Quite inspired. Very Rumpus. And endless appreciation to the Gina Frangello for all of it. Excerpt? Word.
"The cool story would be how we went home that night, dropped
everything, booked our trip, and were soon having a threesome with Larry
Mullens, Jr. under the ocean spray that endlessly cascades over San
Sebastian’s horseshoe beachfront.
But that isn’t what happened.
Instead,
my father got sick, cancer sick, eighteen months to live sick, any trip
of any real length didn’t seem possible sick, and for the most part we
didn’t go anywhere that didn’t look like a cancer ward or my parent’s
house until my father passed away."
We are new joint, race, and kid. We are also very thankful to The Rumpus and Gina Frangello for making it so. So please do Rumpus and we promise that the next round of drinks will be on us. Totally. Excerpt? Cool.
"The office has a run. It’s a fundraiser. There is a 5k and a 10k and a
walk. There are mascots, the Berenstain Bears and Benny the Bull. And
family activities, involving things like water balloons and bean bags.
There is also a kids’ dash.
But he won’t dash, and I cannot let it go, and so every year the conversation goes something like this.
“Yo, this is the year you are going to run the dash,” I say, “right, yes, sweet, you are.”
“No, never, not this year, not ever, you know that,” he says.
“It’s not going to be windy,” I say, “I totally checked that already.”
He
doesn’t like the wind. Not that I actually checked whether it will be
windy, the race is weeks away, and who’s to say what the weather will
bring.
And yes, please note I have just lied to my older son.
Parents do that a lot. I could defend it as a necessary means for
getting though the day. I could also acknowledge that it is very poor
modeling. Then again, if we’re going to get into modeling, and poor
examples thereof, we will be here forever.
So, yes I lied. I had to. And again, we were talking wind."
Travel. Read. Fast. Amanda Knox. And apparitions. In the air. Cars. On living rooms floors. We are movement and readandDomestic Apparitions by the Meg Tuite. It is story as sketch. Family as fragment. Life as a series of disturbances that bounce into one another and congeal. It is also the female experience as filtered through violence and oppressionandwe recognize that women's experiences are far more wide-ranging than what we're reacting to, that there is love, friendship and family as a nurturing and safe place, but in a world where men endlessly project their sexual and aberrant fantasies onto women, where women's voices have been suppressed historically, and ignored, and continue to be suppressed in ignored in various forms in the literary world and beyond, these stories need to be told, highlighted and given a place to be broadcast. And in that way Domestic Apparitions is reminiscent of other work we've had the chance to read recently, books like Slut Lullabies by Gina Frangello, Sweet Charlotte's Seventh Mistake by Cori Crooks and The Lost Episodes of Beatie Scareli by Ginnetta Correli, books that eschew metaphor and magical realism and try to capture something in real time in all its ugliness. Which makes them important and necessary, but aren't reduced by this necessaryness as something merely important, not when these books are this creative, thoughtful and bursting with storytelling talent.
The fine crew at The Nervous Breakdown has already been most kind to You Can Make Him Like You with a much appreciated review by TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Nik Korpon, and they are now running both an excerpt and a Self-Interview, and yes, that does mean Interview Sundays are back. It also means big thanks to the sublime Gina Frangello for pulling all this together. Now, what does it mean for you though? It means enjoyment. We hope. And excerpt. For sure. So please do enjoy, and please do excerpt, and please do keep being you, because we love that about you.
Is it true that you have an amazingly small carbon footprint?
It is if that's not an euphemism for something else.
No, never, this is a family site.
Word. Why do you bring this up then?
I think its good to open with some humor, and maybe even empathy, its more endearing and draws the reader into the conversation. More than that though, I was thinking about some of the commentary on my new book You Can Make Him Like You, which I am supposed to hype, yes?
Totally. Be subtle maybe, don't look desperate or sad and don't be too grandiose despite the initial reviews, but yes hype, must hype.
We will be Top Ten lists for the rest of the week, because really when you think about it, its time, like now, has to be, and today will be books. To be clear, well, straight up, we do not limit ourselves to books published in the year we are covering, just anything we read, we also readily embrace the fact that we are not objective, we virulently, even violently tilt towards indie releases, and to be honest, and we do believe in that, honesty that is, we are often influenced by the fact that the authors we dig may be acquaintances, or people we would like to be acquainted with, and/or based in Chicago the home of TBWCYL, Inc. headquarters. With that in mind, here you go, though please note, that despite all we just said, we are opening with a non-indie, non-Chicago author, and no, we can't totally explain that, but to say, this first one really knocked us out, big time.
Also, the two books we never quite got our hands on, but plan to, because not doing so is a terrible oversight and pains us to no end: Daddy's/Lindsay Hunter and Baby & Other Stories/Paula Bomer.
And, how about a 2011 sneak preview of sorts? A number of books have come in over the last few months just as our ability to make time for reading has slowed dramatically, so books we are geeked for as the new year is upon us (and again in no particular order): Cardboard Gods/Josh Wilker; Sophomoric Philosophy/Victor David Giron; Fight For Your Long Day/Alex Kudera; Cloud and Other Stories/Jason Jordan; Songs of Vagabonds, Misfits, and Sinners/Ken Wohlrob; Chasing the Runner's High/Ray Charbonneau; Mont-Saint-Michele and Chartres/Spencer Dew.
This is too good, and we're not just saying this because TBWCYL, Inc. spokesperson Ben Tanzer appeared on Episode 1 of Breakfast With The Author. Really, we're not, just take a look, and see for yourself. Go ahead. Nice.
We are admittedly just getting over our devastation about not being included on the Newcity 2010 Lit 50 list, though that is not to disparage the entrants on the list itself all of whom rock. On the other hand, we are quite happy to see TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Gina Frangello not only come in at number nineteen, but score a more extensive profile/interview written by fellow TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Robert Duffer, both of whom we have had the pleasure of podcasting with. So when all is said and done, the devastation is minimized, sort of, and the happiness is maximized, a lot, and if you are so inclined you may listen to said podcasts here and here respectively.
Very excited to see Chicago writer and TBWCYL, Inc. favorite Gina Frangello being interviewed at The Big Other about the release of her quite fine short story collection Slut Lullabies. Please do take a look and please do obtain a copy of Slut Lullabies because it just might change your life. Meanwhile, feel free to prep for the interview with the below excerpt and if you still find that this just isn't quite enough Frangello for your liking, please also feel free to check-out our recent podcast with her. It's quite scintillating to say the least.
Davis: What feelings will reading Slut Lullabies induce in the reader?
Gina: Well, of course who knows, right? The stories in the collection are not related, so I hope they induce a range of feelings. Some are fairly satirical or a little goofy, and even the darker ones are, I hope, funny in their own way. But mainly I hear that my writing tends to make people emotionally uncomfortable. All the blurbs on the back of the book say this in one form or another, I think. Most people who have said this mean it in a good way. A few—mainly in corporate New York publishing—have meant it in a negative way. But I like the idea of my work making people uncomfortable. To me, if that’s true, it’s a great compliment.
It's true, there has been much podcast mania this week here at TBWCYL, Inc., for example, Episodes Twenty-Three and Twenty-Four starring Mel Bosworth and Gina Frangello respectively, and yes, there is more to come soon, but for now let's savor the newest edition to the series, Episode Twenty-Five starring TBWCYL, Inc. favorite David Masciotra, author of the quite rocking Working on a Dream - The Political Progressive Vision of Bruce Springsteen. There is Springsteen of course, but there is also Dylan and Fisk and Bolton as well. Who knows, it just might change your life. And maybe even for the better.
We had the great pleasure of not only reading Chicago author Gina Frangello's fantastic short story collection Slut Lullabies this week, but sitting down with Gina for the latest edition of This Podcast Will Change Your Life, which for those of you tracking these kinds of things is Episode Twenty-Four in the series. We would add that we conducted this podcast on the north side of Chicago and we are adding this because in so many ways we were both far from home, even though Gina grew-up in Chicago. We mention this because the stories in Slut Lullabies are very much about place, the places you come from, the places you are trying to get to and the places you actually end-up, all of which are constantly clashing for the characters in these stories. That said, these stories are about more than place, they are also about women, and more than any stories we've read recently, about the violence directed towards women every day and how matter of fact this violence is treated by these women. In fact, the women in these stories have come to expect violence merely because they are women and that's the way it is in the world we live in, a reality as crushing and sad as we expect to encounter in any book, anywhere, any time soon.
We were most thrilled to run into a Fictionaut Five with the quite awesome Gina Frangello and we think you might be too. Do you know what else we're thrilled about? The Fire Sale.
The New City annual Lit 50 list is out, with the theme this year being "Who really books in Chicago." They decided not to focus on any straight-up writers or poets this year, which is probably good for our egos here at headquarters, and they sort of ignored the whole blogosphere, for example the fine team at Pete Lit, one of our first podcasts, or the crew at Orange Alert, not to mention the ladies of QUICKIES! and Pilcrow, podcasted here and here respectively, but they still listed a number of friends and supporters of ours who we would argue do not get nearly enough attention otherwise. These include, Oprah (#1), well okay, not Oprah, and no we haven't podcasted with her, yet, but does include among others Suzy T. from the Book Cellar (#34), Gina Frangello from Other Voices' Books (#37) and Caroline Picard from the Green Lantern Press (#45) the latter of whom we did podcast with way back when. Overall, its an interesting list, and mostly comprehensive, and frankly, anyone who wants to take the time to list literary anything is pretty awesome as far as we are concerned, so big props to New City for the support and attention.
