____________
'The despicable yet utterly sympathetic protagonist in Eugene Marten’s terrifying third novel doesn’t stray far from those of his prior works: Like the janitor in the cult classic Waste and the locksmith from In the Blind, Jelonnek, the state-employee antihero of Firework, is a shiftless man whose routine is shaken by a series of twisted circumstances and terrible decisions. Marten masters a world of blue-collar minutiae with spare, striking prose and meticulous detail, but Firework is, at 370 pages, a breakout achievement that also tackles issues of gender, class, race, identity and family. ... Marten approaches his novel’s slow-building disaster with fearlessness. Equal parts road novel and psychological thriller, Firework is a superbly written exercise in impending doom, which makes sense: Marten seems at home in a world where the worst-case scenario is the most likely outcome.' -- Kimberly King Parsons, Time Out New York
'In Firework, a novel that starts in the gutter and never once looks at the stars, Eugene Marten accomplishes two extraordinary feats. Not only does the book establish Marten, author of In the Blind and Waste, two other bleak miracles, as one of our finest contemporary prose stylists, but it also introduces its publisher, Tyrant Books, as one of our best purveyors of contemporary fiction. ... (Firework is) not just about language; it’s about American language. It’s not just about culture; it’s about American culture.' -- Snowden Wright, The Rumpus
Eugene Marten FireworkTyrant Books
'Jelonnek is a blue collar Midwesterner trapped in a life he is almost sure he wants to escape. Driven by a dim yearning to transcend, he makes the first real choice of his life when a simple errand to a convenience store escalates into a terrifying encounter. He soon finds himself on a cross-country odyssey with a woman he barely knows and her young daughter, in search of escape and new beginnings. They find shelter in an isolated existence at the edge of the country, only to be besieged by threats from outside and, finally, from within. A descent into paranoia, nascent violence and sexuality follows, culminating in a one-man Armageddon and an aftermath as hopeful as it is horrifying.
'Firework is the story of a man who, though ill-equipped to help himself, attempts to help someone else, and the beautifully rendered, perhaps necessary catastrophe that results. Unequaled in intensity, it is also an exhilarating expression of the noble, all-too human impulse to become more than what we seem to be.' -- Tyrant Books
Excerpt
The anchorman says, “In the interest of good taste.”
The street reporter calls it a rental property. “A child,” she says. “A man and a woman...who may or may not be husband and wife.”
We can’t see all the words. We see a man wearing a blue smock. Behind him are shelves of typewriters with little tags wired to them.
“I’m the first one in the door,” he says. “I’m the last one out.” Probably he was the first to see it. He called 911 and and started greasing carriage returns.
A sign in the window: “We dont speak to Reporters.” Some of the neighbors do but nobody saw or heard anything. They stand in front doors and on porches, looking hastily dressed for an appearance. A woman still in her bathrobe: “We turn in early on a school night.” Their next-door neighbor, she adds, is never home.
She says they seem like nice people. She says, “They keep to themselves.”
You can see certain words, a name, crude figures, but the shots are composed so that other words are intimated in fragments, or missing entirely. The pace of the editing is rapid, like a movie trailer.
A boy and a girl pretend to wait for a school bus—the children of the woman in the bathrobe, perhaps. “A prank, like,” the boy says. “Like trick or treat.” We watch the girl watching him talk.
The car, the windows. Lines of rough grammar that bend around corners. Some of it is blurred, washed out, almost shimmers; they must have done something to the video.
“With the aid of digital technology,” the anchorman says. “For those who might be offended.”
“The owner could not be reached,” the street reporter says. She conducts interviews in a trench coat, nodding emphatically. She is attractive but not glamorous; energetic, likeable, down to earth.
“Residents say this has to be the work of outsiders.”
“People are people,” the man in the blue smock says. “What’s that outfit up from California?” They’ve set up headquarters in the west suburbs. (We don’t see him trying to think of the name, or saying that a Selectric has more than three thousand moving parts.)
“My kids play with their kid,” the woman in the bathrobe says.
A police spokesman, a spokesman for an anti-bias group. A former skinhead whose face is a shadow.
“On condition of anonymity,” the street reporter says.
(We don’t see the girl at the bus stop imitating the dead cat in the parking lot: “His eyes were made of ants.” Her tongue lolls in footage that will not be seen. She will not be heard describing the two women who live together at the turnaround, who could be mother and daughter but are not.)
The street reporter stands at the corner with her microphone, police cars and yellow tape behind her.
“Until that happens,” she says.
(more)
Eugene Marten reads from 'Waste' (4:40)
Eugene Marten reads from 'Waste' (9:38)
____________
'Reading An Attempt ... was simultaneously anachronistic and very present for me. I can acknowledge that this is Perec, sitting in a café in 1974 writing down these observations, and yet, whereas this ought to be novel (or at least clever), I’ve become desensitized to this kind of surveillance. The novelness to this book comes directly from Perec and that it was written in 1974. Otherwise, this could easily be someone’s—a very observant, literary someone, but a someone nonetheless, after all, even Perec was someone once—Twitter feed or Facebook update. Today, it seems like we are all attempting to exhaust a place, or if not a place, our lives.
'There is a sadness that lingers beneath An Attempt: a melancholy at his failure to communicate everything. It exhausts him, and in exhausting him, it exhausts me, draws me into his melancholy. Even if this type of communication is familiar to me now, I’m continually reminded of his concept of the infraordinary, that even at my most observant, there are things which escape me, that even if I were to sit in a quiet café and do nothing but watch, I could not see everything. An Attempt is a reminder of my own failures: my inability to see everything, to read everything, to understand everything, etc. I’ve failed even at this attempt at reviewing a book. Like Perec, I’ve interrupted myself, become lost while I’m trying to observe only what he has observed.' -- Lily Hoang, HTMLGIANT
Georges Perec AN ATTEMPT AT EXHAUSTING A PLACE IN PARISTranslated by Marc Lowenthal
Wakefield Press
'One overcast weekend in October 1974, Georges Perec set out in quest of the “infraordinary”: the humdrum, the nonevent, the everyday—“what happens,” as he put it, “when nothing happens.” His choice of locale was Place Saint-Sulpice where, ensconced behind first one café window, then another, he spent three days recording everything to pass through his field of vision: the people walking by; the buses and driving-school cars caught in their routes; the pigeons moving suddenly en masse, as if in accordance to some mysterious command; the wedding (and then funeral) at the church in the center of the square; the signs, symbols, and slogans littering everything; and the darkness that eventually absorbs it all. In An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Perec compiled a melancholic, slightly eerie, and oddly touching document in which existence boils down to rhythm, writing turns into time, and the line between the empirical and the surreal grows surprisingly thin.' -- WP
2 excerpts
swiped from HTMLGIANT
tens, hundreds of simultaneous actions, micro-events, each one of which necessitates postures, movements, specific expenditures of energy:
conversations between two people, conversations between three people, conversations between several people: the movement of lips, gestures, gesticulations
means of locomotion: walking, two-wheeled vehicles (with and without motor), automobiles (private cars, company cars, rented cars, driving school cars), commercial vehicles, public services, public transport, tourist buses
means of carrying (by hand, under the arm, on the back)
means of traction (shopping bag on wheels)
degrees of determination or motivation: waiting, sauntering, dawdling, wandering, going, running toward, rushing (toward a free taxi, for instance), seeking, idling about, hesitating, walking with determination…
A 63 [a bus] passes by
Six sewer workers (hard hats and high boots) take rue des Canettes.
Two free taxis at the taxi stand
An 87 passes by
A blind man coming from rue des Canettes passes by in front of the café; he’s a young man, with a rather confident way of walking.
An 86 passes by
Two men with pipes and black satchels
A man with a black satchel and no pipe
A woman in a wool jacket, smiling
A 96
Another 96
(high heels: bent ankles)
An apple-green 2CV
A 63
A 70
*
The sky is gray. Fleeting sunny spells.
Weary vision: obsessive fear of apple-green 2CVs.
Unsatisfied curiosity (what I came here to find, the memory floating in this café…)
What difference is there between a driver who parks on the first go and another (“90”) who only manages to do so after several minutes of laborious efforts? This provokes attention, irony, the participation of an audience: to see not just the rips, but the fabric (but how to see the fabric if it is only the rips that make it visible: no one ever sees buses pass by unless they’re waiting for one, or unless they’re waiting for someone to come off of one, or unless the Paris City Transport Authority pays them a salary to count them…)
Also: why are two nuns more interesting than two other passersby?
A man goes by, wearing a surgical collar
A woman goes by; she is eating a slice of tart
Georges Perec speaks (6:04)
from Georges Perec's 'Un homme qui dort' (8:54)
____________
'Micro-chapters that can stand alone or be read in a linear fashion, Lily Hoang's The Evolutionary Revolution is a book of sly stepping stones, stepping away from the world as it is now. The world as it is now is assumed by many to be out of our hands, something unstable, something that both affects us yet is not within our reach to fix or improve. Hoang's chapters have grandiose names such as “The Imperial Council,” “Man Emerging” and “How the Sea Became Salty,” for the times beg for at least grounded, surefooted beginnings -- even if many find themselves wading in obscurity after a story unfolds. Hoang creates lush yet monstrous, hybridized versions of humanity disguised as imaginative fables, somewhere between the familiar and unrecognizable. They are lovely, weirdly knowledgeable in their goal to un-educate (i.e. perhaps, one needs to un-teach the self before the self is capable of learning) the reader regarding treatment for any sanctioned story's future.' -- Jacqueline Davis, Bookslut
'One of the most intriguing aspects of (Hoang's) work is the way in which her authorial tone from book to book manages to evolve and shift as one might hope it would while retaining similarities in confidence, intelligence and whimsy that never let the reader forget Hoang’s presence behind the scenes. There’s an ever-present slyness and impression of trickery, the execution of which is brilliant in that Hoang manages to walk the line between solely emphasizing the performance itself or that behind-the-scenes finesse; both are important, and the sense of play always gives way to a cohesive focus and momentum that leaves no doubt as to how seriously one should take the themes of the book. ' -- White Walls/Black Ink
Lily Hoang The Evolutionary RevolutionLes Figues
'What if evolution was decided by committee and revolution by mere chance? What if man was a subspecies? What if man, as a subspecies, was woman, with tiny red wings on her thighs and pasted shut eyes? What if she flew in the sky or slept on the moon, and what if the earth was a saltless water world filled with forgetful, vengeful two-headed mermen? Welcome to THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION, a fabulist story of sense-making for the 21st century. In this twinning tale of freak shows and prophets, tract homes and impending doom, award-winning author Lily Hoang collapses time and narrative into a brilliant novel of beginnings and ends, where sentences undo each other and opposites don't cancel each other out. As Anna Joy Springer notes in the book's introduction, "In literature, as sometimes in life, it's a scary kind of fun to be manipulated by a pretty girl, who changes the game on a whim."' -- Les Figues
Excerpt
A Caveat
We cannot be held responsible if some of these events are not quite in order, if some of the facts are slightly out of place. We did not live through this, and what few facts we do have are difficult to verify.
We have tried our best to make this clear and simple. We have tried very hard to reconstruct this history as it happened, but it’s impossible to do so without some errors so we apologize in advance, before it becomes too murky. We have tried, and while we hope that is enough, we’re afraid it isn’t, that the inevitability of the future is already set, that maybe the prophet wasn’t talking about the Evolutionary Revolution, that maybe the prophet was talking about something we can stop, if only we can get things right. We are trying. We’re trying very hard, but we can’t do it all on our own, if only we could have help, if only we could get you involved. We’re weak and few in number, but that does not mean that we do not try, lord only knows, it does not mean we do not continue trying.
*
A New Baby Boy
Stanley was born a single boy, but when he was in his Mama Sylph’s belly, he had a twin sister. The doctors didn’t know about them being attached, but his mama did. Mama Sylph picked out the name Sylvia for her. She loved the idea of twin babies, attached by a small piece of skin, little wrinkled blobs of baby attached like friends. It was her idea, them being attached like that, but Stanley didn’t like the idea of a sister so he made her disappear.
Sometime along the twenty-ninth week, fetus Sylvia disappeared from his mama’s belly. Mama Sylph was at the doctor’s office getting a sonogram. Both babies were there. They were holding their small hands. Mama Sylph swore she saw Stanley gentle rubbing Sylvia’s hand, soothing her, and then, just like that, Sylvia disappeared. No heart beat, no remains, nothing.
It wasn’t uncommon for fetuses to be miscarried, especially with a tentative pregnancy like Mrs. Sylph’s, fragile twins and all, but the doctor had never seen anything like this. There had to be remnants somewhere, bits of baby floating in Mrs. Sylph’s body somewhere, but there was nothing. There was nothing anywhere, almost as if Sylvia had never existed at all, almost as if someone had gone in and erased her from the manuscript, only it was more than just erasure. You can see the imprint of remains after erasure. No, it was more like someone had just hit the delete key while typing and had deleted all of Sylvia.
The doctor didn’t tell Mrs. Sylph about this sudden change in her body. He thought maybe it was in his own head, but later that night, he went over her file, and in all the other sonograms, there’s another small, distinct body. Up until she gave birth, Mrs. Sylph expected to have conjoined twins, and when just one small wrinkled glob of baby came out instead of two, and after it smashed its eyes and cried, suddenly, no one remembered he should have had a sister. Even the pictures forgot.
*
A Rumor Dispelled
The sea has not become any more or less salty since that one decisive moment. We would like to think differently, that eventually, we can actually correct the mistakes someone else made at some other point in time, but we can’t. This is the state of things. We must accept it. The sea is full of salt, and it will remain so until we can invent a mechanism to remove it, and even then, the mermen will make sure the memory of salt remains, if only as an afterthought, if only as a final act of revenge.
(more)
Lily Hoang reads from 'Changing' (10:00)
Lily Hoang's 'Invisible Women' (sketch; 1:16)
----
*
p.s. Hey. I'm starting this late, so I'll jump right in. ** Colin, Hey, C. I suppose you saw that Ron Silliman referred to your Perlongher post as great and linked to it on his blog. I thought that was very cool. Dude knows his poetry. ** David Ehrenstein, Huppert is a god, no question there. I couldn't possibly be less interested in reading that new Franzen novel. I thought 'The Corrections' was faux-literary, gussied up mainstream crap, and, in any case, his infamous, reactionary review of/ assault on Gaddis and experimental fiction sealed his work's coffin for me until further notice. ** Allesfliesst, Hey. Obviously, I'm very interested in the sound of your abstract for that symposium. Did you nail it? Anything you can say about it? Even if it falls on deaf-ish ears at the symposium, you can publish it and give the piece its proper reach, yes? ** Scunnard, Hi, man. Sorry you're down with the germs. You mean the 16th of this month? Yeah, I'll definitely be here. We'll be recording the 'Jerk' radio play in English on the 17th, but, otherwise, I'll be here working and definitely want to meet up. Where are you staying? We can make a plan as soon as you're prepared to. Awesome news! For now, feel much, much better. ** Dan Callahan, Hey. I've got that book in my sights, and my sights will be bookstore-enclosed in the next day or two. You're writing a critical study of the films of Barbara Stanwyck? What a superb project! Literally two days ago I was talking with someone in Paris, a film buff very into the era of American film in which she worked, about how rarely she seems to be mentioned in recent years, and how odd and unfair that is. That's fantastic news all around, Dan! Can't wait for that. Mega-congrats! ** Oscar B, I guess you'll be here when you read this? So you can tell me about the show and opening, yeah? Call me when you're back, if you feel up to it. And tomorrow for 'Piranha 3D' sounds perfect. Michael and that bass playing guy talked to Chrystel about our show, and there's a tentative date, I think, that we can discuss upon your arrival. Welcome home. ** Misanthrope, Relieved to hear your mom got the all-clear sign. I'll have to catch up on 'Weeds' via DVD some day, I guess. France just launched its own version of 'Master Chef'. I've been looking for a new TV show addiction ever since 'Interville' and 'Star Academy' got axed, and I think 'MC' might be my new baby. ** Pilgarlic, I join Plexus in urging Coil's 'Horse Rotorvator' on you, as far as a good starting point for their early work goes. It's like the British 'Locust Abortion Technician' in a way. Very high compliment. One of these days I'm going to find out what they play over the loudspeakers in Paris' big, most notorious sex/SM club whose name I forget. I'm such an early to bed type is the problem. I had an invitation to go there a few years ago with Gaspar Noe and Peter Sotos, and I didn't even take that offer, which now seems utterly insane to me. ** Syreearmwellion, Ha ha, oh no, the novel with a capital T and N is doing just fine. I'd even say it's rarely if ever been healthier, in the US at least. You're back to work on your novel? Excellent. Man, I would love to hear how that goes or what you're planning, writing, etc. if you're so inclined along the way. In addition to my interest in your work in general, I'm a serious process junkie. ** Bill, Hey. Oh, in the past I suppose I did whatever I'm doing now when my novels-in-progress grew murderous, which is, hm, basically to just work on what's in front of me in a mechanical way and try not to think beyond each problem's successful repair. Tentatively but pretty firmly, 'Jerk' will play in LA next June. The context (Under the Radar Festival West) is known, but the exact venue is undecided. ** Heliotrope, Hey, Mark! Oh, with my dad, it's just this gradual decay, faculty by faculty. One hopes for little plateaus along the way. It's inevitable and very disturbing if somewhat familiar because of mom's final declining. Ugh. You know, man. As of today, I'm in a determined, nose to the grindstone state of mind re: my novel. That's the only way it's going to get finished, so I'm hoping to stay as dutiful and unemotional as I possibly can. Oh no, not the black horse! I'm glad you're sending him packing, obviously. Yeah, tell me more when I see you. Or we could Skype talk. Do you have Skype? Surely. So, the Dodgers are basically suck city this year, right? I'm trying to follow them over here, and it seems pretty doomy. But Vin is staying one more year! Love for you and love for J. ** Alan, Hey. You know, actually, everything you wrote is entirely applicable to what I'm going through with my novel right now. So, I thank you a whole lot for saying that. The thing with this novel is that I chose to construct and work with an unnatural voice. As difficult as my earlier novels were to get right, I could fall back on my natural instincts and patterns, and that removed a significant level of the problems I faced. With this one, I can't do that, and every sentence requires very detailed attention, and that attention involves working with rules and strictures that are more imposed upon me than I'm accustomed to, and the work is much more laborious and tiring. I'm confident that the material I want and need is all there, and that the complicated interiority and the points at which the substructures surface in the style are resolved in a raw state, but the finessing part is so taxing, more taxing than I'm used to. Anyway, I'm trying to be all about completion for now, and I'm trying to be accepting of what that is taking out of me, and we'll see. But if I write one more novel after this one as is my goal, I will never, ever, ever work like this gain, that's for fucking damned sure, ha ha. Anyway, blah blah, thanks, Alan. How is your novel treating you right now? ** Edward Cole, Hi, Edward. The Salter book that was recommended to me is 'A Sport and a Pastime'. If I've read him to this point, it's been stories or bits and pieces. Well, that quote you pulled is hugely problematic, of course. Hm, I guess I'm intrigued enough to go ahead and give that novel a go, but I will definitely keep my eyes and senses peeled for any shit like that. Thank you. How are you doing? You blog continues to provide wonderfully. Fascinating read on 'Imperial Bedrooms', which I still haven't read, weirdly. Everyone, over on d.l. Edward Cole's blog The Red Necktie Journal are terrific recent entries on Polanski's 'Repulsion', 'Imperial Bedrooms', a bunch of Sun Kil Moon videos, and more. Highly recommended if you haven't been over there lately. ** Christopher/ Mark, Hey, Mark. Mm, yeah, I didn't like 'The Corrections', but, like I said to David E, his neo-con attack on experimental fiction didn't exactly endear him to me on a basic level. You good? ** Im not an asbo im your next Prime minister, Hey. You must have been in southern France. Fucking hell, it's hot down there. Even now, I think. Paris barely has summers. Paris is the gift that keeps on giving. One could easily get super paranoid about being on Facebook with good reason, I'm sure. It just begs for conspiracy theories. It's like the online Area 54 or something. Since I've already fucked up my office holding prospects via my novels, I figure I'm immunized against FB's evil or something. ** Steevee, Thanks for the kind thoughts, Steve. I tried Percocet once, and I didn't like the feeling one little bit. I think it hit me basically the way it hit you. ** Davidc, Malta, very nice! Oh, work is finally going to change as per the hopes you mentioned in Paris, I hope? Maybe I'll get to see you in NYC. I might be there for the whole run of 'Them'. Probably not, but maybe. Lovely to see you, D., and give my love to your hubby. ** Plexus, Gabester! Can you use that possible new job or job-ette as an excuse to get away from your dad's place early? Don't dads think their sons earning money in the traditional way is the most important thing their sons can possibly do? I say you should apply. Being a writer has a lot of sucking power too, just to forewarn you. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. My least favorite food? Hm. Well, I'm not going to pick a meat item since I'm a vegetarian and that would be cheating, so ... Either asparagus, yams/sweet potatoes, or beets. I can't choice between those three utterly vile, supposedly edible items. What's your least favorite food then? What's your favorite food, while you're at it? Mine would be either cold sesame noodle or wedding cake. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Oh, that's really nice to hear. I mean the compliment from the Rivette site maestro. Thanks a lot for passing that along. Interesting about what Gibson said. Rings a bell, yeah, although I think my hell has hit a little earlier in the process than his. My novel's mid-life crisis, I hope. Anyway, I'm back to working and not thinking too much now, and I hope that makes the process less emotionally fragile. Thanks much, man. ** JW Veldhoen, I know, with all these veils of mine, I'd better be careful I don't get banned in France. I would say you're very transparent and that it is your transparence itself that's circuitous rather than you. ** Sypha, Hey, James. Like an abnormally famous UFO sighting? That's interesting, yes. ** Will Decker, Ah, you watched 'Providence'! Very cool! Oh, well, I suppose I thought Gielgud's fears, etc. about his children were revealed as aspects of the fictional characters that he based on his children in the novel he was writing by the film's rather more tender if sad end. No, that's not what writing is like for me. Yet anyway, ha ha. I only write in the daylight hours for one thing. Anyway, I'm glad you sought out the film. 'Providence' coincidentally has been something of a very strong influence on the novel I'm writing. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey, Yeah, I think the maze/ installation/ theater piece could be really good. It's going to be kind of like walking through spooky house maze and kind of like being a character in a mazey video game. More news as we get further into the development phase, but I'm excited. That 'going to rain any second but never does' weather was all over Paris for a few days recently. It was exciting, I must say. Your day report didn't suck in the slightest, nononono, ha ha! My day, pretty lowkey, I'm afraid. Uh, I eventually got exiled by the cleaning crew. I used my time away to check out the new issue of Dazed & Confused 'cos I did a 'pick to click' thing/ page in there about the writer Ben Brooks, and I wanted to see what it looked like. It looked fine, but the issue didn't seem all that enthralling, so I didn't buy it. I bought the new Mojo and a muffin (blueberry, very good) and food, cigarettes. I read the Mojo and ate the muffin then smoked while waiting for my room to be clean enough for me to reenter. Then I worked on my novel in a determined fashion while fighting off the despair the work caused me reasonably well. I paused occasionally to de-tire my brain with email -- offer to teach writing at a summer writing program, someone asking for my autograph, Gisele asking me a question, etc. -- or porn -- Roxy Red! -- or a smoke, etc. Eventually, I couldn't go on. I think I made a blog post. I think I thought about straightening up my room but didn't. Yury came home. We watched the streaming Apple announcement event. I ate. Yury was going to go jogging, but he fell asleep. Not much else. Not much of a day. And now it's today, but, first, today is all yours. So, tell me about it. ** 'Stoopid Slapped Puppies', Hi, Nick! Everything's ... uh, so-so. That's the best I can do. What about everything with you? Is your back invisible again? How's writing? How's the weather? Ours is pretty nice. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Thank you, thank you once again and infinitely. Friends who let friends help them are good friends, not to mention the helpers. Really, friendship is just the nicest thing in the whole world. Actually, you know, the Oblique Strategies outcomes were spot on. I was trying to do their bidding, and now I will proceed with the approval of the organized unknowable, which is very helpful. Thank you for your hands' kind assistance. ** With that, you get three recent-ish books that I appear to have thought very highly of to dwell on as you see fit for the day. See you again once this goal has been accomplished.
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