The Awful Possibilities

this is gonna be fuckin incredible.

get gooey

look, it’s my chicago book release party. but better than that, i get to read with adam levin (whose book with mcsweeneys, out this fall, is gonna change the game), jeff parker (my hero — his collection the taste of penny should be out now from dzanc, and you’d better get it), lindsay hunter (labelmate/have you seen the desciption of her book?/have you ever seen her read? — do not miss), and tim kinsella (zach says cap’n jazz hisself is as good at writing as rocking, and you know you can trust zach). also, djs, which i assume means dancing.

so let’s dance y’all.

i’ll be in town (chicago, i mean) tomorrow, so if i know you, let’s get down.

as for other stuff –

brooklyn, were you trying to prove my suspicions of you? yes, the place was packed and the crowd seemed to enjoy themselves and it was great to read with dottie and sasha, but, well, i guess i’m ok with the cover charge, even if i don’t get a cut, but why does my wife have to pay that cover charge, and why are you gonna charge two bux over retail for my book when i would have been happy to bring my own copies and sell them for five bux under? i’m disappointed in you, brooklyn. and will you ever be able to make it up to me.

let me tell you two things i wasn’t disappointed with:

1. matthew simmons’s book a jello horse. i held off on getting this for a long time (which is why i’m late to the game) because the name sounded kind of whimsical or whacky, but i picked it up at awp and read it last week and it’s very good. a road trip story that, in it’s calm, deliberate style reminded me at times of brautigan. but the complaint i always had about brautigan — that a lot of the sadness i feel when reading him comes from my awareness of his unwillingness to face some real issues (informed, probably by my awareness of his biography, but there nonetheless) — doesn’t apply with simmons. the book confronts everything it comes across in this kind of stoic but vulnerable way. even the title ends up being pretty cool once explained. i look forward to seeing what he does next.
2. adam robinson’s adam robison and other poems, poems by adam robinson. this is a really good book. it also happened to be just what i needed at the time i read it. i thought a lot about what it would be like if there was a male dottie lasky (is that okay, everybody?) (i mean it as a compliment to both of them). i also thought a lot about calvinism (close to my heart), which the book seems to (i’m willing to accept that i might be misreading this one, but it’s the way it rang to me, really loud and really clear) engage in tricky ways, finding a weird trajectory from kierkegaard through contemporary criticism and back to a refreshing take on modern culture (the real kind, not the literary kind) while still being fun.

i would have done a better and more thorough job talking about these if i weren’t so swamped right now (as in, for the last month and the coming month).

the house thing went through. kathryn and i now officially own a home. we are hoping someday someone gives us the keys to it because sooner or later we will need somewhere to put this baby we are really excited about having.

also, i’m itching to get back to pontificating here. there is a break between chicago and austin and i will try to say something with some substance.

but i’m gonna be up in you tomorrow night, along with dorothea lasky, sasha fletcher, kseniya melnik, and amy kandathil. it’s a reading, in brooklyn, in a series called earshot at a venue called rose live music, and you can get the other details here.

denver was bananas. i’m still recovering. we sold out of the book quickfast so all i had to do was the reading (which turned out to be more of a singing, in a kind of blue-eyed soul mode) (which is nothing compared to the show the other f’proof kids put on at the afterparty — it included banjo, short-shorts (the apparel, not the literary kind), singing, and two jugs of milk).

i also got to spend a bunch of time with old friends, some of whom i haven’t seen in years (one i hadn’t seen since high school, and i didn’t even know he’d become a writer), and make some new ones.

i bought a shitload of books, some of which i hope to write about here later.

probably my favorite part was seeing adam novy read from his forthcoming novel the avian gospels. that book is gonna be fire. keep an eye out for it, for your own good.

i stopped in at the barnes and noble at penn on my lunch break monday and saw the awful possibilities on the display table. i was psyched and took a picture with my phone, but i don’t know how to get the picture from my phone to the internet. anyway, that’s the picture for this entry. it’s on the corner of the table, a stack about 4 or 5 thick, right next to a jasper fforde book. the ooze on the cover is dripping onto the table and making it sizzle and smoke a little. the other books are cowering in fear. i should go back soon and see if the store is still standing.

next weekend is chicago.

let's do this, denver.

i’m doing it again, leaving philadelphia to preach the good news. this time to denver. the wild west.

i don’t know what it will be like to drink shots while reading stories at that altitude, but ok i’ll try it this once.

if you’re reading this and you’re going to awp, we should get down, whether you can make the reading or not.

also, it looks like the awful possibilities is now really really out. i was at the office today and jason got it delivered to his desk by amazon. why can’t you be more like jason.