Most definitely appreciations for the CCM/Entropy and the Peterson. And yes, many at that. Excerpt? Of course. Always.
"The Tanzer style evolves from the pithy speech and the dialogic
to-and-fro of David Mamet’s early plays. If the 1986 movie classic, About Last Night, enacts a cinematic variation on Mamet’s theatrical production, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, then Tanzer’s opus enacts prose variations on About Last Night.
In other words, in so far as About Last Night softens and
laughs up the hard edge of Mamet so too does Tanzer take his cue and
fill in comic color around the dark and mean parameters of Mamet’s
vision. Both writers, Tanzer and early Mamet, are distinctly urban, Gold
Coast Chicago, male-centric and minimalistic. But in my view Tanzer’s
take is more generous and open than Mamet’s. While Mamet is ultimately a
tragic dramatist, Tanzer’s worldview is ultimately comic and, should I
say, more loving and, yes, there is tragedy and hurt here as well."
For reals. More here and here. And quite certainly sure to change your life. A lot.
We are so podcast. We are also old friends in the Matt Rowan and Joseph G. Peterson, who themselves are former podcastees with El Presidente and Timbre. Or Tamber. respectively. Not to mention Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Lindsay Hunter, George Saunders, Sam Irby, David Mamet David Foster Wallace, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and The Simpsons.
Yet, as if all that was not enough, that's not all, not even remotely, because we are Big Venerable by the Rowan and Twilight of the Idiots by the Peterson too. Both are recent releases from Chicago's own Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which had us wondering how these books just might hang together? And we think it has something to do with systems. Rowan seeks to understand the systems that imprison and embrace us - integrating themselves into our lives as they overwhelm with language and rules - even as he rails against them with an absurdity and wit that both mocks and models the absurdities of the institutions themselves. Of further note, is that Rowan's previous work Why God Why was a collection of stories short and fast, death by a thousand little cuts as it were, but in contrast, Big Venerable lets the humor breathe, the stories now expanded, the lives captured within richer for the effort.
With Twilight of the Idiots, Peterson goes in a new direction as well, but in his case, he goes smaller, providing us with a collection of "yarns" after a career of novels and epic poem. The characters crafted within are certainly Peterson's people though, blue collar and raging, stumbling down streets, being tossed into bogs and frying fish, while all the while lurking outside the systems, and there's that word again, that won't have them, will never welcome them and are all too happy to pretend they don't exist. But they do exist in Peterson's mind, and like Rowan's people, on the page, fresh from CClaP, available now, and more than willing to change your life, if only for a moment.
There will be strobe lights, maybe, and words, lovely, and glorious. There will also be killer line-up, see below. And you may learn more and RSVP here thank you very much.
Featured readers include:
Matt Rowan, author of Big Venerable
Joseph G. Peterson, author of Twilight of the Idiots
Cyn Vargas, author of On The Way
Rachel Slotnik, author of In Lieu of Flowers
For real. More information can be found here. And you can RSVP here. So let's do this, yes? Yes. It just might change your life.
Quite honored. Most stellar. More here.
Like totally gloriously for sure. And do feel free to learn more, a lot more, here. Nice.
So do be sure to hit it all post haste here.
Travel. Read. Read. Travel. And on and on and Gideon's Confession by the Joseph G. Peterson. Peterson is one of Chicago's most lyrical voices and if his bete noire is the drunken, raconteur, street intellectual, lingering, if not languishing, in seedy bars, unable to form relationships that might improve this station, and who should be, could be better, if not for their stuckness, and inability to become unstuck, than few understand this archetype as well as the Peterson does. What Peterson also knows however, is that this stuckness is a product of fear and damage, lost opportunities, fucked-up families who offer too much or too little, but never balance or stability, and the ongoing belief that being fucked-up is easier than not being so, because to not be so is to be aware of just how unaware you are. And it is this latter quality that reflects Peterson at his most insightful. His characters are wander, and they know they are wander, and do everything in their power not to be better, because they have no idea what better could be. Peterson is also about love though, always, and as such, there is always a chance for love, to get lost in its beauty and magic, and in the case of Gideon, there is also the chance that love may free him, and elevate him beyond the stuck, and whatever might yet be possible for him. And in this way Gideon's Confession is Peterson's most hopeful book. It is about lives changed, and changing. It is about the possibility of transformation. And it is sure to change your life, as it has Gideon's and ours.
So please do hit it. More here. Much more.
So do hit it. All post-haste and such. It just might change your life.
Totally. And massively appreciative at that. So do hit it. It just might change your life.
It just might change your life. For real.
A lot a lot. And big thanks to the Joseph G. Peterson for that. Drinks brother, or possibly sandwiches, whichever, soon, many, on us. Excerpt? Word.
"Ben Tanzer is one of the most efficient writers working. This is an
excellent collection filled with Tanzer's wham/bam (I hope)/thank you
ma'm (anyway) themed stories."
Though no need to settle for just our interview, yo, because there is much goodness to digest here. So much. So please do. It just might change your life. Excerpt? Cool.
Tell us how it all came about to begin with.
I’ll give you the abbreviated version. It’s a funny story. Joseph Peterson, who I already mentioned, at one point worked for the University of Chicago Press. He’s the numbers guy, when he’s not writing kick-ass novels. His colleague was leaving U of C Press to go to NIU Press and be the second in command. Part of his challenges was to take their fiction arm and make it cooler, hipper, whatever. So Joseph told this guy, “You should call Ben Tanzer; nobody knows this guy, but he’s maybe one of the people who could help you elevate your fiction program.” And this guy really called me. He was like, “I don’t know who you are...” [Laughter] Very politely. He said, “Send me your books, and maybe there’s something we can do together down the road.” But that road never seemed to materialize. So almost a year passed, and right before the 2012 AWP [Ed.: the second-largest literary convention in the United States, held that year in Chicago], this guy calls and says, “We should get a drink at AWP.” And I thought it was going to be very casual, and in fact I went somewhere else and drank first, which is also part of this story. [Laughter] And I show up, having drank for a long time, and there was the guy, and he was sitting with the head publisher. And I saw them sitting there and I thought, “Oh. Oh, this is not good.” [Laughter] It looked like a job interview. But when I sat down, they were soooo drunk, so the whole thing started becoming like this competition. They started interviewing me like I was going to go work there. And this went on for like an hour, and finally they said, “So what do you got for us?” And I had just finished Orphans and was talking to another publisher about it—and I want to thank that publisher for being so cool—but I thought, “If I leave this discussion, after verbally battling with these guys for an hour, without pitching something, I’m a fucking idiot.” So I explained Orphans to them, and this head guy, who could barely even stand up, says, “What would you think of your first novel with major national attention being a science-fiction novel?” And I said, “I’m sorry, I stopped listening after ‘national attention.’” [Laughter] And I got an email a day or two later, and he said, “Read the book already. This is a go.” And I had a contract on Monday. And then the guys left the company.
