This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Eighteen - Lightning and Women. Redux. And Re-Release.

McClanahan. On the train. And in the rain. Episode Eighteen.

This Book Will Change Your Life - Stories II by Scott McClanahan.

First off, we just want to say that we are looking to go a little Lovelace today with what looks to be a multi-sectional and multi-photoed riff on Stories II by Scott McClanahan. This has happened once before when were in the immediate throes of the quite excellent Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball and it felt good, real good, and if it didn't actually change anyone's life, well it certainly changed ours.

And so here we are again. But here's the thing, writing about Scott's writing suddenly seems like a trickier thing to do then when we wrote about Scott's last collection Stories. We say this, because lately the stuff we've seen on Scott sometimes feels like it is wrapped-up in Scott himself and what he represents to whoever may be writing about him. We think he is as awesome as everyone else does, but our concern, is that what might get lost is discussing the quality of the work, and even the quality of his reading of that work, because of this potentially Dylan-like love of Scott and his Scottness. Now please note, we get it, we do, really, because we're there too, and we have probably abetted it, but we still want to fight it.

Which brings us back to the fantastic Stories II, which is fantastic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is in comparing it to Stories. As we read Stories II, we were reminded of when we read the quite rocking When I Moved to Nevada by Jamie Iredell. We were clearly in Iredell territory, bars and chicks and the like, but as compared to the also impressive Atlanta, Jamie had found a way to expand this universe, making it less claustrophobic by embracing nature and the natural world. It was quite a feat and it should be celebrated as such.

Which brings us back to Stories II, a collection that exists firmly in McClanahan territory, a world where some guy named Scott seeks to not just make sense of the world around him, but embrace it for all it has to offer. Its a world filled with death and illness, dog's goiters, iconic kidney stones and adulterers being beaten to a pulp even as the narrator eats said adulterer's pizza and watches the aforementioned beating. And yet, here's the thing, Stories II is more than that as well, because in this collection Scott bends his stories further in terms of religion and ghosts, adding a layer of mysticism and spirituality that both enriches the stories and takes them from the near fables of Stories to actual fables, fables about a guy named Scott just trying to make sense of the weirdness, humor and sadness that permeates the world around us.

This Podcast Will Change Your Life, Episode Eighteen - Lightning and Women starring Scott McClanahan.

The Scott McClanahan came to town. See above. He read. He rocked it, all funny and low-key. And it was good Stuff. We also had La Guth working her Morrissey thing, the Sam Pink, discharging every possible image to ever enter his brain and TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer's mom Judy. See below. And if all that wasn't enough, there was polka and podcasting as well. Wait, did someone say podcasting? Indeed they did, because we podcasted with the McClanahan on the train and in the rain and now you get to listen to it. Yes, right now, go ahead. Will it change your life? We think so. Enjoy.

This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life, Week Twenty-Eight - "Stories."

TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Scott McClanahan of the much beloved Stories came to town and there was reading. Polka. And podcasting. We will have more to share shortly, like tomorrow. In the interim though it is Week Twenty-Eight of This Self-Portrait Will Change Your Life our effort to post one self-portrait per week for one year. You should feel free of course to follow the project in its entirety at the Flickr. You should also consider sending a self-portrait of yourself to thiszinewillchangeyourlife@yahoo.com so we can post it right here on the blog. Or not, its cool either way.

Pink. Clone. New City. Preview. Reading. Friday. The Book Cellar.

We were quite geeked to see that the Sam Pink got quite a kind write-up for I Am Going To Clone Myself Then Kill The Clone and Eat It in New City this week as their preview for this Friday's reading at The Book Cellar, where Sam is reading with the lovely Amy Guth and TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer in support of Scott McClanahan and his killer short story collection Stories. Among other things, the reviewer had the following to say:

"Sam Pink’s oddball little book is filled with first-person passages and rants that begin with mundane reality and often finish in bizarro fantasy, usually with some element of violence, disgust or aching simplicity."

That's good stuff. See you on Friday.

Guth. Pink. McClanahan. Tanzer? This Reading Will Change Your Life, so please join us July 24th for some Book Cellar reading love won't you?

Yeah, so, we have unabashedly been hyping the Scott McClanahan and his new joint Stories, so imagine how geeked we are to have the chance to read in support of him at The Book Cellar on July 24th at 7:00pm? Now, what if we also had the chance to read with the very awesome Amy Guth, writer, blogger, runner and one time guest of This Podcast Will Change Your Life and, and, the Sam Pink, author of I AM GOING TO CLONE MYSELF AND THE KILL CLONE AND EAT IT and the first writer ever published in This Zine Will Change Your Life. Well we are and we do and we think this reading may very well change your life. Meanwhile, if that isn't enough McClanahan for you, you can also see him on July 26th as part of the ongoing and quite killer Orange Alert Reading Series. Pretty nice, yes? Quite.

The weekly round-up courtesy of Phil Spector.

It's true that we don't really do a weekly round-up here at TBWCYL, Inc. headquarters. It is also true that we have no intention of going all Drudge Report or Smoking Gun just to increase sales and traffic in an increasingly cluttered market. And yet, this photo does somehow seem to touch on a number of themes/topics we blogged about this week including, but not limited to, mug shots; portraits, self and otherwise; music and skewed celebrity worship. It is also both horrifying and wrongly funny all at the same time, and so while we are quasi-embarrassed to write this, we are drawn to it in the worst way.

Stories by Scott McClanahan.

Endlessly conversational and engaging, Stories is a series of more or less intertwined fictional non-fiction folk tale influenced pieces full of giants, picnic table sex and dead deer. It is an America we rarely visit unless we grew-up there and it is the bomb. Read it now, it just might change your life.

The Chicago Subtext interview. Does that sound too serious? Because while talking literature can be serious, this interview, maybe not so much.

the understory Pamela Erens and Oh Baby by Kim Chinquee. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

While we have been especially geeked to read two new books previously mentioned here, Stories by Scott McClanahan and Sunlight at Midnight, Darkness at Noon, a collection of letters between the poets Hosho McCreesh and Christopher Cunningham, we alas have not yet gotten our hands on them. That said, we have any number of books here at TBWCYL, Inc. headquarters that we have been wanting to read and so we took to the bookshelves this week in search of what might come next. As we did, it occurred to us that we have been reading a lot of books by dudes recently and while there is nothing wrong with that per se it seemed like it was time to mix it up a bit. Which we did after coming across the understory by Pamela Erens and Oh Baby by Kim Chinquee, two drastically different yet equally wonderful reading experiences.

the understory is a terrific novel and meditation on not just compulsion and isolation, but the role compulsion plays, good and bad, in the meditative life.

Oh Baby on the other hand is a collection of flash fiction and prose poems that seem to fall somewhere between shotgun blasts and song.

Both are like gifts that had been lurking right there before us just waiting to be discovered. We you hope you will discover them as well, because who knows, they just might change your life.