Emerging Writers Network

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Brian Kubarycz

Brian Kubarycz - Six Pieces:

These six pieces run the full gamut, don't they?  One page stories, a longer short story, a couple of poems.  There were two things that continued to jump out at me - his brief inclusions of Christian references, and his vocabulary, which had me thinking in terms of writing from long ago.  Specifically this second point, usage of words or phrases like:

"Crouching on shore, my skin now rubicon, on came the nights.  Space compacted me, the compass shrank down to a pit of iron ice;" ("Puerto del Sol")

"The very book of death has no horn but doth rise up, vermiform, eyeless." ("Auspex")

"Superintending the edge of this world, waiting for veined temples to descend, I plunge into the wreckage and I search for my lost kind." ("Kuklops")

Is there something specific about the writing of Kubarycz that grabs your attention, or is it perhaps a combination of various aspects?

David:

 

You're a close reader, Dan. Any allusion to Christianity in Kubarycz's work is no mistake. Specifically, any allusion to Mormonism, as Kubarycz was raised a Latter-Day Saint who now teaches at the University of Utah.  But know this: Kubarycz is no saint, Latter-Day or otherwise. The mind of his heart is too openly independent to be that of a saint. He sees too clearly to let his way of seeing be compromised by external dogma. He's the one the saints might envy and weep for simultaneously.

Let me share a quote from Harold Bloom's book, The American Religion: "A major American poet, perhaps one called a Gentile by the Latter-Day Saints, some time in the future will write their early story as the epic it was." Well, Mr. Bloom is an extremely smart man who sometimes offers his readers some far-fetched notions, but I agree with this statement, and to a certain extent I believe that Brian Kubarycz is the poet he speaks of. 

Kubarycz may never write the epic foreseen by Bloom, but already he has written what one might call an authenticated Mormon mythology. Kubarycz bears witness unflinchingly. He takes the stance of a Mormon who is no longer a believer, and gives us writing I believe could not be written by anyone raised otherwise. I also believe his pages could not have been written by a Mormon who remained loyal to the fold.

Kubarycz's content is one of insightful religious contention. Lingually, he presents many discernibly subtle moments. Here is a sentence from "On the Mountain", the first story he ever submitted to me for Unsaid: 

"He needed leaving for a while under the house until the sun got to him even under there and we began to feel the stink coming up from under the rug my mother might have beaten into cleanness."

Clearly--by anyone's standards--this is a beautifully wrought sentence. But it's the phrase "beaten into cleanness" that hit me hardest and continues to hit me each time I read it. This assemblage of three words sums up the Mormon legacy as clearly as the whole of Bloom's tome. The history of the Mormons is stained by violence under a veneer of cleanliness. Kubarycz nails it. "On the Mountain" is as good a story as I have ever read. Even without knowledge of its backdrop, any attentive reader will measure it as a great accomplishment in American Literature. 

This stands true for all of Kubarycz's work. I've had the great pleasure of reading his unpublished collection, tentatively entitled, The Instruments I Used. It disconcerts me to no end that the publishers of Cormac McCarthy's work responded to Kubarycz's pages by saying they are "too literary for the current market." Regardless, Kubarycz is making his mark, and I have no doubt that his pages will be praised by both the public and the likes of Bloom before the final sun sets.

Recent Reading Material - Part I

It feels as if there's been a LOT of slacking going on around here when it comes to reviews and/or interviews.  Probably because there haven't been any of either for quite some time.  While seemingly immersing myself in short fiction during the month of May,I actually was also reading some novels, which continued through June.  There will be reviews of these and I believe I have interviews set up with a few of these authors as well - now I just need to get them some questions.  I'm going to do this over the course of three or four posts with 2 or 3 books in each.  All of the books mentioned here though are top notch and should be rushed out and found, and devoured.

Philipp Meyer's American Rust is a great novel.  It's well written, has a great story about interesting characters and knowing how long it takes from the time a manuscript is submitted to the time it hits stores, it seems Meyer was rather prescient in his thoughts on the financial straits of various classes back when he was putting American Rust together.  Set in steel country Pennsylvania, this tale of a couple of just post-high school young men from the wrong side of the tracks, were in fact there were any tracks, digs into friendship, honor, growth as both individuals and as part of units.  It's a difficult one to set down once you get more than 40 pages in.

I've not been smart enough to read Arthur Phillips first three novels, though they're all somewhere in this house.  A review copy of his fourth, The Song is You, was sent my way and I took a quick peek and emerged a day later having finished it.  The story of a director of commercials and his quasi-relationship with both a) his iPod, and b) an up and coming younger, Irish female singer-songwriter is a quick and very enjoyable read.  I think, without being heavy handed at all, Phillips is able to slide in observations on relationships, both familial and non, music, commercialism, advertising and many other issues we confront daily.  He also does a commendable job writing the tale of an up-and-coming musician.  Not to mention including what is probably the second biggest Jeopardy response related gaffe in history (fact or fiction - and sorry, but the South Park naggers gaffe remains the biggest to date in my opinion).  You'll have to read the book to see how the main character's brother replied to a question during his championship run.  It's not the only reason to read this one, but a solid one nonetheless.

Source of Lit - Hobart

Speaking of being up and ready to go on the first, Hobart's monthly online version is up and live and includes two shorts from Stephen Graham Jones!!!  It also has work from Jessica Piazza, Baird Harper, Damian Dressick, and an interview of Larry Fondation by Brian Allen Carr.

Get over there and read!

Source of Lit - NewPages.com

There are many monthly outlets for information, including book reviews.  Of those that I tend to check as early as 12:01 a.m. EST on the first though, only NewPages.com has recently been consistently getting new content up early on the first of each month.

This month is no different as they have from publishers like BlazeVOX, Black Goat, Unbridled, University of Iowa, Syracuse University, Holy Cow! Press, Wave Books, New Issues, and Dalkey Archive.

And the monthly reviews are only the beginning.  Head on over and check out their treasure trove of material and information!

Chris Anderson's Free - Returned

Occasionally I'll write up a Source of Lit - The Postman! post here at the EWN, letting those that wander by know what titles have hit my mailbox recently.  In some cases, I know I'll be getting to the book in question, be it in a full review, or a mini-review or maybe author interview. In many cases though, it's to give the book at least a little bit of time here seeing that a publicist or author has taken their time to send it to me, believing it to be a book I might be interested in.  And the books that come that have absolutely nothing in common with the type I read and review here?  Well, they don't get mentioned and get donated either to the local library, or a couple of nearby retirement homes.

Just a day or two after reading what both the Virginia Quarter Review blog, and Ed Champion, had to say about Chris Anderson's new offering, Free:  The Future of a Radical Price, and a day after posting a guest essay by Steve Gillis, author and co-founder of Dzanc Books, I received a review copy in the mail. 

I'm sending this copy back to CR, the Director of Publicity at Hyperion with a note suggesting she remove me from the list of places that are sent complimentary review copies.  I'll mention in this note that I strongly disagree with their decision to not pull the book, after the findings that were made, without doing something.  While I disagreed with the University of Georgia Press's extremely quick decision to pulp Brad Vice's book a few years back, believing they could have released the book with a tip-in sheet, I did note at the time that I understood why they were doing what they did, at obvious great cost to themselves.  Hyperion's plan, if I understand it correctly, to let the book fly 'as is' and to include the sourcing online, is a ridiculous reaction to what was discovered and subsequently stated by Chris Anderson.  This is a book that will sell copies, and some of these will be sold simply on the basis that people heard there was something up with this book, without their knowledge of what that something was.  These people won't be visiting a website to find out where Anderson got his information and in some cases his words.  They won't know about it.  There's nothing in the book itself that states that full attributing of sources is available at such and such a website.

I review, or comment upon, many things here at the EWN.  And the books and journals get here via different methods - review copies, ARC's, authors sending copies, me buying copious amounts, etc.  I've never chosen one book over another to be the next one I'll review because of who sent it, or what came with the book, etc.  I choose what I'm interested in and read that one next.  I don't know how many books from Hyperion's forthcoming list(s) would be found in that group I'll be interested in, but if there is one, it will be one that I was so interested in that I went out and bought it myself.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - Dawn Raffel

Dawn Raffel - The Air and Its Relatives

I'm obviously a big fan of Dawn's work, and in fact this story is going to be in her forthcoming collection, Further Adventures of the Restless Universe (Dzanc Books, March 2010).  I think Dawn may be the pre-eminent writer working today in the 'what is not on the page' category.  Her stories, always so incredibly compact on the page, just have an immense amount of story and emotion to them.  All that said, she's just as masterful with her sentences, I love this description of the usage of the defroster in a car:

"There is a sigh of activation and the world becomes visible."

David McLendon:

Ask anyone who really knows me, and either of the two of them will tell you how important Raffel's work is to me.  

Fifteen or more years ago I always looked forward to finding her work in the pages of Gordon Lish's lit mag, The Quarterly. She appeared there often, and I was always eager to read her chopped sentences and the poetry those sentences provided. This goes back as far as perhaps 1991, but I recall one particular issue--Q27, which must have appeared in 1994--that included Raffel's story, "Nightjars". That was the story that did it for me. That was the story that hit.

Her first collection, In the Year of Long Division, weighs in at a deceivingly brief 117 pages. It was released on my birthday in 1995 and remains the most lasting birthday gift I ever gave myself. Raffel's economy continues to amaze me. But it's not that she gives us only what is needed. She gives us more than we expect in a very small frame. Her first collection I have never truly set down, and I look very forward to the collection that is forthcoming from Dzanc. 

As far as her pages in Unsaid, here are a few of my favorite sentences that show Raffel's poetic economy:

"Wind off the lake holds a violence in winter."

"A finger the size of a silo is pointing to gratification."

"Me, I can't abide to be anyplace, ever, so close to closing."

Raffel is a wonder. Her pages are always welcome in Unsaid. I hope her new collection is even thinner and heavier than her last.

Source of Lit - Unsaid - A. Minetta Gould

A. Minetta Gould - Six Poems

I love how varied the styles are in these poems, and while re-reading them realized that there was a common thread, but noticed it was in the subject matter, the artist Egon Schiele (to be open, I learned about Schiele via Wikipedia).  I'm curious about what it was that drew your interest to Gould's poetry, and also wondering, when an author is as focused on a topic as Gould is with Schiele in her work, how familiar do you feel the reader need to be?

David:

Regardless of subject matter--or the reader's knowledge of the subject matter--writing as strong as Gould's will hold our attention and curiosity. That said, I am familiar enough with Schiele's life to know that the portrait Gould paints for us comes across as an authentic artifact. She displays a great deal of authority with her pages, employing intellect and sensitivity and creativity, all in one fell swoop. It's as if Gould provides the reader a rare intimacy with Schiele himself. Gould has an entire manuscript of "Schiele poems" and I will happily publish any she sends my way. It's rare for a writer to speak out from the inside of his or her subject as authentically as Gould speaks to us here. Seemingly random objects are given a strong life of their own. A handkerchief conveys as much meaning as a painting might. And when Schiele's subject speaks, we are allowed new intimacies through the voice of Gould: "Egon, eat an apple; take another foul step toward a cadence set in threes." These are words Gould gives to Valerie "Wally" Neuzil, who was Schiele's model and lover. The detail of such a sentence resonates with authenticity, as if Gould were there in the studio with the painter and his model.  That poem ends, "Draw me odd & long," which Gould herself has done with these authentically strong and beautifully odd poems.

Source of Lit - Oxford American

Maybe my favorite annual issue of Oxford American, nope not the Music Issue, but the Best of the South issue.  Granted, it's a tough tough call, but I really enjoy the Odes section.

This year, the Best of the South 2009, includes three great short stories from George Singleton, Lincoln Michel and Rebecca T. Godwin - seriously, this is like a great literary journal just with these alone.  Beyond that there are essays from Beth Ann Fennelly (about an online recipe friend that she's never met in person), Lyn Millner (about frogs), plus others, some poetry, the always great advertisements (I honestly believe I look at, or read, every single ad in these magazines), and then, my favorite section, the Odes.

As in Ode to a Duckpond from Lauren Groff, or Ode to a Disc Golf course, penned by Ander Monson, plus looks at demolition derbies, ice cream parlors, the southern highway, civil war heroines, bbq funerals and the list goes on, all of them great.  Each is a page to two long and get to the point and out quickly.  Most have a bit of wit to them and all are entertaining as hell.  Look for this one on your local news stand now.

Source of Lit - Quick Fiction

Quick Fiction 15 is now available and, as usual, is chock full of goodness in the form of very short stories.  28 of them in all, a cool cover and some of those stories are from names you've come to recognize around here:  Elizabeth Ellen, Stefan Kiesbye, Randall Brown, Sean Lovelace, James Scott, Jensen Whelan, Mike Young and (wow!) Lee Martin - it's been so long since I read his chapbook, Traps, that I forgot he used to write the very short story.

It's also always nice to read Quick Fiction and find some authors that I've either heard of but not read much of - Andrea Kneeland, Lydia Copeland, Scott Garson, Blythe Winslow - and enjoy them quite a bit, or discover authors that I'm sure I should have heard of but hadn't prior to the issue being in my hands - Dylan Nice, Don Strange, Spencer Wise, and others, and again, enjoy a lot.

It's another solid issue.  If flash is your thing, you probably already have it in hand.  If you've been thinking of delving into a little flash fiction, it's a good place to start.

Source of Lit - Memorious

Memorious issue 12 is now online and it's another great issue with a trio of Aaron Burch's "Overcast" flash fictions, a great story from Thomas Cooper and another from Xu Xi.  A tough call but I'd have to go with the third of Burch's "Overcast" flashes as my favorite.

This issue also has an interview with poet, Brenda Hillman, and a barrel full of poetry, my favorite of which would have to be Ralph Sneeden's "The Cigarette Wheel:  Seaside Heights, New Jersey, 1942."

Since discovering Memorious about two years ago, it's been one of my favorites.