| An online culture magazine and literary community

Time 2020-10-13 22:09:50

Web Name: | An online culture magazine and literary community

WebSite: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com

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Hello. My name is Joseph Grantham. I edit this website. I m also an artist (see above). I asked some writers and friends to recommend some short stories to you, the readers of this website. All I asked was that they do this in 3-5 sentences. Other than that, there were no guidelines. I ll start.  Victor Blue by Ann BeattieThis story is from Beattie s first collection, Distortions, and it is written in the form of journal entries, composed by an elderly man who spends his days taking care of his ill wife ( Mrs. Edway, as he refers to her). He cooks for her, takes care of her violets (one of them is named Victor Blue ), reads novels to her, and whenever he and his wife have to make an important, or not so important, decision, they vote on it, each writing down their answer on a piece of paper and then holding it up for the other to see. Do they want a kitten or a puppy, do they want to hang up the embroidered Eiffel Tower picture which was a gift from Mrs. Edway s cousin, should Mrs. Edway kill herself or continue living in pain? Beattie wrote this story when she was in her mid-twenties and you d never know it. Okay. Now, on to the main event. ◊  Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace “Good Old Neon” is about a man who killed himself in 1991, told from the perspective of his post-death existence outside of time, written by a man who killed himself in 2008, published in 2004. It feels impossible to distill a ~40 page story that works on so many levels of thought and heart into 3-5 sentences, which is basically the premise of the story itself: that linear time and language are inherently limiting modes of describing the dimensionless flashes of perception that color each person’s interiority with significance, but until we die, we can only use one word after another to relate ourselves. Since his first successful lie at age 4, or arguably birth, the protagonist placed himself at the center of a “fraudulence paradox,” which meant that the more he tried to be something he wasn’t, the less he felt like the ideal image he performed, and “…the more of a fraud [he] felt like, the harder [he] tried to convey an impressive or likable image of [him]self so that other people wouldn’t find out what a hollow, fraudulent person [he] really [was].” What hits me so hard about “Good Old Neon” is the vagueness about its audience: the post-death protagonist addresses himself the moment before his death in a car, but he also makes lovingly dry meta-asides to another reader (from who, at least in the confines of a reader-author relationship, David Foster Wallace didn’t view himself as so apart), and I can’t help but feel witness to some similar shade of dialogue Wallace could’ve worked out with himself before his own death. The message of the story, to me, is not to succumb to our self-imposed limits; the message is in the beauty of trying, at least for a moment, to describe what it was like to be human.  recommended by Megan Boyle, author of Liveblog ◊  A Man Came to Visit Us by Brandon Hobson Your question is so difficult to answer.  I read and reread and am taken up by so many stories all of the time both ancient and modern.  But the story foremost in my mind is always the most recent one I have accepted for NOON.  And at this minute, it is the unearthly stunner by Brandon Hobson that is jammed with mystery and passion A Man Came to Visit Us (due out March 2021).   recommended by Diane Williams, founder of NOON and author of The Collected Stories of Diane Williams ◊  Recitatif by Toni Morrison I assign this every semester to my English 102 students, out of The Norton Introduction to Literature. Despite the fact that I read this twice a year, it gets me every time. This story is a good example of why fiction is a superior art form; it says more about big broad important topics, like race and class and friendship and memory, than any piece of nonfiction ever could. This statement will probably offend a nonfiction purist if they happen to read this, whoopsie.  recommended by Juliet Escoria, author of Juliet the ManiacSimp for Godcrow from the loquat treewhat s your placein the human centipede◊Grandpa Indian Killer Whoops! our white ancestors saidlearn more by clicking here◊Man has an asslike lumped charcoal, broplease don t break heat,don t break steam,for minutes, hours— Be still, brobe smooth, the margarita in the machinebro— Let s piss a hole foreverNow playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Dean Koontz. His new novel, Elsewhere, is available from Thomas Mercer.Koontz is the author of fourteen number one New York Times bestsellers, including One Door Away from Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street. He’s been hailed by Rolling Stone as “America’s most popular suspense novelist,” and his books have been published in thirty-eight languages and have sold over five hundred million copies worldwide.Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he now lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirits of their goldens Trixie and Anna.Get Otherppl gear.Get the free Otherppl app.Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.Below are three poems from Willis Plummer s forthcoming chapbook Mons Pubis, published in the U.S. by Stupendous Books.Andrew mists a block of sodObligatorily the artist is presentEveryone sweats windowlessThe factory is windowlessI don t sweat in open-toed shoesMy cat vomits on the towelThat stands in for a bath matFive AM again in Eco-modeThe AC in Eco-modeShifts in and out of gearAlcohol will do that at Six AMAlarm clock type beatDry soles suddenly in focusWith a pause I m thinkingAbout my dry feetEnamel recedes dailyWith lack of intentionThese teeth get coarserThese teeth getIncreasingly coarseAn armored shark in lava, I move on all fours across the rugWhile your daughters leap over me, shrieking.With an unblinking eye, I feel the heat of the earth rise—Its erupting egg, yolk-rug and the shore of the bed, as we play.That night you wake up to tell me you were sinking.Half-asleep, I say, water in dreams always means emotion.I think I feel a pair of cool hands pressing on my temples,A vial of cooking oil in my pocket. Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Lynn Steger Strong. Her new novel, Want, is available from Henry Holt.Strong was born and raised in South Florida. Her first novel, Hold Still, was released by Liveright/WW Norton in 2016. Her nonfiction has been published by Guernica, Los Angeles Review of Books, Elle.com, Catapult, Lit Hub, and others. She teaches both fiction and non-fiction writing at Columbia University, Fairfield University, and the Pratt Institute.Get Otherppl gear.Get the free Otherppl app.Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Steven Dunn. His latest novel, water power, is available from Tarpaulin Sky.Dunn s other novel, Potted Meat, is also available from Tarpaulin Sky.He was born and raised in West Virginia, and after 10 years in the Navy, he earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver.Some of his work can be found in Columbia Journal, Granta Magazine, and Best Small Fictions 2018.He lives in Denver.Get Otherppl gear.Get the free Otherppl app.Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.The dreams I’ve been having have trickled into reality in the hides of false memories. At work, all the electricity went kaput and I bushwhacked the dark to find the urinal. I’m unsure where the mice are getting in from but a strong guess is the extinct fireplace. When Under The Skin was released in 2014, a mouse in the theater darted past my socks. I remember that so vividly but not simple things like I have to eat meals. The people from apartment 1 and apartment 3 and apartment 4 have all vanished. Unsober, I floated through the rooms of 4 and discovered a replica of my extinct fireplace. Their kitchen lent more counter space and their bathtub had claws and a window beside it. Now, I refuse to be dead before eating raspberries in my very own claw-footed bathtub. In January, the roses addressed to Leslie Walton died on 4’s welcome mat. A subscription service meal kit got delivered to 3 and it’s been rotting in the vestibule. Someone moved it to the stoop then someone moved it back inside then I threw it out. Sarah J. said she didn’t have the attention span for movies, so I eased her in with short ones. We watched Jonathan Glazer’s The Fall and the first segment of Todd Solondz’s Storytelling. We came very close to swapping out a tire, we went out to her car and everything, but didn’t. Storytelling is a fitting preface for the remainder of my year because I’m taking 2 workshops. I enjoy Chelsea Hodson’s course because it’s pushing me deeper into what I’m already doing. But I won’t write about the most emotionally intense moment I’ve experienced, it isn’t mine. Just as I won’t describe the plan I’ve devised to get to the life I want to live, in case I can’t. Photo credit: Rachel Eliza GriffithIn an interview published in The Sun (June 2018) you said:I don’t believe anything is over. The Civil Rights Movement was a core moment. The lessons it taught us — about social activism and political engagement and strategy — are still very much in play. Many of the people who were active in that movement are alive today — and not particularly old, either. Ruby Bridges, the kindergarten student who helped desegregate schools in New Orleans, turned sixty-three last year. She’s not even old enough to retire!The Civil Rights Movement became a model for the Women’s Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, and much of the anti-war and anti-poverty movements. Who we are as activists today was shaped in many ways by the Civil Rights Movement. And the fundamental questions it raised have not gone away. As a culture, we are still learning how to be civil and how to acknowledge each other’s rights.Is this still true for you?It is! It’s all still true. (Though Ruby Nell Bridges Hall will actually be 66 in September of 2020, so I suppose now she is old enough to retire. It is past time for us younger folks to be doing the hard work, and thankfully many are rising to the occasion.) This is why so much of my poetry, which is in many ways about the moment we are living in right now, is also so deeply steeped in history. History stays with us every step of the way.            to breathe togetherLast week, a woman smiled at my daughter and I wonderedif she might have been the sort of girl my mother says spat on my auntwhen they were children in Virginia all those acts and laws ago.Half the time I can’t tell my experiences apart from the ghosts’.A shirt my mother gave me settles into my chest.I should say onto my chest, but I am self conscious—the way the men watch me while I move toward themmakes my heart trip and slide and threaten to bruiseso that, inside my chest, I feel the pressure of her body,her mother’s breasts, her mother’s mother’s big, loving bounty.Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Amy Shearn. Her new novel, Unseen City, is available from Red Hen Press. It is the official September pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club.Shearn is the author of the novels The Mermaid of Brooklyn and How Far Is the Ocean From Here. She has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and currently lives in Brooklyn.Get Otherppl gear.Get the free Otherppl app.Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.Tell us more about the title of your book. Why Ugly Music?The title was taken from a line in my poem “Diary Entry #1: Revisitation”: “You’ll fall on the world / like and ugly music.” I didn’t realize how influential music was to my poetry until putting together this manuscript. Not only have individual songs influenced my work, but also the language of music appears over and over in my poetry. To me ugly music lives in the space between cacophony and euphony. It’s not exactly inharmonious nor is it beautiful. This book is my tribute to all the sounds of my life, the songs, the noises that have added up to this moment when I must play them all at once.I haven’t stopped stealing chapsticks from Target. I haven’tstopped questioning the afterlife. My mothersings to me every year and I’m stilldying. I’m measuring distancesby the ache in my throat, the borderof my body, navel to pussy. Is thismy punishment for slipping the small cylindersso easily into my pocket? I have faiththat all the pretty peopleare prettier than me and all the pretty peopleare geographically out of reach.A VoyeurMr. Adams was our seventh-grade woodshop teacher. He lived on the hill with his wife and two kids. He had a false eye and once showed us a video of himself riding a homemade hovercraft on the high school soccer field. He had a soft spot for girls and would always ask if they could help him clean up the classroom. Many did and asked for extra credit, and he gave it.A guidance counsellor walked into our class after Christmas break and didn’t say anything about what happened to Mr. Adams. It’s not like he had to. Facebook was new, and everyone had already seen and shared the post. It happened the week before Christmas. At least that’s what people said. None of us were there. Most of us only saw his mugshot on the county bookings website and made up our own versions of what happened. Apparently, Mr. Adams had been looking into people’s windows and videotaping them naked. Or having sex. Or maybe it was little girls in their bathrooms. The only foundation validating the rumors was one word: voyeurism. I didn’t know the definition. My parents said a voyeur was a Peeping Tom. I imagined Mr. Adams climbing into a tree like George McFly and spying on someone with binoculars. Why would anyone do that?When I came home, I got on Facebook, combed through the posts about Mr. Adams, and read all the comments. My crush commented on one of them. She said he was a pervert sicko and looked at her bare back when she bent to pick up trash in class. I clicked on her profile. We were friends, but we’d never talked and never would. I looked at all her pictures, framed in tiles on my screen. I could see everything. Now playing on Otherppl, a conversation with Kathleen Rooney. Her new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, is available from Penguin Books.This is Kathleen s second time on the program. She first appeared in Episode 274 on May 4, 2014.She is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches in the English Department at DePaul University, and her most recent books include the national best-seller, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk  (St. Martin’s Press 2017 / Picador 2018) and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte (Spork Press, 2018).A winner of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, she is the author of nine books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including the novel O, Democracy! (Fifth Star Press, 2014); the novel in poems Robinson Alone (Gold Wake Press, 2012), based on the life and work of Weldon Kees; the essay collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs (Counterpoint, 2010); and the art modeling memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (University of Arkansas Press, 2009). Her first book is Reading with Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America (University of Arkansas Press, 2005), and her first poetry collection, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) won the 2007 Gatewood Prize from the feminist publisher Switchback Books.With Elisa Gabbert, she is the co-author of the poetry collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths, 2008) and the chapbook The Kind of Beauty That Has Nowhere to Go (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). And with fellow DePaul professor Eric Plattner, she is the co-editor of Rene Magritte: Selected Writings (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).Her reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Poetry Foundation website, The New York Times Book Review, BITCH, Allure, The Chicago Review of Books, The Chicago Tribune, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation and elsewhere.She lives in Chicago with her spouse, the writer Martin Seay.Get Otherppl gear.Get the free Otherppl app.Support the show at Patreon or via PayPal.

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