Drew Reviews: WITTGENSTEIN JR

WITTGENSTEIN JR by Lars Iyer 
Pages: 226
Publisher: Melville House
Released: 2014



Guest review by Drew Broussard 

The Short Version: Cambridge University. A class of boys taking philosophy under the strange tutelage of a man they dub Wittgenstein. Over the course of the term, they will question so many things about philosophy and life. 

The Review: I am a fan of philosophy. A book-length novel that essentially just discourses on life, reason, philosophy... it's not for everyone, not for all times, but sometimes (for me), it's exactly what you need.  Enter Wittgenstein Jr..  Now, I didn't study any Wittgenstein in my few philosophy courses at school - his was a philosophy that worked in logic, in mathematics, in the very basis of philosophy itself.  My sister, who took a philosophy degree in England, would undoubtedly know more about the man's theories than I - I leave it to her to decide whether or not that makes for better enjoyment of the book, should she read it.  But I don't think one needs to know Wittgenstein, mostly because the character who is dubbed Wittgenstein in this novel (curiously, we never learn his real name) is possessed of his own philosophy, a philosophy that becomes the only Wittgenstein we need in this book. 

And there is a whole lot of him. Of it; his philosophy. There are numerous walks, even more numerous classes, still more numerous considerations of philosophy.  Not of any particular one, but of philosophy itself.  Of the reasons why we must wrangle with the nature of humanity, of the world, of the universe.  Sure, there are particulars that are brought up - but all in the pursuit of the larger questions.  My own existentialist leanings served me well when I began to engage with parts of the book: for example, Wittgenstein holds forth on the absurdity of suicide and how the act is the most violent of rebellions - and I thought of Camus, discussing how the only serious philosophical problem is suicide.  These thoughts are on my mind of late, after the untimely passing of a young man close to many in the New York theater community and, as all good philosophy should do, I was pausing in my reading to grapple with the thoughts on my own.  What an impressive achievement in any text, let alone a piece of fiction.

Still, it's not all philosophical mumbo and/or jumbo.  There's definitely a whole lot of that... but there's also some good clean collegiate fun. The boys drink, do drugs, shack up (with girls, boys, each other) - a recurring bit is that Guthrie recreates the life and death of famous philosophers as a sort of party trick.  These reenactments are well-received and just the sort of thing you'd expect to see at a party like this, along with the guy snorting coke next to you and the girl puking in the bushes.  There are armchair bits of philosophy, exactly the sort you'd expect from kids at 20, 21 - the questions of life, the universe, and everything because you just dont know.  Life awaits, you're told, but you have no idea what the hell that means. If anything, it probably means you're about to get screwed (Iyer gets in a good dig about this towards the end, in a chapter where Peters and Ede make fun of the career center brochures about opportunities after college).  But it felt organic, it felt real. I understood these boys because I once was one of them. Hell, I still am in some ways: any given night with friends at a pub, you can wager I'll get us started on something at least modestly weighty.  But philosophy is a life's work - you can't expect to learn it at school and then be done.

And this is where the novel begins to tip into some troublesome territory.  Wittgenstein as a character, we realize, is a bit ridiculous.  Not just ridiculous, he's a little... unreal. His frenzy, his paranoia, his peculiar method of teaching - it just rings a little... well, a little fictional, I suppose.  This would all be fine and dandy if the book ended at the end of section 3.  However, it does not: there is a section 4 and this is where things get weird.  I'm also, for those interested in reading the book, about to get into some SPOILER talk.

So Peters (our main character, the often-just-recording-it-all narrator) ends up falling in love with Wittgenstein. And vice versa. They briefly become lovers at the end of term, after everyone has gone home, and it is a fiery and torrid little affair. And, at this moment, the book dropped in my estimation in the same way a plane sometimes drops suddenly.  It is an unpleasant thing to experience. I find myself wondering why Iyer added this more-personal dash of development to these characters, to this story.  The boys (and Wittgenstein) were all fully formed enough to be definable, albeit with simple terms (this one wears the swear-word t-shirts, the twins are crazy jacked sports dudes, etc) but their characterization was not the point.  The point was, at least as far as I could tell, the philosophy.  The decision to engage, in short-novel length and form, with major questions of existence and being, seen through the eyes of both students and a wacky Cambridge prof. Suddenly the book became a little other than that, but this other undercut everything that had come before. Perhaps it is important to see Wittgenstein crumple, fail, flee - but I don't think so. Perhaps this was a lesson that Peters needed to learn - but I don't think so. Their romance feels so out of place that it almost could've been dropped in from a different novel, a novel taking place at Cambridge at the same time with the same characters even, just written by someone else and following a different plot.  As a result, the novel became a somewhat predictable disappointment at the end.

Rating: 4 out of 5. I am, perhaps, giving the book slightly higher marks than it deserves - but that is because I cannot help but like the idea of putting serious philosophical questions out there in such a way as makes the reader engage.  I engaged with these ideas in this book and enjoyed doing so.  And I enjoyed the depiction of these young men at such an august institution, one that is and forever will be bigger than any of them, still fighting to understand the ridiculous things about the world even as they are told that they probably won't. Or can't. Or shouldn't. But we ridiculous young men (and the commensurate young women) won't ever stop coming.  It's just a shame that Iyer's novel didn't stop a little short of where it does.  Philosophy should be pure, not sullied by unexpected romance or "plot" - but, then, this is a novel, not a philosophy text.  

Drew Broussard reads, a lot. When not doing that, he's writing stories or playing music or acting or producing or coming up with other ways to make trouble.  He also has a day job at The Public Theater in New York City.

Robin Antalek's Would You Rather

Bored with the same old fashioned author interviews you see all around the blogosphere? Well, TNBBC's newest series is a fun, new, literary spin on the ole Would You Rather game. Get to know the authors we love to read in ways no other interviewer has. I've asked them to pick sides against the same 20 odd bookish scenarios. 

Robin Antalek's 

Would You Rather

Would you rather write an entire book with your feet or with your tongue?

My feet.

Would you rather have one giant bestseller or a long string of moderate sellers?

I want to be here for the long term – so a string of moderate sellers sounds good to me. Having a bestseller isn’t a reason for me to write. For me it’s just telling a good story – and hoping it touches someone. 

Would you rather be a well known author now or be considered a literary genius after you’re dead?

Ha! I guess I’d go with the after-life accolades. Too much pressure when you’re alive!

Would you rather write a book without using conjunctions or have every sentence of your book begin with one? 

Without. It is a challenge.

Would you rather have every word of your favorite novel tattooed on your skin or always playing as an audio in the background for the rest of your life?

Wow, that’s hard. Not into pain, so I guess audio. There’s always ear plugs, right?

Would you rather write a book you truly believe in and have no one read it or write a crappy book that comprises everything you believe in and have it become an overnight success? 

No question – a book I believe in.

Would you rather write a plot twist you hated or write a character you hated?

A character. A plot twist can change the entire story so I’d rather live with an unlikable character. 

Would you rather use your skin as paper or your blood as ink? 

OUCH. I’m going for blood here. Skin is too Silence of the Lambs for me to even think about.

Would you rather become a character in your novel or have your characters escape the page and reenact the novel in real life? 

I’m all for the reenactment.

Would you rather write without using punctuation and capitalization or without using words that contained the letter E? 

I’ll try the postmodern route without punctuation or capitalization. I think the letter E would be too hard to give up!

Would you rather have schools teach your book or ban your book? 

Well, I’ve had the pleasure of being taught in schools. So why not try the ban?

Would you rather be forced to listen to Ayn Rand bloviate for an hour or be hit on by an angry Dylan Thomas? 

An angry Dylan Thomas might be interesting, because Ayn Rand is always going to be Ayn Rand – at least with Thomas it might result in something to write about. 

Would you rather be reduced to speaking only in haiku or be capable of only writing in haiku? 

Speaking.

Would you rather be stuck on an island with only the 50 Shades Series or a series in a language you couldn’t read? 

I’m going to learn that new language if it’s the last thing I do/read!

Would you rather critics rip your book apart publicly or never talk about it at all?

Well, the Internet age has made everyone a critic. Even your grandmother. Talk away, people, talk away. The other good thing about the Internet age is that attention spans are short.  Today’s news is all gone by tomorrow.

Would you rather have everything you think automatically appear on your Twitter feed or have a voice in your head narrate your every move? 

I don’t have a Twitter feed. So I guess that voice that’s there all the time anyway would be “live narrating” my every move. Real time? Is that what they call living these days?

Would you rather give up your computer or pens and paper? 

Computer.

Would you rather write an entire novel standing on your tippy-toes or laying down flat on your back? 

Laying down. I have weak ankles.

Would you rather read naked in front of a packed room or have no one show up to your reading? 

During my first book tour I had a store where no one showed up. It wasn’t that bad. I made friends with the booksellers. Naked is out of the question.

Would you rather read a book that is written poorly but has an excellent story, or read one with weak content but is written well?  

I’ve read enough of both in my lifetime so far – and I’ll always go for the good story. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ROBIN ANTALEK is the author of The Summer We Fell Apart (HarperCollins 2010) chosen as a Target Breakout Book and the forthcoming The Grown Ups (William Morrow 2015). Her non-fiction work has been published at The Weeklings, The Nervous Breakdown and collected in the following anthologies, The Beautiful Anthology; Writing off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema; and The Weeklings: Revolution #1 Selected Essays 2012-1013.  Her short fiction has appeared in Salon, 52 Stories, Five Chapters, Sun Dog, The Southeast Review and Literary Mama among others. She has twice been a finalist in Glimmertrain Magazine, as well as a finalist for The Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. She lives in Saratoga Springs, New York. You can visit her site @ ww.robinantalek.com, facebook.com/AuthorRobinAntalek

Book Review: The Great Texas Trailer Park Escape

Read 1/6/14 - 1/14/15
2 Stars - Recommended Lightly - Humorous caper with some annoying grammatical errors and odd moments of character-building for the sake of.... character-building?
Pages: 76
Publisher: Biting Dog Publications
Released: 2013


Uncovering unknowns can be both a super-power and a curse, where my love for the underdogs sometimes finds me falling headfirst down the rabbit hole of strange indie fiction. And though these trips through indie-internet-wonderland always hold the promise of ending in triumph, more often than not I usually crawl my way out of it worse for the wear.

I discovered a free download of Biting Dog Publication's The Great Texas Trailer Park Escape through one of those very same rabbit holes. Though I'll never be able to reproduce the chain of events that led me to this thing, once I found it, I knew I wanted it. The cover looked pretty sweet, the description - "an adventure novel set in East Texas, “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World” taking place in the trailer-laden world of the people of Walmart." - sounded pretty cool, it's a digital novella, and it was free, which always takes the gamble right out of it. I mean, if it sucks, what did I lose? A couple hours of my time?

So onward I trekked, into the scrappy East Texan trailer park where the missing $20 million dollar lottery ticket has just been found. Turns out this dude Skeeter bought it 6 months ago and forgot all about it, only just now realizing he's had it the entire time when the news reports that tomorrow is the last day for the winning ticket to be turned in. Skeeter figures he's got some time to celebrate before cashing it in, so he calls up his buddy Spider to tell him the news, then promptly wraps himself around a pole in a motorcycle crash. 

On his way to Skeeter's place to search for the ticket, Spider bumps into a nasty old drug dealer he owes some dough to and in an effort to save himself from an ass whopping, promises to split the money with him. While they're crashing Skeeter's trailer, the local sheriff Cheatwood gets a call to check it out and makes a dirty deal with the two of them to get in on the fun. Meanwhile Jack, Skeeter's neighbor, is eavesdropping the whole conversation from outside the trailer's window.

And here starts the most goofy, poorly coordinated, and hilariously comic "be the first to find the hidden winning lottery ticket and become a millionaire" caper that ever was. As you read it, you can't help but envision this as a black and white silent film, with that funny organ music playing in the background as you watch these four characters fumble and bumble around, side stepping and back stabbing one another in a million different combinations. Who will be the last man standing, with more money than he could ever dream of spending? Well, c'mon, you're going to have to read the book yourself if you want to find out. 

While I found the story itself to be entertaining and fun to read, the grammar and oddly timed moments of character-building kept getting in my way. 

Some sentences were awkwardly phrased. And the author had a bad habit of creating new paragraphs for each line of a character's speech and quote-end quoting them, which looked as though someone knew had started speaking, though that wasn't always the case, momentarily throwing you for a loop when it happened.

Kerr would also deviate from the main story at odd intervals to give you a little backstory on each of the characters. Information that could have been shared about them when we were first introduced, but for whatever reason was held onto and added into the mix later on. It almost always stalled the story, which was frustrating. And if I had to hear one more time about Jack's broken leg and how he couldn't run yet there he was running and how often he forgot about the broken leg until the broken leg began to bother him because of something he tried to do with a broken leg that no one with a broken leg would ever try to do because its a broken leg broken leg brokenleg brokenlegbrokenlegbrokenaaaaaAAHHHHHHHHH! So yeah, repetitive much? 

With some really honest feedback and a half decent editor, I have no doubt that this could become a much stronger book. So... my final verdict? Cool story, mediocre delivery. If you're more into what the story is than how it is told, and are a super forgiving person with grammar and syntax, you'd probably really dig this one. 

Where Writers Write: Rebecca Foust

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

 

Where Writers Write is a series that features authors as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Rebecca Foust.

Rebecca was the 2014 Dartmouth Poet in Residence and is the recipient of fellowships from the Frost Place and the MacDowell Colony. New poems are in the Hudson Review, Massachusetts Review, Mid-American Review, North American Review, Omniverse, and other journals, and an essay that won the 2014 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Award is forthcoming in the Malahat Review. Foust’s most recent book, Paradise Drive, won the 2015 Press 53 Award for Poetry and can be pre-ordered at http://www.press53.com/Award_for_Poetry.htmland for more information visit http://rebeccafoust.com/

Where Rebecca Foust Writes

Where I write is—everywhere—I never know when an idea is going to ping my awareness, and I try to be ready by carrying a small notebook and pencil stub anywhere I go, even on short walks and especially in the car; there is something about the mind-disconnect that happens while driving that seems to invite ideas in.

Before last year I’d never been on a writing retreat. Who needs it, I thought. Look, I have a desk. With the kids grown up, I have some free time in my day. Why leave home to write? But I decided to try it and last year attended three long writer’s residencies: Vermont Studio Center (January), the Frost Place (July and August) and the MacDowell Colony (October). What I learned was a more profound version of what I’d experienced walking or driving: motion and change-of-place wakes up the part of the brain that receives ideas. I also learned the value of a longer retreats for projects that otherwise can seem too big or sprawling to tackle at home.

At the Vermont Studio Center I joined a community of about 60 other writers and artists, meeting for meals and evening talks and otherwise working in solitude in a bright warm studio that was, (thankfully in that long span of days where below-zero temperatures bloomed ice feathers from river mist) only steps away from the dorm where I slept and the “Red Mill” where delicious healthy meals were served. While there I worked on a significant revision of Paradise Drive, the manuscript that recently won the 2015 Press 53 Award for poetry and will be released in April at AWP.  I’d been writing those sonnets since 2009 and had tried several book sequences, but it was at VSC that Paradise Drive really jelled into a narratively-linked sequence telling the story of a modern day pilgrim who makes a spiritual and geographic journey that begins in the mountains of rustbelt Pennsylvania and ends in the postcard-perfect hills of a tony suburb in Marin County, California. One of the wonderful things about pulling together a book is that the process generates new poems, and I came away from VSC with not only a stronger manuscript but also a sheaf of new poems. This was my view while I worked at my desk at VSC:

I enjoyed the after-dinner artist talks and especially Open Studio night where I saw a glass sculpture that brought the chinkle and glitter of the icy outside weather into the room:

The Vermont Studio Center takes applications year round for its artist’s residencies, see http://www.vermontstudiocenter.org/residencies/

While writing all the sonnets that eventually became Paradise Drive, I was continuing to free verse and in other forms, and my focus while in residence at The Frost Place was finding all those other poems, printing them out and trying to discover if I had another book. TFP’s Dartmouth Poet in Residence program is a wonderful, unique residency experience which gave me the chance to live and work by myself in Robert Frost’s farmhouse in Franconia, NH for two months. Here is a picture of what the house looked like when I arrived in July 2014:

I knew I wanted to work on a new book while at TFP and that to do that I needed to see all the poems at once. When she showed me through the house, Cleopatra Mathis told me about how she had taped her poems up all over the walls of Frost’s house during her own residency in 1982. I was very excited when I saw what became my main work space in that house—a screened in back porch with a long conference table looking out over a sunset yard bordered by the woods.

  

When the first table filled up with my poems, I set up a second one and it soon filled up too. One day I looked up and noticed two empty clotheslines and got the idea to do this:

 Again, kinetic energy proved a source of inspiration, and it was also good for my back to be able to walk back and forth “editing” the book by unpinning a poem from one spot and moving it to the next. As at VSC, I found myself writing new poems while in the process of revising and sequencing older ones. Having nearly two full months alone with no responsibilities—except to the writing was amazing—so much creative space opened up! I remember feeling buoyant and emptied in a good way of the pressures of normal life, suspended in that timelessness a child sometimes feels. The Frost Place offers three vibrant poetry conferences every summer, in the fall takes applications for the next summer’s Dartmouth-Poet-in-Residence program, http://frostplace.org/

The MacDowell Colony  was more like VSC than TFP in that it offered a community of writers and artists (this one, about 30 people) I could join or take refuge from, exactly as I pleased. Meals were communal, and it was not just the wonderful food that trained me not to miss one—I quickly realized that the company and conversation of other artists abuzz about their projects fed my own work. As at VSC, I absolutely loved having a separate place—in this case a 1930’s era stone cottage in the woods—for my work. Once I crossed the threshold, I was all in.

The walls of this cottage were bulletin boards, and I soon had poems tacked up everywhere as well as ranged in long columns on the rug laid before the fieldstone fireplace. That cottage offered the luxury of TWO desks, so I set up my laptop on one and used it for editing and on the other set up my notes and supplies for making notes by hand on a completely new project that I worked on in the late afternoons. When the light slanted in and touched that desk, I knew it was time to switch gears and work on the new project.

The MacDowell Colony takes applications for residencies that take place twelve months of each year, http://macdowellcolony.org/

I’m back home now in Northern CA writing at my desk overlooking a small garden vibrant with birds this time of year and with flowers and vegetables when the weather is warmer. Now that my husband and I are alone, a room as been dedicated as my office and for the first time in my writing life I have my books all around me on bookshelves and—this is the real key—a door that closes. It’s a great spot but I still find myself migrating back to places I used to write—the kitchen table, a local café, even my car. When I get stuck, I take a walk go for a drive, do a few yoga stretches. And now that I know the value of a writing residency, I hope to go to one at least every other year.

Jacob Appel On Being Indie

On "Being Indie" is a blog series that introduces us to a wide variety of independent authors, publishers, and booksellers as they discuss what being indie means to them.

Jacob M. Appel’s first novel, The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up, won the 2012 Dundee International Book Award and was published by Cargo.  His short story collection, Scouting for the Reaper, won the 2012 Hudson Prize and was published by Black Lawrence Press in 2014.  His most recent books include a novel, The Biology of Luck (Elephant Rock, 2013), an essay collection, Phoning Home (University of South Carolina Press, 2014) and a short story collection, Einstein’s Beach House(Pressgang/Butler University, 2014).  Jacob’s short fiction has appeared in more than two hundred literary journals including Gettysburg Review, MichiganQuarterly, Southwest Review, Threepenny Review and Virginia Quarterly Review.  His prose has won the Boston Review Short Fiction Competition, the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award for the Short Story, the Dana Award, the Arts & Letters Prize for Fiction, the North American Review’s Kurt Vonnegut Prize, the Missouri Review’s Editor’s Prize, the Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, the Briar Cliff Review’s Short Fiction Prize, the Salem College Center for Women Writers’ Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, the H. E. Francis Prize, the New Millennium Writings Fiction Award on four occasions, an Elizabeth George Fellowship and a Sherwood Anderson Foundation Writers Grant.   His stories have been short-listed for the O. Henry Award (2001), Best American Short Stories (2007, 2008, 2013), Best American Nonrequired Reading (2007, 2008), and the Pushcart Prize anthology (2005, 2006, 2011, 2014).   In 2003, he was honored with Brown’s Undergraduate Council of Students Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003.   He is currently on the faculty of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

I imagine most aspiring authors, at some point in their careers, have conjured up similar visions of their literary futures.  In my rendering of this collective fantasy, I prefect my first manuscript and send it off to a handful of high-end New York City agents, who claw each other’s eyes out scrambling to represent it.  A similar battle royal the next day blinds several of the city’s leading editors, but results in a seven or eight digit book deal.  The publishing house then suspends production on several of its best-selling novels—and even diverts resources from its chain of Dutch radio stations and Austrian record labels—in order to print my volume on the spot.  A few weeks later, after my masterpiece appears in bookstores to glowing reviews, the German overlords at my publishing house dispatch me on a book tour that includes the great capitals of Europe and joint readings with Philip Roth and Salman Rushdie.  By the end of my first month of literary stardom, I have a nine-book deal that could bankrupt many African nations, my face is as recognizable as Muhammad Ali’s, and I’m dating a besotted Karen Russell, who pledges to dedicate her future Nobel Prizes all to me.

Needless to say, the literary life rarely follows that trajectory.  Certainly, this was not my path to publication.  (I was just grateful not to have followed in the footsteps of John Kennedy Toole, the author of A Confederacy of Dunces, whose mother was only able to find a publisher for his manuscript after his suicide.)  When my first agent proved unable to sell my first novel, I despaired.  When my second agent proved unable to sell my second novel, I grumbled.  In hindsight, as my fourth agent now attempts to sell my fourth novel, I look back with some relief that those first two agents—both very talented, I must add—didn’t secure me a small deal with a major publishing house, because such a deal was a recipe for failure.  After all, most first novels fare poorly and are rapidly remaindered.  That leads to disappointment and makes publishing a chart-topping fourth novel (my current plan) all the more difficult.

            I am very fortunate to have publishing six books with six very distinct, small to mid-sized independent publishers:  two literary novels (The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up with Cargo and The Biology of Luck with Elephant Rock); a mystery, Wedding Wipeout, with Cozy Cat Press; an essay collection, Phoning Home, with the University of South Carolina Press; and a pair of short story collections (Scouting for the Reaper with Black Lawrence and Einstein’s Beach House with Butler University’s Pressgang).  I have been able to connect with readers and to build up a fan base that will help me promote future books, a painstaking yet rewarding process that would not likely have been possible with one of the big five houses.  Along the way, I have learned that the keys to successful independent publishing are threefold:  generosity, creativity and relentlessness.

            The first step in marketing any book is valuing readership over profit.  Some writers are insulted when a friend or even a stranger asks for a free copy of their book.  I make a point of being flattered.  To the degree that I am financially able, I give away copies to those who ask, knowing that if they enjoy my work, they are likely to recommend it to others.  I make a point of giving copies to salesclerks in shops where I read, to all fellow readers at public events, and to local libraries whenever I visit them for research.  Obviously, few if any of us have the resources to give away tens of thousands of hard copies of our publications.   A hundred well-placed copies, or even a dozen, can generate both sales and long term interest.  There is no pride or value in being pennywise and pound foolish.

            The second step in marketing a book—and particularly an independent book—is to exercise the same creativity in marketing as one did in writing.  I am frequently amazed that authors who generate imaginative plots and highly-original characters prove unable to generate marketing plans that extend much beyond placing their books on Amazon and hoping strangers will invest in them.  Far better to engage in wild and zany guerilla tactics.  I am reluctant to share my own yet—but keep your eyes open and feel free to copy.

            The third step, and this cannot be emphasized enough, is relentlessness.  Make your own rain.  Go anywhere you’re invited.  I once gave a reading for one single patron in a small town bookstore, and sold precisely one book—but that’s one more book than I would have sold without doing the reading.  Relentlessness means reaching out constantly:  to booksellers, reading venues, libraries, other authors and even directly to potential readers.  It also means that you have to keep on writing.  You’ll want to publish book reviews and articles and short stories that draw attention to your byline and continued interest in your work.  While it might be lovely to retire on one brilliant book a la Harper Lee, this is a poor career plan to bank on.

            Finally, a trusting, ongoing relationship with ones publishers is essential.  If you spend your energies scrutinizing your royalty checks for errors, or gripe over typos, you are not using your limited emotional resources effectively.  Never forget that the person most responsible for marketing your book isn’t the publisher; it is you.  However, in my experience, the effort you put in as an author is often met with a matching effort by publishers.  Independents cannot afford to support all of their authors equally, so they devote their time and connections to helping those authors who are already helping themselves.

            I am very pleased with my tiny below-the-radar-screen niche in the world of independent publishing.  I can boast that I am a published author at high school reunions.  My grandmother is proud.  That being said, if you’re a Teutonic media conglomerate interested in offering me an eight figure book deal, or you’re Salman Rushdie and you’d like to do a joint reading, my loyalties to independent publishing might prove reasonably negotiable.

Audio Series: Ryan MacDonald

Our audio series "The Authors Read. We Listen."  was hatched in a NYC club during BEA back in 2012. This feature requires more time and patience of the author than any of the ones that have come before. And that makes it all the more sweeter when you see, or rather, hear them read excerpts from their own novels, in their own voices, the way their stories were meant to be heard.


Today, Ryan MacDonald reads from his debut story collection The Observable Characteristics of Organisms, which was recently published with FC2. He is the winner of the 2012 American Short(er) Fiction Award. His work in art and writing has been exhibited performed or published at Notnostrums, New York Live Arts, Fast Forward Press, the Continental Review, Fountain Studios, Flying Object and elsewhere. He teaches art and writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he received an MFA in English and an MFA in Studio Art. He blogs at http://briefepigrams.blogspot.com/  

Listen to Ryan read BRASS TACKS from his collection by clicking on the soundcloud icon below:

The word on The Observerable Characteristics of Organisms:

In Ryan MacDonald’s stories, most no more than a page in length, we are given glimpses of a father and daughter at the zoo; an isolated man lamenting the absence of TV in his life; two young men atop a fridge at a party, drinking wine. These are stories of marriage and family, of the oddities of the natural world, of college parties, of web-cams and media obsession.

Despite the range of circumstances they reveal, these stories are unified by a brightness of vision, deft observation, and consistently sharp, funny, and unbridled language.

“I love Ryan MacDonald’s stories for their humor and absurdity, their intuitive logic, their beguiling juxtapositions. They are sweet and cruel and plaintive, and they express, in changing terms, our failures and obsessions, the plain ways we neglect and punish and please and love and forget one another.”
—Noy Holland, author of Swim for the Little One First

“Ryan MacDonald's short tales of seemingly quotidian life lead us to the end of the diving board—and then leave it to us to take the plunge into the depths of exploding implications. Everything's normal, until it isn't. Through these stories MacDonald invites us to look around our own lives and wonder what is moving around just beneath the surface and about to break free to surprise or frighten us. A stimulating, intriguing collection.”
—Stanley Crawford, author of A Garlic Testament and Log of the S.S. the Mrs Unguentine


“Do you know what the lurid intermixture of complicated emotions produces, according to Nathaniel Hawthorne? That’s right, it produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions. Ryan MacDonald’s glorious shards of prose are both lurid and blazing, and together they comprise an anthology of complex feelings—dream-like, vivid, and never, ever obvious.”
—Chris Bachelder, author of Bear v. Shark and Abbott Awaits

“Concise and contrary, exquisite and eccentric, these stories unsettle, then settle, then unsettle again.”—Susan Steinberg, author of Hydroplane 
*lifted with love from goodreads

Book Review: The Observable Characteristics of Organisms

Read 12/31/14 - 1/6/15
3 Stars - Recommended to fans of bizarre and bold flash fiction / super short stories
Pages: 145
Publisher: FC2
Released: October 2014


An effective short story always knows when to end itself. It says what needs to be said, politely ushers the reader through the front door when it's done, and closes it tightly behind us.

Ryan MacDonald's somewhat loosely interconnected stories (hello, Havershamp?) capture deceivingly small slices of life that leave rather large impressions on us. Not unlike quick little slaps to the face, the sting of his language is unexpected and his words linger behind like ghosts, filling up the spaces between what we read and what we feel in the hours that follow.

Through his stories, Ryan offers us a rotation of glimpses, parading snippets of his characters' lives before our eyes. And as we experience these moments with him, we have seconds to decide - do we judge or reserve judgement, do we cringe with concern or smile with camaraderie?

A father stores grotesque animal parts in his family's refrigerator in "A Confluence of Occurances"; a man forgets to feed his finches in "A Small Death"; we experience a husband's grief at the hands of his wife's unpleasantness in "Wakefield".  A bored kid plays with a crawdad in "Into the Woods". A little boy finds a mentor in his father's mail-ordered mexican cowboy. Someone finds Richard Gere very grating when in close, confined quarters. A brother and sister secretly revel in the stink of a dead skunk.

Oh yes, reader, beware. Where there be animals, there also be death. Ryan, like so many authors before him, can't seem to have a furry or crustaceous creature in a story without bringing about its death swiftly and (mostly) unnecessarily. Whether we enter the story at the moment of death or are pulled in at the burial scene, these stories struck out at me the strongest because they tended to break my heart the hardest. Well, those and the stories about familial distress (they stuck with me but didn't break my heart). Those mostly elicited snuffs and giggles.

Open Positions: Inquire Within

Yeah, ok, the word "hiring" might be a little misleading in this case, because as I'm sure you know, TNBBC is one-hundred-percent a labor of love. We're ad free and we don't take payment for reviews. However, we do love our review contributors to pieces and we can't wait to crush you with our love too!

TNBBC is currently looking for a few more review contributors, and we'd like to add a columnist or two, just to spice things up a bit. Because you'd be doing this for gratis, we're super flexible with our scheduling. There's no nine-to-five commitment here. No minimum number of reviews or posts you need to fulfill per month. You'll find we're really rather easy going.

So let's talk detail, to help you decide whether TNBBC would be a good home-away-from-home for you:



Book Reviewers:

• A love and passion for small press and/or self publishing is a must. 

We're all about promoting the underdog here, and helping our readers find their 'next best book'. We're not about promoting the same ole tired literature as everyone else. That's already being done. That's Zzzzz....

• Writing skillz. You haz some. 

You don't have to be an English major to write great reviews. Hoity Toity, stuffy reviews are not welcome here. However, we won't accept mediocre or poor writing. So make sure your grammar and spelling is up to snuff. And you know, that you can start a thought and finish it coherently. 'Cause that counts for something. Oh, and if your review style is built primarily around gifs, this is probably not the place for you.

• Let your personality shine, shine, shine. 

Are you a genre reader? We could certainly use some of those. Bizarro, literary crime noir, shock horror, experimental poetry, post-apoc sci-fi, non-fiction.. if you're reading it, we'd be interested in taking it. The only genre's we truly steer clear from are romance/erotica and YA.

Our current review contributors each have their own, unique voice. We want to our readers to know who wrote the review without ever looking at that byline.

And before you ask, we want your good, bad, and ugly! We don't sugar coat. (Do you let fly with colorful language from time to time? We are no strangers to the f-bomb around these parts.) If you hate it so hard lightening bolts shot out of your eyes and disintegrated the pages right out of your hands, we want to know why. If you love the hell out of the book, come on and scream it from the mountain tops.



Columnists:

• You have ideas. Your ideas are relevant.

The Columnist position(s) will be a new one for us. A deviation from the typical review-and-author-features we've been doing, we need someone with something to say about things that are worth talking about in a way no one's quite talked about them yet.

• Format is key.

The format of the columns must be consistent. For example:

Maybe you're a lister. Someone who prefers to speak in lists. Your column will share whatever soap-box topic you're on in the form of a list, always. Top 5 Reasons I Won't Read Romance. Top 10 Pet Peeves of the Publishing World. Yadda, yadda. yadda.

Maybe you speak in cartoon. Everything you have to say is said best in sketches. So your column will look like clip art or a comic strip panel, always.




So, you think you want in? Here's what you've gotta do next:

• Send an email to mescorn@ptd.net
• Link to some of the things you've done in the past. Never written for a blog before? That's cool too. Then make something up and send it over. 
• If you're a reviewer, pitch me your spin - is it genre? is it only international/only women/only backlist? is it personality? What's gonna separate you from the pack?
• If you're a columnist - pitch me your column idea(s).

The great news is there's no deadline. The positions won't close and we'll keep reviewing your "applications" for the reviewer and columnist gigs until we feel we've got what we're looking for. We do promise, however, to get back to you as soon as possible with a yeah or nah when you "apply". We won't leave you hanging! We swear!

We look forward to seeing what you're gonna bring! So come on... BRING IT!

Rebecca Burns' Guide to Books & Booze

Time to grab a book and get tipsy!

Back by popular demand, Books & Booze, originally a mini-series of sorts here on TNBBC challenges participating authors to make up their own drinks, name and all, or create a drink list for their characters and/or readers using drinks that already exist. 

Today, Rebecca Burns, author of The Settling Earth, shares some character-drink pairings with us:

Booze and The Settling Earth

Drink was a big problem in colonial New Zealand. The Settling Earth, my collection of short stories about nineteenth-century settlers, fictionalises the lives of men and women dealing with the challenges of settler life, of which alcohol was one. Women suffered at the hands of those addicted to drink; others became part of temperance movements fighting for prohibition; lives were shaped directly, or indirectly, by booze.

The characters in The Settling Earth are as varied as the real-life emigrants who made New Zealand their home. From the mid-to-late nineteenth century, thousands stepped on board emigrants ships and endured a three-month journey. From a naïve young wife and a woman driven into prostitution, to an abusive and resentful farmhand and widow advocating temperance, characters in The Settling Earth reacted differently to their new environment and home, seeking to make sense of life in a new land. What drink might they have turned to in times of need?

Sarah – milk. Newly married, bewildered, and hopelessly naïve, Sarah is transplanted to New Zealand after marrying a much older man. During her husband’s absences she lives alone on their sheeprun, save for the unwanted attentions of a farmhand. She is plagued by lethargy and heartburn only relieved by glasses of milk. She has no idea that she is pregnant.

Phoebe – brandy. Phoebe has been driven into prostitution and works in a brothel in Christchurch. After being seduced on the three month crossing from England, an unplanned pregnancy leaves her destitute. Strong liquor, such as brandy, would make the harsh realities of the world disappear for a moment, a prospect that Phoebe, a reluctant prostitute, would relish.

Miss Swainson – port. Miss Swainson owns the brothel where Phoebe works. She has found New Zealand to be a land of opportunity and disappointment – she has experienced love, grief, life and death in the colony and, when the chance comes to return home to England, Miss Swainson is torn. She relies on port to smooth away the anxieties brought on the troubles and worries of the prostitutes in her care.

Mrs Ellis – tea. As a member of the temperance society, Miss Ellis would be scandalised by the offer of alcohol. And yet, following her discovery at Mrs Grey’s house – another character in the book – she might have been tempted. The shock of what she found at Mrs Grey’s forces Mrs Ellis to reassess her life in New Zealand and it is the thought of small comforts – tea and cake – that helps her regain an equilibrium.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rebecca Burns is an award-winning writer of short stories, over thirty of which have been published online or in print. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011, winner of the Fowey Festival of Words and Music Short Story Competition in 2013 (and runner-up in 2014), and has been profiled as part of the University of Leicester's "Grassroutes Project"-a project that showcases the 50 best transcultural writers in the county.

The Settling Earth is her second collection of short stories. Her debut collection, Catching the Barramundi, was published in 2012-also by Odyssey Books-and was longlisted for the Edge Hill Award in 2013.

How to Read A Lot More Without Reading A Lot

With a new year comes the stress and anxiety of setting new reading goals!!

I don't know about you guys, but 2014 was a pretty solid reading year for me.

I had set my reading goal rather conservatively at the start of it. Back in January I was working my full time (read: real) job and diligently attending to my Marketing Director responsibilities (read: side job) with CCLaP, while doing some non-CCLaP publicity (read: side side job), and balancing all of my TNBBC stuff in between. Phew! So I figured 52 books, one book a week, would be pretty reasonable.

Little did I know that come May, my full time job would move me from a four-day workweek to a three-day workweek (same hours, just longer days), and in June I'd start my eventual break-up with CCLaP. Insert unanticipated extra reading time! By the time the end of the year rolled around, I was sitting pretty at 80 books read - a whopping 28 books over goal!

But you don't have to have free time handed to you in order to have an awesome reading year. You just have to be more mindful and planful with the time you DO have. 

Here are just a few easy "cheats" that I've used in the past to help me pad that reading percentage. Feel free to start using them too, to jack up your own reading stats in 2015:

1. Have a book handy AT ALL TIMES. Stuck in the longest line at the grocery store? Commute to work on the bus or train? At the kid's baseball game and he's sitting the first half out, or waiting to pick 'em up at the bus stop? Whip that sucker out of your purse/pocket/man-bag, and get a few pages in while nothing's doing. 

2. Read on your lunch breaks. Instead of being super-social and hanging out at the break table with the rest of the crew, sneak your sandwich out to your car or eat it at your desk with the door closed over and read, read, read as you munch away. 

3. Go audio. I gotta tell you, all that time I spend in the car rocking out to the radio as I drove to and from work was a waste before I started listening to audiobooks. In 2014 alone, I listened to over 20 audiobooks! I know, right?! I highly recommend getting yourself set up with downpour.com. They have great sales and deals (you can RENT audiobooks for super cheap from them!) and they have a free app to download the book straight to your phone.

4. Go digital. 2014 was the year I completely gave in to ebooks. My Kindle has never been fuller. But how does reading digitally help you read more? Well, for starters, it ties directly into "cheat" #1. Keeping that Kindle in your purse, or downloading the Kindle app on your cell phone means you are never very far from your next read. And digital books are a great break from your current paperback... look at them like the snack you sneak between meals. Or the perfect breather from the book you're currently slogging through. (plus, you can find a ton of great books on Kindle for FREE)

5. DNF more often. Speaking of slogging through a book! Nothing kills your reading mojo more than a book you aren't looking forward to picking back up once you've put it down. If that book is boring you to death or just doesn't seem to be your cup of tea, cut it and move on. You're more likely to read more often if you're reading a book you actually enjoy. 

6. Take a bath. Sneak a little you-time at the end of your workday by running a nice, hot, relaxing bath. Don't forget to bring that book with you! As you scrub-a-dub, give yourself a few extra minutes to soak in a few pages.

7. Flash Fiction, Short Story Collections, and Chapbooks are your friends. Break away from back to back to back novels by squeezing in a short story collection or chapbook from time to time. Easy to dip in and out of, shorter fiction gives your brain a well deserved reprieve from all of the heavy world building and character development and will make you feel like your making more progress, which in turn will stimulate that reading mojo into higher gear. It's easier to give in to "one more story" when it's only 5 or 6 pages long vs. "one more" 30 paged chapter, right?!

8. Find a reading partner or reading challenge to keep you motivated. I've done both in the past and both work really well for me. Whether you set up an online reading challenge that is task-oriented, like the one we're kicking off over at goodreads this year, or you set a dual goal with a reading-partner-in-crime, sometimes a little outside motivation helps! 

Hope this helps you in your quest to read a lot more without reading a lot this year! Feel free to stop by and let me know if these tips work for you. And why not hashtag your current reads with #TNBBCreads on twitter, so we can follow you along on your journey?

Happy reading everyone!

Book Review: Braineater Jones

Read 11/11/14 - 11/19/14
4 Stars - Highly Recommended to fans of zombie fic and crime noir; entertaining smash-up of both genres
Pages: 234
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Released: Oct 2014


Pulpy crime noir is not normal TNBBC fare by any means. Our most loyal and beloved readers know this, as do the many authors who've passed pitch letters for that genre our way. But pulpy crime noir involving... zombies? Uh, heck yeaaaah, pass that bad boy over here!

The last time I read anything of this ilk was back during the 2011 BEA, when I was kidnapped and brainwashed (just kidding, sort of) by scientology's publishing arm into taking a review copy of Dead Men Kill. What turned Hubbard's predictably canned and corny detective story into a rather fun and rompy read was the fact that it had zombies. Death by the hands of your recently deceased secretary?! Count me in.

The only other time I tried reading a spin on the hard-boiled detective novel was A Lee Martinez's The Automatic Detective, and that one, though written in classic noir style, was set in the future and featured a robot protagonist. So yeah, you see where my reading tastes lie, right?

I feel no shame in admitting that that's what sold me on Stephen Kozeniewski's pitch for his retro crime-noir Braineater Jones. Ok, so the title is a little... cheesy and the cover is a little... tacky but seriously, we're talking a crime noir novel where a ZOMBIE PRIVATE EYE is investigating his own death. The title HAS to be cheesy and the cover HAS to be tacky! It's so bad it's good, ya know?  Hell, it's better than good. It's fricken tops. And it's set during the prohibition so the entire novel is peppered through with good ole 1930's lingo.

So here's the lowdown: The novel kicks off with our protagonist floating face down and naked in a swimming pool. He's dead and he has no memory of why or who did him in, though he can pretty well tell how as he fingers the big ole hole in his chest:

"I woke up dead this morning... Not dead drunk. Dead. Dead dead. As in no pulse, no breathing, dead as a doornail dead... dead is tough. But dead and still thinking means I've got a chance."

His first order of business, finding the guys who killed him. Then, figuring out why he's become a braineater. Actually, he'd be cool with answers to either at this point. So he starts by logging all of his questions in a journal - Who was the hatchet man? Why did they bump me off? Who or what was I before I died? Why can't I remember anything from before I died? What am I? And are there others like me? - and begins to search the property for clues. Before he gets very far, he's chased by two men with guns, ending up in an alley in a bad part of town. And here is where our Braineater Jones starts to get some answers...

Told from the eternally hopeful POV of Braineater himself, we're pulled deep into the underbelly of The Welcome Mat, a dark and dangerous place where the rest of the dead hang out, pickling their brains with alcohol (a very effective way of staving off the rigor mortis and quieting their innate hunger for flesh). There, he meets Lazar - a mysterious man who promises to keep Braineater's whistle whet for a price; a troublesome dame who smells like nothing but trouble from the start; and Alcide, who quickly becomes his severed head sidekick. Oh yeah. A fucking severed head you guys.

Nothing is as it seems and every answer only seems to create more questions for our wise crackin' protag. But come hell or high water, Jones won't give up until he gets to the bottom of things, or until he ends up double-dog dead. Whichever comes first.

Stephen Koseniewski pulls us along, page after page, leaving us just as clueless as his narrator. We know only what Jones knows as he comes to know it, the truth of his murder and the origins of the walking deaders unfolding before our eyes at the same time.

An incredibly well written and brain-tickling read, Braineater Jones aims to hit you in both the heart and the funny bone. Super hard core zombie lit fans might find the liberties Stephen takes with his undead a little too much to bear, however for this reader, it certainly hits its marks.