We Hear You But Aren't Listening

Recently we came across an article written by us for the good old college newspaper. The burning topic of the day was technology — how it would affect our future. Keep in mind this was 1999, when a snarly debate about the Web’s influence still lingered. We were decidedly anti-tech at the time, and the article’s tone was downright cynical. Foresight was not prominently in mind, even as we strode our forward-thinking campus quad like the embodiment of new day media men. Even today we remain old school. A 1928 Corona typewriter rests dusty and auspicious on our desk, behind our brand new Mac. Now, engaged as we are to life online, we can’t help thinking about commitment. Writers write books and books are written about writers. Thus a commitment is formed. Hemingway was committed to America, even as he tramped around in his fishing boat. Read more in Book Forum. The novelist Sebastian Faulks voiced scathing opinions about the Qur’an. Now he’s writing its laurels. Obama is committed to his cause. Currently that includes plenty of book reading. What’s fashion got to do with literary pursuits? Check out a new blog-turned-book, which bares all. Bugs are committed to nature. Love nature or hate it, bugs live there. For your perusal Paper Cuts impales the little bastards. Finally, who touts commitment and technology better than the Secret Service? These guys have been plugging their ears with electronic acorns way longer than your fellow commuter. Concomitant techies: Live hard, or die hard trying. — Kevin Murphy

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Kerouac Finds His Inner Voice

We live in a time of intense self-examination. Our personalities are scrutinized, our traits boiled down, our lives plucked and analyzed like wonderfully strange flowers. But self-examination is nothing new. It’s been around ever since that first hunter looked at his spear and wondered if it were big enough. Sometimes, personal examination causes a kind of paralysis. Other times, though, it liberates us. Just look at writers. We are notoriously self-possessed and lurk for hours in the secret places of the brain. Perhaps Jack Kerouac spent too much time doing this. After all, he had trouble managing most everything else. The Cabell First Novelist Award has been announced — one of self-examination’s more lucrative rewards. To get to our core we must consider art, and ethics. Two new essays discuss this further. The Daily Sun reflects on the Nigerian poet Chris Okigbo. He was a brave and talented man. Readers should feel free to compare his life with their own. Finally, how our families make us what we are, and a new book on dancing, which is both the impetus for and the result of too much self-examination.  – Kevin Murphy

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I had a few drinks in your honour last night.
As time spilled on
I forgot if I was wishing you the best of luck,
or bidding you good riddance,
but it was most certainly you.

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Dawn McSweeney practices happiness in her hometomwn of Montreal, Canada. Her work has appeared in Breadcrumb Scabs, Lickety Split, and on anderbo.com. She is an incurable night owl.

Begins: Writing equals love & passion. Middling: Writing tends towards disruption & discord. Story ends: Writing equals torture. In between: famine abuse violence death & the like. I write.

Begin at childhood but never make it far. No notice: Bright light. Blinding. Silhouetted figure appears in suddenly open doorway. Places all manuscript pages in open box on the floor. Smell of gas. Watch as paper recedes. New blanks given. Ashes are all that remain. Here I am. Here we are. All are together.

Fed once every 24 hours. Plus a vitamin. Enhanced engrained vitamin. The kind on the outside. I don’t take it. Never have. Lost left ear hearing because of it. Weak always. Sick always. Tired always. Water is constant. Drips on wall. Lick enough to sustain. Piss drain is just below. Body is nothing more than a pause for water from dirty cement to steel grate. Food is bread. Oatmeal. Tasteless. Cold. Dry & wet but meaningless. Wrecks bowels. Produces phlegm. Must eat. No option. Drop the food through the sliding panel. 2 inches x 4 inches. Deposit onto floor. Bread crushed through slot. Mush spooned on to ground. We lick it up. Gulp it down dirt piss & all. Must. Must. Shit through floor grate too. Liquid enough to go. Mostly. Vomit through grate too. Would crawl through grate and all its contents to get from here. 2 inches x 2 inches. Solid steel. Welded to piping. No screws nails etc. A little separation from surrounding floor concrete but not enough to do any good. Small pebbles exist in the crack. Roll them. Throw them. Try to keep body occupied. Doesn’t. Eat them to help stomach. Doesn’t. Not much does.

Surroundings: Cell is cement. Gray. Damp. Exceedingly cold. Ferocious darkness. Eyesight fading daily. Type mostly with eyes closed. Errors are marginal if existent. Cell is a cube. 4 x 4 x 4 feet. Haven’t stretched body since incarceration. Sleep curled. Type hunched. Eat crouched on all fours. Nothing else for setting. Noises: Guards wear dress heels or heavy duty boots. Clicking with food delivery. Entire wing of building cement concrete or the like. All hard & hollow.

Crying persists beyond everything. Crying with food with piss & stool with day with night with everything. Becomes solid moaning. Horrifying at times. Comforting at others. Have attempted dialogue numerous times. Everyone speaks another language. No communication exists beyond wailing. Trapped. All of us. Smells: Wet concrete & death. All else is product of the two. Nothing more.

There are White rooms. Stark & magnifying. There are Purple & Green & Yellow & Blue & Orange & Red rooms too. All serve a different purpose. White are interrogation. Questions with the threat & completion of physical violence. A chair. Several lamps. Officers speak not in person but through loud speaker. One speaker directly above chair. Extreme volume. Doubled for my lack of left ear functions. Violent threats spoken of and then shown on large projection screen. Full wall size. Begins with words & definitions. Goes to diagrams & technical drawings of tools & equipment. Moves to footage of recently performed procedures. Includes sound & color.

Men enter. No women. Full black suits. Single zipper running from left ankle up leg over torso & chest and to center of neck. Matching gloves boots & masks with tinted eye-shields and seeming gas-mask capabilities. Ominous & silent. Tools & equipment enter on metal cart with last set of men. Duties are to work procedure as questioning continues. No answers suffice. No words work. No responses are given. The reality of a mute. Torture is enacted. Sometimes filmed or documented. Men recede with tools & equipment. Silence & blood. Pain. Needing to die. Don’t. Will pass out.

Wake up in same cell as always. Same mush. Same grate. Typewriter with blank page inserted carefully and stack nearby. Welcome home.

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J. A. Tyler is author of the forthcoming novella Someone, Somewhere (Ghost Road Press, 2009) and the chapbooks The Girl in the Black Sweater (Trainwreck Press, 2008) and Everyone In This Is Either Dying Or Will Die Or Is Thinking Of Death (Achilles Chapbook Series, 2008). He is founding editor of mud luscious/ml press and nominated for a Pushcart.

Gogol: The Funny Russian

Thursday usually belongs to Contributing Editor Andrew Geer. But this Thursday he cannot contribute. He has to go buy a house, or something. Anyway, we will do our best to replicate Drew’s Southern fried wit in today’s hurling of literary snowballs (Hey, it’s too damn hot to use summery metaphors). Speaking of colder climates, how’s your Russian? несчастье, you say? Well then, head to The Guardian and drink in the cool breeze of Nikolai Gogol. Then ask yourself, how much would I pay for this experience? The National Book Critics Circle reviews two books that ask the same question. A former bartender did more than drink with her regulars. She took their mugshots. The result is a very pretty book. Read about it in The Stranger. Dan Chaon discusses literary fiction and genre fiction in the A Well-Read Donkey. Barnes & Noble announces it will imprint out-of-print books. 1959 was an important year. How important? Fred Kaplan wrote an entire book about it. Finally, In Case You Missed It, the winners of the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize were announced. — Kevin Murphy

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