We are most thankful for the Mary Miller and"I Am Sorry, Women" at The Rumpus.
"At a reading recently, my boyfriend had this conversation with multiple people:
Person at reading: So, you’re dating Mary Miller?
Boyfriend: Yes.
Person: Have you read her stories?
Boyfriend: Yes.
Person: [Walks away shaking head, feeling very sorry for boyfriend.]
People
are uncomfortable with people like me, those who want to tell
everything. Those who can’t keep quiet. You can do these things, and you
can feel them and talk about them, but you can’t write them down. Just
don’t write them down.
There are a number of AWP wrap-up type things flying around the internet that we are quite enjoying, though we have not quite been inspired to do one ourselves. Still, the experience of being there has been trickling into our communications over the last week and will probably continue to for some time after this. One of the highlights, maybe the highlight, of the whole experience for us was the endless swirling, twisting, chaotic hustle as we bounced from one writer or publisher to another, in some cases people we feel like we've known for some time, but had yet to meet in person, Ryan "Reynolds" Bradley from Artistically Declined, Dave Housley from Barrelhouse, yes that Barrelhouse, Michael Fitzgerald of Radiant Days awesomeness, or Caleb J. Ross of Charactered Pieces fame, long-time TBWCYL, Inc. favorites and friends such as Mel Bosworth, Scott McClanahan and S. Craig Renfroe, not to mention the Lindsay Hunter who may live right here in Chicago, but who we still never see enough of; newer acquaintances like Tom Williams of the soon to be published The Mimic's Own Voice, Dan Cafaro of the most triumphant Atticus Books, Chris Heavener from so kind Annalemma and Alan Heathcock of the so now, so hot Volt; writers new to us we can't wait to learn more about, Nik Korpon, Brandon Tietz, Amber Sparks, David Kiefaber and Matty Byloos; and then another sort of group, writers we admire, but have never met or corresponded with, and while there are many, one who made a huge impression on us was long-time TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Mary Miller the author of Big World who among others we had dinner with one night and who turned out to be as lyrical and captivating as her stellar short stories, all of which is a long way of saying we did our best not to be total fan boys when we met her, though we are, and while we probably would have mentioned here how much we enjoyed the interview we just read with her in The Rumpus at any time, what a different flavor it has after meeting her. So, please do check it out, enjoy the below excerpt, something we plan to quote and/or steal as needed and yeah, this turns to be a sort of AWP round-up anyway, go figure.
Rumpus: What is the gestation process like for your stories? Do they start with a character? An idea? A simile?
Miller: Never a simile, sometimes an idea, often a sentence. The narrator is nearly always a thinly veiled version of myself so this takes some of the question out of it. If the narrator isn’t “me” then it’s someone watching “me.” It’s a very narcissistic world I live in.
As previously noted here, the Karen Lillis asked us for three holiday small press recommendations and asked that we limit these books to releases from the last two years. We stuck to releases from the last two years, but we did not stick to just three, we should have, and could have, but we did not and are happy to report that we were not admonished for doing so, which is always nice.
For a more detailed commentary on our part please do hit the Karen the Small Press Librarian post containing our recommendations, but for those of you who just cannot wait, here's our list, with apologies to many, many others.
(1) Big World - Mary Miller
(2) Hush Up and Listen Stinky Pooh Butt - Ken Sparling
(3) Grease Stains, Wisdom, and Maternal Wisdom - Mel Bosworth
Also, and, somewhat collectively:
(1) Stories II - Scott McClanahan
(2) The National Virginity Pledge - Barry Graham
(3) Songs of Insurgency - Spencer Dew
And finally, because this book just has not gotten enough attention:
(1) The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli - Ginetta Correli
As there was much work travel and work furlough in 2009, there was much reading, hence we terribly excited to roll-out TBWCYL, Inc.'s 2009 Top Ten Books List, the first of our 2009 Top Ten lists, all of which we intend to post over the next couple of weeks. As with previous years, most of these books are from indie presses, which makes us happy, and many are written by friends, which makes us biased, though luckily, we love being biased almost as much as we love being self-absorbed. In terms of housekeeping, please note, that unlike our other end of the year lists, we do not limit ourselves to books published in 2009. Further, pretty much all of the following books were written about or blurbed here at This Blog Will Change Your Life, so, while we will keep the verbiage to a minimum today, we will be hyper-linking like there's no tomorrow. And who knows, maybe there won't be.
We travel, we read, we're back. And we have two entries for this edition of This Book Will Change Your Life. First, Fast Forward >>Confessions of a Porn Screenwriter by Eric Spitznagel. Now we should begin by saying that it is most definitely true that we are big fans of the Spitznagel, hence way biased, but Fast Forward is a great read regardless, all breezy and Spitznagellian, which is to say, funny, crude and sweaty, sort of furry and always verging on nudity. And second, Big World by Mary Miller. As we read these stories, or more accurately, as we vacuumed them down, we were initially thinking, Faulkneresque, well, maybe, how about Carveresque, for sure, but then we thought, whatever, this collection is just fucking great, and quite Milleresque, a descriptor we expect we will be hearing more and more as time goes by.
