Jeff T. Johnson on Pynchon’s Inherent Vice

There’s at least two surprising things about the new Pynchon novel: 1) it’s fairly short, 2) the cover looks like a Carl Hiasen mystery novel. Jeff Johnson, the former Kitchen Sink music editor and now a Brooklynite, shares his insights into this new work and compares the narrative structures of assorted Pynchon works in his review for The Fanzine.

We Can Only Expand the Boundaries When We’re Up Against the Ropes: Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Brandon Scott Gorrell

Kaya Oakes, author of Slanted and Enchanted, reviews the work of two very different young poets: one who writes in the voices of historical figures, including Amelia Earhart’s mechanic and boxer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, the other working in the genre of “Gmail Confessionalism.” Through these collections, Oakes traces the influence of parallel trends: the rapid expansion of MFA programs and the growth of digital publishing, showing us two very different points in the vast territory of contemporary American poetry.

Kaya Oakes, two Los Angeles independent record labels and I will be part of a panel discussion on independent media at Skylight Books, Sunday Sept. 27 5:00 pm. It would be great to see you there.

The Fanzine: Matthew Derby on Roberto Bolano

I’m a pretty huge advocate of Matthew Derby’s collection of short stories Super Flat Times and so I’m puffed up with pride to say that Derby’s review of Chilean novelist and poet Roberto Bolano’s The Skating Rink is now up on The Fanzine. Following the success of Bolano’s 2666, New Directions press is publishing the first English translations of some of Bolano’s work including this, his first novel. Derby is a former editor at McSweeney’s Believer and his review is as insightful and occasionally funny as one might expect. Fanzine will also be publishing an article from Derby on Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam diptych Full Metal Jacket, apparently a subject of his fixation.

The Fanzine: Slanted and Enchanted and New Fiction from a New Russia

I recently started working as  an assistant editor at the internet magazine The Fanzine. I has a great, very wide range of arts and culture coverage — where you can learn about the latest in experimental fiction as well as betting tips for the Kentucky Derby.

Two recent pieces I’d like to recommend:

Rob Tennant’s review of Kaya Oakes‘ Slanted and Enchanted: The Evolution of Indie Culture:

“The question remains: Who is more ‘indie’ – the O.C.’s Seth Cohen or New York poet Frank O’Hara? In Slanted and Enchanted Kaya Oakes reframes the debate by creating a wide-ranging lineage of independent media and artists, defying the categorical limitations that have arisen around the term in recent years. Mike Watt, Kathleen Hanna, David Berman and cartoonist Daniel Clowes all make appearances. Rob Tennant asks the ramifications of this heritage for the current state of independent culture.”

Also Olena Jennings’ review of Tin House Books’ Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia. Jennnings shows how the shadows and literary tropes of the Soviet Union hangs over the Putin and Medvedev’s Russia. Also, Jennings brings insights into the translation process.

Busdriver Interview and Profile: “The Avatar of ‘Less Yeses, More No’s’ in the Era of ‘Yes, We Can”

A recent interview and profile of rapper Busdriver, written for TheFanzine.com.

“That’s the problem with underground hip-hop is that we don’t have street cred with niggas in the hood,” Busdriver expounded from the stage of Los Angeles’ El Rey Theatre while muscularly wearing a mauve polo shirt. “College kids just download the shit, so it’s a small demographic we’re chasing after.” Opening for UK grime rapper Dizzee Rascal and Definitive Jux label head El-P at the end of a month long tour, Busdriver tore through his song lyrics at nearly double the already astonishing speed of his albums, pulsating around the stage, feigning anger and ecstasy, a mist of perspiration rising up into the stage lights while he freestyled about walking down Wilshire Blvd. in cowboy spurs. At one point he grabbed a life-sized cut-out of an eighties gold chain-wearing rapper and thrust the microphone into its face and––perhaps in an effort to catch his breath––demanded, “Now sing your part.”

Read the complete article here.

Doseone interview: “I may not be much else in this world but I guarantee you I am getting to rapper heaven.”

Published in The Believer, Oct. 2007.

Adam Drucker, better known by the alias Doseone, has said his initial attraction to rap was as much about the “persona/ego projection” as a love of words. Drucker cut his teeth on the rap-battle circuit, exchanging rhymes with Eminem and other MCs, until his friendships with like-minded musicians led to the creation of the Anticon collective/record label, which fuses hip-hop to indie rock, ambient music, poetry, and experimental noise.

Although Drucker has recorded several solo albums, his primary efforts have been collaborative. With the trio cLOUDDEAD, he worked with Yoni Wolf (Why?) and producer David Madson (Odd Nosdam) to create a pair of critically acclaimed albums that pasted non-sequitur raps onto sleepwalking funk beats and archaic keyboards. His most consistent collaboration has been with producer Jel (Jeffrey Logan) as Themselves. The duo has joined forces with German indie-rockers the Notwist as 13 & God and with other musicians in their current project, Subtle.

Read the complete article in The Believer.

“Electronic Literature” N. Katherine Hayles

Published in The Fanzine, Aug. 2008.

With newspapers feeling the bite of advertisers’ migration to the internet and the music industry, for better or worse, in dire need of a new business model, the era of digital media seems to offer more fodder for fears than opportunities for innovation. Advances in electronic ink technology have brought resurgent interest to e-book devices, such as Amazon.com’s Kindle, and so readers of literature might be wondering if a similar fate awaits their medium of choice. N. Katherine Hayles’ Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary profiles the work of writers who are diving into the new creative methods headfirst. In her forward, Hayles makes explicit her aim to create a canon of electronic literature and to introduce it both to lay readers and the university classroom. Additionally, Hayles’ book provides an overview of the critical discourse on the subject, arguing that this new kind of writing will require a different critical perspective than its print predecessors, advocating an examination not just of what appears on screen but the coding beneath.

Read the complete article at The Fanzine.

Supergroup in Reverse: The Afterlife of cLOUDDEAD

Published in The Fanzine, Nov. 2007.

Every once in a great while when a band breaks up, it’s like a supergroup in reverse; each performer’s independent project is packed with an exactness of vision that seemed impossible in collaboration: as if Bob Dylan had always just been the guy who played rhythm guitar in the Traveling Willburys and then – Bam! – came out with Blonde on Blonde; a complete inversion of the rock archetype of Paul McCartney’s post-Beatle blandness.

Eccentric hip-hop trio, cLOUDDEAD, part of the Anticon collective, formed in Cincinnati in 1999 and relocated to Oakland together in 2001. Producer Odd Nosdam (David Madson) built murky soundscapes from archaic keyboards, flea market reel-to-reel tapes and a Roland SP-202 “Dr. Sample” while rappers Doseone (Adam Drucker) and Why? (Yoni Wolf) overlapped non-sequitur lyrics about paint-spattered eye-glasses, their neighborhoods and the universality of death. As self-described shut-ins who shared apartments in various permutations, on their albums they sound telepathically close: Why? and Doseone completing each others’ sentences while the production mirrors their hypnotic, sometimes morbid humor.

Read the complete article at The Fanzine.

Interview with Paul Beatty, author of White Boy Shuffle

Originally published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, March 2006

In Hokum, an anthology of African American humor, novelist Paul Beatty finds comic value in stump speeches, stage banter, sermons – and boxing braggadocio.

Paul Beatty grew up reading from the oppressive white hegemonic literary canon of Mad Magazine, Archie Comics, the Green Lantern, and Joseph Heller paperbacks snagged from his mother’s bookshelf. In the introduction to Hokum, Beatty’s anthology of African American humor, he explains that he didn’t awaken to the strength and beauty of black literature until college. “My crew of conscious brothers and I were sitting in the student union rehashing books we hadn’t read and dictating laws of governance for countries we’d never been to,” he writes, when they were interrupted by a stoned classmate who proceeded to gargle Amiri Baraka’s “Sacred Chant for the Return of Black Power and Spirit” through a half-masticated mouthful of cheese pizza.

Best known for his hilarious and upsetting first novel, White Boy Shuffle, Beatty studied under Allen Ginsberg and got his start at the Nuyorican Poets Café alongside the likes of playwright (etc.) Sarah Jones. The pieces he’s gathered together here make for an unusual humor anthology by any standard: Hokum combines political speeches with boxing braggadocio, experimental poetry, blackface minstrelsy, radio sermons, movie scripts, comic books, and blues stage banter. There’s also a scene in which Osama bin Laden tears out Santa’s eyeball.

Read the complete text at San Francisco Bay Guardian.

What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Kim Jong Il Bashing? An Interview With Bruce Cumings

Published in The Fanzine, March 2007

University of Chicago history professor Bruce Cumings has written about the politics of both Koreas for over 25 years, most recently in North Korea: Another Country and Inventing the Axis of Evil. He has been outspoken on the need for normalization of U.S.-North Korean relations and a diplomatic solution to the nuclear stand off. Cumings’ work has also been critical of U.S. support for previous South Korean dictators, such as Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan, who came to power through military coups and used torture and assassination to silence critics and repress labor movements. In this interview he gives a perspective on North Korea not often heard in mainstream news coverage and describes his own experiences under South Korean dictatorships.

For the interview check out The Fanzine