Oh, that Nabokov

It is strange, the morbid inclination we have to derive satisfaction from the fact (generally false and always irrelevant) that a work of art is traceable to a “true story”. Is it because we begin to respect ourselves more when we learn that the writer, just like ourselves, was not clever enough to make up a story himself? Or is something added to the poor strength or our imagination when we know that a tangible fact is at the base of the “fiction” we mysteriously despise? Or taken all in all, have we here that adoration of the truth which makes little children ask the story-teller “Did it really happen?”

- Vladimir Nabokov

What We Can Surmise about the John Adams Incarnation

I'm excited to say that I have a new story about John Adams up at Melville House. The story is part of a series of forty-four stories about our forty-four presidents that will include a ton of great writers such as Matt Bell, Micheal Kimball, Amelia Gray, and many more.

My story is kind of a quasi-science-fiction-slash-Lovecratian-horror-via-Borges thing. Or not. You decide.

Although much remains unclear about John Adams (alternatively referred to in remaining analog documents as Jon Adam, John Adems, and The Adams Abomination), recent drone expeditions into the Charred Continent have unearthed new artifact fragments that led us closer to understanding this mysterious entity. Long assumed to be a prince or demon of a lesser cult, we now know that John Adams was an important figure in the dominant United Statsian mythology.

two comic things

1) I have a new comic strip in the September issue of Everyday Genius (edited by the great Michael Kimball). Sample panel above. More comics at hoarsehorse.com.

2) I reviewed one of my favorite recent comics, Forming by Jesse Moynihan, at The Rumpus. You should really check it out, especially if this description sounds good to you: science-fiction-soap-opera-comedy-cum-action adventure-mythological-origin-story.

readings past

I was lucky enough to participate in two great readings in the past two weeks. The first was InDigest's flash fiction night at La Poisson Rouge with Ann DeWitt, Shya Scanlon, Robert Lopez and John Jodzio. The second was the always packed and awesome Franklin Park reading series with Caitlin Harper, Courtney Maum, Victor LaValle, and Tayari Jones.

The latter got a great write-up by Ryan Chang in Electric Literature's Outlet blog. Very complimented by this line:

Michel reads sternly, tinged with finality, but his narrator’s child logic evokes the comic element of his fiction, locating that delicate place between comedy and tragedy.

UPDATE: Electric Literature also published a review of the InDigest reading by David Moscovich.

boring personal reading habits: 50 literary pillars

I've been enjoying the William H. Gass inspired "50 literary pillars" series at Big Other, where guests such as Christine Schutt, Matt Bell, and Samuel R. Delaney post their 50 favorite books. The list by Gass which inspired the series can be found on Goodreads.

When I logged onto Goodreads to see Gass's list, I checked my own list of favorite books, which happens to stand at 54 books. This is a very casual list that I've added a book to now and then since 2007, when I apparently first started a Goodreads account. It isn't a carefully compiled list that I agonized over to make sure I represented my various interests, had a good balance of different types of literature, and so forth.

But, as such, it may actually be more telling than a list that one I'd consciously compile for publication. Unedited list and comments after the jump.

Windeye

Brian Evenson's new collection Windeye is one of the best books I've read recently.  I reviewed it for Bookforum today and talked about the uncanny and the literary / genre divide.

cartoon news

Two updates about my comic strips:

1) I'm very excited to say that Volume 1 Brooklyn is going to be running my comics. First one is up here.

2) I've started a Tumblr to post my comics and comic collaborations at. Please follow if you want to see existential animals and crudely-drawn body horror strips.

Postmodern Demons

How many of the "doorways to demonic possession" do you qualify for? 

Quarantine

I have a new story in the most recent issue of The Fiddleback. It is about a plague quarantine and soda pop. It starts:

I was in the quarantine, but I didn’t have a quarter. I had a few dimes and some nickels but needed a quarter. There was only one soda machine in this wing of the facility. It was an old machine that hadn’t been updated, and the drinks only cost sixty-five cents. I couldn’t believe my luck!

GIGANTIC HEAT

Gigantic has a new online issue up with fiction from Robert Lopez and Marguerite W. Sullivan, poetry from Ben Fama and Leigh Stein, an interview with Gordon Lish, and more. Check it out!

Barfield

Comic attempt #6. (Previous comic attempts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)

mostly I liked the whistlers, singers, and shriekers: the ones that screamed

I have a new story up at Tin House for their Flash Fridays series. It is called "Red-Faced Whistler, Emerald Tower, Rabid Wolfpack Motherload" and starts:

I always cared about the explosions, but mostly I liked the whistlers, singers, and shriekers: the ones that screamed. Billy Acres and I bought a backpack-full from a fold-up table beneath the overpass. The old hippie had smuggled them up from South Carolina beneath a load of tie-dyed shirts. He said we had to buy a shirt to get the rockets and that there wasn’t a holiday that wasn’t improved with fire. I picked out one with a peace sign and he handed me a free box of snappers.

Check it out if you'd like!

reading about reading

Ryan Chang has a very nice write-up of the recent Volume 1 reading I was a part of at Electric Literature's Outlet blog. The readers were Matt Bell, Melissa Broder, Julia Jackson, Jacob Silverman, and myself. Is it totally gauche to quote part of the write-up? Because I love this quote: "Michel’s marriage of the deadpan and totally absurd is a perfect iteration of the Uncanny, and it rules."

Deadpan, absurd and uncanny is pretty much what I'm going for! Anyway, thanks to Ryan, Tobias and Jason at Volume 1, and the rest of the readers.

Adorkocalypse

            There had been a subatomic explosion in the Zooey Deschanel containment unit.

            I awoke, somehow, in a charred field. Gaseous clouds in the shape of Zooey Deschanel hovered overhead.

            My assistant was covered in blood beside me. When I rolled her over, what was left of her looked exactly like Zooey Deschanel. I wept and held this Zooey Deschanel in my arms as she expired. “My God,” I tried to say, “what have we done?” but the only words left were “Zooey Deschanel.” Suddenly I could see everything—each thin blade of Zooey Deschanel blowing in the wind, each newborn Zooey Deschanel hatching into the world, every single Zooey Deschanel atom bouncing in her impossible orbit.

            Had the reaction altered the fundamental structure of the universe? Or had it merely torn the thin veil that separated the visible world from the true, hidden world of Zooey Deschanel? The horrifying sounds of infinite Zooey Deschanels overwhelmed me. I grabbed the sharpest fragment of Zooey Deschanel I could find and slid her across my wrist, a beautiful red ribbon of Zooey Deschanel spurting forth.

            But just then, at the top of the hill, beneath the painful rays of the gigantic burning Zooey Deschanel in the sky, the dark, ominous figure of Justin Bieber appeared. 

Molten Mechanistic Hull by any other name

For no reason at all, here are my ten favorite anagrams of my (full) name:

Molten Mechanistic Hull

Ill Tom: Unethical Mensch 

Nonathletic Mulch Slime

Hmm, It Echos 'Till Unclean...

Chill Unethical Moments 

Hellish Laconic Mutt Men!

Lethal Omniscient Mulch

Macho Lunchtime Lentils 

The Technician Lulls Mom

A Chill, Luminescent Moth 

 My novel title is in there somewhere...

(runners up: Cinchilla, Unsettle Mom! / Metallic Lunchtime Nosh / Neolithic Helmsman Cult / Miniscule Hellcat Month)

Writing for the gladiators....

Think about those who haven’t long to live, who know that everything is over and done with, except the time in which the thought of their end unrolls. Deal with that time. Write for the gladiators. . . .

– E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

*

I've always loved this aphorism from the great pessimistic existential philosopher E. M. Cioran. There was even a brief time when I flirted with inking it into my skin before my friends' literary tattoo book came out. Writers are normally told to write for themselves, that the only thing that matters is that the work works for you. This is not true. Even when you are writing for yourself, you are conscious of the weight of the other's eyes. How will it sound to someone else who is not trapped in your head?

recent things, past things, future things

Recent things:

- "The Grandmaster Hoax" at The Paris Review Daily (an essay on chess, robots, and mysterious deaths)
- "Twosome" in NOON 2012 (a short story in one of my absolute favorite journals...not available online, but the issue should be in stores now)
- "A Note on the Type" in elimae (a short story about typefaces, jealousy, and intrigue)
- Art of the Sentence: Lincoln Michel in Tin House (a short essay on my favorite sentences by Franz Kafka)

Past things:

I've finally gotten around to creating a page to list (most) of my publications. I say most because I left off some of my early poems and stories that will hopefully be lost to history, and only listed select non-fiction pubs. Otherwise if, for some bizarre reason, you want to peruse my old stories and such you can.

Future things: 

Fiction forthcoming in Unsaid, The Fiddleback, and an anthology of presidential flash fiction. Some essays in the work as well as a killer comic collab with John Dermot Woods. More on those things at some future point.

uncanny mechanics

Over at The Paris Review Daily, I wrote about the 18th-century chess playing automaton known as The Turk:

The Turk became a spectacular attraction, thrilling, baffling, and terrifying viewers across Europe and America for decades. His victims included Benjamin Franklin, Catherine the Great, and Napoleon. In one account of that match, Napoleon, in perhaps telling fashion, moved first—despite the fact that the Turk was playing white—and then attempted illegal move after illegal move until the Turk, fed up with these shenanigans, swiped the pieces off the board with a stiff wooden arm.


Check it out! 

R.I.P. Moebius. One of the greatest ever.

I was very sad to hear about the passing of Jean Giraud aka Moebius aka Gir. Moebius was one of my favorite artists ever. His line work is insanely intricate, his colors are phenomenal, and his works are haunting, surreal, dreamy, and supremely beautiful.

His books are sadly hard to find in the United States, and in generally he isn't nearly as known as he should be. If you haven't read his comics, you will probably still recognize his aesthetic from concept art and storyboard work he did on films like Alien, Tron and The Fifth Element.

Below is sampling of his work. You can find many more here. Stare in wonder:

new story in elimae

I have a story up in the new issue of the always great elimae. It is about typefaces and begins:

This work has been set in Berdych, a typeface named after Antun Berdych who was a prominent typesetter and printer in the early years of the 17th century. The typeface was originally designed as a stunted, incongruous font with the kerning between the glyphs inconsistent and the vowels improperly rounded.


This is actually my first work of fiction in elimae, but they have published poems of mine in 2011, 2010, 2009, and 2008.

Annals of Not Getting It

I tweeted a Jack Handey joke (great comedian behind Deep Thoughts and some of the best SNL sketches) and got this response from a "Father, husband/ lover, socialist, philosopher, storyteller, servant of the living God, follower of Jesus Christ and believer in a global commonwealth."

Gigantic Minotaur Bags

If you are like me, you've spent many years thinking "What would my life be like if I owned a tote bag with an image of a minotaur posing like Raymond Carver? Would I be happier? More friendly at work? Eat better, more locally sourced food?" Well, now we can find out, together.

Gigantic organic cotton tote bags. These are seriously high-quality, big and usable. Same price as our popular mammoth totes.

my head is filled with Nietzsche? (Asterios Polyp)

Reading Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli this week, I pretty much lost it when I got to this panel:

Valentine's Day Special: Franz Kafka's Love Letters

First off, over at Tin House I wrote about my favorite Franz Kafka story, The Judgment. Secondly, I was recently asked to take part in a dead love letter reading and decided to read some of Franz Kafka's love letters to his on-again off-again fiancé Felice Bauer.


Now, you probably know Kafka as a fairly lighthearted author who wrote whimsical stories about talking bugs and zany bureaucrats. However, these love letters reveal something of a darker, more tortured side that was hidden from the public eye.


Since I couldn't find these letters online and hand typed them for the reading, I thought I'd post my favorite two here for Valentine's day. Reproduced in full:

Post-Apocalyptic Grammy Awards

Another successful Grammy Awards went off without a hitch tonight. Here's a sneak peak at what future Grammy Awards might hold.

Grammys, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj, Thom Yorke, Bjork

...

A chicken stuffed in a duck inside a turkey inside an ostrich inside an edible wax model dodo inside a fossilized pterodactyl hidden inside a statue of Horus in a secret room in the Temple of Edfu.

Comic #4: Bad Date

My fourth comic. This one is big, so it is all after the break. (Previous comics: #3, #2, #1.)

RIP Dorothea Tanning

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning (1948)

"Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now."

-Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning, the oldest living Surrealist at the age of 101, passed away the other day. She published her first novel and books of poems in her 90s. She was married to Max Ernst from 1946 to his death in 1976. She spent the last few decades of her long life in New York.

She ruled.

A few of her works:

Ancient humor, dead animals, and Mitch Hedberg

Doing the normal internet procrastination rabbit hole thing, I came across an old article on ancient jokes. Apparently this is the oldest known joke (Sumerian, 1900 BC – 1600 BC):

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap

However, the one that caught my eye was from the Philogelos (oldest known joke book) 4th/5th century AD:

Wishing to teach his donkey not to eat, a pedant did not offer him any food. When the donkey died of hunger, he said "I've had a great loss. Just when he had learned not to eat, he died."

I think this is a pretty wicked little one-liner. The black humor and brevity even feels pretty modern. In fact, it instantly reminded me of one of my favorite jokes from one-liner king Mitch Hedberg (1968-2005).

I bought myself a parrot, but it did not say "I'm hungry", and so it died.

"the weird guy in the bear suit"

Great New York Times correction yesterday on an article about one of my favorite movies, The Shining:

Correction: January 29, 2012
 
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described imagery from “The Shining.” The gentleman seen with the weird guy in the bear suit is wearing a tuxedo, but not a top hat.

For Virginia Woolf's birthday

Some quotes:

"Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title."

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”

“I am rooted, but I flow.”

"It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses."

Renaissance Quiz (comic attempt #3)

This is based on some dumb tweet of mine from December. (Previous comics here, here, and here.)

pre-order me, baby

You can now pre-order Unsaid Six, which includes a story of mine called "Selections from a Sexual Survey." The new volume looks positively epic, featuring work from Brian Evenson, Diane Williams, Lorin Stein, Padgett Powell and many more. Very excited to be included.

In addition, I have two poems in the new PANK print issue, which should be shipping around now, as well as a story in the new NOON, which will be out in a few months. Great way to start 2k12.

Livin' Like a Bug Ain't Easy

I would easily listen to this Kafka rock opera record if it really existed. "Livin' Like a Bug Ain't Easy" (starting 1:14) is such a tear-jerker!



Living like a bug ain't easy
My old clothes don't seem to fit me
I got little tiny bug feet
I don't really know what bugs eat
Don't want no one stepping on me
Now I'm sympathizing with fleas
Living like a bug ain't easy

(This Japanese animated adaptation of "A Country Doctor" is great too.)

dripping dark so dense

When I was in middle school, I started listening to punk and hardcore. Easily the most important band for me at that age, and in high school, was the Dead Kennedys. The twisted collage art, the dark humor, Biafra's weird vocals, the surreal satire. An inordinate amount of my aesthetic can probably be traced back to this song in particular:

Now, I am become blog-Death, destroyer of words

I just deleted all of my 2005 blog posts and most of my 2006 ones. I'll probably thin out the early years more too. Google+ deleted all of my old images last year and it is too much work to replace them. Don't worry, there was nothing juicy deleted. It was mostly just links to random things. (Maybe I'm lying but now you'll never know!)

Anyone notice Ben Roethlisberger is a Dick Tracy villain?

Pirates and friendship

It's funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating.

- Jack Handey

Comic attempt #2

Here is my second attempt at a comic strip (or third really, but the other needs some revision). Check out the first comic here. This one may be a little obvious with its meaning, but I think the message is an important one in these trying economic times.

ever-shifting and contradicting blobs of absurdity

The Collagist interviewed me today about about my story "Hike" that they published last October. Mostly we talked about forests and cramming dreadfulness into fiction.

I’ve always thought that escalation is essential in fiction, so I am glad you think it builds to something. Or maybe what I mean is acceleration. I like the effect of tumbling down the slope of the story, picking of speed, getting dirt on your clothes, and nicking your skin on exposed rocks, until you crash into whatever lies at the bottom. It doesn’t have to be something violent, of course. Perhaps you tumble out into a field of dandelions. 

Boring personal reading habits 2k11

Below are all of the 70 books that I completed in 2011. Only the books I finished, not all the ones I started or read most of. 70 is a pretty healthy number, except when I filter out the graphic novels and comic collections, I only completed 26 prose books. This is not to say that prose books are superior to graphic novels or anything like that (I read so many because I'm collaborating on one with the artist and writer John Dermot Woods) but I have to acknowledge that graphic novels take me almost no time to read. The shortest ones on my list were probably completed in twenty minutes and the longest ones were still likely quicker reads than the shortest novellas. So, I'm going to break things into two lists.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents

Although I get annoyed by people who blog/tweet/facebook about the food they cook, I wanted to share with you the fact that when I cracked open my egg this morning there was a grotesque, half-formed second egg inside of it!

ovum in ovo

I've decided to quit writing...

...for a career drawing body horror comic strips. Here is my first attempt at one:

the little boy that lives inside my mouth

I was asked by Vol. 1 Brooklyn to write about my favorite Stephen King adaptation and obviously picked The Shining. I wrote a few hundred words about Kubrick's use of Freud's concept of "The Uncanny" as well as his mastery of "terror" over "horror."

The creepiest and most haunting parts of The Shining are moments of pure Radcliffian “terror,” filled with ambiguity and tension. Danny flinching his finger and squeaking in the voice of Tony, “the little boy that lives inside my mouth.” Jack staring eerily into the model hedge maze and seeing, somehow, his wife and child. The ghost butler telling Jack in a slow and deliberate voice, “I corrected them, sir, and when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I corrected her.” And the final ambiguous shot of the film, a slow zoom into the image of Jack Torrance smiling in a photograph that was taken decades before he was born.

The ten greatest Stephen King adaptations

status of the year's statuses

According to some random application, the above represent the frequency of words in my Facebook status updates for 2k11. I suspect this is more of a random picking of words than a true weighted representation. I doubt I used the word "buffoon" as often as "the." Either way, the words I immediately see--crotchety, crushing, uncaring, existence, despair, surreal, etc.--speak for themselves.

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much.

- Eric Cantona's entire press conference after jump kicking a fan

Game narratives

HTMLGIANT has, for a little while now, run a magazine club. Members read a lit mag together and discuss the various themes, stories, design, etc. I think this is a great idea. Far too often lit mags feel disposable. You can pick them up, read a few stories or poems you want to read, and ignore the rest. But the best magazines work more like books. They need to be read in their entirety. I think here of magazines like NOON or McSweeney's (and, hopefully, Gigantic).

The most recent lit mag club has been examining Beecher's #1. In addition to being an extremely beautifully (and minimally) designed magazine, and a brilliantly edited magazine, Beecher's includes a few stories of mine as well as stories by several close friends of mine like John Dermot Woods, Rozalia Jovanovic, Joshua Cohen, and James Yeh. The latest lit mag club entry, by Daniel B. Cecil, talks about interactive/game narratives and has some very nice comments about one of my stories:

Second person narration is used throughout the journal to back the reader into a corner as well. In Lincoln Michel’s “A Question of Commitment,” you are asked as a participant to imagine both a lover and murderer in the same story. The murder, however, isn’t clear, and that uncertainty, paired with the second person narration that draws you into the story, begs you to imagine two terrible possibilities. It is a horrifying take on the “choose your own adventure stories” we’re so familiar with from our childhood.

Anyway, check out lit mag club and check out Beecher's!

Some people have a way with words, and other people, uh... not have way.

— Steve Martin

PANK it, PANK it real good

You can order PANK #6 now, which includes two pieces from me (a poem and a prose poem) as well as work from John Warner, Sherman Alexie, Christopher Newgent, and others.

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

- Flannery O'Connor

stream of consciousness search engine optimization

I am not getting enough hits on this blog, so let me tell you about how Kris Humphries was attacked at occupy wall street by zombie corpse of Steve Jobs walking dead with Gaddafi and reciting 10 ways to get hot body this winter while Zooey Deschanel used people's microphone to give student loan reduction tips to Greek debt crises where economy collapsing like Rick Perry presidential campaign but with less drunk speeches, possibly high quality Breaking Bad methamphetamine, and Herman Cain delivered "artisinal" pizza to police brutality seeking wall street bankers short selling stocks of free pornography, iPhone 5 prototypes, fall fashion trends for Williamsburg singles, Groupon grey poupon coupons, organic gluten free vegan locavore head cheese home recipes, The-Dream new single wifi download hipsteraes a;dkfjdskf;jadsjfkad;skfjask;kjfads

There are ten thousand superfluous heads at work in the world. It's clear, clear as day. The generations of men are losing the joy of life with all their treatises and understandings and knowledge...I like running down stairs. What a lot of talk!

- Robert Walser

A NYC-area Halloween message from Dracula

I have a grave message for everybloody going out tonight. There is a spooky storm outside that will send shivers up your spine and make your cheeks turn blood red! Unless you are as hairy as my pal the wolfman, wrap yourself up as tight as my other friend, the mummy. Put on your BOO-ties before venturing through the cold, slimy sludge of the streets. If you don't, you may end up shivering and moaning like an undead ghoul! If you think my warning is chilling, go outside without a scarf. Your exposed neck may notice a real BITE to the air. MUH HA HA HA HA!

the usual

‎...intoxication, sexual license, absorption by the primal horde, in short, dissolution of the individual (occasionally, actual dismemberment) and re-immersion into a common organic whole.

- disembodied Wikipedia quote.

Triple Threat

I have a poem out in the newest issue of Harpur Palate, which also has work from Sherman Alexie, Tim Jones-Yelvington, and many others. The poem is titled "Drift Ice in the Foreground." Haven't seen a copy yet, but the line-up looks great!

Along with new stories in BOMB and The Collagist, that is three new pieces for me in October.

GIGANTIC BODIES

We have a new online issue up at Gigantic. The issue features new prose from Brian Kubarycz, Dan Bevacqua, Lynne Tillman, Lena Bartone, James McGirk, Matt Dennison, Daniel Borzutzky, Mitchell S. Jackson, and Anelise Chen; a conversation between Gary Lutz, Mary Caponegro, and Tim Horvath; and gorgeous artwork from Maria Kondratiev. Check it out, if you'd like.

October Twofer

The October issue of the always fantastic The Collagist is up and I'm very happy to say I have a new story titled "Hike" in it. The issue also has work from friends Blake Butler and Kate Lorenz, as well as plenty of other rad things.

My story in there pairs nicely, I think, with my short story in BOMB magazine that went up one day before.

Filling Pools at BOMB

Very excited to so say that I have a short story called "Filling Pools" up at BOMB Magazine. It is the second installment of their Page Break series "showcasing original works of fiction by emerging literary talents."

Opening lines:

People say I have a baby face. You can look at me and pretend I’m drowning; I do this watery thing with my eyes. How you work the face is important in this line of work.

.

‎"Reality is not always probable, or likely."
- Jorge Luis Borges

b/w

‎"Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful."
- André Breton