“Do you think your mother will want to save his glasses or his false teeth? They take those out prior to cremation.” I have to be at work, behind a counter, in about an hour and a half. I will have to answer this question: “How’s it going today?” This will happen many times.
Numéro Cinq started January 11, 2010, as a reading, discussion and resource site for Douglas Glover‘s current Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing students who are also authors on the blog. It seems to have expanded (be expanding) into something else. Visitors are welcome. Already they form a large part of the community.
Because it’s nearly the weekend (and because we managed to miss yesterday… Flannery O’Connor!!!!) we are relaying two stories for your casual Friday reading: A Good Man Is Hard To Find, by Flannery O’Connor, and The Passionate Male Prostitute, by Blake Butler.
TODAY: The Belonging Kind, by William Gibson and John Shirley
In 1981, William Gibson’s Sprawl mythology was yet to be written and this collaboration with John Shirley (the author who put the punk in Cyberpunk; pictured on the left above, with Gibson) is unique in Gibson’s oeuvre as it’s more of a surreal fantasy piece. Shot through with melancholy, “The Belonging Kind” is about a social misfit figuring out that the confident and the popular, those people who seem to fit in anywhere, may be members of a shape-shifting species that survives by metabolizing alcohol from free drinks. A nerd’s lament.
Brian Joseph Davis /Globe and Mail
TODAY: “The Author”, by Derek McCormack
Derek McCormack is a collector of images, anachronisms and junk who assembles his curios into clipped writings that are altars to his obsessions: vampire cowboy fashion designers, toxic novelty items, Peterborough, and butts. Ignoring trends, causes, and publishing, ahem, wisdom, McCormack’s short books and even shorter stories are guaranteed to outlive this century, like an evil polyester shirt.
Brian Joseph Davis/Globe and Mail
TODAY: The Cavemen in the Hedges
Twin Study, the Tucson writer’s short fiction collection from a few years ago, is the most consistently satisfying collection of the aughts. I love every single story in Twin Study but I think I love this story a little more. By the time you get to the drum circle at a derelict Pizza Hut, you will as well.
Brian Joseph Davis/Globe and Mail
bouncysimba1877
About damn tmie Victroia Secert has the matcihng panites to thier bars IN-STCOK about 5 hours ago via web
Please do not follow bouncysimba1877… madness lies in that direction.
The research for this book was painstaking. I spent months in libraries, in newspaper archives, in idling cars, preparing to write this book. The novel, as many of you know, concerns a group of intellectuals, all at the top of their respective fields, who are selected as the judges of the Nobel Prize in Literature. As they prepare to carry out their duties, strange occurrences take place, and it becomes apparent that a mysterious writer has targeted them and intends to destroy their lives, in horrible ways, unless he is awarded the Nobel Prize.
I came across a RT (retweet in Twitter speak) recommending a recent experiment by A. N. Devers in which she writes a short story in 20 Tweets. It’s called The Mystery Box and you’ll find a couple of chapters in the post as well as her bio. The fact she is credited with articles on Edgar Allen Poe and Alice in Wonderland peaks my synchronicity meter too, given that Branta has had posts on both those subjects very recently as well.
There are many lit-minded apps and podcasts these days to help us with our seemingly unquenchable thirst to carry all manner of media with us wherever we go. Few of these outlets are as steadfast in their desire to have you only connect via portable device as CellStories. This story-a-day page can only be read on your iPhone, iTouch or similar carry-along cellular doohickeys. Take a look inside for their whys and hows.
