Emerging Writers Network

Any Other Foodies in the House?

This is almost a Source of Lit - The Postman! post, but I actually bought one of the below.  I have a short stack of four books, three of which arrived in yesterday's mail, and all are food related!  Am I alone here at the EWN in my interest in not only reading fiction, but also reading damn near anything that is well written about the food world?  Certainly I'm not the only one that got hooked on Emeril when he first hit the scene and now start handicapping Bravo's Top Chef from the minute I see each season's first introductions?  Am I the only one that watches Guy's Big Bite or Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives?

Anyway, not long after discovering The Food Network, I discovered the writings of Michael Ruhlman.  And while he has written a few incredible books about topics not related to food, it's food and chefs that have probably brought more readers to his writing than anything else.  Since reading his The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, and then The Reach of a Chef, I've found myself wandering into the food related book section more frequently.

A new batch of non-Ruhlman books has caught my attention and I'll probably be reviewing them all together sometime soon:

Knives at Dawn:  America's Quest for Culinary Glory at the Legendary Bocuse d'Or Competiton by Andrew Friedman (free Press, 2009) is about, well, I guess the title pretty much captures it.

Barolo by Matthew Gavin Frank (University of Nebraska Press, 2010).  This is from UNP's "At Table" series and is Matthew's writings of the six months he spent in Barolo, Italy.  The description has it "... an intimate travelogue and a memoir of a culinary education, the book details the adventures of a not-so-innocent abroad in Barolo, a region known for its food and wine (also called Barolo)."

Immortal Milk:  Adventures in Cheese by Eric Le May (free Press, coming in June 2010 - no cover available yet).  PR papers have this one as "Essential reading for the cheese gourmet, the cheese fan, or even just the cheese curious."

Goat Song:  A Seasonal Life, A short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese by Brad Kessler (Scribner, 2009).  This one doesn't concentrate on the food so much as the pastoral life, but has more than enough information about goat milk and cheese to find its way into a foodie's library.

PW Gives Jeff Parker's The Taste of Penny a Starred Review!

As noted over at the Dzanc Books Blog:

From their 2/22/10 book reviews:

The Taste of Penny: Stories Jeff Parker. Dzanc (Consortium, dist.), $16.95 paper (144p) ISBN 978-0-9825204-4-4

Ten dark, suspenseful, and tightly wound stories teeter on the edge of catastrophe and the surreal piecing-back-together of life afterwards. Parker (Ovenman) tosses his characters into some form of peril, whether physical—like the narrator of “Our Cause,” who loses the tip of his tongue—or emotional, like the jingoistic American in “The Boy and the Colgante,” who erects a giant illuminated American flag in front of his house in the heart of “French redneck” Quebec. Parker's characters are disfigured or pitiable—one weathers guilt and emotional torture while paralyzed in a wheelchair, one gnaws at his fingers and attempts to excrete a swallowed penny, one stands in line outside the house where his ex-girlfriend is interviewing potential new boyfriends. Parker's prose is concise and quirky, packed with unexpected turns (“It's like yak butter or meat jelly,” says one character. “You don't know exactly what it is but you know it's there”), and aside from the few moments when Parker gets too clever for his own good (as with the unnecessarily obscure “The Briefcase of the Pregnant Spylady”), these stories are haunting and constantly surprising. (Apr.)

Dzanc Day - March 20, 2010

We're a month away as of today, and spots are filling up.  Get yours today!

Book Review - 2010-002 - Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records by John Cook with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance

Book Review 2010-002
Our Noise:  The Story of Merge Records by John Cook with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance
289 pages from Algonquin books 2009

I have to start off by stating that I entered into reading this book because of a) Matt Bell's constant quoting from it in various emails over a two day period, b) an interest in the music industry and c) I'm a sucker for books that are put together as oral histories (Loose Balls, an oral history of the American Basketball Association got me hooked on this type of book long ago).  It would seem that main author, John Cook, probably had an easy time getting access to those that would have stories from all stages of Merge Records as the co-founders and current day operators of the record label, Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance, were his co-authors.  One possible worry from a reader's point of view with their involvement is removed early on when it is revealed that Chuck Garrison, the original drummer of Superchunk (the band that Mac and Laura are also in, and the longest running Merge Records' band), who was bounced from the band, was indeed asked to participate in the interview process for the book, but declined.  So at least the reader knows at this point that Mac and Laura's being involved in the process wasn't going to hide any potential ugliness in the label's history.

Besides being a fantastically interesting read, this book made me realize just how deep I've gotten into the publishing industry the past decade, and how much this has affected the level of interest I've maintained (or actually not) in the music industry.  Dipping into many of the bands mentioned in the book, I'm loving a lot of music I could have been listening to the past ten to twenty years.  There's a quote though in the book, and it's one that Matt Bell sent me that really brought my interest level high enough to go out and find the book.  It's from a friend of Mac and Laura, Jonathan Marx.  He was discussing why they, as Superchunk, didn't take offers of decent or better money to sign with a major label.  He stated that "they weren't desperate for cash; they weren't desperate for fame.  The only thing they were desperate for was the thing that they were doing."  This quote rang frighteningly close to home here at the Emerging Writers Network.  I thought back to the first few years of the EWN, especially between 2001 and 2003.  During that time, while working a couple of jobs, and raising three kids under the age of 8, I reviewed close to 300 books, and interviewed close to 30 authors and 75 literary journal editors.  There was no money involved and nary a person knew who the hell I was, but I could not stop what I was doing.

This aspect of those behind not only Merge Records, but many of the bands on the label itself, shine through in these segmented interviews.  Seeing how some specific bands were "found" by Merge (some found Merge more than they were found), how the process of recording their music happened, touring stories, and especially the stories of distribution were very interesting - again, for me, both as the stories themselves, and as stories to compare with what we're doing with Dzanc Books these days. 

While I don't know that a decade from now I'll be able to recount stories from this book as well as the Marvin "Bad News" Barnes 'time machine' story from Loose Balls (feel free to ask and I'll recount it), it is probably a book I'll dip into more frequently because of the parallels mentioned above.  Even without those, it's a book I'd have enjoyed immensely.

4.5 stars.

Fall 2010 - Dzanc Books

Working with a distributor like Consortium has us looking much farther ahead than we used to, especially in terms of things like book covers.  We have just put together much of the information for the sales catalog they put together for books publishing between September 2010 and March 2011.  Here is what some of these titles are going to look like (two more are forthcoming still):

 Terese Svoboda's novel, Pirate Talk or Mermalade (Dzanc), design by Brian McMullen

Asunder, Stories by Robert Lopez (Dzanc), design by Steven Seighman

 We Make Mud, stories by Peter Markus (Dzanc), design by Steven Seighman

 Steven Gillis' novel, The Consequence of Skating (Black Lawrence Press), design by Steven Seighman

From the Darkness Right Under Our Feet, stories by Patrick Michael Finn (BLP), design by Steven Seighman

 A Catalogue of Everything in the World, Nebraska Stories by Yelizaveta P. Renfro (BLP), design by Steven Seighman

How They Were Found, stories by Matt Bell (Keyhole), design by Steven Seighman

 How to Predict the Weather, stories by Aaron Burch (Keyhole), design by Emily Goodale

Ampersand, Mass., stories by William Walsh (Keyhole), design by Peter Cole

Indie Publisher - The Song Cave

Earlier this month, Brian Foley's post over at HTMLGiant.com alerted me to The Song Cave, a publisher of limited edition chapbooks.  The first issue was limited to 50 signed and numbered copies and sold out, and the three subsequently issued chapbooks have seen their counts upped to 100 copies (again signed and numbered).  

There's not a ton of information at the above linked to website.  There's a touch more on their Facebook page, where it notes:

The Song Cave publishes single poems in single volumes.

The editors are Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal.

thesongcave@gmail.com

The three titles that are still available are Amanda Nadelberg's "Building Castles in Spain, Getting Married," Cyrus Console's "OK TONY," and Ben Lerner's "Topekan Ethos."  Although, if they are mailing them out in numerical order, the number of copies of the Nadelberg chapbook is pretty limited as #81 hit my mailbox a week or two ago.

These are really nicely constructed chapbooks - solid covers with flaps, inner leaf paper on both ends and then a nicely weighted off-white paper for the actual poem.  And I like the covers with their design that reminds me of a cross between a Lego construction and the Space Invaders video game (which probably doesn't say much for my own imagination).  It will be interesting to see where they go with this design as the possible colors to use dwindles.

As many who wander through this blog know, I don't know squat about poetry (just look at some of those "brilliant" questions to McLendon in the Unsaid series going on when it comes to the poems he's included), and so often find it difficult to comment upon poetry that I read.  I will say that I enjoyed all three of these - the Nadelberg with, to me, an interesting assemblage of what I believe to be a conversation within the construct of her poem; the Console had an interesting rhythm to the lines, seemingly heavily emphasizing the first word of each line; and the Lerner with some amazing use of repetition of specific words, especially in the first of the six sections the poem is broken into.

At five bucks apiece, the chapbooks again are really nice object, the poetry within is enjoyable, leading me to think The Song Cave is doing something worth your support.

Gearing up for Short Story Month

Okay, not quite, but I did find myself really enjoying a trio of short stories just recently published in online journals late last night (or really early this morning I suppose) - and this doesn't include the quartet of short stories I really enjoyed from the new issue of The Collagist!

Matt Baker once again hits me with a good story, writing of mistakes, and various ways of dealing with them, among other things, in his "Nail Polish and Beer" from the new issue of Word Riot.

The issue also has a flash fiction, "The Difficulty of Endings," by Jeff Vande Zande.  A great story about a divorced couple and snow shoveling - what more could one ask for in a description?  I loved the line:

"He worked up a headstone-sized chunk and flipped it into the yard . . ." as one that has frequently shoveled snow, and come up with various ideas as to what the current chunk of snow flying off of the shovel looked like. Can't remember coming up with headstones though.

The third story was a pleasant surprise as C. Dale Young, an excellent poet, sees his first published short story, "The Affliction," published in the new issue of Guernica!

I found the story to be an excellent one, even slightly altering the point of view about a fifth of the way in, but in such a subtle manner it was hardly noticeable, yet was noticed just enough.  It was a necessary shift to make the end of the story work, but again, done in a manner that was extremely smooth, creating a seamless reading experience.  While I'm always happy to see a new poem from C. Dale Young, I can now say I'm also going to be looking for his name in the fiction section of journal table of contents pages as well.

Greatly looking forward to May!

Book Review - 2010-001 - We Take Me Apart by Molly Gaudry

Book Review 2010-001
We Take Me Apart by Molly Gaudry
100 pages from mud luscious press 2009

Molly Gaudry must have revised this gem of a novella over and over and over to get the wording, the rhythms, the images, etc. just so.  We Take Me Apart, as an idea, may have stemmed from fairy tales, but Gaudry's pushing of language takes it to a special level. 

The story itself, told from the point of view of a daughter, focuses on a mother/daughter relationship.  But it doesn't simply do that.  Gaudry is able to divulge her wheres and hows through the simple language of a young girl - clearly showing the social and class structure through the protagonist's views of the world her mother works in.  Her path from childhood to adulthood, and the murkiness that many of us may recall going through on that very path, is executed beautifully.

It's the type of book that I find the best means of expressing what drew me in is to show off a sample of the writing itself.  This comes from about the 3/4 mark through the novella:

She caught cold in the chest so called me
home & I went to her to care for her the
way she had cared for me & after awhile I began
to call her Susan because I could not call her
Mother because Mother had been black cherries
in a bowl & Susan had become chewed up &
pit-spit out & Mother had been days & Susan
was seconds & Mother had been a massage that
eased the soreness of a sprain away & Susan
was the beating of fists & the bruising of an
orange into a plum & Mother had been a small
white bird & Susan was the bones of the bird
fractured like glass that cannot be mended
& Mother had been pepper & Susan was the
mistake that ruins a meal & causes the chef to
throw in the towel & Mother had been news &
Susan was the ash of the remains of crumpled
newsprint & Mother had been a mass

a force

& Susan was sparse

One thing I'm not sure of is the usage of the ampersands.  That is, I'm not sure that this was Gaudry's idea, or that they are there because that is how MLP rolls.  Either way, reading the above, and doing so aloud - which I believe is the best way to enjoy this novella - one can't help but being sucked into a rhythm, or cadence.  Not a word is out of place, nothing is missing, no extra words are added - Molly Gaudry has worked this section, and every other section in the book to the very essence of what is necessary to capture her readers and not let them go.  This is a book you'll pick up and begin to look at and find yourself setting it down an hour or two later, having read it all, with many paragraphs and pages having been enjoyed two or three times.

4.5 stars

On a quick side note, I cannot say how impressed I was as well with the production quality of this book.  mud luscious press has done a fantastic job - the cover is gorgeous (Alicia Neal's art and Steven Seighman's design) and the size and feel of the book matches Molly's writing perfectly.  Just a stellar job all around.

Source of Lit - The Collagist

The February issue of The Collagist is live and has some great material. 

Editor Matt Bell, and his Poetry Editor, Matthew Olzmann, have found another batch of fantastic writing - great short stories, flash fictions, essays (long and short), and poetry, plus some wonderful book reviews and a couple of great excerpts from forthcoming novels! 

I'll not go into author names or details here as the Table of Contents is readily available for you to peruse.  Having spent some time with these words the past few hours though, I can highly recommend you follow the link and spend some time with them yourself!

Source of Lit - Pank

The latest issue of PANK arrived earlier this week (along with Aaron Burch's chapbook, How to Take Yourself Apart How to Make Yourself Anew.  More about that one in a later post, you know, probably) and it both looks fantastic (see cover to the left), a much improved look when compared to issue 3, in my opinion, but is also stuffed full of great writing.

The table of contents is a mini-who's who of recent EWN favorites:  Matt Bell (heard much of this guy lately?), Elisa Gabbert & Kathleen Rooney, Matthew Simmons, Jennifer Pieroni, J.A. Tyler, Matthew Kirkpatrick, Craig Davis, Kyle Minor, Sarah Layden, Alicia Gifford, Barry Graham, Aaron Burch, Shane Jones, Jensen Beach, Meg Pokrass, Ethel Rohan, Randall Brown, Ryan Dilbert, Angi Becker Stevens, Steven J. McDemott, Kevin Wilson, Jen Michalski, Donora Hilliard, Sarah Sweeney and Timothy Jones-Yelvington.

That isn't even the full table of contents - just those that I knew I'd be reading as soon as I saw their names inside.  Which leads me to believe I might just like a lot of those authors whose names are new to me in the ToC.

I've actually read the bulk of those names above, and some of the newcomers to this mind, and have been enjoying them greatly.  Bell's story continues his ridiculous streak of incredible work.  Ryan Dilbert's usage of Tupac Shakur lyrics in his story is brilliant.  Actually I'll stop there as I'm otherwise simply going to repeat every name listed above with a bit of hyperbole next to their handles. 

Run to your computer (well, I guess you're probably already there, but maybe you're on an iPhone or iPod, or whatever else allows you to access the internet these days) and order this issue!