Collect 'em all

Animals in Midlife Crises

More to come...

"Why do I keep coming here? I hate all these assholes."

Have you been reading Animals in Midlife Crises by Lincoln Michel and John Dermot Woods? The second strip went up this week. It even caught the eye of Flavorwire. New strips every Sunday at The Rumpus.

In unrelated Rumpus news, Nancy Smith reviewed issue six of Canteen magazine and gave a very nice shout out to my essay on disappearing deep ends:

Lincoln Michel writes, rather remarkably, about the loss of the deep end of the pool....I simultaneously loved/was terrified by learning to swim and overcoming the deep end was a rite of summer passage. I’m somewhat depressed by the fact that kids nowadays just splash around in a couple feet of water. As Michel so rightly concludes, “A pool can only be conquered if you actually have to swim in it.”

Very awesome to read! Also awesome to see reviews of literary magazines, something that doesn't happen enough.

It is getting harder and harder to be a writer in Brooklyn

(signs at my local corner store)

mystic haiku, mortality haiku, capitalist haiku, foreboding haiku

I have four haiku up at elimae for the April issue. They are titled Mystic Haiku, Mortality Haiku, Capitalist Haiku, and Foreboding Haiku.

Animals in Midlife Crises by Lincoln Michel and John Dermot Woods

I'm very excited to say that The Rumpus is running John Dermot Woods and my comic strip about animals undergoing existential midlife crises (appropriately titled Animals in Midlife Crises). The first strip can be viewed here. Others to follow every Sunday.

Marcy Dermansky, Norman Lock, and Lincoln Michel at The Brooklyn Winery

I'm reading tomorrow night in Williamsburg at Brooklyn Winery with two fantastic authors. Starts at 7pm.

Full details over at Vol. 1 Brooklyn.

Come out, if you'd like.

Three readings and other upcoming things

THREE READINGS

March 11th: In anticipation of Blake Butler's new novel, This Is No Year, Harper Perennial is staging four consecutive readings where a variety of writers will read the entirely of Blake's novel. I will be reading on the fourth day, this Friday, at PowerHouse Arena. Other readers that night include good friends Adam Wilson, Catherine Lacey, and Blake Butler, amongst others. Giancarlo Ditrapano, James Yeh, Justin Taylor, and many others will be reading on other nights. You know you want to come.

March 16th: I'll be briefly reading my own work at the Monkeybicycle Lightning Round reading at the Cake Shop, 7pm.

We're happy to say that this edition of the Lightning Round will also double as a release party for our eighth print issue, which will be available shortly. Featuring: Paula Bomer, Vince Czyz, Scott Geiger, Jeff Grentharer, Michael Hickins, Suzanne Marie Hopcroft, Blake Kimzey, Lincoln Michel, David Moscovich, Dustin Luke Nelson, Steve Peacock, Edwin Rivera, Kathleen A. Ryan, Andrew James Weatherhead, and Katie Wudel, plus others.

March 23: I'll be reading a longer amount of my own work at Vol. 1 Brooklyn's monthly reading series at Brooklyn Winery alongside Marcy Dermansky and Norman Lock. The reading is co-organized by Big Other. Dermansky and Lock are both fantastic writers, so should be a good time! Here is the Facebook event with more details.

FOUR PUBLICATIONS

An essay in Tin House's summer issue on Herbert Read's The Green Child.

A short story in Indiana Review's spring issue about a dictator and his head bodyguard.

Two poems in PANK print issue #6, one about urination and campfires, the other about an evil grandfather.

A shorty story (from the last Unsaid) anthologized in Tell: An Anthology of Expository Narrative. This anthology is being put together by the very talented and awesome Molly Gaudry. In addition to writing and editing awesome stuff, Molly just launched an indie books publicity business that is getting tons of deserved buzz around the indie lit world. Check it out.

The anthology's contributor list is beyond amazing and I'm very excited to be included:

Contributors include: Matt Bell, Aimee Bender, Kate Bernheimer, Crispin Best, Blake Butler, Alexandra Chasin, Paola Corso, Rebecca Curtis, Justin Dobbs, Anthony Doerr, Stuart Dybek, Brian Evenson, Kathy Fish, Susan Froderberg, Roxane Gay, Thomas Glave, Michael Griffith, J. C. Hallman, Miles Harvey, Lily Hoang, Christie Hodgen, Shelley Jackson, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Lee Klein, Samuel Ligon, Robert Lopez, Gary Lutz, Charles McLeod, Ben Marcus, Peter Markus, Clancy Martin, Michael Martone, Lincoln Michel, Lydia Millet, Rick Moody, Richard Nash (Foreword), Peter Orner, Benjamin Percy, Dawn Raffel, Nelly Reifler, George Saunders, Christine Schutt, Ben Segal, B. R. Smith, Michael Stewart, Terese Svoboda, Christian TeBordo, J. A. Tyler, Deb Olin Unferth, Diane Williams, Kevin Wilson, Lidia Yuknavitch.

SOME OTHER STUFF

Gigantic Indoors (Gigantic issue #3) is heading to press pretty shortly and we are very excited about it. The issue will include fantastic contributions from Dave Berman, Diane Williams, Joshua Cohen, and many others. More info to come!

I have been working on a rad series of comic strips with the very talented John Dermot Woods that we will hopefully reveal pretty soon.

As always, I write a regular column on fiction at The Faster Times and pretend to post witty thoughts on Twitter.

Interview up at PANK

I have an interview up at PANK blog in which I use the phrases "children’s party clown with a mean streak," "organic oils and artisanal lotions," "air-dropped into the secluded hunting grounds," "undead howls," and "fool others into thinking I’m thinking."

You can read the interview here.

You can read the two stories that prompted it here.

Forthcoming...

Essay in Tin House

Fiction in Indiana Review

Poetry in PANK print

Interview in PANK online

Starting 2011 off with a mix of things. Will post more as they are posted or printed.

language as inside ideal

I know plenty of people have made note of the spam poetry that exists on the web and in emails---the bizarre sentences cobbled by computers to get around spam sensors---but since this one contains my name I thought I might as well post it:

Mondays and thursdays are considered already recent infantrymen for fasting. Ringed piers of different fancy of definitions acutely followed. Thinking contributors were a other interest often constructed over science and from one transcendence to another. Victoria's form is six pipes larger than endurance centrifuge. Lincoln Michel since i published some of his language as inside ideal at night train rocks inside.

I'll spare you the spam link, but I couldn't figure out what the spam was even for. Russian Viagra maybe?

Nice things people have said about me

Last month I had two short stories in Unsaid #5 and this month I have two even shorter stories up at PANK.

My two PANK stories were featured on BlackBook magazine's "Fiction For Your Lunch Break" series. Here is what writer and friend Adam Wilson had to say:

His two featured stories might only be a paragraph long each, but they manage to encompass big ideas and entire worlds. “The Soldier” hinges on a startling point of view shift, from that of a soldier abroad to that of a local dog the soldier has accidentally kicked. In “The Hunt,” men go off hunting only to return to a burnt shell of a village, the families there regressed to feral, pre-human instinct. Michel is a master at manipulating time, seamlessly shifting from panorama to personal close-up. Re-read these stories until your brain has been marinated in their dark wisdom.

On Facebook, Unsaid super editor David McLendon has been collecting photographs of Unsaid contributors and had a very flattering comment on mine that I hope he won't mind me repeating here (or perhaps using as a blurb in the future!):

Lincoln Michel knows where he is from. No matter the flask or bottle or napkin dispenser from which Michel imbibes, his pages are always poured from the greater vessel that is Michel himself. Or, more accurately, Michel's pages are poured from that part of himself that he wishes but refuses to shake: Home. In Michel's case, home is a more than a place - it is a journey. His pages always orbit the source they intend to flee, but with a kind of furthering recurrence that pushes home much closer to home than was ever possible before Michel framed home with language. In other words, you can never go home again. In other words, welcome home.

~ David McLendon

You can read one of my Unsaid stories, "Drive," over here. However, you should buy the whole issue because it is packed with amazing writers and McLendon is one of the most talented editors in the lit mag world today.

Two for PANK

I'm excited to say I have two short-short stories in the current online issue of PANK. I will also have a few poems in their forthcoming print issue.

The first story is about a a soldier that accidentally kicks a starving dog and the second is about abandoned women eating bark with their teeth. Here are two random sentences:

When he was hungry he sat on the ground and gnawed on his own leg.

Our beards grew long.

Check them out if you'd like!

Boring personal readings habits 2k10

The past two years, I made resolutions to read at least fifty books and did so. This year, I did not make a resolution and failed to crack thirty. So this list is probably even less interesting than usual.

I taught several classes this year, which allowed me to reread a lot of fantastic essays and short fiction from old masters (Kafka, Hoffamann, Borges, O'Connor, Marquez, Cortazar, and countless others), but impeded my complete book reading. I also started a few giant tomes, specifically Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy and Roberto Bolano's 2666, both of which I will hopefully finish in some future year.

Books I finished in chronological order (*s are rereads):

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – Junot Diaz
2. Chronicles – Bob Dylan
3. Little Things – Jeffery Brown
4. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned – Wells Tower
5. NOON 2001
6. Reality Hunger – David Shields
7. NOIR – Robert Coover
8. NOON 2010
9. Twenty Grand – Rebecca Curtis
10. Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
11. Magic For Beginners – Kelly Link
12. Books: A Memoir – Larry McMurtry
13. Nightwork – Christine Schutt
14. The Spot – David Means
15. Apex Hides the Hurt – Colson Whitehead
16. All the Living – C. E. Morgan
17. Jesus’ Son – Denis Johnson*
18. Billy Hazelnuts 2 – Tony Millionaire
19. Seven Nights – Jorge Luis Borges
20. The Green Child – Herbert Read
21. Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico – Javier Marias
22. The Literary Conference – Cesar Aira
23. Patriotism – Yukio Mishima
24. Ghosts – Cesar Aira
25. Tales of Desire – Tennessee Williams
26. Mystery and Manners – Flannery O’Connor
27. Do Not Disturb – Muriel Spark
28. Here Comes Another Lesson – Stephen O’Connor

This feels like too few books to bother with further breakdown, as I did in previous years.

Well, onwards and upwards (and more reading in the future).

Settling down to an evening with the new Unsaid #5

This thing is massive. Check out this list of contributors and then order it here.

BRIAN KUBARYCZ/ANNE CARSON/JOE WENDEROTH/BLAKE BUTLER/JONATHAN CALLAHAN/ROBERT LOPEZ/MICHAEL KIMBALL/A. MINETTA GOULD/DAVID HOLLANDER/JENNY GROPP-HESS/GREG AMES/JOSEPH CELZIC…/ANNE VALENTE/ERIKA LORENTZSEN/DANIELLE BLAU/DAWN RAFFEL/TRENT ENGLAND/M.T. FALLON/BRIAN EVENSON/KIM CALDER/ROZALIA JOVANOVIC/LUKE GOEBEL/CATHERINE FOULKROD/A WOLFE/PETER MARKUS/KATY WYER/JASON SCHWARTZ/TOM MCCARTAN/SHANE FIREK/AMBER SPARKS/ROBERT KLOSS/ELIZABETH MIKESCH/PAMELA RYDER/LINCOLN MICHEL/MICHAEL COPPERMAN/LITO ELIO PORTO/ALEXIS ALMEIDA/MONICA HARHAS/EVELYN HAMPTON/SEAN PATRICK HILL/PAUL MALISZEWSKI/B.R. SMITH/JEFFREY LAMONDE/ALEXANDRA CHASIN/TOM LAVERTY/ANDY DEVINE/M SARKI/RICHARD ST. GERMAIN/ALLISON TITUS/KEITH NATHAN BROWN/LIAM O’BRIEN/MATT BELL/COOPER ESTEBAN/SCOTT GARSON/ERIKA MOYA/SASHA FLETCHER/JOSEPH SCAPELLATO/STEPHEN GROPP-HESS

several of the last few weeks

I have not updated this blog since reading in Kansas City, MO and Lawrence, KS. Here is a quick round-up of some things.

In writing news:

I have two stories in the sure to be fantastic Unsaid #5, which I believe started being shipped yesterday. You can view the massive and massively awesome list of contributors here. I'm honored to be alongside so many authors I admire (Anne Carson, Brian Evenson, etc.) and authors I am good friends with--and also admire!--such as Rozalia Jovanovic, Catherine Foulkrod and Sasha Fletcher. Look out for it in bookstores, or order it online.

I also have a story forthcoming in another great literary magazine, Indiana Review. It is a story about a short dictator and his bodyguards. It is pure fiction, although when I gave a reading of it once several different people came up and told me that they were positive they knew which real life dictator it was based on. More on that when it gets published.

I also found out that an essay I wrote for The Rumpus was assigned in a college course when I received a few emails from students asking me for background information for their essays. It was pretty flattering to hear!

John Dermot Woods and I have been working on a badass comic strip. More about that later.

Lastly, the readings in Kansas City and Lawrence were both awesome and a million thanks to Clancy Martin and Chloe Cooper Jones for organizing them. Indeed, the whole midwest experience was fantastic, especially the food. Some items I consumed: duck fat french fries, kobe beef burger, biscuits and turkey sausage gravy, biscuits and beef sausage gravy and eggs, biscuits and fried rabbit, chicken-fried pork steak, sliced flank steak, Kansas City pulled pork, Kansas City short ribs, etc.

post-lecture, pre-reading

In editing news:

In addition to our readings, James Yeh and I gave a talk on editing and creating literary magazines to students in the MFA program and Kansas University. I've just learned that their magazine will be called Beecher's Magazine and my good friend Chloe Cooper Jones is going to be the first editor in chief. Look out for it!

Speaking of Chloe Cooper Jones, she is joining the staff of The Faster Times with an exciting dialogues section. The first piece will be a conversation between herself, Deb Olin Unferth and George Saunders. It should go up on Monday.

Lastly, Gigantic #3 is coming together amazingly and we have several killer contributing writers and artists to announce soon.

In non-writing and non-editing news:

I had a birthday and am one step closer to death.

In better news, I recently attended the baptism of my cute and awesome godson, Leo Marshall Pesch. If we are Facebook friends, I am sure you've seen pictures.

More to come...

Big on the Missouri-Kansas border

Gave a fun reading with James Yeh and Chloe Cooper Jones last night in Kansas City at the New Letters house. Clancy Martin gave a far too kind introduction and New Letters was a great host.

Tonight, James Yeh and I will be giving a lecture on literary magazines (4 pm) followed by a reading of our fiction (7 pm) at Kansas University in Lawrence.

That's right, I'm blowing up on the Missouri-Kansas border!

James Yeh, Chloe Cooper Jones, Clancy Martin, and Lincoln Michel

The Kings County Society for Fitness, Science, and Musical Merriment Third Monthly Gala

James Yeh and I are hosting our monthly dance night at Greenpoint's Manhattan Inn this Friday. I play a lot of 60s soul and Southern hip-hop, James plays a lot of 80s pop and Northern jangle rock. Come on by and boogie.

your football assigned reading

I'm a little late posting this here, but before the kickoff of the NFL season I wrote a piece about great football books for Flavorwire. Pictured above is my absolute favorite.

you'll need this in the desert

Above is the rad cover for the new issue of Canteen magazine. The issue's feature is a series of essays that tangentially deal with the decline (?) of The Great American Novel. I have an essay in there on disappearing swimming pool deep-ends and there are essays by many other rad writers such as Justin Taylor and Tao Lin (read an excerpt of his essay online). Check it out!

The Kings County Society for Fitness, Science and Musical Merriment

ATTN NYC FRIENDS:

DJs James Yeh and myself* will be hosting our monthly 60s soul/60s rock/southern rap/sporadic funk dance night at The Manhattan Inn in Greenpoint Brooklyn this Friday. Come on by if you can!

*Formerly DJs Cormac McBootay and Hemingyeh?

The last dog days of summer are being rounded up.

After a short summer break, Gigantic online is back with new content. We have fiction from Ashley Farmer and John Dermot Woods as well as a great interview with the fantastic Amy Hempel by Nathan C. Martin and part four of our serialized comic Until I Find It (by Luca Dipierro and Leni Zumas).

on and on and on and on

I have a short piece up today over at Everyday Genius. It starts:

Driving out west in a rusted sedan, our thoughts slowed with each passing state. My Indian wife wore her wrist-watch with the broken strap. She was dialing up the radio.

Mildly interesting note: that piece actually began as a cut-up of a Hardy Boys novel I found on the street. I have some other work coming out soon that I'm excited about, especially two stories in the new Unsaid that will be in stores very soon. Also expect new Gigantic online content, events and print issues in the coming days, weeks and months.

there's still a lot of drinks that I ain't drunk and lots of pretty thoughts that I ain't thunk

Friends, Romans, blog readers, lend me your ears. Gigantic and NOON are joining forces Voltron-like for a Bastille Day Soiree this Wednesday the 14th! If you are in the New York City area you should come out to mingle in a rad downtown bar and hear great readings from three amazing authors: Diane Williams, Rebecca Curtis and Joshua Cohen.

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In other Gigantic news, we are seeking submissions for our third print issue: Gigantic Indoors.

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And have you been checking out the amazing comic by Leni Zumas and Luca Dipierro that we have been serializing? The third installment went up last month with more to follow.

wigleaf top fifty

Every year wigleaf magazine posts their top 50 short fictions from the previous year. This year was guest judged by the amazing Brian Evenson (read his forward here). I'm honored to note that a short story of mine from Opium magazine was included as was Carmen Lau's piece that we published in Gigantic's mini-monster issue. Check out all 50.

Gigantic May

May Gigantic is here with work and interviews from Joe Wenderoth, Leni Zumas, Mike Young, Luca Dipierro and more. Check it out!

Puff the Magic Dragon sued for child endangerment

I have a fun short story up at Everyday Genius, guest edited this month by Blake Butler. Lots of other rad writers this month to so check it all out. My piece is titled Our Current Trajectory and begins:

Puff the Magic Dragon was being sued for child endangerment. Johnny Paper's mother was crying on TV. Her son had returned home hours past his bedtime with burns on his arms.

Reminder

NOON launch and reading at The Center for Fiction tonight. You should come. Details below:

NOON 2010 Reading & Party

Thursday, April 22nd at 7pm

Featuring Kim Chinquee, Sara Jaffe,

Tao Lin, Lincoln Michel, Dylan Nice,

Diane Williams, & Anya Yurchyshyn

The Center for Fiction

17 E. 47th Street

R.S.V.P 212.755.6710

Sam Lipsyte Jump-Off Story

The Rumpus has posted a short-short of mine alongside seven other rad stories by Mark Edmund Doten, Shya Scanlon, John Madera, Maureen Miller, A. Wolfe, Franklin Winslow and Snowden Wright. These are the four winners and four finalists of the Sam Lipsyte Jump-Off Contest where we wrote 300 word stories based on a sentence from Lipsyte's fantastic new novel, The Ask. You can read my story here, after the introduction.

“It’s when they stop trying to destroy you,” my mother said, “that you should really start to worry.”

My mother had one arm hooked around my neck, smothering me against the same breasts that once milked my mouth. The other swung at me with a mechanical can opener.

“Stop,” I yelled. “I get your point!”

high life at the highline beneath the high line

Tonight, April 6th, is A Night Together at the Highline Ballroom. The event, hosted by The Rumpus, Tin House and Flavorpill features a bunch of awesome writers, comedians and musicians like Sam Lispyte, Colson Whitehead, Michael Showalter and Jeffery Lewis.

The Rumpus also held a contest for readers to write 300-word stories based on Sam Lipsyte sentences. Four submitters, including me, were selected to read, which should be pretty fun! So if you aren't doing anything tonight, you should stop by. Or if you are doing something, you should scrap those plans and come to this instead.

A Gigantic April

Gigantic has a bunch of new content up for April. We have a whole collection of new American biographies and accompanying artwork from John Dermot Woods, an exciting illustrated book from Leni Zumas and Luca Dipierro that we are serializing online, and finally we have reprinted the long Sam Lipsyte interview that I conducted for print issue 2. I know there have been a lot of Lipsyte interviews and reviews accompanying his great new novel, The Ask, but like my momma always said, there is always room for more Lipsyte.

Hey, speaking of issue 2, you should buy a copy! A beautiful little magazine for only 7 dollars.

A NOON reading

NOON's annual reading and party at The Center for Fiction (formerly The Mercantile Library) is happening on April 22nd this year. As I noted two posts ago, I have a piece in the new NOON and I'll be reading it at the NOON party alongside some great writers. So, you should come! Info below:

NOON 2010 Reading & Party

Thursday, April 22nd at 7pm

Featuring Kim Chinquee, Sara Jaffe,

Tao Lin, Lincoln Michel, Dylan Nice,

Diane Williams, & Anya Yurchyshyn

The Center for Fiction

17 E. 47th Street

R.S.V.P 212.755.6710

p.s. There will also be a deal to get all 11 issues of NOON for 100 dollars!

Me and James Wood down by the schoolyard

My essay on Reality Hunger by David Shields has been getting a lot of responses on The Rumpus if you want to check out the comments. It also got a nice mention in the New Yorker Book Bench in their review round-up alongside the reviews by Laura Miller, James Wood, and others: "Lincoln Michel provides a thoughtful and evenhanded response, aptly named 'Reality Boredom: Why David Shields is Completely Right and Totally Wrong,' in The Rumpus." Cool. I was also glad to see that James Wood, in his New Yorker review, had a similar take as me on the contradictory nature of Reality Hunger's argument.

UPDATE:

I don't want to make a new post for this, but Harper's also posted a section of my essay on their site.

Rock 'n Roll.

it is that time

The new NOON is here! Always an amazing and essential read, the 2010 issue is even more exciting for me this year because I have a short piece in it. I'm very honored and excited to be alongside the likes of Deb Olin Unferth, Clancy Martin, Christine Schutt, Gary Lutz and my good friend Anya Yurchyshyn. Should be in bookstores soon if not there already.

a response to Reality Hunger by David Shields

Over at The Rumpus, I have a fairly long response essay to David Shields's intriguing (but frustrating) new book Reality Hunger. It is titled Reality Boredom: Why David Shields is Completely Right and Totally Wrong

The comment section is buzzing if you want to weigh in.

Respect for the late master

Barry Hannah passed away a few days ago. Hannah was one of my all-time favorite writers, a true master of both the sentence and the story. Few writers wrote with such power or with sentences that are stunningly beautiful without seeming conscious of their own brilliance. I wrote about Hannah's writing over at htmlgiant along with several other writers. I also did a round-up of Barry Hannah remembrances at The Faster Times. RIP, good sir.

at the edge of every woods

I have a new poem up at the always awesome elimae. (Some other poems I've had at elimae are here: one and two.)

Also, thanks everyone for coming out to the Gigantic issue 2 launch party this weekend and making it such a success!

Gigantic Things Poppin'

Believe it or not, the second issue of Gigantic magazine is completed. It is a long time coming, but the result was worth it. The magazine looks completely fantastic (thanks to Erin West!) and contains work or interviews with the likes of Sam Lipsyte, Robert Coover, Clancy Martin, Lydia Millet, Stephen O'Connor, Deb Olin Unferth, Adrian Tomine and many other awesome artists and writers.

We are also having a launch party next Saturday at PPOW gallery in Chelsea. Clink on the link for all the details, but Stephen O'Connor, Deb Olin Unferth, Sasha Fletcher and Brian Beatty's surrogate will be reading and there will be booze so you know you want to come.

momma was a bildungsroman, papa was a whammy bar...

Tomorrow night Vol 1 Brooklyn and Gigantic are presenting Greatest Three-Minute Rock ‘n’ Roll Story Ever, a rocking reading with 20 readers, some bands and good times. The readings will only be three minutes each, so not as intimidating as it sounds. I'll be reading a short piece as will James Yeh, Justin Taylor and many other rad writers. 7pm at Bar Matchless. More info here.

Retired astronauts plant American flags into their own chests

I was cleaning up my old files and came across a very old poem I'd written in 2005 after a Robert Bly poem called The Great Society (1967). I haven't touched the poem or read Bly's in five years. I still like some of the lines, but as you can tell it is very much a poem about the Bush era and doesn't seem salvageable. I figured I'd post it here for fun. (Note: the only edits I've made are losing some semi-colons, which I was using to mirror Bly, but probably incorrectly.)

Here goes:

The New Society

after Robert Bly’s “The Great Society”

Dentists will drill holes in fences to monitor their neighbors.
At night, evangelists drain the motel pools
As apes appear hauling barrels of oil to refill them.
On city ledges, pigeon courts dole out painful sentences to captured doves:

New buildings designed with the terrible architecture of ants.

The legs of senators are trapped in gofer holes.
Dogs sniff at dark clouds brewing to the east.
The President daydreams of invading everything
Except his own skull.
The pregnant cement of city streets has split open with weeds.

Talking heads cough up balls of static on TV: The suburbs brood.
The traveling salesmen returns home covered in blood, again.
Wet children in their lawns stare troubled at each other
Before vanishing to their dinners while
Retired astronauts plant American flags into their own chests.

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In other poetry news...

A few of you have met my friend Taras Castle. He is an, uh, interesting man. He has been working on a collection of poems called The Red Cosmonaut Cycle for a while and one of those poems just appeared in Greatest Uncommon Denominator. If you click on the link you can see a preview and purchase the poem for a mere 50 cents (or for a bit more the entire issue). Here is the first paragraph:

The old lady tells me that inside

the belly of every songbird

there is a purse of gold coins.

the web: now in real life

The Rumpus and htmlgiant party last week was a rocking good time. Thanks to everyone who came out (and it was a packed house). I had fun DJing and listening to the rad musicians and readers, especially Deb Olin Unferth and her forthcoming Noon story and Jeffrey Lewis and his Mosquito Murderer rap. There is a write-up with some short interviews and pictures at Scallywag and Vagabond.

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In other web slash non-web news, Gigantic magazine just put some new content online including a rad story by Saša Stanišić and some Little Big Planet levels inspired by Matthew Barney's Cremaster films. We also are having a call for submissions for 300 biographies of famous Americans in anticipation of Gigantic #2, which will be available in physical bookstores near you in a few short weeks.

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In just web news, a short article of mine at The Faster Times (Is David Foster Wallace So 1990s?) got linked at The New Yorker blog and other places, which is pretty neat.

scratch master

This Thursday I will be DJing The Rumpus One Year Anniversary Party (co-sponsored by htmlgiant). The Rumpus is a great website that I've written for a few times. The party features lots of great readers and musicians (Deb Olin Unferth, Tao Lin, Justin Taylor, Jeffrey Lewis, etc.) and is hosted by my good friend and Gigantic co-editor Rozalia Jovanovic.

Check out this nifty animated invite:

Come on out, you know you want to.

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A week and a half ago I wrote a long (and mostly negative) review of James Cameron's Avatar for The Millions. Yesterday Avatar won a Golden Globe for best picture, but we live in a world where Juno of all awfully-written films won a script Oscar and Crash was named best picture...so what can you do?

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The second (and super-awesome) issue of Gigantic should come out in the next few weeks. I know we've been saying that for a while, but this time we are super-serious.

tune in

I made a guest appearance on WNYC's Soundcheck yesterday to talk about my essay in the current Oxford American Southern Music Issue and southern music in general. I didn't talk for too long (the editor of Oxford American, Marc Smirnoff, was the main guest) but it was a lot of fun and interesting to see the inside of radio. Anyway, you can listen to the episode online or download it if you'd like.

And if you haven't checked out the OA's music issue, you should get on it. It is really great this year. I've been rocking the CDs constantly for the past few weeks.

Boring personal readings habits 2k9 summary edition

Continuing my annual tradition that is of no interest to anyone but myself, here is the chronological list of every book I finished in 2009. Finished means I finished reading the entire thing front to back, but not necessarily that I started reading it in 2009 (likewise books I started this year yet didn't finish are absent).

My goal was at least 50 books. I completed the 50th late in the afternoon on December 31st.

1. The Tormented Mirror – Russell Edson
2. The True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey
3. The Men Who Stare at Goats – Jon Ronson
4. Flying to America – Donald Barthelme
5. How to Sell – Clancy Martin
6. Retreat Retreat Chapbook – Wells Tower
7. The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven – Rick Moody
8. Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee – James Tate
9. Farewell Navigator – Leni Zumas
10. Like You’d Understand Anyway – Jim Shepard
11. Funny Misshapen Body – Jeffery Brown
12. NOON 2009
13. Days Between Stations – Steve Erickson
14. Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson
15. Hey Jack! – Barry Hannah
16. Personal Days – Ed Park
17. Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World – Donald Antrim
18. Varieties of Disturbance – Lydia Davis
19. Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan
20. Last Days – Brian Evenson
21. The Pill Versus the Springhill... – Richard Brautigan
22. Roads – Larry McMurtry
23. The King – Donald Barthelme
24. High Lonesome – Barry Hannah
25. Platform – Michel Houellebecq
26. The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake – Breece D’J Pancake
27. I Love and Understand You and Would Be... - James Yeh
28. The Spectacle of the Body – Noy Holland
29. The Collected Works of Tony Millionare's Sock Monkey*
30. The Writer's Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House
31. Fugue State – Brian Evenson
32. Prison Pit Vol. 1 – Johnny Ryan
33. Skin Deep – Charles Burns
34. The Squirrel Machine – Hans Rickheit
35. Tours of the Black Clock – Steve Erickson
36. Child of God – Cormac McCarthy
37. Light Boxes – Shane Jones
38. Che: A Graphic Biography – Sid Jacobson
39. The Ask – Sam Lipsyte
40. The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
41. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
42. Born Standing Up – Steve Martin
43. Twilight of the Superheroes – Deborah Eisenberg
44. The Book of Evidence – John Banville
45. The Anthologist – Nicholson Baker
46. New York Tyrant V. III Issue I
47. All-Star Superman Volume 1 – Morrison and Quitely
48. All-Star Superman Volume 2 – Morrison and Quitely
49. Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine – Stanley Crawford
50. Numbers in the Dark – Italo Calvino

* indicates books I'd read before previously...although this year that was only one book.

20.5 novels/novellas

15 story collections/lit mags

8 comics/graphic novels

5 books of non-fiction (one of which was also a graphic novel)

2.5 poetry collections

This year I was working full time and also finishing up my fiction thesis for Columbia University, which I think cut down on my reading time substantially (14 fewer than 2008). I'm a little ashamed of the gender imbalance in the above list, something to fix in 2k10. The amount of poetry I read fell dramatically and I'm not sure what explains that. Non-fiction is always low since I read a lot of magazines for that (primarily The Believer, New Yorker, Harper's and The Oxford American).

I read two books each by Steve Erickson, Barry Hannah, Grant Morrison and Donald Barthelme. Three books each by Brian Evenson (all 2009 releases no less) and Richard Brautigan.

Top 10 favorites (no order):

Days Between Stations – Steve Erickson

Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson

The True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey

The Ask – Sam Lipsyte

Child of God – Cormac McCarthy

Last Days – Brian Evenson

Like You’d Understand Anyway – Jim Shepard

NOON 2009

Personal Days – Ed Park

In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan

6 honorable mentions:

The Anthologist – Nicholson Baker

How to Sell – Clancy Martin

All-Star Superman Volume 1 – Morrison and Quitely

Hey Jack! – Barry Hannah

Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan

Fugue State – Brian Evenson

hollaback blog

I wanted to give a shout out (back?) to Jay Diamond at Vol 1. Brooklyn (a great culture blog based in, well, Brooklyn). He recently made a nice post titled Scott Esposito vs. Lincoln Michel in a Cage Match to Determine who my Favorite Lit. Blogger is about my book blogging at The Faster Times and then some guy named Scott Esposito who I must now destroy.

The fight will take place in February in a cage suspended above the Gowanus. I'm told I'm allowed to bring either one folding chair or one copy of Infinite Jest into the ring. Is anyone available to help me train?

Farked, Metafiltered, Digged

Yesterday my account of The Velvet Underground's "reunion" at the New York Library went up on The Rumpus. The piece got picked up at a few places around the internet, including Metafilter, Fark and Digg. I feel like Paul Wall here!

“The building has hit fire code,” the security guard told me. “500 people.” Some of the people outside were holding tickets. I asked the guard if I could use the bathroom out in the hall. He sighed, shrugged and said, “I’ll remember you.” I decided not to risk it.

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Also, two days ago I had a (very short) story go up at Opium magazine. It is called Consequences:

I once knew a girl who’d been smothered with a pillow by her lover. It was the same old story, jealousy of this or another. He didn’t get far and she lived, but she became afraid of anything soft.

ctrl + f "Lincoln Michel"

The Oxford American's 11th annual music issue is out now and this week they put up Q&As with all of the contributors online. If you click here and do a ctrl + f for "Lincoln Michel" you can read me discussing Iggy Pop, Bernhard's The Loser, why U2 is boring and other music-related things. Or you can just scroll way down. Or not click. Hey, I give up. Do what you wanna do.

Oxford American Southern Music Issue

Oh yes, it is that time of year!

For those not in the loop, every year The Oxford American compiles a few CDs of amazing tunes from across the spectrum of Southern music. Soul, country, bluegrass, rap, pop...it is all here, likely by artists you have never heard of before. Each track gets an essay (or two or three) to accompany it in the magazine and this year I'm lucky enough to have a piece of mine included. I'm pretty excited to be a part of this because an OA Southern Music issue is always some seriously massive stuff. This year features two CDs, one devoted entirely to Arkansas musicians.

The Oxford American also published a short story of mine earlier this year.

It's like Santa came early this year and he had a flask of bourbon in his hand and a twang in his voice.

Big Bling

New York City (and surrounding area) friends, three magazines that I am involved with—Gigantic (co-editor), The Faster Times (books editor) and The Rumpus (sometime contributor)—are joining forces to throw a near-year-end holiday party on Monday, December 14th.

Should be a pretend-fancy good time.

Read more about it here.

Three Jokes the Homeless Man Told on My Morning Commute

Q: What did the breakfast say to the lunch?

A: Eat me.

Q: What did the SWAT team say to the young man?

A: Get a haircut!

Q: What do you call the stars in Hollywood?

A: The Big Dipper.

Recent things at The Faster Times

Sorry for the lack of updates. Lots of projects in the works. Some fiction coming out, some non-fiction coming out, some reading series being worked on, some issue 2 of Gigantic (featuring Robert Coover, Sam Lipsyte, Lydia Millet, Adrian Tomine, Clancy Martin and many more...it will be massive, titanic, giant, even gigantic) being finished up, and so on. In the meantime, here are some recent posts of mine at The Faster Times:

The 100 Best Books of the 2000s (At Least According to The Times)

Philip Roth’s Bad Sex Writing Gives Him Hope for a 2009 Literary Prize

A Novelty Deckchair of One’s Own

Balls-Out Badassery: TFT Review of Prison Pit Book One by Johnny Ryan

Will the Real Roberto Bolaño Please Stand Up?

Reading at NYPL next week

I'll be reading at the NYPL next Tuesday for CLMP's Periodically Speaking series (the same series where Adam Wilson read for Gigantic earlier this year). Three magazines pick three emerging writers to read for a short amount of time each. Here is the line-up:

Lincoln Michel reading fiction on behalf of Vestal Review
Leigh Stein reading poetry on behalf of Low Rent
Montana Wojczuk reading non-fiction on behalf of Tin House

I'm very excited to be picked by Vestal Review and to share the room with the fine journals and writers above. Stop by if you'd like, I will try not to be boring.

Tuesday, October 13th, 6 – 7:30 pm
DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room, The New York Public Library,
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
(Please use Fifth Avenue entrance; admittance is free)

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My piece on hamburger restaurants is out in The Believer. I just saw it for the first time yesterday and it looks fantastic (thanks to the layout genius of Alvaro Villanueva). It is a schema, so you can only see it in print, but I have a Lincoln Michel bio online I can link to.

All for now.

Hamburgers in The Believer

The October Believer is out and, as always, has lots of interesting stuff (Agnès Varda interviewed, Vlad the Impaler's impact on tourism examined, Louis C.K. doing sedaratives, a poem by Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, etc.). The issue also has my piece on the habitats of regional hamburger restaurants. It is not online, so you'll have to read the issue to see what that means. I'm extremely excited to be in a magazine as consistently rad as The Believer!

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In The Faster Times news, we recently partnered with The Onion AV club and in the books section I wrote a perhaps funny piece on classic lit / monster mash-ups and learned that Dan Brown and David Foster Wallace were in a workshop together. Zak Smith was interviewed by Justin Taylor and Gary Lutz was interviewed by Michael Kimball. Clancy Martin, who I interviewed for Gigantic, has been discussing loving and lying. Many other cool things, but I think I already overloaded this paragraph with links.

Gigantic interview with Clancy Martin

Over at the newly designed Gigantic magazine website, I have an interview up with philosopher and novelist Clancy Martin whose novel How to Sell I reviewed for Bookforum earlier this year. We we talk about talk about philosophy versus fiction, Apollo versus Dionysus, Thomas Pynchon versus Denis Johnson, minimalism versus lyricism, and one or two other things. Read it here: TALKING ABOUT THINKING: a fairly long interview with Clancy Martin by Lincoln Michel.

CM: I think if you are a writer and you want to immediately grab hold of your reader's repressed consciousness, of her or his own terror and despair of suffering and the meaninglessness of life and the consciousness of their own failure and the inevitability of death, all you have to do: Yellow. Just bring in yellow and you've got it just like that.

It's a live (website)!

The official Gigantic site is now live! Infinite thanks to the crazy talented Joanna Neborsky for designing it and making it happen and also to Daniel Carvalho for programming it.

Check out our art feature by Thomas Doyle, the new Forecast chapter from Shya Scanlon and a new story by J.A. Tyler.

We are excited and hope you are too.