It's just indigestion...or is it?

http://www.vice.com/read/ny-tyrant-atticus-atticus

Picked up Atticus Lish’s collection of sketches, Life Is with People, and wow, wow. I’m into art but I don’t think I’ve ever purchased an “art book.” I hesitate to label People as an art book because to pigeon-hole something this insane and unique would be doing the fine peeps at Tyrant Books a sad disservice. The limited (500 copies) print run features pleasantly thick covers and heavy-stock lined composition paper, usually one drawing per page, occasionally more.

http://nytyrantbooks.com/atticus/

As the title suggests, there are lots of people. People stabbing, shitting, cross-dressing, fucking, praying, grinning, often with a few explanatory phrases thrown in for good measure. The style of illustration is what Shel Silverstein would have penned if he’d been imprisoned in the S&M dungeon of some creeper with a serious fecal fetish then let loose amidst the dregs of an outer-borough wasteland populated by psych-ward all stars and sluttily anthropomorphic lesser mammals. Which is to say, mind-blowing. Each of the images presents a self-contained situation – a man who has ripped his eyeballs out to avoid attending a Bat Mitzvah, unkempt anorexic banshees screaming for Tony Danza, a woman hanging from a sex swing and crapping on a dude’s face in what is described as “a fairy tale right out of the Village Voice," unapologetic Susan Sontag references – that can be disturbing, outrageous, ultraviolent or misogynistic, but always funny as shit. Seriously, I was reading People in a bar and kept laughing obnoxiously, at one point dribbling Pilsner from my nostrils. The J. Crew catalog couple seated next to me must have thought I had a few chromosomes loose and when I allowed them to peruse the book their suspicions were confirmed. 

The weird/amazing part is, I don’t really feel like I’m looking at visual art. Each image is more akin to a flash fiction – rough, subtle, twisting – that deserves to be absorbed for more than a casual moment. Which is why I recommend flipping through People slowly, taking a dozen or so drawings and then calling it a night. Or maybe not. I tore through the book in two extended sittings, the last one culminating in a 3am near nervous breakdown. I wanted to look at porn or hug someone, and probably both, in that order. Yet my sleep was surprisingly untroubled, devoid of the fucked up and too-vivid dreams that had been plaguing my head for weeks. And they haven’t returned. In purging his nightmares, Lish may have inadvertently helped me shirk off some of my own.

I can’t guarantee that Life Is with People will have the same affect on you. But I can guarantee you’ll love the book. And if you don’t, you’re a moron. 

http://www.vice.com/read/ny-tyrant-blake-butler

The book's mini-site is here. 

best drug albums

David Bowie – Low

Simple Kid – Simple Kid

Butthole Surfers – Locust Abortion Technician

Pink Floyd – A Saucerful of Secrets

Flaming Lips – Clouds Taste Metallic

Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles

Talking Heads – Speaking in Tongues

Bob Marley – Legend

Dr. Dre – The Chronic

New Radicals – Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too

Pink Floyd – DSOTM

Human League - Dare

The Velvet Underground – The Velvet Underground

Weezer – Pinkerton

Jay-Z – Reasonable Doubt

Smashing Pumpkins - Gish

Ween – The Pod

Grateful Dead – Shakedown Street

Phish – Story of the Ghost

Pavement – Slanted and Enchanted

DMX – It’s Dark and Hell is Hot

Flaming Lips – everything recorded after 2009

Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms

Del Tha Funkee Homosapien – Deltron 3030

Hum – You’d Prefer an Astronaut

Big L – The Big Picture

Silver Jews – Starlite Walker

Pixies – Surfer Rosa

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2012/02/ziggy_stardust.php

A series of chance sexual encounters provides him with an unlikely side career as a male prostitute

I review Ryan W. Bradley's Code for Failure at HTMLGIANT. Stop dicking around and get the book, it's really good.

nightmare sequence 3.04

IN THE LIVING room of my cottage, seated in front of the camcorder’s gaping black eye. Philippe is standing behind squinting Jean-Paul, holding cue cards, the writing on them big and Sharpie-black. Titus is standing behind me, holding the same sword I’ve used in hundreds of scenes. Alaska is in the far corner of the room, oblivious, playing with some old Ninja Turtles action figures I saved from my parents’ house. She’s got the Shredder toy in her tiny fist, stomping him down on a defeated pile of turtles and their wise mentor rat, Splinter, crushing them all. Shredder – the most badass ninja mutant killer of them all, the yin to the Turtles’ yang. For a second I want to tell her that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, that the Turtles and Splinter are supposed to combine forces and kick Shredder’s ass, to make things right. But the grunts of sheer joy coming out of Alaska’s mouth as she crushes the Turtles’ green plastic skulls one by one with Shredder’s iron-studded heel, because at this moment the carnage makes perfect sense. Jean-Paul presses the RECORD button. Lauren is sobbing in another room. ‘Action,’ Titus whispers. I repeat what’s on the cue cards: my real name and age, my real address and place of birth. ‘I am a wretched, squirming sinner,’ I say, ‘a true scum. I have found that my sin is truly an abomination and I seek forgiveness from the almighty –’ I hear the sword slide out of its sheath, the metallic hum. ‘Keep going,’ Titus whispers. ‘No,’ I say. I turn to look at Alaska. I hear Lauren’s sobs stifled by what might be a towel or a fist in the other room. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen, but is there ever a way it’s supposed to? ‘So that’s it?’ Titus asks. ‘That’s it,’ I say. ‘I had really hoped for more from you, Josh, but…OK.’ Yes, this will be it. No more games. Because a sudden warmth has enveloped me, a contentment I haven’t felt since childhood. My mother wrapping me in a thick wool sweater like she used to when I’d come home from sledding, worried that I might have a cold. I smell woodsmoke, my father’s strong forearms lifting logs into the biggest fire I’ve ever seen, then lifting me onto his shoulders to laugh and laugh as the blaze burns down to nothing. All this warmth is coming out of Alaska, an unbreakable cable stretching into the yellow cloud that surrounds me, blinding. I close my eyes, and wait for it. I hear the rush of the blade coming down and Lauren’s primal and beautiful scream and there’s no pain, only a brighter rush of yellow and the sudden string of words, as big and blinding as a five-million-watt high-high-definition billboard illuminated by five million moons reflected off the calm, mirror-like water of Long Island Sound: THIS WILL BE OVER BEFORE YOU KNOW IT.

one eye put out from a staple glancin' off a post

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/authors/harry-crews

A recent column in LitReactor reminded me about this dude Harry Crews, whose books I haven't read in a while and who is basically a Southern Gothic GG Allin, which is pretty fucking badass. Now I know "badass" gets thrown around way too often, and I'm guilty of it, too. Frat parties and longboarding through traffic, brah, are not badass activities. 99.9 percent of tattoos are not badass. Drinking Bud Light Platinums on a work night until you puke is not badass. Getting massively scarred in knife fights after the age of 70 is super badass. Read the column and do a quick Google search of Crews and you'll see what I mean. 

But gnarliness aside, the guy can write. And he gives great advice about writing. Anyone attempting to write fiction should at least heed the words of an OG who managed to give birth to seven amazing novels in eight years in the midst of a violent thirty-year blackout. Luckily someone was smart enough to recently film him dropping wisdom.

Some quotes:

"The amateur, or the coward, or the non-writer, will try to keep it and make it work because he doesn't want to have to throw it away and do all of that over again another way. The real artist, with no tear in his eye, and no sadness in his heart, puts the pages in the fire and does it again."

"All of fiction is about one of two things: love or the absence of love."

"Who could imagine her having the flu, or snot coming out of her nose, or her wiping her ass. Who could imagine that? Nobody, nobody. It's Beauty. It is what it is and it will be what it is forever, even though we know perfectly well it will not. That it will decay and die."

"Any piece of fiction that has a point to make is bad. It's gonna be bad. Because no one knows what the fucking point is."

"The Old Man and the Sea is not about fishing."

The entire thing:

And here's Crews jamming out some stories in the documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus:

whispers groin the chord of every scar

Got a review of Sean Kilpatrick's fuckscapes in this month's elimae. Definitely my favorite new book of the year thus far. Plus this issue is full of ridiculous people writing ridiculous things. Highly recommended. Not my shit. But other people's good stuff.