Syntax of Things

A fan of the author

What blog would be complete without some name dropping?  At the risk of leaving someone out, a list then of authors I have recently read or am forever returning to and thus recommend:  Mark Sarvas, Samantha Hunt, Eileen Pollack, Roy Kesey, Yannick Murphy, Kyle Minor, Jeff Parker, Lee K. Abbott, George Saunders, Pinckney Benedict, John Cheever, Lydia Davis, Keith Taylor, Philip F. Deaver, Steven Almond, Sam Lipsyte, Stephen Dixon, Jason Ockert, Andre Dubus, Jim Shepard, Stephen Elliott, Suzanne Burns, Brian Evenson, Elizabeth Ellen, Jim Harrison, Yasunari Kawabata, Jonathan Lethem, Lee Martin, Cormac McCarthy, Erin McGraw, Chris Bachelder, Flannery O'Connor, Don Pollock, Robert Lopez, Peter Markus, Peter Ho Davies, Aimee Bender, Ben Percy, Tod Goldberg, Rusty Barnes, Pia Z. Ehrhardt, David Morse, Mike Czyzniejewski, Stefan Kiesbye, Anton Chekhov, Gunter Grass, Fyodor Doestoyevski, Jo Neace Krause, Felicia Sullivan, Norman Waksler, Kevin Moffitt, Corey Messler,  Hesh Kestin,  Louella Bryant, Allison Amend, Daniel Chacon,  Peter Selgin,  Laura van den Berg, Henning Koch, Terese Svoboda, Dawn Raffel, Norman Rush, Christine Hume, Janet Kaufman, TC Boyle, Aaron Burch, Harold Pinter, HannahTinti, Jim Tomlinson, Colson Whitehead and Kellie Wells.  And a host of others to be sure that I apologize for excluding off the top of my head.

Dzanc Books

At the risk of taking advantage of this forum offered me, I'd be remiss if I didn't write a bit about Dzanc Books.  Dan Wickett and I founded Dzanc in 2006  with the aim of bringing great writing to a wider audience.  With lots of sweat and focus and support from folks like Steven Sieghman and Keith Taylor, we have put together a list of authors which we feel rivals the top tier presses in the country.  We are a hands-on, here to help you, buddy up to the bar, publishing house and damn proud of it.  Consortium now distributes our books nationally, as well as the books of our imprints, Black Lawrence Press, Monkeybicycle and OV Books.  Our Dzanc Writers in Residency Program, our Dzanc Prize and dozens of workshops further extends the Dzanc vision for giving something back to the community.  Its been a grand 2 years and we are looking to run for 100 years more.  After that, it's anyone's guess.  Now, if anyone can tell me what Dzanc stands for, we'll send you a copy of Roy Kesey's great Dzanc Book,  All Over.

Detroit loves literature. It also loves sports.

Having finished the task of describing the fundament of Temporary People, I can move on to more imperative concerns:  SPORTS.  Let us not pretend there is anything more significant or moving than the mark and measure of the home team.  I am a homer.  A Detroit boy forever rooting and what can I say?  Right now, without exception, there is no better sports city in America.  Go ahead and differ with me, the proof is in the pundit, I mean the pudding.  Pistons?  Second round of the playoffs and up 3-1.  Red Wings?  Western Conference finals and up 2-0.  Tigers?  On the move after a tough start, the team to beat for sure after 40 games and having just taken the Yankees in 2 series winning 5 games.  Lions?  Ok, so we have a blip on our screen.  Are we going to focus on the mole on Cindy Crawford's cheek or look at the body in total?

Guest Post - Steven Gillis

Hey All:

    Steve Gillis here.  I've been invited to blog away, to rant and riff and indulge myself today on Syntax of Things, and I want to thank Jeff for this opportunity.  I am well pleased the Syntax of Things dug my novel, Temporary People, (Black Lawrence Press, April 2008) and figured a good place to start the day would be with a brief bit about the book.
    I got the idea for TP around the time George W. Bush was elected president.  In short, I wondered with a good deal of shock how the hell this happened.  (And not once but twice!)  How did a moron become the leader of the free world?  It's an astonishing development and one which lead me from there to ask the question:  What can we do about it?  This is the fundamental question being raised in TP.  What can any one of us do to when we find ourselves under an oppressive government, one that is intent on taking away our liberties, distorting reality and messing with our lives.  What if the called for response clashes with our personal philosophies?  I am by nature a pacifist - though those who have argued with me might disagree.  I am against the war, against violence.  Yet, what if the only way to get rid of a despot was to put a bullet in his brain pan?  Is it ok?  Is it indeed the intelligent decision or must one maintain their personal convictions in the face of adversity?
    Temporary People has been described as:  "A political fable of the first order, sharp and satirical, a hilariously insightful romp."  I hope this is true.  My intent when writing the book was to examine every option from all sides, the pros and cons of passive resistance, bloody coups and rebellions and collective indifference.  The story - I hope - works well in subscribing to what Swift said about relying on humor and a hint of satire when addressing a serious issue.  In the end, I reach no easy conclusions.  Hell, I'm not so smug as to assume it is in my purview to reach any conclusions at all.  I am, as a writer, an observer.  The only truth I know is that, at least for me, ultimately, all we can do is follow our hearts.   What else is there?

Primary

I got an email yesterday asking why I wanted the blog to remain politically agnostic.  Good question.  For one, in case you haven't noticed Syntax of Things isn't really about politics.  However, I think if you read this site enough you'll probably catch on to what my politics are and you'll probably be able to hazard a guess as to whom I plan to vote for in the upcoming North Carolina primary.  There may come a time in the next few months when I'll feel more comfortable jotting down my thoughts about the elections, but for now, I'm too busy trying to make sure that I limit the number of curse words I say in front of the wee one as we watch CNN's election coverage together.  I've already caused her to swear twice and while there is some humor in hearing "shit" come out of your toddler's mouth--with more clarity than she can muster for even the simplest words like "sky"--I'm pretty sure that filling her with this vocabulary is not such a good idea.  (Imagine if I were to sit down and watch FOX News with her...the horror.) 

Also, I don't often pass along press releases to you because, well, I'm not really the press, but sometimes I get them and on the very rare occasion that I find one worthy I might just go ahead and put it here.  And this morning, one came to me that seemed worthy, so here you go:

NEW YORK CITY (April 24, 2008)-Salman Rushdie, Francine Prose, Edward Albee and Rick Moody will be among the writers attending a press conference Thursday, May 1, at which the PEN American Center will announce the delivery later that morning of a petition to the Chinese Mission to the United Nations. The petition demands the release of 39 writers and journalists imprisoned in China who PEN believes have been jailed for exercising their right to speak and write freely, which is guaranteed under Chinese and international law.

Li Jianqiang, a lawyer who has represented seven of the writers currently imprisoned in China, five of them PEN members-and who has twice lost his license for defending Chinese dissidents-will speak at the press conference. The aforementioned authors will attend the press conference to represent the thousands of PEN members and supporters who have signed PEN's petition. Other PEN luminaries and international writers taking part in that week's PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature are expected to attend as well.

May 1 is the 99th day before the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games, and PEN is asking that all writers and journalists be freed before the Games start. "The Chinese government made explicit promises to the world to improve human rights before the Olympics, but if anything this year has seen even greater restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of the press. We are delivering our petition now, while there is still time for China to fulfill these important pledges" said Larry Siems, Director of PEN American Center's Freedom to Write and International Programs.

The petition is one part of PEN's "We Are Ready for Freedom of Expression" campaign, which challenges the Chinese government to release all of the writers and journalists currently imprisoned in China, and to guarantee freedom of the press before, during, and after the Olympic Games. To date, over 2,500 writers and supporters have signed the petition. More information about the campaign can be found at: http://www.pen.org/china2008

X Key

If you need your typewriter erotica fix, you can find it here (probably not wise to click on the link from your work computer, but the link opens a page that is fairly safe for virgin eyes).  Don't ask...

Yips

Black is beautiful, no?  I'll be working on the design off-and-on this weekend so expect changes.  The banner is high-priority.

Around the Corner

Dearest Reader,

I'm tired of what Syntax of Things has become.  Tired of feeling like I have to force out a post just because.  Starting April 1st, I'm going to try something different.  It may be similar to what has been but it won't be the same.  I'm not going to speak of what will be quite yet; I'm still trying to figure it out.  Until then, feel free to offer suggestions of what you'd like to see, what you'd like to read about, what you think has worked and what should be avoided.  I miss writing about baseball; I miss hating on Madonna; I hate being part of the litblog scene just because...Time to reinvent.  Time to talk more about the weather; time to figure out if R.E.M. can redeem themselves.  Time to figure out if my time has come, if maybe at 37 I need to give this all over to someone who has the energy and time.  Or maybe I should just not worry about any of it.  I do know that I'm not ready to quit.  Not when there are battles to be won.  Not when I still have to finish that Denis Johnson novel.  Not when I keep getting strange ARCs in the mail, ARCs about stem cell research for godsake.  Nope, not done. Not yet.

See you on Fool's Day.

love
SoT

PS.  The Litblog Co-op is no more.  It suffered from being insufferable at the end.  Something like it can work, even if it's run by the little people.

Gag Order

While traveling to the south of the continent in a bold effort to reunite grandparents with child, the brave father contracted a possibly lethal form of the flu.  At least it felt lethal to him.  Now after flying back from the south of the continent, flu in his veins, toddler in his lap, he figured on a day or two of rest, but lo and behold, his wife had relapsed, she having had this same flu some two weeks ago, an illness the father/husband helped nurse her through back then.  So this morning, it was a battle of who was sicker.  She won, claiming as her award a vomit bucket of purple plastic and the honor of holding down her side of the bed longer.  Miraculously, husband/father/flu victim was able to make it through the day but is begging of his ever faithful and too patient blog audience to give him but another few days to get back to feeling close to normal again. 

CNN Projection

According to Lou Dobbs (and I'm paraphrasing), the South ain't the backward hickhole that it used to be even a few years ago. 

In other news, a tornado hit Clinton, Arkansas.

Enough of politics, I need some sleep. 

All Ears

I hear your pleas for me to name the book I mentioned, to make book recommendations, to come out and play some more.  I hear them and I will comply.  Check back on Monday.  I may have two books to recommend.

Half a Mil

At some point in the next 24 hours, Syntax of Things will pass the unofficially official 500,000 visitors point.  I say unofficially because I didn't put an accurate stat counter on here until some months after I started the site, but of course, in those early days, daily visits included me, my brother, my wife, and the random google search for "Janet Jackson's nipple." 

Since I don't really have time or even know how to figure out exactly who will be my half-millionth visitor, why not let's say that it's you, the person reading this right now.  Congrats. 

And Thank You.

Random Head Hanging

What does it say about the state of one's present condition when he (or she) uses the Internet to confirm that he (or she) did indeed spot a factual error on Sesame Street?  And the fact that this was perhaps the most intellectual stimulating thing he (or she) has done in a couple of days.

The letter of the day is sigh.

Of course, doing something similar is how I found out that the woman behind Marlie's favorite show, Signing Time with Alex and Leah, is a second cousin to Win and Will Butler of Arcade Fire.

Ball Dropping

Just thought I'd take a few of these last seconds of 2007 to say thank you and Happy New Year:

To my beautiful, patient, and forgiving wife;
To my amazing, beautiful not-such-a-baby-anymore girl;
To my brother (be strong);
To my friends in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill;
To my friends in San Diego;
To my friends all over the place;
To the readers of Syntax of Things who I apologize to for being a not-so-good blogger the last half of the year--may 2008 bring better content and a renewed sense of purpose;
To my fellow litbloggers, fuck all the haters;
To all the other bloggers who bring the content that keeps me hanging on the bloglines;
To everyone near and far.

See you tomorrow or the next day.  Best of luck in 2008 and beyond.

...

No, I haven't left for good.  Thanks for asking.  Just really need a break.  I'm hoping for a return around the first of the new year.  Stay tuned.  And please, no more Christmas music.

Pretentious Pecksniffian Cruft

I'm apathetic about what the word of the year is or what it will be next year, but giving you the list of nominated possibilities selected by the folks at Merriam-Webster, which you can vote on for next year's WotY (wOOt), made it possible for me to achieve one of my quixotic pursuits: to type the words pugnacious and sputum in the same sentence, not that it was ever a great conundrum for this charlatan.  Anyway, here are the words; go vote:

apathetic
babymoon
blamestorm
charlatan
conundrum
cruft
eleemosynary
facebook
hypocrite
linkability
melancholy
Pecksniffian
pretentious
pugnacious
quixotic
sardoodledom
sputum
subpoena
vanity sizing
w00t

Return

I'm still trying to figure out how four days could go by so fast.  More to the point, I'm wondering what happened to the months of June, August, September and October.  I'll be slowly trying to get back to a normal schedule over the next few days, including opening Bloglines for the first time since last Tuesday, so bear with me.  To start it off, here a few thrown together items mostly of a personal note, just to get the typing tips warmed up and ready to go:

• I know I said that I would be reading nothing but short story collections at least until the end of the year, but I forgot that a few reads would be out of my control--the nominated Litblog Co-op titles.  Yes, we are still active.  Just took some time off to reorganize.  I think there will be an announcement in the next few days so I won't spoil anything here, but let's just say that the books chosen this time around are all quality and made me happy to be reading novels again, even if I had to cram them in under deadline.
• I got around to seeing No Country for Old Men this weekend.  I'm going to try to put together something more detailed later on, but I will say that this was one of those rare cases that I liked the movie better than the book.  Also, did anyone else feel like this was a strange, Coen-CorMacish 21st Century-revision of The Andy Griffith Show? 
• Sick of Christmas?  We're still a week away from December 1st, over four weeks away from the day itself, and you can't get away from it.  Can't we all just digest our turkey and enjoy a break between the holidays before we let the yule overtake us? 
• More later.

Thanks

I'm taking the Thanksgiving week off.  Be back once the turkey is devoured.

Again...

I've done just about enough crying the last couple of days.  Time to dry off the keyboard, sift through the emails I've ignored (thanks in advance for all the kind words), and see if my feed reader still recognizes me.  No matter how much one prepares for the loss of someone or something, it still happens as if it were a surprise.  After all, there was that 10 percent of my brain that kept thinking she would recover, that same 10 percent that thought she would outlive me.  Now I have to convince that 10 percent that it was wrong and because it is so irrational, I have to spend a little extra time letting it mourn the loss, or perhaps mourn the fact that it was wrong. 

So I've spent the last two days telling lots of stories about Hannah, about how she once woke me in the middle of the night covered in what I thought was blood, only it turned out she had found a taste for my wife's paints, especially burnt sienna.  Of how she hated her backyard fence so much she chewed it down.  Of how she could shed two fur coats a day, every day, during the summer.  Of how she lived in more states and apartments than anyone else in family save me and my brother and probably logged more miles by cars than the majority of people I know.  That's just the tip of her legend.  But I won't bore you.  Time to see if there's been anything interesting going on in the world of books and music and whatever else.

To all of you in San Diego, my heart goes out to you.  These fires take me back to that Sunday morning four years ago when what I thought was a most odd morning thunderstorm developing to our north, especially strange for October, turned out to be the genesis of a fire that would scare the hell out of me for a couple of days and render the air nearly unbreathable for days after that.  I think my car still had ash on it years later when I pulled out of San Diego for the last time.  I hope everyone I know there is safe.  Check in and say hello.

And wouldn't you know it, there's an 80 percent chance of rain in Raleigh today.  I'll believe it when I see/feel it.

So Long, Girl

I lost an amazing friend of fourteen years today.  I owed her too much to try and keep her here any longer.  Too much pain, too much not being the dog I remember running around like the queen of the dog park, too much suffering to be able to give the love and affection that she was known for.  I speak not just as the person who fed you, watered you, bathed you, and loved you, but as a friend:  Thank you for being there through all the good and especially through all the shitty times, those times when you were, it seemed, the only thing still around.  Run again, Hannah.  And grab the biggest piece of rawhide you can find!

I'm about as much a poet as I am a neurosurgeon but here's something I wrote for her over a decade ago:

Green sackclothed
wonderer, wandering,
gazes at upside down stars
through bad beer bottle glasses;
all these fences between him and them,
those toothache days of fear
when not the car wreck
or the vodka shots
or the jaunt through clean air
smiling at his dog's first swim
clears his head.

She waits tenderhearted
as peace floats close to upturned stars.
Giving sight, needing sleep.
She smiles and helps his head
this time.
Always separation, timid of commitment
like the dog's three year fear of water.
One day, he thinks,
says aloud;
she listens.

He's Reluctant

Just got a hit on my site from someone searching for "opinion on Ed Champion".

Ed, you looking for a job or something?

NO!

How could you all let me miss out on celebrating this again this year:

;-?!....[{)

I count on you guys to keep me in the ellipsis.  Now you're just making me question mark your trustworthiness.  Period.

CPR

Not dead.  Just enjoying an unscheduled vacation.  Back next week.

Don't Look...Wait, Do

I have to thank Bob Dylan for helping me out with this little ad.  He's such a nice guy.  A little hard to understand and he needs a comb, but hey, he did everything I asked.  Ginsberg on the other hand...whew!

Lookee There

Not too long ago, all folks in my birth state could say when folks made fun of us for being the dumbasses of the country was "Thank God for Mississippi."  Well, things are looking up.  Now we can say "Thank God for Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, New Mexico, South Carolina and Washington, D.C."