'Crispin Best’s for every year project is one of the most overlooked literary sites on the internet– a dynamic collection of amazing stories and poems in honor of every year in history since the year Chaucer died (1400). Writers get to pick a year, write something inspired by that year, however loosely, and send it in– the timeline is up to 1525 now, offering over a century’s worth of reading by authors such as Nicolle Elizabeth, Jimmy Chen, Krammer Abrahams, Molly Gaudry, Benjamin King, Ravi Mangla, Paula Bomer, J. A. Tyler, and xTx. It’s a great place to browse– one of my personal favorites is 'Margret Tells Us About the Important Wet Dead Man' by Aiden Clarkson, but there’s so much more, favorites are impossible, really– and a cool thing to write for. -- Mungo
Details & info:
for every year
the contributors (so far)
Crispin Best @ Fictionaut
Crispin Best's blog 'we will all go simultaneous'
Crispin Best interviewed @ Chicken and Pies
'Go Ninja Go Ninja Go', by Crispin Best
'your five-year plan', a poem by Crispin Best
Crispin Best translates Heinrich von Kleist @ Everyday Genius
Unnecessary Press
Behind the scenes
JMWW: How did you come up with the idea for (For Every Year? By yourself? How long after you thought of it did you begin taking (submissions)? What did you think when you read your first sub? I remember reading Cami Park’s 1493 “Queen Isabella Eats A Pineapple and Misses The Jews.” I cracked up, such a great story.
Crispin Best: Sounds weird maybe but I think “For Every Year” wasn’t an idea so much as a decision. I can’t remember ever considering or pondering over it at all. The creation story is something like “The Olympics had just finished. I was unemployed and unhealthy. I had been watching Usain Bolt being Usain Bolt. For whatever reason I felt sort of weirdly capable. I felt a need for a big new project and this was the first thing I thought of, like: Absolutely. I could collect 600+ themed stories on a website. Why not?”
1400 was a sparkly round number, but it was also the year Chaucer died. Absolutely you have to hand it to Chaucer: he was a cool kid. Reading more about him it just kept occurring to me that there’s so much of history that isn’t battlefields and castles. Chaucer got paid a gallon of wine daily for his writing. I felt more and more certain that there had to be ways to honor the vagaries, morsels, and flakes of nonsense, and I decided this project could be one.
As for subs, at first I solicited from writers I knew and admired (or else wrote them myself) to get things started. 1410 was the first sub I got unsolicited sent, without even opening submissions. It was a weird feeling, that people were starting to pay attention to this little thing I was doing, this thing that had occurred to me sitting mostly-naked on the carpet a few weeks before. I love receiving subs. The way people deal with the prompt is telling and kind of excellent.
(read more)
Sideshow
Crispin Best 'holy war'
Crispin Best 'blinking competition'
Crispin Best 'hi'
The project
'for every year'
'A story or poem for every year since 1400. Or something else even.
It just has to be in honour of that year, it needn't be set then. Don't cry.
Right?
For example. Chaucer died in 1400, so that explains that. And. The first written record of whiskey appears in 1405, so that explains that.
Pick a year in the upcoming 30 years (from where the project currently is).
Write a story/poem/something dedicated to that year.
Send me an email.
We can do this.
Andiamo.'
-- Crispin Best
3 years/3 examples
1404: Owain Glyndŵr
by Crispin Best
After declaring myself Prince of Wales, I got down to work. I thought of all that was imperfect in Wales. I thought for a good long time.
---I realised that there was no statue of me yet in Wales. This was imperfect.
---I called a press conference, at which I made certain famous pronouncements, and announced I had commissioned a statue of myself to be built. The statue was to have the head of a bear. However, the bear would be wearing a mask of my face. The people would perhaps think that I was a bear. Underneath my human body, perhaps I was a bear.
---The statue was to be astride a bicycle. The statue was to have one hand raised so as to provide a photo opportunity where the statue appeared to be offering a high-five, or waving hello. Or even losing to scissors. It would depend on the person posing with the statue, of course.
At the end of the press conference, I resigned my post. The reporters all nodded to themselves. My work was done.
You can go there now. The statue still stands. Thousands of people a year have their photo taken with that statue. And, on the pedestal, beneath my name, the legend still scrolls mechanically between my two most well-known proclamations:
---- We, The Welsh, Do Not Like Disasters!
---- We, The Welsh, Want More Oversized Cheques!
---- We, The Welsh, Do Not Like Disasters!
---- We, The Welsh, Want More Oversized Cheques!
*
1473: being nicolaus copernicus
by ryan manning
my feet hurt. i need slippers. have slippers been invented yet. i don't know. my whole body hurts. this chair is not comfortable. i need an office chair. i need to exercise. i need to stretch. will i ever get laid before i die. will someone write a wikipedia entry about me. will someone write a story about me. on the internet. will someone look at something i've done and feel negatively about it. will i formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology. will i write a book. will i be a mathematician, astronomer, physician, scholar, translator, artist, jurist, cleric, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist. will i ever be famous. when will i die. will i ever be loved and adored by a member of the opposite sex who's not my mother. will i ever achieve steady cash flow without a real job. will i ever experience not awkward sex. will i ever be accepted by my peer group. validation. that's all anyone really wants, really. that, and amazing sex. multiple orgasms. will i ever experience the joy of date rape. before i die. will i be criticized by my peer group. will i be rejected. ostracized. will i experience severe alienation. will someone dislike me for arbitrary reasons and therefore attempt to convince others to dislike me in an effort to legitimize their own arbitrary dislike of me. will i ever not masturbate. when will i stop existing. will i achieve cult status. will i ever love myself. will i ever have sex with a prostitute before i die. does it matter. what matters. does anything matter. who cares. are we fucked. what difference does it make. who am i. how am i not myself. am i making sense. i feel afraid. there is much fear in me. what exactly do i need to say in order to attract a female. that's all i really want. does that make sense. can anyone tell me what needs to be said in order for me, to get at sex. before i die. please. help.
*
1525: The bubonic plague fucked me
by Ana C.
I'm infected and my skin looks gross. I'm going to die in 3-7 days.
I'm a virgin. My dad won’t let me get close to anyone. He says I need to get married. Nobody wants to marry me because my skin looks gross. I’ve heard and watched people fuck. It looks painful but I want to do it. Nobody wants to teach me how to fuck. Everyone runs away from me.
Nobody wants to touch me. Fuck. My skin is really gross.
My face is still pretty so the other day I almost tricked a man. I think he was going to fuck me in the street. He was doing funny things with his tongue. It felt nice. I was screaming. He told me to shut up. I couldn’t. He lifted my tunic and ran away from me. I think he didn’t fuck me. I’m sad and infected. My skin is really gross.
The other day I asked for help. A whore helped me. She told me to go fuck myself. She explained. She said I could use my fingers. I think she’s crazy.
My skin is gross and I don’t want to use my fingers.
Everyone knows I’m infected. I’m going to die. The bubonic plague fucked me.
----
*
p.s. Hey. So, a very rushed p.s. today written while I'm not fully awake yet. I'm also very nervous about doing my scene in the Christophe Honore film today. A triple whammy. I'm sorry, and this should be (un)interesting. As I mentioned a few days ago, there won't be a full-fledged p.s. tomorrow but rather just an intro to the post and a howdy due to my early morning train back to Brest. Things will be normalized again on Monday. ** Oliver, Me too, and never without quotation marks. Excellent to see you, by the way. ** Bill, Well, that's just rude. Those talkative fuckers, not you, obviously. The gig sounds like such a beauty, though. That sentence -- whispers, beetles, groove, etc ... lovely. ** Put The Lotion In The Basket, If I could give you Bellatrix, I so totally would. ** Magick Mike, Well, hey there, Mike! Very cool to see you back here, man. Sucks that you returned and left such a rich comment on a day when I'm forcibly zooming along. Yeah, stick around, or stick around more at least, if poss. I like that idea to turn Esotika into a journal. Pretty light bulby, that idea. There's a teeny bit of Roger Laporte in English, but not much. I did a post on him here a while back, I think. Anyway, shit, I have to keep moving. Mike, serious excellence to have you here. Thank you! ** David Ehrenstein, Hey, D. Oh, I can't wait to read your Anna Karina interview. It'll have to wait for Saturday or Sunday. In the meantime ... Everyone, David Ehrenstein has interviewed the great French star and Godard icon Anna Karina, and it's a guaranteed source of fascination and pleasure, trust me, so go get yours here. ** Okay, shit! Something is fucked up with Blogger or with my account or something because I continued the p.s. from this point, addressed all the comments, proofread the thing, saved, and clicked 'publish', and, instead of publishing, Blogger locked me out of my account suddenly for about fifteen minutes. Now it has let me back in, and mysteriously, the p.s. was reduced to the very partial version you see above. I can't recreate what I wrote because I'm about to rush out the door to do the film thing. Fucking hell, and I'm very sorry about this. So, the post today spotlights a very interesting project by the writer Crispin Best. I hope you'll explore and discuss it. Assuming Blogger let's me publish this fragment of a p.s., I'll see you via a brief p.s. tomorrow and in full again on Monday. Again, I'm really sorry about the fuck up. Take care. Bye.
No comments:
Post a Comment