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.

one or two things about one or two things

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Gigantic /Opium /BOMB end of summer bash. We had a great time, so we hope you did as well! If you missed it, read a recap at The New York Observer.

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The Faster Times is still young but going very strong. Some recent highlights from the book section (that I edit) in case you missed:

• Rozalia Jovanovic debates "selling out" and indie books with PGP's Adam Robinson.
• Darin Strauss has a minor bone to pick with Jonathan Franzen.
• James Yeh reviews the new Bolano.
• And I compile some of my favorite literary pieces from The Onion.

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I've have a few other rad things in the works that I will tell you about at some future point. Wow, this is a boring way to end a post isn't it?

You Don't Know Me

but... you could if you come to this party:


Gigantic magazine, BOMB magazine and Opium magazine are co-throwing an end of the summer bash. A Gigantic Opium Bomb, if you will. Boozing, schmoozing, DJs, special guests, short plays directed by novelists. What more could you want? You can buy tickets online here.
Bowery Electric, August 26th.

it is indeed alive

The Faster Times went live a few days ago and is looking pretty rad. I'm editing the Faster Times Books section and writing the Faster Times Fiction section. I'd recommend Clancy Martin's essay on how grown-ups love and The Faster Times interview with John Wray (conducted by James Yeh). Check it out, link us, write angry comments, etc.

two new for you to peruse

- I have a short-short story up today on The L Magazine's new online fiction component. You can read it here: My Initiation by Lincoln Michel. Lot of other neat people up as well, including the great and hilarious Ed Park.

- Also, recently I had a short play up on my friend Terry Selucky's blog. She has been collecting six-line plays and I'm excited to have my contribution up alongside other great writers and artists like James J. Williams III. A cool project all around, check them all out.

a series of tubes

The Oxford American has unveiled its new website. It looks to feature a lot of new and old content (my story isn't online, only in print so far) such as Kevin Brockmeier's 50 favorite stories and Lyn Miller on whether the environment is croaking.

In other web news, The Faster Times is getting ready to launch. Check out the video teaser:



Lastly, Opium issue 8 was written up in WIRED.

Lincoln Michel in Bookforum and The Oxford American

Please excuse my Bob Dole-isms in this post. I am experimenting with Google rankings.



I had two things come out in the past two days. First, a review of Clancy Martin's How to Sell in Bookforum. I've been a big fan of Martin's work for a while (he appears frequently in NOON) so was excited to read his debut novel and even more excited to review it for Bookforum: Lincoln Michel's review of How to Sell



Secondly, I just saw the cover for The Oxford American's Best of the South 2009 issue. Looks fantastic and also includes a note about HOT SUMMER FICTION by George Singleton, Rebecca T. Godwin & Lincoln Michel.

Full articles should apparently be going online in a few days, so I will link my story if/when it appears.

A little piece at The Rumpus

I have a piece on the PBS documentary Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story over at The Rumpus. The documentary is only an hour long and viewable on Hulu.com. I recommend it, but I guess just click on link to see what I thought.

Spend some time clicking around The Rumpus if you haven't already. Lots of great content including a lot of pieces by Rozalia Jovanovic. There is also a great series called "The Last Book I Loved." Here is my entry on Donald Antrim.

I'm in Opium 8 (sorta)

I just got my copy of Opium 8 and it looks fantastic. Hard to tell from the above pic, but the cover design/concept is brilliant (read about it here). I also found, to my surprise, that a piece of simple yet accurate writing advice that Neil Gaiman once gave me was included in Opium's "Network of Writers Experiment," a collection of advice passed from writers to writers. There is also a picture of me on the back alongside Sam Lipsyte, Diane Williams, Ben Greenman, Stephen Elliot and a whole host of other people who have read or judged at Opium events.

Okay, those are just some random things, but the actual content of the issue looks great as does the design. Check it out.

elimae marathon

A late reminder for the elimae reading tonight at KGB Bar. It includes me, Lincoln Michel, two of my Gigantic magazine co-editors (Rozalia Jovanovic and James Yeh), many writing friends (Justin Taylor, Tao Lin, Todd Zuniga, Dennis DiClaudio, Kimberly King Parsons and Sasha Grayboch) and believe it ore not several more people who will surely rock the house. Starts at 7pm.

(That was way too many links...)

Raise those swords

Over at htmlgiant, someone with the Hannahesque name of Michael Bible posts some of Barry Hannah's rules for writing.

This is spot on:

2. When you tell a story think more in terms of yarn, tale, even whopper. Then tell it subtly. DON’T think of nuance or “interior decoration.”

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Speaking of Barry Hannah, he sometimes publishes in The Oxford American, a great magazine whose next issue is at the press as we speak. Oh, and it has a story of mine in it.

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I wrote a short bit on Donald Antrim over at The Rumpus a few days ago.

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Also, in case you missed it, Gigantic magazine has two excerpts from our print issue up online. Three shorts by Shane Jones and the Gigantic interview with Gary Shteyngart.