Moody/Experimental Fiction Update
Written byPosted on December 8, 2005
Filed Under Literary Motifs
If you’re not reading this site through an RSS feed, then be alerted that the experimental author referenced by Rick Moody has personally responded on these pages. His name is Tim Ramick and his story, “Foursquare” (a PDF to be downloaded and read, whereby the page is split up into four quadrants and the reader jumps from square to square), can be found here.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Girl Power by Marisa Meltzer. During the 1990s, artists such as Liz Phair and Bikini Kill came very close to unsettling the patriarchal pop hierarchy. And this small yet thoughtful volume delineates many connections between girl bands and post-Beauty Myth ruminations, suggesting that we may have come closer to a musical revolution than we realized, but settled for less.
Reality Hunger by David Shields. This book, challenging both "originality" and the conventional narratives we accept in literary "masterpieces," is mandatory reading for every working writer. It's almost designed as a litmus test carefully designed to uproot charlatans. (Indeed, Zadie Smith confessed last November in The Guardian that she could not write a novel after reading this book. Interestingly, her essay is no longer available online.) The book presents numerous thoughts and maxims: some contrived, some taken from other sources (see the numerous endnotes), and some sincere. And even if you don't agree with the sentiments, you'll come away from the book rethinking your perceptions of the novel and possibly galvanized to reapproach your own work. 
Psycho Too by Will Self. This handsome followup to Psychogeography containing the last half of Will Self's New Statesman columns and accompanied by Ralph Steadman's gloriously savage illustrations -- seems to have escaped the attention of most American newspapers, save for a widely syndicated Alexandra Fuller review in The New York Times Book Review. Small wonder that in a universe happily handing over its glass-encased brains to the likes of People and TMZ that Fuller would accuse Self of penning a "densely written" book and focus her interests more on Self's "rakish behavior" from fifteen years ago rather than his post-Debordian meditations on the dérive. That's too bad. Because Self's enjoyable and hyperliterate essays, laden with cranky asides and thoughtful considerations about the fixed manner in which humans unwittingly accept their spatial limitations, deserves your consideration.
Contact Ed by email.
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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Tim Ramick, looking to get in touch with Linda. Am a friend of her sister Deborah, and of Arnold, Linda’s step-father. Want her to help me find Debbie. Linda knows me, Marko Modiano, from Gardena. Am in Stockholm. If you are in the family, could you give my email address to Linda and ask her to get in touch with me.
All the best
Marko Modiano, Professor of English Literature, Sweden
marko,
i hear you’re looking for me!