Rave Review in The Believer

There is an absolute rave review of DEAR EVERYBODY in The Believer. Just a little bit of it is available online, including those funny little nuggets of information they do, but there are some great lines in it: "Kimball creates a sort of curatorial masterpiece, finding the perfect spot for everything that a life comprises. ... As Dear Everybody draws to a close, the letters and accompanying texts become progressively more intense and unexpected. ... The final power of Dear Everybody is that the reader shares in the inevitably conflicted feelings of those closest to Jonathon." Thank you, Drew Nellins.

#131: Tao Lin Will Never Get Another Real Job for the Rest of His Life

Tao Lin was born in Flagstaff, Arizona. He had a very busy childhood that involved practicing the piano a lot. When he was 5, Tao remembers writing little books and selling them to his mother for $0.50. When Tao was small, his neighbor had a rabbit farm and sold them for money. Being near that changed Tao, and, because of it, he talks less shit about people publicly and makes fewer grand pronouncements. Growing up, Tao played kickball and baseball and basketball in the neighborhood, but not at school. When he was 10, he was playing poker with his neighbor and bet his entire coin collection. The neighbor won and Tao picked up his coin collection and ran back to his house and locked the door. The neighbor knocked a lot and said things like this: "Just give me half. I won't be angry." Tao kept practicing the piano until he no longer owned a piano that worked. Then, at New York University, he studied journalism, but he would have studied creative writing if there had been a program. His sophomore year, he broke up with his girlfriend and it was after that that he decided to focus really hard on writing. After that, Tao wrote and published you are a little bit happier than I am (poetry), Bed (stories), Eeeee Eee Eeee (novel), and cognitive-behavioral therapy (poetry). As Tao has noted in interviews, his writing expresses crippling loneliness, severe depression, and the arbitrary nature of the universe. Also, Tao enjoys repeatedly looking at statcounter, salesrankexpress, facebook, myspace, gmail, and bloglines. When a number changes, he feels like something has happened. His job is to promote himself to ensure that money will come to him 2-3 years from now, and then even after that. Everything is just some thing that Tao does. It can be either good or bad depending on the way he thinks about it. Once, Tao thought about peeing in an empty FYXX energy drink bottle and selling it on eBay. Another time, after he ran out of money, Tao sold 10% shares of his second novel, Richard Yates (2010), to six different people for $2,000 per share. But he has not sold shares for Shoplifting from American Apparel (2009). He will never get another real job for the rest of his life. Tomorrow, Tao would like to eat only raw vegan foods.

Tao Lin’s Blog

[Note: This postcard life story is part of a series of postcard life stories that will appear in Keyhole #6 (guest edited by William Walsh), where all the contributor bios will be postcard life stories--the idea being to make every possible aspect of the magazine literature.]

#5: The Moving Life of C.

C. is glad that she was born in 1976 in San Jose, California, but wishes it would have been to a different family in a different house. Her childhood was unique and painful. In those terms, it’s difficult to say more than that. At 4, C. moved to Utah with her family, which was Mormon, which led to certain problems. At 7, C. started playing piano, and, at 12, she realized music would be her life's calling. She thought she would be a concert pianist, but it didn’t work out. At 14, C. realized that there were problems with being a Mormon, and only now does she realize that this was part of the reason she ran cross country in high school (she was trying to get away). At 15, C. stopped studying classical music when the piano became restrictive. After that, she picked up the guitar because her boyfriend played guitar and wrote songs, and she wanted to do everything that he did. When she was 17, C. was out walking when she had a realization—she stopped walking and decided to leave the Mormon Church—then she began walking again. The decision was easy in the moment, but it took a lot of will power to get to that moment. Please know that C. is not a recovering Mormon or a Jack Mormon or even culturally Mormon. When C. left, she left for good. It will always be part of her past, but it is not part of her identity.

In college, C. was an English major, but didn't stay long enough to finish her degree. For years, she has felt the need to keep moving—moving away from her family to Colorado Springs to Seattle to New York City to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Los Angeles again and to Baltimore (21 total addresses). Now C. is a shampoo girl by day and a musician by passion. She’s not sure what she wants from music anymore, but she’s trying to tap back into what she likes about music, what naturally comes from her, whether anybody likes it or not. It's hard. She doesn’t know what will come of it. C. is also starting massage therapy school and looking forward to learning about anatomy and physiology. She looks forward to being able to help people. C. is kind. C. wishes that she could sort out her relationship with music. She has a feeling it will happen naturally as she sorts out her head. Eventually, C. might find somebody to play great music with and to tell that she secretly loves romantic comedies. For now, C. likes Baltimore and she has finally moved far enough away from home to stop moving. But she has also developed a sense of pleasure from that physical movement and knows she won’t stop. She could move to Chicago or London. She could go to Philadelphia or Rome. Now she can go anywhere.

The Apostrophe Cast Interview, Concerning Literary Crushes

The Apostrophe Cast interview, in which I answer whether I ever had a crush on a literary celebrity, is now up. You can also hear the podcast of the "yellow" reading here. Thanks, John and Guy.

#66 We're Lucky There's Blake Butler

Blake Butler’s two older brothers were miscarriages. Blake was almost a miscarriage too. He was blue and not breathing. He scored 1 out of 10 on the Apgar scale, which is almost not alive, and lived under the lights in the ICU for days. When he went home, he was his mother’s miracle. Understandably, she was overprotective with Blake when he was an infant, but that turned into permissiveness as he grew older, which gave him a sense of freedom that continues to inform his writing today. By 4 years old, Blake was performing considered monologues, crazy dances, music videos, and both sides of talk shows. It’s all on video (his mother will show you, if you want). Despite these performances, Blake was a fat child by the 4th grade. He liked comic books and video games. By 10th grade, he weighed 250 pounds and felt disregarded. His bedroom walls were covered with pictures of women that he tore out of magazines at the grocery store. He started playing bass in a band and started to feel better. By 11th grade, he weighed 170 pounds and people were nicer to him. He lost all the weight for a girl named Jen. He thought his weight was the only thing keeping her from him. It wasn’t, but Blake stopped being shy and started talking to girls. He played in lots of different rock bands—15, eventually. The first time Blake was on stage, under the lights, it reminded him of when he was in the ICU. Eventually, writing replaced music, though Blake brought the rhythm of the bass with him to the page. Blake still thinks of himself as the fat kid and he writes to find out what is inside him. This is one explanation for his tremendous written output. Another explanation is his insomnia, which allows him more conscious hours than most people are allowed. Blake is never fully awake or fully asleep, though, and the normal often becomes strange. But Blake keeps giving us everything that is inside him. It’s not pounds, but it’s a different kind of weight.

[Update: Blake Butler's first book has just been released. I've already bought my copy and you can buy your copy of EVER by clicking on EVER. There are blurbs from Brian Evenson and Gary Lutz. There are excerpts. There is an official trailer. There is an unofficial trailer.]

#129 Matt Bell Is One of the Coolest Things Ever

Matt Bell mostly grew up in a house outside of Hemlock, MI, where there was enough isolation to grow up odd, but not too odd. In 3rd grade, Matt won a certificate for writing the best pirate story set in outerspace, which is part of how he became the writer he is today. For the longest time, he wore Velcro shoes because he thought they were the coolest things ever and because that is what the astronauts did. That’s how he was 12 before he learned how to tie his shoes. That is, Matt was a nerdy kid. He read D&D rulebooks on the school bus, played lots of computer games, and read tons of science fiction and fantasy books. In 7th or 8th grade, Matt wrote a 200-page fantasy novel, but then he stopped writing in high school. After that, Matt went to Saginaw Valley State University and dropped out. After all, he had only been tying his shoes for 6 years and he didn’t know what he wanted to do yet. He went to Delta Community College, a 2-year school, where he had the distinction of placing 3 years in a row in a writing contest. Then Matt went to Oakland University, which was the closest university he could drive to, and received his English degree. Over this time, Matt worked as a bartender (he may have gotten the first internet-posted job anybody got) and then as a restaurant manager. These jobs were good for him personality-wise. He lost his shyness. He met characters and had experiences that he wouldn’t have met or had otherwise. Then Matt met Jessica on Valentine’s Day, which was a kind of sign. She was the roommate of two women he worked with at the restaurant, and, as soon as they started dating, Matt wanted to spend all his time with her. Instead, Matt went on a camping trip by himself. He drove across the country, which gave him a sense of scale and changed his perspective. After that, Matt and Jessica were engaged within a year, got married on the beach in Port Austin, and had one of the best weddings ever. It was amazing to stand up in front of all those family and friends, and for everybody to be so happy for them. Then everybody cried. By the time Matt finishes his MFA at Bowling Green State University (2010), he will have finished writing a short story collection and a novel. He will also have an even happier marriage and remember even less of what his life was like before he met Jessica.

[Note #1: Matt Bell's new chapbook, How the Broken Lead the Blind is now available for pre-order here.]

[Note #2: This postcard life story is part of a series of postcard life stories that will appear in Keyhole #6 (guest edited by William Walsh), where all the contributor bios will be postcard life stories--the idea being to make every possible aspect of the magazine literature.]

Dear Everybody Goes to CarolineLeavittville

There's a really nice interview about DEAR EVERYBODY and other things where Caroline Leavitt asks me interesting questions and I do my best to answer them in interesting ways at CarolineLeavittville. Just be careful if you go there. The interview begins with a command.

#71 Sean Lovelace: Running, Reading, Writing

Sean Lovelace was born in a clinic, not a hospital, which may explain why he later became a nurse and worked in a hospital. His biological father left when he was 1 year old and his mother was going to put him up for adoption. He didn’t know this then, but he felt abandoned, angry. Luckily, his grandfather adopted him and his uncle became his best friend. Then his mom remarried and Sean moved back in with his mother and his step-dad, who was great. The whole family would run together and read together. He often saw his parents reading and he thought that this was what he was supposed to do too. He also used to read the encyclopedia cover to cover until he found something interesting to make or do. Despite this, many of his childhood memories are of pain—hitting himself with a bolo, impaling himself on a tomato stake, that kind of thing. He went to the best schools, but was a middle class kid, so he overcompensated by writing hyperbolic stories about his classmates. When he was 14 years old, his dad challenged him to read War and Peace, which he did, but Sean didn’t really know how to use commas until he was 18 years old. Years passed. Sean kept running faster and faster. Running is the closest thing to religion for Sean. He can feel the earth moving through his body with each step. Sean read more and more books. He became a psychiatric nurse, which is how he met his wife--at the hospital (she wasn’t a patient). She is a therapist and Sean loves her heart and how much she gives to people. Sean loves their two kids, though he feels as if he abandoned his patients when he became a writing professor. His patients were thankful for everything that he did for them, though, and Sean is glad that he still makes a difference in people’s lives, which he does in many different ways—including when people read his stories and are somehow transformed.

[Update: Sean Lovelace just won the Rose Metal Press Third Annual Short Short Chapbook contest.]

The Launch for the BMA's New Audio Tour: Friday, January 16th, 7-10pm

I'm reading a piece that I wrote about Dan Flavin's Untitled (To Barnett Newman for 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf') at the launch party for the BMA's new audio tour. This Acoustiguide is a great project that includes lots of wonderful writers (see list, below) and will be free to the public. Here's the museum's press release:

Beginning January 16, 2009, visitors to the BMA can experience a dynamic Acoustiguide audio tour of some of the most beloved and intriguing works in the Museum’s collection. Titled 60 Objects / Countless Stories, this innovative free tour offers an insider’s perspective on the works of art from the BMA’s expert curators, as well as art-inspired stories and poems by celebrated Baltimore writers, including David Simon, Laura Lippman, and Michael Kimball.

In addition to the personal take on objects from the Museum’s expert staff, the BMA invited 23 local writers to chose anobject and submit a piece of writing to be recorded. “There are tons of stories that surround and inform our understanding of objects,” said the project leader Anne Manning, Deputy Director for Education. From Laura Lippman’s musings on Edgar Degas’ Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen to Justin Sirois’ poem on Alberto Giacometti’s Man Pointing, the creativity of these writers adds another dimension to our appreciation of these works of art.

Laura Lippman • Jackie Regalas • Hank Lewis • Shirley Brewer• Elizabeth Spires • Ed Hodges • Stephanie Briggs • Joshua Weiner • Amy Siegel • Chezia Thompson Cager • Kevin Robinson • Michael Salcman • Claire Banks • Dan Fesperman • Barbara Diehl • Olu Butterfly Woods • Suki Kuss • Caleb Stine • Justin Sirois • Teri Taylor • Michael Kimball • Jennifer Carinci • Michael Salcman

Celebrate the connection between arts and letters with an evening of live readings from the authors featured in this dynamic new Acoustiguide audio tour. Meet the curators, conservators, and writers who contributed to the project, and enjoy an evening of curatorial talks, poetry readings, storytelling, music, and book signings.

FREE, open to the public
Cash Bar

#86 Jen Michalski: Unchanging and So New

Jen Michalski’s twin brother, Scott, came out first, but his nose and ear were all bent up. His nose still looks a little smashed. Of course, this early struggle just made Jen even more ambitious. When Jen and Scott were toddlers, their mom used to dress them up in matching outfits even though they were fraternal twins, one a boy and one a girl. Their mother would take them shopping to department stores and they would sit on the mannequin stands and sing songs from Sesame Street (today, Jen has a mannequin in her house). Their mother always knew where they were. When Jen was 4, she learned to say Fuck You from her father. But all the fighting in the family made her reserved in some ways. Jen’s filter became quite thick and sometimes she'd rather say nothing than risk what the response might be. Around this same time, Jen decided that she wanted to be an elephant when she grew up. She thought it was a viable career choice. She thought that elephants looked peaceful and that they must be brave (there aren't many hiding places for an elephant). Over the years, Jen wanted to be an elephant, then a writer, then a policewoman, then a writer, then a doctor, then a writer. She wrote her first short story when she was 5 and she read everything she could find--to try to find out how other people lived. She assumed that everybody else was happier than she was. By the time she started college, Jen had written six novels. In college, she wrote poetry. After college, she wrote short stories and two more novels, but she never tried to publish them. Also after college, she was in a relationship for eleven years, which was difficult to end. Jen doesn't like change. She doesn't even like going on vacation because then she has to get used to a new routine. She has lived in the same city for most of her life (B’more!). Now, Jen’s much much happier with her life and especially with her new partner, the wonderful Phuong. And Jen still reads all the time and runs an online e-zine, jmww, where she publishes other people's stories. She’s fascinated by what people write and why. And last year, Jen published her first collection of stories, Close Encounters (So New Media). Now she’s writing another novel and this one she’s going to publish.

[Note: Jen and I co-host The 510 Readings (see article, below). Plus, the new issue of her online journal JMWW just went live.]

The 510 Readings in Baltimore Magazine

There's a really nice article in January's Baltimore Magazine about The 510 Readings, which I host with the wonderful Jen Michalski. Thank you, Jason Tinney. Thank you, Peggy and Minas.

#54 The Short Life of Red Delicious Apple

The first thing that Red Delicious Apple remembered was being a flower and the way the birds sounded in the trees. Later, Apple remembered the wind and losing his petals. Apple wanted to jump down after them, but stayed on the branch, in the tree. Apple grew up, got wider, filled out, and began changing colors. He hung on by the stem even as the others began falling to the ground. He was afraid until the hand reached up, pulled him off the branch, and piled him in a bushel basket. Apple said goodbye to tree and brought his stem with him, a few small leaves, but he didn’t know where they were taking him. He bumped against the others and was afraid. The next thing that Apple remembered was the bright lights, another hand, and a plastic bag. He thought that maybe he was being suffocated, but he still trusted the hand, which eventually placed him in a small basket with others he didn’t recognize. There was a green and fat-bottomed couple, a small gang of long and spotted yellows. It wasn’t long after that, though, that the hand delivered Apple to the teeth. Apple could feel the teeth cutting through his skin and into his meat, what was left of his insides turning brown, sickening, softening. The last thing Apple remembered was the trashcan, the lid, the rotting darkness.

SOME OF THE LETTERS THAT WERE CUT, BUT THAT TELL EVEN MORE OF THE STORY OF JONATHON BENDER, WEATHERMAN (b. 1967-d.1999)

There is a wonderful writer and editor, J. A. Tyler, doing wonderful things over at Mud Luscious Press where a chapbook called SOME OF THE LETTERS THAT WERE CUT, BUT THAT TELL EVEN MORE OF THE STORY OF JONATHON BENDER, WEATHERMAN (b. 1967-d.1999) is now available for pre-order ($2, including shipping). The press run is limited and each chapbook always sells out.

There have also been, are, or will be chapbooks from Kim Chinquee, Blake Butler, Shane Jones, Brandi Wells, Brian Evenson, Peter Markus, David Ohle, and a bunch more great writers.

New Year's Day Marathon at Creative Alliance

I'm reading at the New Year's Day Marathon at Creative Alliance with 50+ other writers, performers, musicians. Everybody gets 7 minutes. I'm on 2:45-2:52.

Here's the promo paragraph: Celebrate the New Year with a wildly diverse day of spoken word and music. Join Baltimore son and writer for The Wire Rafael Alvarez, Charm City Kitty Club star Rahne Alexander, Underground Poetry Godfather Blaster Al Ackerman, Yao, Aware and Outraged (Ron Kipling Williams and Moziah), and local literary luminaries Chezia Thompson Cager, Mary Azrael, Kendra Kopelke, and Michael Kimball. Other musical guests include Liz Downing, John Berndt, Cliff and Rocky, and award-winning classical guitarist Zane Forshee. Throw in Maryland's Poetry Out Loud Champion Will Poxon, the Baltimore Improv Group, poetry animations (and many more fabulous people/acts we can't list them here) and you've got one awesome creative community all gathered under the Patterson's roof for an epic day of poetry, in the spirit of the annual marathon festival at St. Mark's Church in NYC. PLUS: write a verse on our poetry wall, put your New Years Resolutions in the hat to be read from the stage! Special thanks to Laurie Flannery for bringing us this cool idea! Hot, delicious Southern Style Brunch buffet (Black Eyed Peas!) and full cash bar (bloodies and mimosas!) Benefits CA’s Open Minds kids art ed. programs.

New Year's Day, 11am-5pm. $5.

Seven Things

The wonderful Gena Mohwish tagged me and I am glad to have been chosen. I am supposed to say 7 things about myself and then tag 7 other people to do the same thing.

1. I was born in 1967 in the days after the Great Midwest Blizzard.
2. Once, when I was looking up at the ceiling, a piece of plaster fell in my eye (it really hurts).
3. I don’t have a favorite color.
4. One of my nephews told me that I still hold the record for the 600-yard run at Meryl S. Colt Elementary School, which I probably set in 1978. It was part of the Presidential Physical Fitness program, but I never got the patch because I could never do enough pull-ups.
5. I like it when old classmates get in touch through Facebook.
6. Sometimes I am afraid to tell people what my favorite movies are.
7. I know that none of these things actually says much about me.

I'm going to tag 7 people who recently left me blog comments: Shane Jones, Anonymous, Peter Cole, Katrina Denza, Shanti Perez, Karen Lillis, Jen Michalski.