The Rumpus.net » Michael Berger

Zombies Meet Joy Division

Michael Berger — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 21:00:46 +0000

More and more “serious” “literary” writers are turning to zombies, werewolves, and vampires for inspiration. This could be symptomatic of something dire or something hopeful in the world of writing. We could dither endlessly about the ramifications.

But perhaps we need to stop abstractly generalizing and focus on specifics instead.

Case in point: Colson Whitehead’s upcoming novel about zombies. Which partly resembles a Joy Division song apparently.

Since I have a young adult novel in progress, Confessions Of Tween-Wolf — a harrowing account of a barely pubescent girl’s struggle to control her excessive body hair and abnormal eating habits — I’m encouraged that established writers are not afraid to tackle the monsters that we carry inside ourselves. I’m also aware that books about werewolves, vampires and the paranormal tend to make money. (And now I’m generalizing.)

Rebecca West On Literary Criticism

Michael Berger — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:30:26 +0000

“A little grave reflection shows us that our first duty is to establish a new and abusive school of criticism. . .There is merely a chorus of weak cheers, a piping note of appreciation that is not stilled unless a book is suppressed by the police, a mild kindliness that neither heats to enthusiasm nor reverses to anger . . .”

MobyLives excerpts Rebecca West’s commentary about literary criticism, as timely now as when it was written. (Via: Bookforum)

No related posts…

Farewell To Open City

Michael Berger — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:30:47 +0000

A memorial to the long-standing literary magazine, Open City. (Via: Bookforum)

No related posts…

On Law, Zines and Trans Politics

Michael Berger — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:00:30 +0000

“. . .there has been widescale attacks on social movements over the last thirty or forty years in response to the very meaningful social movements in the sixties and seventies that had very transformative demands, that were seeking a redistribution of wealth and of life chances in really significant ways.

“What’s emerged in their place is a very thin national narrative about social change that often centers on the law and often says that groups that are marginalized or experiencing subjugation of various kinds should just win lawsuits and pass laws to change their lives.”

A great interview at Guernica with Dean Spade, “America’s first openly transgendered law professor.”

Perec On Asking For A Raise

Michael Berger — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:45:56 +0000

Everyday life is surprisingly full of hair-raising adventures. Sometimes you don’t realize it until you’re in the thick of it.

Waiting for the grocery store manager to confirm that you are not in fact the same guy who stole the roast chicken three days prior.

Finding yourself in your boss’s office, waiting for him to angrily adjust the nodules on his new Executive office chair while you are assailed by a bizarre coughing fit.

And you say to yourself: wow, this is absurd and vaguely like a scene from a novel. You pile enough of these singular details together and you have a comic epic.

Georges Perec was one of those writers who made high (and very playful) art out of the intricacies of day-to-day life. His Life: A User’s Manual is one of the great books of the last century. Today I discovered that this month Verso published an English translation of his 1968 novel, The Art Of Asking Your Boss For A Raise.

To honor it, please follow this flow chart on how to actually ask that question.

Reimagining The Memoir

Michael Berger — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 23:20:01 +0000

“That it is being considered as book of criticism, rather than as memoir, seems the luck of the draw. Some of the essays in it were originally published in the guise of book reviews, but they always jump the rails of literary journalism and go off on their own course — assessing not just the text but its place in the constellation of her own interests and personal history, which are (respectively) various and knotty.”

In light of all the back and forth about memoirs, I think this appraisal of Terry Castle’s The Professor and Other Writings is pretty enlightening. (Via: Bookforum.)

The Joys Of Freelancin’

Michael Berger — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 22:00:48 +0000

“The great thing about freelance, of course, is the numerous freedoms it embraces, chief among them being the freedom to work in your underwear. This seems to be the one that everyone knows. I was talking on the phone to an uncle of mine who’s in a nursing home, and when I told him I was working freelance, he said, ‘Oh, the underwear people!’”

Essays like this are the reason I put pants on sometimes.

It’s funny too, isn’t it, how “pants” and specifically “wearing pants” is a cultural marker for maturity, autonomy and not being a total, scum-sucking parasite? The moment I’m caught without pants on I’m compromised in countless ways; it becomes open season on what remains standing of my integrity. Unless I’m not wearing pants for ribald reasons. (Which could conceivably expose me to a different kind of devastating humiliation.)

Also: I have severe freelance envy.

Introducing Belgium’s Master Fantasist

Michael Berger — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 20:45:03 +0000

Just like last week, Belgium, for reasons obtuse and inexplicable is on my mind.

I discovered at 50 Watts a guest post by Edward Gauvin about a Belgian writer named Thomas Owen that English-only readers are not going to encounter anytime soon. As a fan of pseudonyms, alter-egos and Pessoa’s heteronyms, I loved this autobiographical description of Owen:

“The story goes like this: there once was a lawyer named Gérald Bertot, who worked all his life in the management of the same flour-milling factory. He held a doctorate in criminology, and a side career in art criticism under the pseudonym Stéphane Rey.

Spared service in World War II, he turned to writing mysteries for money, with the encouragement of Stanislas-André Steeman, a celebrated craftsman of Belgian noir. In Tonight at Eight (1941), he introduced the police commissioner Thomas Owen–a character whose name he liked so much he later took it as his own when he embarked on what he has called his true calling, his career as a fantasist.”

The only book by Owen translated into English can be purchased to the tune of 300 some dollars on the internet. Which, if I had the money, might be worth it.

Introducing Anna Kavan

Michael Berger — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 23:30:42 +0000

There’s an indispensable book called About Writing by Samuel R. Delany. In the first essay he cobbles together an eclectic list of authors that, ideally, the aspiring writer should read. Because Delany has read everything, you can bet his tastes are wide and varied.

And it’s thanks to that book that I discovered Anna Kavan.

Born Helen Ferguson, she began writing while living in Burma in the 1920′s but then after her second marriage collapsed, she had a nervous breakdown and changed her name to Anna Kavan, a character in one of her novels. Thereafter her books took a decidedly surreal turn.

In fact, downright weird and hypnotic and deranged, at least based on the two I just recently read: Ice and Sleep Has His House.

Besides being the author of nearly a dozen bizarre and influential novels and story collections, Kavan was also a lifelong heroin addict, car enthusiast, world traveler, painter and breeder of bulldogs. Her life seemed to be one long fever dream that seeped, by way of her fictional persona, into her unclassifiable books.

Ice has been cited as an influence on everyone from J.G. Ballard to Doris Lessing to Elizabeth Wurtzel.

What’s it about? Well, in an unnamed country an unnamed man is driving around trying to find his true love, a frail albino woman who is perpetually haunted by demons. But the man’s quest is hampered by ice and snow and floods and ruins; in fact, it is verily the end of the world by ice that is deterring him time and again. And also other suitors, including an evil, ice-blue-eyed man named the Warden who is something of a warlord and a sadist.

The unnamed narrator is also obsessed with capturing the strange music of the lemurs. But this music, while it delights him, is a true torment for his albino love. The story flows in meandering, non-linear, dreamlike fashion and it casts a spell on the reader who goes for that kind of intelligent, fractured weirdness.

So on that note, go explore the weird world of Anna Kavan.

A Primer On Exotic Punctuation

Michael Berger — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 22:00:06 +0000

Never heard of the ancient, wonderful and criminally under-acknowledged Pilcrow?

Then go savor the musings at Shady Characters, a blog about unusual punctuation. (Via: Book Bench)

No related posts…

The Rumpus.net » Michael Berger

Zombies Meet Joy Division

Related Posts:

Rebecca West On Literary Criticism

Related Posts:

Farewell To Open City

Related Posts:

On Law, Zines and Trans Politics

Related Posts:

Perec On Asking For A Raise

Related Posts:

Reimagining The Memoir

Related Posts:

The Joys Of Freelancin’

Related Posts:

Introducing Belgium’s Master Fantasist

Related Posts:

Introducing Anna Kavan

Related Posts:

A Primer On Exotic Punctuation

Related Posts: