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you find a writer's space terribly interesting, the ultimate reflection of how they give themselves to their work. That's why I find this to be one of the most insane and beautiful rooms I've ever seen, kind of like Kevin Spacey's apartment in Seven. It belongs to Will Self, whose latest novel, The Book of Dave, about a 21st Century madman whose ramblings become the basis for a 25th Century religion, drops Tuesday, November 28th.

Discover "New" Writers

2006-11-15T14:16:00.000-08:00

Here's an article from CNN.com about a "new" writer we should be paying attention to. Coincidentally, I ordered his first book "House of Leaves," from Half.com last week. Think David Foster Wallace's narrative sensibility meets David Markson's abstract plotlines with chart and figures and whatnot. Invigorating.

Volume One, Issue Ten

2006-11-14T16:40:00.000-08:00

Out now:

Marjorie Maddox

2006-11-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

Best Face Forward

I.
When you have it done, Elizabeth saw on one of those daytime talk shows, the plastic surgeon cuts new slits for your ears, then tugs the skin back, up, and over. Your ability to hear remains the same. She dreamed about this after the phone call. Her sixty-six-year-old mother was 2000 miles away recuperating in Phoenix; had already had it done. The time for arguing was long gone. Back, up, and over, the skin stretched like not-enough pie dough needing to fill the tin.

II.
Her sister’s cancer was bigger than a dime and square on the lower lid of her left eye. The doctors used the word “deformed,” pronounced it carelessly in the examination room. Her mother worried about photos, what her youngest daughter would be able to see.

Her sister was awake during the operation, could watch her husband watching her. They had splurged and gone to a hospital. The pathologist kept coming in and out, shaking his head. After three times, he nodded. Afterwards, they gave her the sulfa she was allergic to, and still later, when she broke out in raw rashes, a bill reduced by $5000. A good deal, her sister said. After three weeks, her ability to see returned to normal.

III.
Elizabeth scanned, but did not mention, the Time magazine article entitled, “When Doctors Say They’re Sorry.” She cut it out carefully along the lines.

IV.
After Elizabeth tried on her mother’s Liz Claiborne hand-me-downs, there was nothing new to wear. Buttonholes refused to meet buttons. Hooks and eyes remained a safe distance from each other. Zippers, at their worst, dug into her skin and stuck. At their best, they bulged. Altogether, Elizabeth tried on ten blouses, five sweaters, eight skirts, and one pair of elastic running pants, the latter too tight on her hips. She had lost ten pounds.

The next day, over coffee, her mother offered to pay for breast reduction and a tummy tuck. “It could be your birthday present,” she explained, stirring NutraSweet into her decaf.

V.
The daughter smoothed her Size 12 skirt and looked away. Her ability to feel remained the same.

VI.
“An explication,“ Elizabeth wrote on the blackboard for her freshmen, “was the process of analyzing a poem line by line, similar, in fact, to writing the poem itself.” She squiggled some lines to look like text. “It also was not unlike the work of a surgeon, “ she went on to explain, “evaluating, diagnosing, dissecting, amputating or augmenting where necessary.” She drew a circle around the squiggles and a dotted line out to the side the way she did when diagramming sentences for her Secondary Ed students. “Start by taking careful note, what makes up the whole, how it is shaped.”

She dusted the chalk off of her hands to avoid sneezing, then began again. “And always look for second opinions.” She nodded toward the quietest girl in the front row. Once again, she had forgotten her name, but no matter.

“Take, for instance,” she continued, “the poem on 1228 of your text,” (quick flipping of pages) “an over-taught piece, yes, but in this case, appropriate.” She circled the room, reading slowly, articulating carefully, eyeing up her clients.

She was good at building suspense. Knew how to milk the persona of confidence. “First, are you our sort of person?” she interrogated, gaze straight ahead and serious. “Do you wear a glass eye, false teeth, or a crutch?” She tugged the hair of a cheerleader who had fallen asleep so that she woke with an “Oh!” No one laughed. All eyes were on her in her blue pants suit, her professor face. Her sensible flats clicked across the tile dramatically.

“A brace or a hook, rubber breasts” (a football player and an accounting major smirked) “or a rubber crotch?” (they stopped). She walked toward them, then suddenly veered away.

She took a deep breath. “Stitches to show something’s missing?” This she started slowly as a whisper and had meant to continue in hushed undertones. Somehow, though, by the end of the query, her voice gained momentum and volume, the last words re-playing themselves on her lips like a broken record. “Missing, missing, missing?” Too late, she realized that she was shouting.

She turned away for a moment, erased the blackboard, then turned back again to her waiting audience. Fully composed. Face Forward. Her ability to think remained the same.

Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 3 full-length poetry books: "Weeknights at the Cathedral" (WordTech 06), "Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation" (Yellowglen Prize, 04), "Perpendicular As I" (Sandstone Book Award). In addition, she has published 5 chapbooks (including "When The Wood Clacks Out Your Name: Baseball Poems") and over 270 poems, stories, and essays in journals and anthologies. She is co-editor of "Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania" (PSU Press 05) and author of the children's book "A What of Whats?" (Boyds Mills Press, forthcoming 06). Her short story collection, "What She Was Saying," was 1 of 3 finalists for the 2005 Katherine Anne Porter Award.

Pynchon Freaks Prick Up Your Ears

2006-11-11T14:51:00.000-08:00

Nice advance article on "Against the Day" and several other things Pynchonique. Except where he is, what he looks like, and if he actually exists.

Indie Lit

2006-11-10T15:22:00.000-08:00

It's about six weeks old, but here's an interesting article from CNN.com on what the kids like to call the "indie lit."

Writers Writing

2006-11-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

If the Onion doesn't stop posting really interesting articles on literature, I'm going to have to drop The Watchtower and make the Onion the only media I read. Check out this piece on 6 great books about writers writing.

Do Screenwriters Matter?

2006-11-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a really interesting conversation between two editors at the Onion's AV Club, on the role and relevance of the modern screenwriter. Pretty interesting stuff. By the by, Guillermo Arriaga, the screenwriter first mentioned, is primarily a novelist. His first American release, The Night Buffalo, came out this past summer. It's a wonderful read, subtle and devastating. Give it a look.

Writers on Film

2006-11-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

Check out this article from MSNBC, then leave us a comment about your favorite movie writer. My personal fav is Michael Douglas' character in Wonder Boys - stoned, hopeless, laboring long and ultimately redeemable. And I think he tagged Katie Holmes, which used to be cool.

Literary Slugfest: Saramago vs. Saramago

2006-11-08T17:21:00.000-08:00

In a first for LSF, this match-up is a unique opportunity to watch a brilliant author (insert your own "beat himself" joke here). The contending novels are Saramago's Blindness, written in 1999, the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and its sequel of sorts, Seeing, released this very year. So if you think about it, technically this match-up is a Literature Slugfest. My mother's right; I should've gone into marketing.

ROUND ONE (plot): No spoilers, don't worry, I'll speak in general terms, nothing you can't learn from the dust jacket. Blindness, in a nutshell, is about a viral outbreak of blindness that spreads in a modern Portuguese metropolis, and the subsequent confinement and abandonment of the infirmed, and of course, the infirmed's reactions to such abuse. Seeing, on the other hand, is about the same city and some of the same characters several years later when a mild form of protest - voters turning in blank ballots - goes awry as the government responds by barricading the citizens inside the city, all services taken away, of course. Remember, these are nutshells, the plots get more intricate than this in both cases. But as intriguing as both are, the original idea's usually the best, so I'm giving this one to Blindness.

ROUND TWO (themes): Both books deal with the same issues, only from different approaches; Saramago is writing about social alienation, the atrocities that befall when fear trumps reason, and the chaos inherit to our social, cultural and political structures. In Blindness, he tackles these issues in terms of an environment when the aforementioned structures are taken away (we're blind, get it?). In Seeing, the environment is one in which the structures are overextended, pushed to their extreme limits (eyes wide open, one could say). Both methods have of course been used before - think Oryx and Crake, The Road, other apocalypse fiction for the former, Brave New World, 1984 et al for the latter - but never perhaps with as much humanity as Saramago brings to the page. Those other novels are experienced by readers, they project their ideas and follow them out ruthlessly, brilliantly, searing themselves into our collective consciousness. Their power is visceral. Saramago is visceral as well, but he is also sensual, and thus his work is felt, it is experienced on a different, more personal level. Everyone feels the same sense of generic fear when they finish 1984; no two people read Saramago the same way. The fear, the hope, these are things that come from inside us, so they are not common. But maybe that's too flowery. I'll get to it: Blindness, again, serves its purpose more completely.

ROUND THREE (voice): Without using too many definitive adjectives, Saramago's one of the greatest narrators ever. He's there but he isn't, he knows everything going on and he knows as little as we do. It's amazing, and furthermore, it's comforting, even when telling you horrible things. As such, his voice only gets better with time. Seeing, being the later novel, is thus a little stronger, enough to win the last round.

But not the bout. Blindness by Jose Saramago beats Seeing by Jose Saramago. Sorry Jose, but someone had to go away empty-handed

Ryan Newton

2006-11-08T16:27:00.000-08:00

Airport Landscape

Glad to have touched down
In the city of brotherly love
Whiskey blue – free baggage
Allowance – ultimately outsiders
Wonder whether their view is privilege,
Like, nowhere. If you ever come to
That state of contentment
Or contention, full of content
As devoid of it, you might be
Reaching into the Causa sui
The Deus sive natura of Baruch
Spinoza; call me, I’ll pick you up.

Ryan Newton wrote this poem after reading the excellent book Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, by Rebecca Goldstein.

Contributor Note

2006-11-08T16:19:00.000-08:00

Ellipsis contributor and world-renowned novelist Isabel Allende (vol. 1, issue 8) has just released a new novel Inez of My Soul. Check out a review here.

Well-Written Television: Hustle

2006-11-08T13:37:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, television is the root of all evil, the bane of modern society, and the most potent and debilitating drug ever known. Largely I agree with this. However, every so often a show comes along that is so well-written, it transcends the mundanity of the medium and becomes what some of us would deign to call "art." Twin Peaks was one such show, The Sopranos another, and Lost (providing it doesn't stretch itself so thin it snaps) is yet another. And I've found a new name to add to this list: the BBC's Hustle.

Every episode is like The Sting: a team of con artists planning, launching and pulling off incredible schemes each more dumbfounding than the one before. At one point the Crown Jewels are involved.

The best part about Hustle is its writing, all done by series creator Tony Jordan. The storylines are tight, original, and move of their own accord at a jaunty pace. Never derivative. Never predictable. The characters are fleshed out by the first episode, each so simple yet so complex you can almost smell their Greek origins. All together it's a highly engaging and entertaining hour. Quite possibly the smartest show on TV, in my opinion.

So you can either get BBC America and watch Hustle there, rent season one on DVD, or freak out like me, hop online at 3 in the morning and buy a multi-region DVD player, then skip over to amazon.co.uk and pick up the first two seasons, third on the way. Seriously; it's that good.

Remember, Remember

2006-11-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

Every year on this date in England, children construct human effigies from old clothes stuffed with newspaper. They carry the effigy around their neighborhood, knocking on doors and requesting “a penny for the Guy.” As night falls, the effigy is placed atop a bonfire of the season’s dry leaves and dead branches. There are fireworks. The effigy is burned. And although I’m sure this has been replaced by safer, community organized and sponsored bonfires and firework displays, it is an excellent and, to me, nostalgic tradition.

Here is a nice piece explaining why this happens, written by (I believe) the same Bruce Robinson responsible for the stellar Withnail & I and Paranoia in the Launderette.

Saint Paul

2006-11-05T17:18:00.000-08:00

Last month, Paul Auster, a writer I very much admire, seems to have won a prize from a Prince. And, the Guardian* has printed his acceptance speech on the interweb, right here.

It’s a good speech. Articulate, at times beautiful, as you’d expect from one presented with the grandly monikered “Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters,” as the article’s footer states: Spain’s premier literary honor.

The general thrust is that although “... art is useless, at least when compared, say, to the work of a plumber, or a doctor, or a railroad engineer,” it is magnificent in this uselessness.

Well, I disagree with Mr. Auster. I think this is like saying that learning algebra is useless because such knowledge never finds a practical application in later life. This is an easy view to subscribe to: when was the last time you figured out how much an orange costs if six oranges and seven lemons come to a dollar seventy three? In this sense, yes, algebra is useless, at least when compared, say, to what you might learn in shop class, economics, or even composition.

But this isn’t the point. Algebra is taught to train the mind to deal with problems and develop the logical thought patterns often utilized in everyday life. And far from proffering the apparently elusive “purpose of art,” I would say that if we’re looking for a “use” for art, then it could be in the same vein.

Experiencing and creating art introduces the mind to new processes, new ways of reading, deciphering or approaching situations. The fireworks in the mind induced by a Motherwell painting; an apparently nonsensical Burroughs novel; a Stan Brakhage film; the verse of James Schuyler: these are exercises of thought. New destinations that forge new mental trails.

Does it make us “better people”? That’s questionable. What does “better people” even mean? But it develops new ways of seeing, experiencing and perhaps understanding our environment, our minds, and gosh, maybe even our lonely human predicament. This, to me, is a long way from “magnificent uselessness,” certainly if we are open to the distinct possibility that the “real world” consists of more than we may access via our five crude senses.

So, when that magnificently “useless artist” Pablo Picasso said (something like) art is a lie that illuminates the truth, he was closer to my own opinion than Mr. Auster appears to be. Compounding Pablo, and all of my ramblings, with Proust’s assertion that “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes,” you could arrive at something of a conclusion: that the art of fiction, in both reading and writing, is the forerunner to discovery.

* Apologies if I appear to be a one-man marketing army for the Guardian. It isn’t the only website I read. But, I tend to find a lot of their articles interesting, or provocative of reaction, so they find their way here.

Me Me Me

2006-11-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed this article from the Guardian, and now I want to see this movie. I also enjoy origami and interesting cheeses.

WILLIAM STYRON 1925 - 2006

2006-11-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

One of the true greats of Southern Literature has passed away. Though best-known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sophie's Choice (his last actual novel, published in 1979), my personal favorite of his work was the memoir Darkness Visible, in which Styron discusses his bout with depression. Beautiful and empowering. They don't make them like Styron anymore. It's a shame.

More from CNN.

I, Robot

2006-10-30T15:09:00.000-08:00

Although it seems unlikely that we'll be in Atlanta for the 2007 AWP conference, maybe we'll shell out to send this "young lady" in our place. Awesome-O. And horribly frightening.

Gillian Barlow

2006-10-30T12:34:00.000-08:00

Pygmalion

I got breast implants for my high school graduation present. I needed it. You think of skinny girls as wood: toothpick, stick, twiggy. I thought of myself as stone, flat as a slab of slate. I used to jog in the same circle around the neighborhoods every day, honing myself like an arrowhead.

I feel dull here, though, and sometimes I look at the cameras suspiciously, wondering if it’s the lenses doing it to me, although the crew members get angry with me when I do that. I break the flow of the action when I look.

You watch the show regularly. It is your shameful pleasure. The camera pans out, and you see the mansion. There’s no sign of life. The grass looks like it’s been spray-painted on.

My mother wanted me to have good self-esteem. My father wanted me to be proportionate. He worked closely with his associate, planning the implants. After the operation, he stood back, chuckled, and compared himself to Pygmalion.

You think I don’t understand that allusion.

Women do not like me. They think I am cold as a razorblade. They also think very little of their men. I do not know about their men, but I know that I am not cold. Although I have never had sex, I have wanted to. I wanted to have sex with Scott. He was beefy and brown from a trip to Cancún. His skin smelled like honeysuckle. But then I saw that his neck had little fatty creases in it, like a worm.

I am not cold. In fact, quite frequently my joints sear me with a silver hot pain, especially my hands. And my breasts. I know how they look: finely varnished, with a matte finish. But they generate a churning heat.

I remember a fantasy I used to have as a child: I wanted to tuck myself into a convent and merge with the other black and white bodies. I would be a keystone in God’s cathedral. Every day I would set about my work: building a hearth of prayers, brick by brick, and after many years I would become empty except for an eternal glow in my center. But the fire that I imagined then was nothing like the fire that gnaws my bones now.

Back at the room I share with one other girl, the newly washed grass glints out the open window. I take my dog out of my purse. My mother gave him to me before she died. She named him Doggerel, a name that belongs to a smiling, kindly mongrel, not a minute, quaking sparrow of a dog. I take him out because he eases the tension. The other girls do not like me. But they will take the dog as a sacrificial offering, something to brood over.

You are still watching, waiting for the outcome. The camera pans out, and the girls drop like flies; the camera zooms in, and the newly washed eyes glint. You think I don’t love Brian. But I do. I know it because when he hands me the final red flower, my heart pounds, pounds, drives, like a stake, like hard rain.

Gillian Barlow is married to Portland, Oregon. God knit her together in her mother’s womb about 24 years ago. She is currently riding her bike through Ladd’s Addition, meowing at cats.

Robert Levin

2006-10-30T12:33:00.000-08:00

How To Make A Baby

I was, I suppose you could say, in a PREpartum depression.

It started when my wife, Connie, decided it was time to have a baby. I was thirty-one and she was twenty-eight, a circumstance which I reminded her in my argument against the idea was no cause for alarm. But after she'd voiced her ambition--and thereby made it real to herself--the achievement of motherhood became an obsession for her and she would not leave me alone about it. Finally, after several months, my reluctance to enlist in her project compelled her to resort to a not so veiled threat: "Steven," she said. "Either we have a baby now or I'm going to leave you."

All right, I told her, get off the fucking Ovril then.

Now it wasn't that I never wanted a baby, and not that when I had one I didn't want it to be with Connie. Strong of character and will, nurturing, quick-witted and sometimes astonishingly perceptive (not to mention pretty), Connie was a terrific wife and more than qualified to be an exceptional mother. The notion of one day having a family with her was hardly repugnant to me.

No. What troubled me when the prospect became imminent--what troubled me immensely--was a consequence inherent in the making of a baby, a consequence that I could not stop recognizing. Fathering a child would tie me into the hideous plan that Creation has devised for everything corporeal. I would be, and by my own hand, replacing myself. Once the deed was done, once I had accomplished the only thing we know with any certainty Creation wants of us, I would be, in Creation's estimation, expendable.

If Connie, born Catholic but now earnestly New Age in her faiths and sentiments, soothed her fear of death by believing in reincarnation, I was a secular Jew and so had only the void to anticipate. And if I'd always been keenly tuned to the price of existence, and lived in a perpetual state of medium-grade anxiety as a result, my heightened appreciation of my mortality destroyed any semblance of internal equilibrium I could claim. With Connie's demand the sinister underside of nature had turned itself toward me and it wouldn't turn away. Indeed, my now hyper-consciousness of what it ultimately meant to be alive made any vista of extravagant pullulation, albeit as manicured as Central Park, grotesque to me. On the most festive of occasions I would see what William James saw--"the skull grinning in at the banquet." And I understood as well what Burroughs meant by "Naked Lunch." When I ate I saw exactly what it was--the flesh--on the end of my fork.

I was also, much of the time, in a small rage about the new burden I'd be taking on. I'm referring not to the responsibility of child raising per se, but to the fact that no matter how large was the contempt I'd developed for humanity over the years, having a child would force me to care about what the world might be like after I died.

Thoroughly upended, I even began to think about homosexuality; about, that is, the solution it afforded to the problem of getting your rocks off without spinning what Kerouac called the "wheel of the quivering meat conception." Though a less than appealing option for me, there were hours when, oddly and perversely, I could not help but feel...well...TITILATED by the concept of having sex that was unencumbered by procreative implications.

In the petrifying absence of contraception I found myself avoiding sex with Connie. And when I could not avoid it my performance was impeded by occlusions in my circuits that would leave the both of us in a condition of considerable frustration. Worse, my very biology joined in the protest forcing me to suffer the embarrassment of a sperm count that a lab I visited at Connie's insistence twice reported was "virtually negligible."

Compounding these miseries, locking me deeper into paralysis as it increased my sense of urgency, was Connie's evident disappointment in me; a disappointment that was evolving into disdain. Terms of endearment like "honey" and "sugar," for example, were routinely being replaced by "washout" and "loser." In my timorousness I'd become, in her eyes, something less than a man. Recalling her admission to me once that she'd believed that all Jewish men were extraordinary providers and natural born fathers--and having long before disabused her of the former assumption--I knew that I had no choice now but to keep the latter one alive.

Then, reasoning that a change of scene might turn the trick, Connie came up with the idea of spending a few days in the country together. When I agreed, she arranged for us to stay with our friend Betsy who ran a little print shop out of her ramshackle house in a Catskill town not far from Kingston.

With Connie's patience rapidly disintegrating it was, I knew, something like now or never for me and I geared myself as best I could. Scrupulously adhering to a plan we devised--a month of wholesome foods and regimented exercise; no masturbation for a fortnight--I made ready to win a war with myself.

But arriving upstate, I felt like a German soldier must have felt upon arriving at the Russian front. It was the middle of winter, the sky was low and gray, the snowdrifts were thigh-high and the temperature was near to zero. This was not exactly an atmosphere conducive to a successful completion of the undertaking at hand--especially not when in the back bedroom to which Betsy assigned us (and which she used to store old printing equipment and bound stacks of yellowing posters and flyers), you could see your breath and needed to wear a coat.

But as inopportune and unlikely as the setting may have been, it was on our second afternoon there that a child was conceived.

I should say, first of all, that I was feeling not a little physically ill--and it wasn't only that I was on the edge of a cold. A city apartment dweller, I've noticed that country people who pay for their own heating oil tend to be flinty about using it, and Betsy was no exception. On this day, however, in a generous but woefully misguided demonstration of support, she had pumped the thermostat up to steam bath levels. The oppressive heat, coupled with an effluvium of musty furniture and nasty chemical compounds, threatened my ability to both keep my lunch AND remain conscious.

In any case, with Betsy at work out front, Connie, after giving me a thumbs up sign, took off her clothes and arranged them carefully over a chair. Deliberately presenting her bottom to me as she bent to the bed to pull away the quilts, she followed this maneuver by abruptly turning around and flopping onto the bed on her back. Then, reaching for a pillow, she propped it under her buttocks and spread her legs.

"Stevie, do you feel it too? It's as though there's a spirit hovering near us waiting to be born again."

"Great," I said, removing my pants. "I hope it's the spirit of a heavy-duty bond trader who happened to have a coronary while he was up here for a weekend. Please don't let it be one of the local yahoos who ran his pickup into a tree."

I entered her immediately--it had, after all, been two weeks. But just as quickly I knew I was going to wither. My deprived penis's rote reaction to a welcoming vagina notwithstanding, the gravity of the occasion continued to undermine me. Still, I'd made a compact which I had to honor and I began to leaf through bodies, shuffle through poses, postures and configurations in my personal mental Kama Sutra file--then, starting to panic and sweating obnoxiously--to ransack my memory and imagination. But no one and no thing I could remember or think to want would keep me up, let alone elicit he participation of my gonads. I tried, with my hand, to STUFF it in. I would happily have settled for a premature orgasm.

"Stop." Connie said. She squeezed out from under me and, her hair trailing along my chest and stomach, ran her tongue down the length of my torso to the numb thing between my legs.

A determined virgin into her early twenties--she had not permitted a man inside her until she was twenty-three--Connie'd had more than a little experience keeping boyfriends with her mouth. In seconds, my mental state notwithstanding, she got it half way up and we tried again. But once more I evacuated her ignominiously and she was obliged to root in me again. Ten minutes must have passed before she raised her head. I was expecting an expression of scorn. Look, I was prepared to say, I'm sorry. This is really out of my hands. But Connie was grinning at me. Crawling backwards a little, she reached her arm under my legs and lifted them until they were almost perpendicular to the bed. Then, holding my haunches up and steady with both of her hands, she lowered her head to my starkly exposed ass and drove her tongue as deep as she could into my rectum. Lingering there for a while, she finally came out from under me and, brushing it against my nostrils en route, brought her mouth to my ear.

"You little Jew bastard," she whispered. "I wish you'd be the lesbian you are right now because what I really want to do is eat your pussy."

Score one for Connie's acumen and her resourcefulness in an emergency. "Harder," she was instructing me after no more than a minute had elapsed. "Go deeper. Yeah! Oh! Splash."

Cody was born nine months later, almost to the day. Nature being oblivious to human expectations of justice and symmetry, he had, contrary to the circumstances of his conception, both a proper allotment of toes and fingers and a countenance that was amazingly genuine in its sweetness and innocence. I mean there was nothing unhealthy or freakish about him, nothing that was even remotely Damien-ish. By every measure he was a wonderful specimen.

And me? Well, I was worn by then to a physical as well as emotional nub--I lost fifteen pounds during Connie's pregnancy that I didn't need to lose. But not dropping dead with Cody's arrival had a salutary effect on my nerves that was almost immediate. I was still filled with trepidation, of course, but--my panic significantly less clamorous and debilitating, my not so quiet desperation much quieter--it was, relatively speaking, a manageable trepidation.

Just days after his birth I was, in fact, as close as I get to all right again.

Robert Levin is a former contributor to the Village Voice and Rolling Stone, and the coauthor and coeditor, respectively of two collections of essays about jazz and rock in the '60s: "Music & Politics" and "Giants of Black Music." His fiction has appeared in numerous print and online journals.

Submission Guidelines

2006-10-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

Volume One of Ellipsis is complete. Guidelines for submission to Wayward Couch Press have changed significantly. Please read them carefully before submitting your work.

Although we invite all to submit, please see Ellipsis Volume One, or read through some of the work on our site to get a sense of the sort of work we’re drawn to, and to gauge whether Ellipsis would be a good fit for your writing.

Unfortunately we cannot provide feedback on individual submissions.

We would love to be able to offer monetary compensation for published work but, like crime, Ellipsis does not pay. If accepted you will receive two contributor copies of the issue(s) in which your work appears.

WHAT WE WANT:

Fiction/Poetry

As we are only able to accept a limited number of poetry and fiction submissions for the print magazine, we will consider all submissions for publication online unless specifically advised not to by the author.

Short fiction up to 3000 words in length.

Serial fiction. For the print magazine: divided into THREE installments of up to 3000 words. For online publication: divided into up to ten installments of up to 2000 words.

Poetry of any length.

Non-Fiction

Reviews

Ellipsis will print literary reviews in Volume Two. Submissions should be no more than 300 words about a specific work of literature. Please include publication information for the work (title, author, publisher and year of publication). Please query for reviews longer than 300 words.

Interviews

If you have conducted or would like to conduct an interview, please send a query to: submissions@waywardcouch.com

Please include brief bios of both yourself and the subject of your interview.

CONVENTIONS (Important):

All submissions should be sent via email attachments. We will NOT consider submissions sent by snail mail.

Work should be submitted in either text, rich-text, Microsoft Word or Works document formats. Please check with us before sending other formats. Address submissions or questions to: submissions@waywardcouch.com

Multiple submissions should be sent as ONE attached document. We have no limit on the amount of pieces you may submit at once, but please be reasonable. Sending five stories or twenty-five poems at a time is not reasonable.

Having said this, if you are submitting a serial, it is helpful for us to see the piece in it entirety.

Include a BRIEF cover letter in the body of your email. This should include the author’s name, title of the piece and contact information (including a physical address for your contributor copies if accepted). If you are submitting fiction PLEASE note the word count.

You may also include a short synopsis of your publishing history and some biographical notes. Some information is useful, long personal essays masquerading as cover letters are not.

Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you note this in your cover letter and let us know as soon as the piece is accepted elsewhere.

We will also consider previously published work but again, make sure you give a full publication history of the piece in your cover letter.

DEADLINES:

Ellipsis accepts submissions on a rolling basis.

PLEASE ALLOW UP TO TWO MONTHS BEFORE QUERYING THE STATUS OF YOUR SUBMISSION.

Quills Winners Announced; De Sade Not Among Them

2006-10-19T18:53:00.001-07:00

The Quills - essentially the People's Choice Awards of Literature - recently announced their 2006 winners. No big surprises here - Maya Angelou is still the greatest poet ever, serial hacks are geniuses compared to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rachael Ray continues her reign as the second, cuter coming of Christ. I was pleased with the General Fiction result, highly recommend the winner of Health/Self Improvement, and wanted to vomit when I read who presented the Book of the Year Award. As though that idiot is the biggest name in the room. Any who, give it a scan. Chances are, if you've been in a Barnes & Noble in the last year, you've seen gigantic displays of most of them.

Book of the Year -- presented by James Patterson
Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life by Tyler Perry

Debut Author of the Year -- presented by Anderson Cooper and Elizabeth Kostova
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell

Children's Illustrated Book -- presented by Rhea Perlman and Daniel Handler
If You Give a Pig a Party by Laura Joffe Numeroff, Illustrated by Felicia Bond

Children's Chapter Book/Middle Grade -- presented by Judy Blume
The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket

Young Adult/Teen -- presented Jonathan Root and Ann Brashares
Eldest by Christopher Paolini

General Fiction -- presented by Dominick Dunne and Sue Monk Kidd
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore

Graphic Novel -- presented by Chip Kidd
Naruto, Volume 7 by Masashi Kishimoto

Mystery/Suspense/Thriller -- presented by S. Epatha Merkerson and Nelson DeMille
Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich

Poetry -- presented by Liz Smith and Debra Leach
Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem by Maya Angelou

Romance -- presented by Kamar de los Reyes and Janet Evanovich
Blue Smoke by Nora Roberts

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror -- presented by Sherri Saum and David Weber
Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon

Religion/Spirituality -- presented by Marianne Williamson
Mama Made the Difference by T. D. Jakes

Biography/Memoir -- presented by Dana Delany and John Berendt
Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan

Business -- presented by Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki
The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch) by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio

Cooking -- presented by Todd English
Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners by Rachael Ray

Health/Self Improvement -- presented by Suzanne Somers and Jorge Cruise
It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider by Jim Henson

History/Current Events/Politics -- presented by Mary Matalin
An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It by Al Gore

Humor -- presented by Lewis Black
Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life by Tyler Perry

Sports -- presented by Pat Summerall
Get Your Own Damn Beer, I'm Watching the Game!: A Woman's Guide to Loving Pro Football by Holly Robinson Peete with Daniel Paisner

Variety Blockbuster Book to Film Award -- presented by Peter Bart and Stanley Tucci The Devil Wears Prada Accepted by author Lauren Weisbreger and director David Frankel

Looks Like Another Perfect Day

2006-10-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

October 20th and 21st, 2006
REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater
631 West 2nd St, Los Angeles CA 90012

With Chris Abani, Sesshu Foster, Renee Gladman, Johnny Golding, Shelley Jackson, Joni Jones, Bhanu Kapil, Lewis MacAdams, K. Silem Mohammad, Ishmael Reed, Emily Roysdon, Sarah Schulman, Mady Schutzman, Edwin Torres, and Anne Waldman.

What role does writing and narrative play in the invention of alternative communities, identities and politics? Can imaginary communities or fictitious authors solve real problems? What are the methodologies of the oppressed, the voices of the silenced and the technologies of otherness? Such work might include collaborative projects, self-organizing or anarchic groups, poetic terrorists, writer-pirates, and textual gleaners, revolutionaries or exiles. Impunities gathers disparate cultural vagabonds who set into motion our collective fantasies of escape, oblivion, arrival, and transformation.

Organized by Christine Wertheim and Matias Viegener. Sponsored by the Writing Program at CalArts and a grant from The Annenberg Foundation. For more information see www.redcat.org or contact: impunities@gmail.com.

I'd really like to go to this. Too bad I don't live there anymore.

2006-10-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

LITERARY SLUGFEST:

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

VS.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Here's an interesting bout: both stories are argueably the most successful of their kind in recent memory, but notice how they're billed: Egger's proclaims his work is "Based on a True Story," like "Remember the Titans," or "Troy." Frey, as we'll all no doubt recall, said his effort was a "Memoir." And now Oprah wants him dead. But that doesn't take away from the story's literary merit, and so these two contenders step into the ring as evenly matched as any we've seen thus far.

ROUND ONE (style): A tight contest. Both authors write with a very carefree, casual, and comedic style, especially effective given the intense subject matters of either book. Both books were successful, I believe, because of this style, the way the authors could bring you to the brink of tears and still have you chuckling, or at least smiling. The main difference between the authors' styles is that where Eggers is soft, poetic even, Frey is blunt, raw, base. And this difference tips my hand in favor of Eggers. Sue me.

ROUND TWO (content): Again, a tight contest. Both stories are engrossing, all the more so for their links to real life. It can certainly be argued that more people will relate in some way to Frey's story over Eggers', but Eggers trumps Frey when it comes to worst-case scenario. No one really dreads the inevitability of becoming a drug addict, but we all think of losing our parents, and Eggers' way was pretty bad. So we relate in that way. And I think ultimately, we're touched deeper by a man reacting to one of our worst fears than we are a man mending his mistakes. Eggers again. I'm as surprised as you are.

ROUND THREE (overall): It's not necessarily fair to bring Frey's, let's call them "indiscretions" to light here; it's not like he's a plagiarist, he simply misrepresented himself a little. Who doesn't embellish when telling a great story about themselves? And at least he owned up to it, took his lumps on national TV from a woman who, let's be honest, as many wonderful things as she's done, she was trying to save her own ass, not bring the truth to light. Against anyone else, this might be enough to pull of the round, but we're talking about Eggers. The man used his book to build a publishing empire with fingers in magazines, books, the web, writing education, and baby-seal saving (I'm not positive about this last one). Humility can't take down altruism. Eggers by TKO. I can't believe it.

WINNER: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.

The Engine Just Gleams

2006-10-12T14:20:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday’s reading at The New College in San Francisco was a beautiful evening. This is particularly remarkable since most of the readers and both hosts had been investigating the relationship of housewares and a ceiling fan until the wee hours of Sunday morning. These were actions to prompt a silly poem, born out of the genuine concern of the MCE (who is 30 today).

Ethan’s Question

How long
can we keep the train rolling
before somebody dies?

Thank you to all who read, attended and supported this event. There was love in that room. And I for one, returned to Portland with the empty feeling that accompanies days after ceiling fan drunkenness and the practical application of yabra. A tightness in the arms, across the chest.

It is my privilege to know these brilliant, young writers.

And be sure to check out The Los Angeles Project. Ms. Dacheux needs your help.

In the next couple of weeks we’ll be adding several new features to the Wayward Couch Blog. Let’s make a list:

1. New short fiction, to be published online as it is received.
2. New poetry, as above, to continue what we have started throughout Volume One of Ellipsis.
3. Information about all previous issues of Ellipsis.
4. A new music column from Jon Seiber of the wool cap ensemble.

We'll be updating the submissions guidelines over at Wayward Couch Home. The website will become a more static information source, while the blog takes on the fluid movements of Wayward Couch Press.

With Ellipsis Volume One almost complete, check back for more news on what 2007 will bring.

Another Brilliant Writer I Haven't Heard Of

2006-10-12T13:55:00.001-07:00

Those Swedes. What a great group of people. You never hear about them warring, killing each other or others, ruining their country through ill-advised domestic and foreign policies, like some other, some would say more substantial world powers I won't deign to mention here - in fact, the only time you hear anything about the Swedes it's usually in the context of a bikini team.

But don't forget, the Swedes are the force behind the coveted Nobel Prizes, the award of awards, the pinnacle of human achievement commemorated with a bunch of freaking money. And usually given to a whole score of people you've never heard of. Be honest. The only reason you might know anything about the prizes this year is because Bono's up for one. Another one. Beside the point.

The point is, this week the committee announced it's recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. Now, I don't know Pamuk or his work, but I assume it's really, really good, because with the exception of Hemingway, they don't give these things to just anybody. Why Cormac McCarthy isn't up there is a discussion for another time. Bottom line is, if you like really strong, relevant and powerful literature, it would appear there's a guy named Pamuk who writes it pretty well. According to the Swedes. And they gave us ABBA. It's something to think about.

Read about it at the BBC.

Thank You For Making Thank You For Smoking

2006-10-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

When I was a film production major in college, that one semester before I realized making movies meant physics and math and a cutthroat ambition I didn't posess, I was bound and determined to make Thank You For Smoking into a film. There might even be a couple pages of a screenplay somewhere in my piles. Anyone who's read the book knows what I'm talking about: the vivid and effortless prose, the witty, snappy, riotous dialogue. The book became one of my favorites the first time I read it. Sharp, smart, perfect. So when I heard that someone else beat me to the punch, I was a little skeptical. Especially when I found out the someone in question was the son of Meatballs and Ghostbusters auteur Ivan Reitman (other directors who are children of famous people: Jesse Dylan, song of Bob, jerk behind How High, American Wedding, and the worst Will Ferrel movie that hopefully there will ever be, Kicking and Screaming; Scott Marshall, son of Garry Marshall, responsible for blah Jeremy Piven film Keeping Up with the Steins; Mel Gibson, presumed son of God, and that Jesus movie).

But all this aside, you know what? Thank You For Smoking the movie is every bit as funny as the book, in the book's own voice, and is all-around a pretty faithful adaptation to the novel, though jokes have been updated, health concerns and hype, all that. It's not often that novels translate well, or at least accurately, into films. The last one I can really think of is High Fidelity. Think what you will of it, the film was pretty damn accurate to the book. So's Thank You For Smoking, although it's still best enjoyed one word at a time, cover to cover.

Then tell me, Future Boy ...

2006-09-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe people already know about this.

Without doubt my favorite thing I've ever found on the internet. So it's odd that I've only ever talked to 2 people about it.

O starry spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here: johntitor.com

Literary Slugfest Archive

2006-09-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

Saramago vs. Saramago NEW
Frey vs. Eggers
Beagle vs. Kerouac
Carver vs. Gogol

Live in San Francisco

2006-09-27T09:28:00.002-07:00

Yes, it's on:

Ellipsis Magazine Ruling the Bay
Sunday, October 8th
7:00 PM

The Creamery at the New College of California
780 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94110

readers:
Neelanjana Banerjee (issues 3, 5 & 10)
Will Skinker III (issues 1-7)
Ryan Newton (issues 1 & 5)
Paul Corman Roberts (issue 2)
Jacqueline Motzer (issue 1)

It's true. All these trouser-strainingly attractive people reading on one bill, magazines available, and while stocks last BADASS Ellipsis stadium cups.

artwork:
Stacy Elaine Dacheux (issues 1, 2 & 4)

Yep: the artist whose work beautifies the cover of many a fine book, and (among many other places) The Governor's Palace in Tlaxcala, Mexico.

hosted by:
Mssrs. Morse & Froude who last appeared together in this capacity on KBOO FM's Talking Earth poetry show. If you heard that particular transmission, imagine what it's like when they're in the flesh.

Come and see us. We want you.

THE ROAD is delivered

2006-09-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

Today's the day! Drive, walk, skip, run, trample others, endanger children and small animals, do whatever you must to get to a bookstore today, any bookstore, and pick up your copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road (Knopf, $24). If you don't, McCarthy will eat a kitten, then make you read about it later, which you'll want to, because as horrifying as it will be, it will be the best damn description of an author eating a kitten ever conceived. And you don't want that. If my words aren't enough, check out what some dude at the NY Times said about it, then go, shoo.

LITERARY SLUGFEST: Beagle vs. Kerouac

2006-09-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

I SEE BY MY OUTFIT (Peter Beagle,1965) VS. ON THE ROAD (Jack Kerouac,1957)

At first glance, you wouldn't think this is a fair fight. One of these books is the quintessential work of the last true American literary movement (if you have to ask which one, stop reading now; CSI will be on soon), and the other one I'm betting you've never heard of. It probably isn't fair. But sometimes you throw a wet marmot in a cockfight and, well, you'd be surprised. So let's see what happens.

ROUND ONE (style):This is the first place fairness comes into debate. Kerouac's novel is not only a breakaway from tradition in terms of narrative structure, it's also an exercise in his own form of spontaneous prose. Beagle's book, a nonfiction account of he and a friend's trip cross-country in the mid-60's on motor scooter (no shit) is just that: a standard account, no narrative or stylistic flourishes, just the truth, picaresque though it be. So although at times I prefer Beagle's straightforward style, you just can't fuck with genius. Pardon the language. Round one to the Beat Bomber.

ROUND TWO (voice): The blatant differences in style would seem to make any comparisons on voice equally unmatched, however, considering the similarities in narrative - 2 young men, a journey cross-country with no real destination in mind, America between WWII and Vietnam, a time of expansion, exploration, a certain sense of frivolity about it all, but also a certain sense of desperation - considering these similarities, though the round still has to go to Kerouac, it's not because his voice is better than Beagle's, it's that it's better-suited. If both men had written a book about a professor in crisis somewhere in Ohio, or a family's coming to reckoning in the wake of a death, Beagle's dependable, traditional voice would be the more appropriate. But for a subject matter such as this - a man's ultimate freedom, in essence - it needs to sound reckless, not steadied, because that's what self-discovery is: reckless.

ROUND THREE (overall): Well, Beagle was wobbling after the last two rounds, and he's certainly in no shape to take this one. Like I said up top, one of these books is the quitessential work of the last true American literary movement, and one you've probably haven't heard of. So no surprises here; the cock took the marmot. But though I See By My Outfit goes home a little battered, you've heard of it now, and if you're a fan of the champ, you should check out the contender, because it's exactly that, a tamer, more level-headed approach to the same ideas that made Kerouac a shaper of culture; think On the Road, the made-for-Network-TV movie, on scooters, starring someone you like. A good ride. But the winner, and still champion: On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.

It's Nick Cave's birthday...do you know where your children are?

2006-09-22T12:57:00.000-07:00

In addition to his well-known work with The Bad Seeds, Nick's actually a damn fine novelist, too. His book And The Ass Saw The Angel is just as creepy, cutting and haunting as his rendition of "Stagger Lee." And he's been receiving a lot of acclaim this year thanks to his screenplay, The Proposition, for which he won a major award at the Venice Film Festival. So here's to Nick Cave on his birthday; seems sometimes ne'er-do-wells do well after all.

Harvest Time

2006-09-15T15:32:00.000-07:00

Just like movie distributors, publishers release specific kinds of books at specific times of the year. Spring and summer, for example, are when the "fun" books come out, the beach reads, the pop-fiction stuff. Whereas fall is reserved for heavier works, more literary novels by perhaps some more revered names than, say, James Patterson.

This fall is certainly no exception. In fact, it looks to be one of the best falls in an incredibly long time, if not the best ever. To help you navigate through the new arrival section, here are six can't misses, six novels that you will never regret having read.

FALL'S BEST BOOKS

The Road by Cormac McCarthy - Every so often there is written a book of such power, such talent, that it is frightening. This is one of them. Post-apocalyptic, barren, horrifying and hopeful. If you read one book for the rest of your life, make it this one. But leave a light on.

The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford - This is the third of Ford's novels to feature retired sportswriter Frank Bascombe. The last one, Independence Day, won not only the PEN/Faulkner Award, but also a little thing we like to call the Pulitzer. Nuff said.

The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen - I love creepy, historically-based stuff like this novel. Set just before WWI and during the flu pandemic, a small town in the Pacific Northwest decides to quarantine itself from the rest of the world. The one road into town is barricaded. Chaos, naturally, ensues.

Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier - Remember when it was Cold Mountain the masses went mad for, not The Da Vinci Code? We really had something then. And we just might have it again. After more than a decade of speculation, Frazier finally releases his second novel, and epic it is. It almost doens't matter what it's about, the anticipation is so high. But it still sounds good.

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers - In his 9th novel, Power's tackles the story of a brain-damamged man rediscovering his sister with the aid of a cognitive neurologist/best-selling novelist. Powers has proven himself time and again to be a highly capable storyteller, but this could be his best effort yet.

Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon - Anytime Pynchon publishes we should all pay attention, especially when he publishes a 1120-page magnun opus, as he is this fall. The novel spans the time from the 1893 Chicago's World Fair (same featured in Erik Larson's Devil in the White City) to the years after WWI, trots all over the globe and is inhabited by the not-so-usual usual array of characters only Pynchon can create. Expect everything.

So there you have it, just a sprinkling of some of the better books to be published in the coming months. If anyone comes up with others, we'd love to hear about them. Read well.

Dahl Day 2006

2006-09-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Mr. Dahl...

LITERARY SLUGFEST: Carver vs. Gogol

2006-09-13T14:09:00.000-07:00

In the interest of furthering both literature and head-to-head competetion, two of our absolute favorite things, we're proud to bring you this first installment of SLUGFEST, a semi-regular column comparing two pieces of media with something in common. Sometimes it will be movies, sometimes albums, sometimes literature, and sometimes a mixture of all these things, like a suicide at the Burger King drink machine. Today it's literature, two masters of short fiction and their best collections:

Tales of Good and Evil
by Nikolai Gogol

VS

Where I'm Calling From
by Raymond Carver

ROUND ONE (narrative voice): At first glance, you may see little similarities between the Father of Russian Literature and the Founder of so-called (insultingly so, I think) K-Mart Fiction, but then you're just not looking close enough. Both men dealt with the common people in the same way as Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes before them; they spoke to them, as them. They understood their topic and their class so well that their work became more than mere fiction, it became a mirror to the times, a mirror to the people who made the times. Gogol and Carver were quiet observers, content to let the story tell itself. Any moral lessons or judgements passed were inferences from the reader, not bold implications from these two masters of truth and subtlety. But every round has a winner, and in terms of who better landed his punches when it came to defining the world around him, I gotta give it to Carver by a slight margin. His characters breathe easier, in my opinion, they exist sooner, reveal themselves more through action and dialogue than description. Some of the realest people I've read have been Carver characters. Sugar Ray gets round one.

ROUND TWO (narrative style): Some of you might think that Carver is the shoe-in here, but let's see what happens. It's true that Carver's style - like Hemingway's, or Faulkner's - is instantly recognizeable, while Gogol's, though just as exquisite and masterful, is more traditional, classical. Carver is stark and gritty, while Gogol is melifluous and lush. Both styles serve their respective contents, both illustrate an author who knows his language and his character's language inside and out. But for me, and you can call me a purist, I prefer the graceful hooks of Gogol to the swift jabs of Carver. All tied up after two.

ROUND THREE (legacy): Carver, for a period that perhaps is still occurring, was the most imitated writer in MFA programs here in the United States. Everyone was going to be the next Carver. As yet, no one is. But then there's Gogol, coming out of his corner with a supporting quote that has been attributed to Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Turgenev: "We all came out from under Gogol's Overcoat." The quote references the short story by that title, and is meant to demonstrate the impact Gogol had not only on Russian literature, but the short story in general. Nobody wrote them like Gogol before, and everyone writes them like Gogol since. Including Carver. KO.

WINNER: Nikolai "Pretty Boy" Gogol, Tales of Good and Evil

Everybody Goes Home in October

2006-09-06T16:25:00.000-07:00

Wonderful things continue to happen at Artifact:

Sept 16:
Garrett Caples
Andrew Joron
Justin Sirois
with artwork by Renee Evans!

Oct 7:
Bhanu Kapil
Bill Luoma
Elizabeth Treadwell
(artist TBA)

Nov 11:
Amanda Davidson
Rodney Koeneke
Stephen Vincent
(artist TBA)

It is almost certain that there'll be a Wayward Couch presence at the October 7th reading with Bhanu Kapil. AND we're cooking up a very tasty surprise for the evening after the reading. More about this when we've got a few things confirmed, but I assure you it will be as canny as a badger and twice as handsome.

In the meantime, whet your appetite by reading this excerpt from the scrumtrilescent Bhanu Kapil over at not enough night, the journal of the Naropa online MFA.

That's all to report for now, except that I might change my name to Richman Deluxe. And here's a picture of a badger:

STEVE

2006-09-05T11:47:00.001-07:00

Deciphering and Interpreting: Brief Notes on Duchamp and Raworth

2006-08-31T13:55:00.000-07:00

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. - Marcel Duchamp

I should state that with only a layman's knowledge of Duchamp (at best), much of this reaction is to my own 'deciphering and interpreting' of this quotation, presented outside of its original context and installed within my own agenda.

My only point of contention is in the words 'deciphering and interpreting'. This implies to me that there is information posited, or somehow hidden within the piece. Something that the artist means to disguise and convey.

Take this: Tom Raworth’s "South America"

[The only instance of this poem I was able to find on the internet is presented with vastly different line breaks to the version that appears in Tottering State: Selected Early Poems 1963-1983. Even if you decrease the text size so that the lines do not run over, some of the indents and spacing are off.]

In any case, I cannot get over this poem.

Here is an attempt to say why: describing emotive states that can be assigned a name, such as love, anger, fear etc. is tricky enough. But so rarely do we encounter these states in isolation. There are overlaps, sensations and states of mind that are not pure anger, or pure pride, or pure anything.

This particular state, the poet names South America. And the description of that state is the poem itself. And it is smooth and it is jagged and it does not curdle. It is, in me, something beautiful, to the point where I want to feel South America again, and again.

And this is personal to me. The poem may be read by others in a completely different way. Some may receive it as nonsense, some as an emotive state incongruent to my experience. This is, to refer back to Duchamp, their own creative act.

My point is that the poem does not tell me anything. Or that to me, there is nothing to be deciphered or interpreted. I do not find a kernel of truth or moral comment. If it is conveying anything to me, it is a new sensation, a state of mind not accessible through 'deciphering and interpreting' but rather through submitting to the poem itself, its subjectivity at play with my own.

Also: Brent Cunningham reviews Tom Raworth's Tottering State.

He’s The Only Cabbage Round Here

2006-08-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

Inside the last two weeks, the two internet news sources I visit the most have offered a quiz centered on John Betjeman. The BBC extends their scope to a few other modern poets, The Guardian sticks to Betjeman in commemoration of his recent centenary. I did much better in the BBC quiz.

In other news about Betjeman - admittedly, a poet I've never really been enamoured with - this is pretty funny.

What's In Your Box?

2006-08-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

Aside from the usual bills and snail mail submissions*, what a lovely mail day this turned out to be: galley copies of John Woodward's Rain, and S.A. Stepanek's Three Breathing from the excellent Wave Books. CDs by Editors and The Phoenix Foundation. And, causing the Editor-in-Chief to soil his trousers, Cormac McCarthy's new novel The Road from Alfred A. Knopf.

Hey, Courtney Love**, what do you think we should do this weekend?

I think you're right.

* Ellipsis ... does NOT accept submissions by mail. We greatly appreciate your support, but all work should be submitted via email. Full submission guidelines are here.

** We made this one ourselves.

I Say Kill Him

2006-08-22T17:09:00.001-07:00

Dear Ms. Rowling,

Recently, there’s been a lot of buzz surrounding you. Well, a lot more than usual. You’ve announced that you’re well into the last novel of the Harry Potter series, probably the most highly-anticipated book ever, behind maybe the Bible, they had to be lined up for that one, right? Anyway, though you’re staying as mum and cryptic as ever, you have let it slip that two major characters are going to die. Naturally, people have begun to freak out.

The idea of Harry Potter buying a pine condo has generated pleas for clemency from your fans and peers alike. Stephen King and John Irving (really? I don’t know, just seems weird) stand among those publicly begging you to stay your executioner’s hand. References to Sherlock Holmes and whatnot.

I say kill him, screw those guys. What are they getting all worked up for anyway? Don’t they have their own books to worry about? King, maybe not, but Irving, that last one about the tattoo? That shit was just strange.

If you don’t kill Harry, one of two things is going to happen:

a) someday you’ll come back to him and ruin him.

b) when you’re dead someone else will come along and ruin him

Now, I’ll admit I haven’t actually read any of your books, not in a literal sense, but I have seen the movies and that one kid can really act. Seems like you got a good thing here, you’ve had a hell of a run, richer than the Queen, right? Not too shabby. You don’t need the work, you don’t need the exposure, you don’t need the acclaim. I say leave on a high-note, and drop that little fucker off his broomstick over a volcano or something. Put it to bed, or it’ll only keep you up.

There are ways to kill the boy and still have it be a beautiful, satisfying thing; just look at Charles Darney at the end of A Tale of Two Cities – Death made that guy. There’s got to be a loophole somewhere in that Harry/Voldemort one-must-die prophecy. Come on, you made it up, find something. We’d all be better off in the long-run if Harry Potter dies. I think deep down, we both know it. That’s just me, though. Anyway, take care, send money, all that stuff.

xoxo

Perry

Pop Quiz, Hotshot

2006-08-22T15:00:00.000-07:00

Each month in Ellipsis ... we present Eight Great books on a theme. As a complement, here’s a list of Eight Great books that don’t exist. The only difference between this and the monthly print feature is that this list is complete bullshit.

Here’s the fun part! Match the titles with an author below. Scroll down to find our answers. Even more fun: no possible combination can be incorrect since none of these books exist.

1. Notes from a Grassy Knoll
2. Where I’m At
3. Wake & Bake
4. A Casual Work of Mediocre Talent
5. Nine Thousand Stories
6. Marksmanship for Dummies
7. An Oral History of the Zombie War
8. Mein Kampf

a. Dick Cheney
b. JD Salinger
c. Pat Robertson
d. Martha Stewart
e. Jimmy Hoffa
f. The Hamburglar
g. Dan Brown
h. Oprah Winfrey

Also, many thanks to “JH” from Lincoln, Nebraska who sent in this eye-catching Axl Rose READ poster:

For this contribution, “JH” receives a keen Ellipsis ... stadium cup, available in environmentally aware green, passionate red, or calming lagoon blue. Want one too? Send something fun to: editors AT waywardcouch DOT com

ANSWERS: 1c, 2e, 3d, 4g, 5b (credit Junior Burke), 6a, 7h, 8f

READ

2006-08-17T13:56:00.000-07:00

In the previous post, I wanted to use the picture of Elvis featured by the American Library Association as part of their READ poster series. After a couple of searches, I can only conclude that it does not exist on the internet: as elusive as the poster itself.

The only place I’ve ever seen it is in the library at Naropa. Since stealing from Buddhists seems like the easiest route to reincarnation as Jared from Subway, it remains (to my knowledge) on the wall of the Allen Ginsberg Library.

In the monochrome photograph Elvis sits in a pale turtleneck, immersed in letters. The title of the book is obscured, and has been the subject of much debate among those with little else to do. This quote from the King may shed some light: “I enjoy reading. I don't usually read the type of books other people read. I read a lot of philosophy and some poetry.”

If I had to hazard a guess I’d say it was Ashbery’s Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror, either that or some early Wittgenstein. I suppose we’ll never know.

The ALA continues to produce these posters featuring recognizable book fiends such as Coolio and Ben Roethlisberger. In an effort to promote reading, we at Wayward Couch encourage you to submit to our own gallery of unlikely celebrities.

Here’s one I made earlier, featuring celebrity Nick Nolte:

On a side note ...

2006-08-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

Elvis Presley
(January 8, 1935 - August 16, 1977)
"I hope I haven't bored you."

Ellipsis Submissions

2006-08-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

If you've submitted creative work to Ellipsis in the last ten weeks or so, and are still waiting for a reply, thanks for being so patient.

We're working through a mountain of submissions and will get back to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for your support.

Bookies on the Booker

2006-08-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

If, like me, you can't resist blowing your wages on a trip to the local betting shop, here's a chance to fuel your addiction while maintaining an air of literary gravitas. That's a pony on Nadine Gordimer on the nose, and a ten-sheet each way on Mitchell. Luvverly.

For a closer look at the Man Booker Prize, here's the official website.

Grass-hole?

2006-08-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

I was going to post something considering the reaction to Gunther Grass' Waffen-SS involvement during World War II, and the demands that he should return his Nobel Prize. However, over at Guardian Books, Guy Dammann has already written an article that would render my poorly informed attempts obselete.

Read it by pointing yourself here.

Stoner's Boner?

2006-08-10T18:46:00.000-07:00

I have not seen Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center. Will I? I doubt it. But just dwelling for a second on the fact that this movie has been produced and distributed through the Hollywood studio system, a couple of things about "truth" occurred to me.

From Pearl Harbor to Braveheart, Titanic to U-571, nobody calls Hollywood on its bullshit. Of course, we will remark to each other that it's just entertainment and those who want a more reliable account should consult the history books. I don’t think it’s too great an assumption to say that most of those who contributed to the huge purses yielded by these "based on history" movies checked up on the facts afterwards. (This is of course makes the very debatable assumption that history books contain facts.)

Given the historical proximity of the events that form the basis of Mr. Stone's movie, and the continuing delicacy of this global situation, and the fact that the movie has been produced and marketed by an industry whose main prerogative is to make money through entertainment (not to inform): is it a good thing that this movie was made?

In light of the ridiculous reaction to James Frey's admissions by Oprah and her collegiate, why is it OK for movies to effectively rewrite history? Again, this is not directed at Mr. Stone, nor his new movie that I haven’t seen. I’m talking more about how effortlessly "based on a true story" has come to mean "this is what happened." Why aren't books allowed to do this?

Writers on Writing

2006-08-09T17:32:00.000-07:00

William Faulkner Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
NY Times Writers on Writing Archives
Erica Jong's 20 Tips for Writers
Five Tips for Avoiding Total Disaster as a Novelist by Kris Saknussemm
Paul Auster on Magnificent Uselessness

Suggest another link ...

NEW FICTION

2006-08-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

The closer to the top, the newer it is. Scrolling down fades effortlessly into archive.

Marjorie Maddox, Best Face Forward NEW
Gillian Barlow, Pygmalion
Robert Levin, How To Make A Baby

NEW POETRY

2006-08-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

The closer to the top, the newer it is. Scrolling down fades effortlessly into archive.

Sally Van Doren, Three Poems NEW
Ryan Newton, Airport Landscape

Links to Contributor's Blogs & Websites

2006-07-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

Steve Almond
Neelanjana Banerjee
Stacy Elaine Dacheux
Mary Rachel Fanning
Jim Goar
Laird Hunt
Pirooz Kalayeh
Ingrid Sundberg
Daniel Wallace

More to come ...

Volume One, Issue Nine

2006-07-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

Volume One, Issue Eight

2006-07-30T12:47:00.001-07:00

Issue eight of Ellipsis features the conclusions of Brian Evenson’s chilling “Baby Leg;” and Yuvi Zalkow’s two-part serial “Another Happy Client”. Find the next installments Steve Almond’s “Marta Morfa’s American Dream;” Pirooz M. Kalayeh’s “The Whopper Strategies;” and J. Mark Powell’s “Next Time By Fire,” while PJ Piccirillo’s three-part “The Oxbow Problem” also debuts.

Also featuring poetry from Christopher Ryan and Gerald Fleming, plus interviews with Isabel Allende, Stephen McBean and Will Skinker III; the first of three non-fiction pieces by Sehba Sarwar; exclusive short fiction from Terese Svoboda and Nora Cox; and the featured art of Charles Klein.

Volume One, Issue Seven

2006-07-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

Issue seven of Ellipsis includes the continuation of Brian Evenson’s chilling “Baby Leg;” Steve Almond’s “Marta Morfa’s American Dream;” Pirooz M. Kalayeh’s “The Whopper Strategies;” and J. Mark Powell’s “Next Time By Fire.” Yuvi Zalkow’s two-part serial “Another Happy Client” also debuts.

Poetry from Keetje Kuipers accompanies the final installment of Will Skinker III’s “SUM” plus interviews with Ursula K. Le Guin, and Rebecca Brown (featuring exclusive new work); short fiction from Ron Singer and Ron Savage; and the featured art of Ingrid Sundberg.

Volume One, Issue Six

2006-07-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

Issue six of Ellipsis includes the conclusions of Laird Hunt’s “Without Remainder;” Daniel Wallace’s “Ebersol Makes Short Work of New Love;” and Scott Nadelson’s “the Cantor’s Daughter.” Also find the next installment of Brian Evenson’s chilling “Baby Leg;” Steve Almond’s “Marta Morfa’s American Dream;” and J. Mark Powell’s “Next Time By Fire.”

New work from featured poet Jim Goar accompanies the fifth installment of Will Skinker III’s “SUM” plus interviews with Laird Hunt, Coffeehouse Press founder Allan Kornblum and Mason Jennings; features with Pauls Toutonghi, and the Independent Publisher’s Resource Center; short fiction from Alexandra Ash and Dorene O’Brien; and the featured art of Zach Trover.

Volume One, Issue Five

2006-07-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

Issue five of Ellipsis includes the first installments of two new six part serials: Steve Almond’s “Marta Morfa’s American Dream,” and J. Mark Powell’s “Next Time By Fire.” Also find the latest installments of Laird Hunt’s “Without Remainder”; Daniel Wallace’s “Ebersol Makes Short Work of New Love”; Pirooz M. Kalayeh’s “The Whopper Strategies”; and Brian Evenson’s chilling “Baby Leg.” Scott Nadelson’s three-part serial “The Cantor’s Daughter” continues, alongside the second and final installment Kerri Smith’s “The Legacy”.

New poetry from Ryan Newton accompanies the fourth installment of Will Skinker III’s “SUM” plus interviews with Tom Spanbauer, David Berman and Daniel Wallace; features with Kitchen Sink Magazine, Selah Saterstrom and Two Gallants; short fiction from Keith Kumasen Abbott, Neelanjana Banerjee, Stephanie Gayle, Vincent Kovar, C.L. Blesdoe; and the featured art of Ed Tadem.

Volume One, Issue Four

2006-07-30T12:43:00.001-07:00

Issue four of Ellipsis includes new installments of Laird Hunt’s “Without Remainder”; Daniel Wallace’s “Ebersol Makes Short Work of New Love”; and Brian Evenson’s chilling “Baby Leg.” Scott Nadelson’s three-part serial “The Cantor’s Daughter” and Kerri Smith’s two-part “The Legacy” both debut.

New and exclusive work from featured poet A. Van Jordan accompanies the third installment of Will Skinker III’s “SUM” plus interviews with Eleni Sikelianos, Devendra Banhart and Steve Almond; features with Peter Coyote, David Biespiel, Sam Savage and Guy Hogan; short fiction from Stacy Elaine Dacheux, Amy Halloran and Michelle Auerbach; and the featured art of Mark Ricketts.

Volume One, Issue Three

2006-07-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

Available in March 2006, issue three of Ellipsis included new installments of Laird Hunt’s “Without Remainder” and Daniel Wallace’s “Ebersol Makes Short Work of New Love”; the debut of Brian Evenson’s chilling six part serial “Baby Leg,” illustrated by Ben Templesmith; the conclusion of three part serials by Jim Scott and Tara Blaine with Contributor Spotlights on the authors.

Featured poet Connie Voisine accompanied the second installment of Will Skinker III’s “SUM” plus interviews with Dan Chaon, David Barker of the 33 1/3 series, and Steve Schiltz of Longwave; articles by Whitney Kvsagar and Will Sheff of Okkervil River; short fiction from James Drinard, Mark Gluth and Willie Smith; and the featured art of Ben Templesmith.

Volume One, Issue Two

2006-07-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

Available in February, issue two of Ellipsis included the second installments of Daniel Wallace’s “Ebersol Makes Short Work of New Love,” in which the hero, previously entertained by a Hollywood starlet while attending a mathematician’s conference, furthered this burgeoning relationship; Laird Hunt’s “Without Remainder,” a convention-bending narrative that challenges our notions of family, friends, safety and even location; Pirooz M. Kalayeh’s nine-part “The Whopper Strategies”; Jim Scott’s “As Far as the Eye Could See”; and Tara Blaine’s “She Wants to be a Different Kind.”

Also featured are a quartet of short stories from Savannah Schroll, Jim Goar, Paul Corman Roberts and Laura van den Berg; plus interviews with songwriters Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon, and Charles Bissell of the Wrens; a look at upcoming contributor Brian Evenson; a brand new featured artist, photographer Mary Rachel Fanning; and a new featured poet, Will Skinker III, whose debut marks the beginning of our first, six-part serial poem.

Volume One, Issue One

2006-07-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

On newsstands in January 2006, our debut issue of Ellipsis … Literary Serials and Narrative Culture featured new fiction by Daniel Wallace, Laird Hunt, Pirooz M. Kalayeh, Tara Blaine, Jim Scott, Jamba Dunn, Susan Streeter Carpenter, Garrison Taylor, Stacy Elaine Dacheux and Andrew Wille; poetry by Jackie Motzer; interviews with Tim Kasher of Cursive and Anne Waldman; and more.

Ellipsis Volume One

2006-07-30T12:37:00.000-07:00

Issue One, January 2006
Issue Two, February 2006
Issue Three, March 2006
Issue Four, April 2006
Issue Five, May/June 2006
Issue Six, July 2006
Issue Seven, August 2006
Issue Eight, September 2006
Issue Nine, October 2006
Issue Ten, November/December 2006

Links to Publishers, Small Press Projects and Organizations

2006-07-29T14:35:00.001-07:00

33 1/3 Series
Algonquin Press
American Drivel Review
Artifact
Attic Writer's Workshop
Aunt Beep's Bookcase
Coffee House Press
effing press
Encyclopedia Project
Feministing
Hawthorne Books
Independent Publisher's Resource Center
Kitchen Sink
One Story
Poetry Northwest
University of Tennessee Press
Voices Breaking Boundaries
Wave Books

More to come ...