Recommending Beckett at Post Road

Just noticed that Post Road has posted my recommendation of "First Love" by Samuel Beckett, which appeared in issue 21(Fall/Winter 2010).

Post Road 21 is a great issue, with work from Michael Martone, Michael Kimball, Meredith Steinbach, and many others. Recommendations is a running feature in Post Road. Authors share brief appreciations of their favorite (and often overlooked) books.

Here's a clip from my recommendation of "First Love":

"The unnamed narrator of "First Love" will be familiar to you. You've met him before. He is much like Molloy and Malone and the unnamed narrator in The Unnameable. He is not unlike Belacqua from Beckett's short story "Dante and the Lobster"—he even uses the term "lepping." And like Krapp, he has a taste for bananas. But while Belacqua's first love is blissful Beatrice, from Dante's Inferno, and Krapp spools and re-spools his recorded memory of lovingly reading a "page a day, with tears" of Fontane's Effi Briest, the narrator of "First Love" is less literary and more corporeal: he marries a prostitute named Lulu."

Read it all...at Post Road.

Ampersand Review

Richard Thomas gave Ampersand, Mass. a pretty thorough read over at the The Nervous Breakdown.

"These tales run the gamut from fantastical and bizarre to sweet and touching to heartbreaking and morose. Sounds like life—like most towns, big or small. But in his unique point of view, Walsh unveils relationships that are familiar, and yet, not quite right—a twist or oddity that makes these tales his own."

Thanks to Richard and TNB.

Research Notes

I've got a Research Notes piece on Unknown Arts at Necessary Fiction.

It's all about the research. I don't have a PhD. That's not an apology. Unless you want an apology. In that case, sorry I don't have a PhD.

OK?

I am a man of constant borrow...

Unknown Arts is available for pre-order at Keyhole Press. $14.95, includes shipping.

Release date is February 2, 2012.

Order information for digital editions soon to follow.

It's a collection of 40 borrowings from Joyce's Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake, Exiles, Pomes Pennyeach, Chamber Music, Giacomo Joyce, and his collected letters.

A few of these poems and text pieces have appeared in a few journals over the last few years, namely elimae, Artifice, Admit2, Big Other, Annalemma, Mudluscious, Monkeybicylce, FlatmanCrooked, The Scrambler, and H_NGM_N. Thanks to the good folks running those fine journals.

And special thanks to Keyhole Press for sticking its neck out--again.

UNKNOWN ARTS

Unknown Arts is coming very soon.

Texts and poems derived from the works of James Joyce. A few have appeared here and there. In Artifice #1, elimae, Admit 2, The Scrambler, Mudluscious, Monkeybicycle, and elsewhere.

The image on the front cover is a St. Brigid's Cross made from McDonalds' straws.

Here's what's on the back cover:

Unknown Arts, to use a Joycean coinage, is a thinkling. Walsh offers a series of critical appropriations—poems, stories, and a silent play—drawn from Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, and more. "Enjombyourselves thurily!"

"Art critic Thomas Hess found that the only worthwhile criticism of a work of art is another work of art. William Walsh must feel this too, because he does not merely document and rearrange Joyce's work here—he makes, with Joyce's materials, his own music. Each piece is a lovely read, and a reminder not of totemic, hallowed literature, but of how personal and playful the act of reading really is."
- Darcie Dennigan, Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse (Fordham University Press)

"A mixup, an accumulation; William Walsh faithfully divines James Joyce and his multiflex bodies. Here is a man (two men, I mean, meant to mingle, both) once won of song and slave to rhythm; sum dumb, fully plumbed. Here is a truly prazeful recapitulation! Read."
- Ken Baumann, Solip (Tyrant Books)

More informaton to follow...

Hello Week iPhone/iPad Story App

Touchoo Books has released our children's story "Hello Week" as a neat little book app. And coming soon for Android devices.

It's about a little boy who has a one-word vocabulary. That word is hello. He says hello to everything that he sees for one week.

It's only $2.99 at the iTunes store, and it's totally charming. C'mon.

HELLO WEEK

Touchoo Books has posted a Q&A with me and Kim Edge-Ambler about our forthcoming children's book-app, "Hello Week." It's a childrens' story told in rhyme with super charming illustrations by Kim. You can read it to your kids from your iPhone, iPad, or other touchscreen device. More details to follow...

Flowersday

Celebrating Bloomsday today with a piece up at No News Today called "Flowers of Idleness, which tracks Henry Flower, Bloom's alias, as he appears in episode five of Ulysses, Lotus Eaters. Thanks to Robert Lopez for letting me share this news today at No News Today.

RE:Telling

RE:Telling, an anthology of short stories (and some poems) told with borrowed premises, appropriated characters, and stolen settings, is available now from Ampersand Books.

RE:Telling is Matt Bell, Roxane Gay, Molly Gaudry, Daniel Grandbois, Joseph Riippi, Zachary Mason, Samantha Hunt, Pedro Ponce, Jesse Bradley, Darcie Dennigan, Alicia Gifford, Jim Ruland, Josh Maday, Steve Himmer, Erin Fitzgerald, Curtis Smith, Timothy Gager, Shya Scanlon, Tom LaFarge, Lily Hoang & Kathleen Rooney, Jeff Brewer, Crispin Best, Peter Conners, Teresa Buzzard, Michael Kimball, Corey Mesler, Heather Fowler, Henry Jenkins, Wendy Walker, Michael Martone, and Blake Butler.

RE:Telling riffs on Shakespeare, cartoon characters, folklore and nursery rhyme, video games, stage drama, mythology, popular novels, movies, television, the Old Testament, and more.

RE:Telling is available at Amazon, Small Press Distribution, and Ampersand Books.

RE:Telling has a Tumblr with contributor interviews and other important content.

RE:Telling has been reviewed (so far) at TimeOut Chicago and Prick of the Spindle.

RE:Telling is at GoodReads, so you can add it to your bookshelf.

Here's a preview of RE: Telling featuring work from Matt Bell, Roxane Gay, Molly Gaudry, and Teresa Buzzard.

Open publication - Free publishing - More anthology

"O!" in H_NGM_N #11

"O!" a poem derived from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, is featured in the "From" section of H_NGM_N # 11.

"O!" tracks the sentences in the novel that end like this: o!

Check it out!

Small Press Saturday @ Newtonville Books

I'll be reading this Saturday, October 2nd at Newtonville Books. Show starts at 2PM.

Small Press Saturday features Ampersand Books, Dzanc Books, Madras Press, Rose Metal Press, and Small Anchor Press.

Here's the rundown:

Ampersand Books: Benjamin Lowenkron will read from PREACHER'S BLUES

Dzanc Books: William Walsh and Myfanwy Collins will read from THE BEST OF THE WEB 2010

Madras Press: Editor Sumanth Prabhaker will read "A Manual for Sons" by Donald Barthelme, the first Madras Press Classic Reprint

Rose Metal Press: Adam Golaski will read from COLOR PLATES

Small Anchor Press: Joseph McElroy will read from PREPARATIONS FOR SEARCH

Newtonville Books is located at 296 Walnut Street in Newton, Massachusetts.

Salem Lit Fest is NOT Witchy

I'll be reading at the Salem Literary Festival on Saturday, September 18th (5PM - 7PM).

It's Quick Fiction's Utter Amazement program at Gulu-Gulu Cafe. The big news is who I'm reading with. Quite a lineup: Steve Almond, Kim Chinquee, Myfanwy Collins, Brian Evenson, and Michael Thurston.

It's in Salem, Mass. But, again, it's not witchy.

Money Getting

Been running a serial at The Kenyon Review Blog called Money Getting. It's a verse digest of P.T. Barnum's The Art of Money Getting (1880).

Here's a sample of how a verse digest works...

Original sentence:

"It is a slavish position to get in, yet we find many a young man, hardly out of his "teens," running in debt."

That sentence digested in verse:

a slavish position
running in debt

So far, seven of twenty-three parts posted: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII.

Bloomsday 2010 Shenanigans

Rejoycing this Bloomsday on the web , June 16, 2010:

- A Blooming at Annalemma.

- A stroll though Dublin with Father Conmee at Artifice.

- A Pounding from Pound and a nine-parted gestation at Big Other

- A stout piece at Keyhole Press.

- A letter to Bloom at Letters With Character, the blog inspired by Ben Greenman’s new collection What He’s Poised To Do (Harper Perennial). LWC is running as many letters to Bloom as they can get today.

- A salute to Poldy at The Kenyon Review Blog.

MANY THANKS to John Madera, Chris Heavener, Peter Cole, Ben Greenman, James Tadd Adcox, and Rebekah Silverman for celebrating Bloomsday 2010 with me.

Recent Pathologies on the Web

Some good words on Pathologies from Chris Heavener, publisher of Annalemma:

"Walsh slices his characters thin, then chooses which slice will show you their eventual trajectory."

Read the whole post here.

And J.A. Tyler, author of Inconceivable Wilson and the man behind Mudluscious Press, presents "A Partial Study of these Pathologies" at Big Other:

"...Walsh’s Pathologies, in its seventeen micro-fictions, has a clear through-line & a vibrant arc..."

Read the whole post and comments here.

And Timmy Waldron, author of World Takes, had some pathological questions to ask me at Word Riot, like:

Timmy: Many of these stories have surreal elements to them, but you never take these stories into the impossible. Could you talk about this type of writing and what draws you to this kind of hyper reality?

William: I like the story-ness of stories. Fiction shouldn’t try to be too realistic. Fiction is portrait and fiction is landscape, but fiction is not real. Stories should be an examination or dramatization of an idea or a feeling. A story should also bring a reader to know something or feel something new.

Read the whole Q&A here.

Finally, some sharp readers (like Ben Tanzer, Kathy Fish, Marc Lowe, Tim Jones-Yelvington, Jason Jordan) posted some sweet ratings of Pathologies at GoodReads.