A post-apocalyptic, Kafkaesque cabaret book launch
and other mashups
My lovely humans who refuse to be pigeonholed:
I chose Substack because it was the most simple of all the newsletters. You had one decision to make: do you charge $5 or would you prefer to continue to pretend people would pay you if you asked them to? That was it. After that choice, you put up a post, you sent it out, you did it again another day. Also the photo library is really cool.
But now Substack is trying to compete with Medium which won the “you-can-make-money-at-this-game” game by tutoring its users on keywords and grabby headlines so that now everyone on Medium is writing potentially viral posts (or publishing online journals where they collect the potentially viral posts of others). Substack is also trying to compete with a past version of social media (where the current trend is no longer to beg your friends to share things that you wrote that were amusing, sorry Substack, the current trend is to create “communities” online where the sharing is part of the rules of the community).
Trouble is, people are inherently selfish. We want to be the ONLY ones (or maybe just us and our friends) who get to see the best thing, and we want to be the first. (Frequently, once we get older, we can’t be stuffed to be first, but still we like to get to be in a circle that has done a thing).
Here’s what got broken—and I was blaming the pandemic until I realized that it started long before pandemic. We now attend events in order to meet up with our friends and like-minded people who enjoy the stuff that we enjoy. We know we like…say…pie-eating contests, and that few other people we know enjoy them. SO when there is a pie-eating contest, we invite the one friend who has professed a secret enjoyment of this completely disgusting and wasteful event, and if that friend can’t make it, we go alone or with the person we are dating/married to who has to pretend to like what we like for about the first 20 years of the relationship.
This is great for us, as we discover people who like the same weird stuff we like.
This is terrible for pie-eating contests.
As someone who just threw a wildly successful book launch (I say “wildly successful” because no one was able to lower their eyebrows for the entire night, and people were smiling so widely that I could see it from the stage, and I got more than one note that said “that was nothing like what I expected” — which is shade, I know, but I grew up with that kind of shade so it passes for love in my book) — anyway, as someone who just threw a wildly successful book launch, I realized that events are no longer things that you invite people to, hoping they will have a good time or at least you will have something to discuss, instead, our time is wildly precious. We attend only the things that we have a very good chance of loving. There are so many events, and we have so little time, we just can’t take a chance on something that might not be exactly up our alley - and we know this inherently, so we no longer invite along new friends to dinner parties (who still throws dinner parties? no one eats the same thing anymore) — we no longer grab a group and tell people to bring people. Spouses don’t even go to much stuff with their spouses (is anyone still married?) and it is sort of sad—because shared experiences, especially shared BAD experiences can bring you so much closer together.
My husband and I used to host a bad-movie club (when movies didn’t cost half as much) and we would invite anyone who wanted to go (and their dates/friends we hadn’t yet met) to the movies to watch a terrible flick, anything that looked truly bad, and then we would all go out to an all-night diner or bar (this was back when people could talk in bars) and the whole group would get into a vibrant and truly fun discussion of the worst parts of the movie and how the movie might possibly have been made better. No one was disappointed—we were there for the camaraderie and to test our creative muscles. Do people still do this? Go out together to something that might-or-might-not be terrible? Just for the fun of it?
WRITING NEWS:
Okay - so first of all, credit where it is due, my book launch would never have come off without the incredible talents of Lara Henneman (your friendly neighborhood book vendor is also a terrific writer!), Betsy Golden Kellem, Rimas Polikaitis (we have the same birthday I just found out!), Allison Sylvia & Anna Winham from the Poetry Brothel, and of course Victor LaValle who leant just the perfect amount of staggered curiosity, massive literary knowledge and gravitas to the event.
For once, I did not have a favorite part: all the parts were perfect. The accordion music set just the right tone of old-world Eastern European cabaret, Betsy knew everything Circus and introduced the “acts” like a sideshow outside talker—weaving circus vocabulary and history (Isaac W. Sprague aka “The Human Skeleton” was real!) into her beautiful introductions. The Poetry Brothel always knocks you out with how fantastic spoken-word poetry can be with the low lights and the deeply sensual voices and the fabulous costumes. I was thrilled at how the audience hung on my words as I presented my new translation of Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist (here’s an old translation to show you how much the words of a translation matter).
(Recall, please, that the show was called “Kafka Cafe”. Oh I’m sorry. Did you think I was going to bring people in a room and not have anything fun to do? Look at how happy everyone is - I love a room where people talk to each other!)
And then we did a crazy singalong and everyone SANG ALONG (next time I’ll give you guys more time to pull up the lyrics on your phones). And then I presented a story from the collection A FLASH OF DARKNESS which echoed the themes of A Hunger Artist. And then Victor LaValle came up and he’s just so curious and intelligent - it makes you want to tell him everything. So, you know, I did. And thanks to those that made it out to listen.
Here’s some photos:
So thanks again to those of you who were able to come out and play!
Everyone else, please buy my book and give it to someone who likes one of the following things: 1) dark fiction 2) weird fiction 3) short stories 4) Kafka 5) Twilight Zone 6) Black Mirror 7) Shirley Jackson 8) Kelly Link 9) strange literature or 10) who feels like an outsider in their life.
And in other ACTUAL WRITING NEWS:
I have a NEW STORY in an anthology that is coming out June 21 - but right now the preorder kindle version is $3.99. So if you’re craving just one more story, click here to get the TUMBLED TALES ANTHOLOGY from Wandering Wave Press and read “All Clear” my post-Kaiju-attack literary fiction… They also seek book reviews so if you’re into fantasy mashups of all kinds, head over to Book Siren and request an ARC.
ALSO!! This amazing interview with me: “There is no Weirdness that NYC cannot Absorb” is so long it feels like a biography, but it will engage you like reading someone else’s diary… It just came out from Vilnius Review, literally on the day of my launch party. There is a cautionary tale in that it was written by a woman who went to high school with me. Beware when granting public interviews to people who have known you more than three decades (she has known me for at least that long)….
It includes a photo of me in Lithuanian garb in Texas and I think I’m about eight years old. Curious? Click here.
We interrupt this newsletter to bring you an excerpt from Marc Guggenheim’s newsletter, which is far more professional than mine (probably because he gets paid for his writing when he isn’t on strike and I to me, money is like this weird parrot that sometimes flies in the window to entertain me and distract me from writing.)
Marc is a prolific writer. He sees things as they are, but he is still funny. And he is nice to people that aren’t paying him money. To me this is a triumvirate. (I do not know if he is also nice to people who do pay him money as I have never paid him money. But I can attest that he is nice to people who do not pay him money).
The excerpt from his blog is about the current writers’ strike - it makes reference to other blogs also writing about the writers’ strike: this is a very nice rabbit hole to cozy up in, particularly if your coffee is hot. All three of the referred-to pieces are wonderful for a writer to read. The first will make you glad you’re not a writer in Hollywood (not the least because you’ll have to close about six pop up ads). The second will make you glad you ARE a writer of any sort. And the third will remind you that everyone in this country has it hard: because this country values money and it only values art when the art also makes money.
Here’s the excerpt:
The first piece, written anonymously by a “Well-Known Creator” for The Hollywood Reporter describes the new circles of development hell which have become an unfortunate part of the Hollywood landscape. You can read it here.
(My agents think I wrote this piece. I didn’t. But I wish I had.)
The next piece is a Substack written by Julian Simpson, “On the Importance of Writers.” I similarly commend it to your attention.
I guess Julian had some regrets about what he described as his “punching down” in this piece. I disagree that that’s what he was doing, but he followed up with an equally compelling essay about the way development is equally hell for execs and I found it to be as accurate as his piece on the plight of writers. You can read that one here.
More Writing News:
Are you still with me? Thanks!!
I published a piece in Medium which is a fable for nonprofit founders. If you know anyone who has founded a nonprofit or who is thinking of founding a nonprofit, hop on over and share “The Gravedigger” with them. They will like it.
I do have a little bit more news. I was just informed in a back-channels way that a literary magazine is sort-of-considering having someone write an actual in-print review of my book! I am very excited about this prospect—and also terrified. Please light candles for me.
And on the topic of reviews: currently, there are six reviews on Amazon and I want to hug each of you who posted one.
So here’s why I keep asking for reviews: it isn’t for my edification and they don’t have to be literary treatises. It is (of COURSE) a numbers game. I need 25 reviews before Amazon will suggest my book to others… and they probably use the words in your reviews to do it. So even if you have only read the first couple of stories, maybe you can review those? or skip around and pick any one story and review just that? I dunno. I can’t figure out how successful writers do this unless maybe there is some secret publicity machine like in high school…you watched the right shows and knew the right people and then whenever anyone who was a slave to the secret popularity machine did something either good or bad, the machine would promote their successes and minimize their defeats and I am fairly sure that it was fueled by the broken souls of the band kids and I’m not sure why I’m talking about high school and creepy machines when what I am trying to do is encourage you to maybe pop over to Amazon and write a quick review. Here’s a link to the page.
Random Final Thought:
The day before my book party, the air in Manhattan was so full of Canadian fire-dust that the sky turned orange and a lot of people voluntarily wore masks.
But not everyone.
THE AIR WAS ORANGE WITH DUST and not everyone wore masks.
Thanks again to everyone who came to my post-pandemic, post-apocalyptic book launch. I loved seeing you and it was great to all be together. Cheers.
It was a lovely evening, or, since that is pretentious, a good one.
Victor LaValle has a sense of proportion and is modest and aware. I was impressed.
The discrepancies in the Kafka translations that jumped out at me both had to do with gender: first, the now "hot babes" tending to the artist, and then the use of "mansplaining." I would be surprised if there were an equivalent term in 1924. Mansplaining definitely seemed to capture the entirety of what followed, but it is an instance of introducing a "tell" and not just letting the "show" operate. Maybe that principle does a writer more harm than good, I don't know. I also felt that, while "mansplaining" was funny, it was distracting, because it just did not seem "1924" to me. The flexible approach to the translation almost could have used a preface explaining the style of it beforehand, so it wouldn't be distracting (not that this was more than one instance).
I am struck between the parallels between philosophies of translating and philosophies of reading the constitution. Do you do it literally, or capture the underlying meanings, applied to the present day?
I feel that the word "hunger" could be extracted without losing much meaning. The things he said applied to all artists, not just hunger artists (you do it for the thing itself, yet chafe at non-recognition, etc.) But, oddly, the connection to athletics is also strong, and so I love that you incorporated that into "Tastemakers." The parallel connections are only odd in that few people think of art and athletics as similar, but they would probably are, if they connect to a third thing.
In my running days, I would try not to let on that I was tired, even if I had set a personal best, and Kafka captures that. I guess I'm stuck on gender today, because I identified that front as a form of machismo. There is an episode in "Mad Men" when Don Draper and Roger Sterling climb 20 flights of stairs after eating and drinking to excess. Don taunts Roger, acting as if the climb is leisurely for him. Roger throws up. In private, we see Don doubled over, too.
Thanks for the flattering words and picture, and so much to chew on for this week.
Fun City