Art

Issue #16 Cover and Contributors

Although Issue #16 was originally slated for publication May 1, in light of the ongoing pandemic that began early this year, we made the decision to delay publication of the issue to August 1 and place Into the Void on hiatus. Now, with August rapidly approaching, we are thrilled to reveal the cover art and contributors to Issue #16. We’re extremely excited about how this issue has turned out. It may even be our favorite ever.

The stunning cover art, pictured above, is “She Was Happily Dancing with the Fire” by Spanish artist Fares Micue. The saying goes “a picture paints a thousand words” and rarely has that been so true as it is for Micue’s evocative piece.

Below is the list of highly talented writers and visual artists included in this issue of Into the Void. The issue publishes August 1 in print and online and will be available for purchase then. Alternatively, you can snag a one-year print subscription to Into the Void which offers 50% off the cost of single issues and includes full access to our website; or a one-year online subscription offering full access to our website.

FICTION

Renoir Gaither
Tim Hanson
Katie Hochschild
Michael Kozart
Cyrena Lee
Eric Williams
Gregg Williard

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Nicholas DelloRusso
Warren Stoddard II

POETRY

John Amen
Robert Beveridge
DAH
Steve Denehan
Anthony J. Dennis
Frank Dullaghan
River E. Hall
Atsushi Ikeda
henry 7. reneau, jr.
Sheree La Puma
John Sweet
Brendan Walsh
Tori Grant Welhouse
Beth Oast Williams

VISUAL ART

Natalie Christensen
Breehan James
Yadi Liu
Fares Micue
Valerie Patterson
Ernst Perdriel
Taylor Wang

REVIEWS

Asylum Garden: After Van Gogh by Alan Catlin reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp
ÜberChef USA by Jennifer Juneau reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp

INTERVIEW

Sarah Elaine Smith interviewed by Anthony Koranda


The Pugilist: A Boxing Column (#10)

Boxing is immediately a visual sport. The stories always come, but they come later. Right away it’s figurative. We see two bodies penned in by ropes (which we intuit to mean “yet-to-be-tamed”). No apparatus, save for the gloves (the gloves! beautiful paradox: they cushion the hands but also weaponize them). It’s a sport that feels almost designed to elicit singular, riveting images.

It seems only natural that artists of all stripes have been attracted to prizefighting. Every artist brings a style to the sport. And those images connect them to stories, illustrating them (literally and figuratively). Edweard Muybridge. George Bellows. Leroy Nieman. Martin Scorsese. Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Add to that list the name Damien Burton.

I started seeing his work on the website The Fight City, where his work is featured regularly. He specializes in portraits of individual fighters, and they are eye-catching. The first drawings of his I saw were simple black and white ink portraits, lots of angular lines conveying the muscle and the mass of their subject, suggestive of movement captured in the stillness of the image. Sometimes he makes use of contrasting styles within a single image, as he did in a painting for the cover of Boxing News magazine. He was generous enough to talk with me (via email) about boxing and art.

DB: I think my interest in boxing derives from the personal nature of it; no team, no reliance on sophisticated equipment or technologies. Just two guys, in direct competition, each trying to very literally beat the other. In my arty-farty mind something about the purity of it fascinated me.

I’d always found myself drawn to portraiture, always found interest in pondering the stories behind portraits.

Fiction writers have a habit of writing up grisly portraits of their fighters’ faces, as though boxing were some protracted kind of sculpture, the head like a lump of clay, shaped over the course years, leather gloves battering and fashioning this work of art. I understand the fascination. One way to depict violence is not to show the violence itself, but to trace the way it has molded its participants, shaped them.

DB: Sometimes I’ll see someone with a face I just want to draw, paint, whatever, whether in a realistic portrait style or as a caricature. Tom Sharkey was one of those; that great, old-timey boxer look. Thick neck, cauliflower ear, very broad and unsubtle features. Toney was another with his wide jaw, that sullen pouty frown and his shiny bald dome looking like an upturned Bullet Bill from the Mario games. Greb – I love the old-time guys with their outdated “fighter” stances, slicked-back hair and inevitably flattened or bent noses).

It’s the details in a drawing that begin to tell the story. What the artist chooses to focus on impacts what the viewer focuses on. There’s also the matter of style – how we tell the story is often just as important as the story itself.

DB: I’m not sure how I’d describe my style. I certainly don’t feel it’s fully developed yet; there’s always something new to experiment with, or someone to discover for the first time and draw fresh inspiration from.

I’m a luddite, there’s something I find so fascinating in discovering how techniques work, whether that’s sculpting, printmaking, drawing, painting…there’s a genuine excitement to be had in first learning the techniques but then also in discovering new ways they can be applied.

I check out his Instagram, where he posts finished images but also works-in-progress. I can see the experimentation immediately, the playing with styles and techniques. Last Fall, for example, he was carving tiny heads out of sculpey clay at 1/6 scale.

He works prodigiously fast. Practically every day it seems he’s got a new drawing posted on social media. Recently, he’s been working on caricatures, drawn in monochromatic blue.

Gentleman Jim Corbett

DB: One thing that is a constant is when I’m working in colour, I don’t use black. I can’t remember who said it, or when, but I recall years and years ago hearing how it deadens an image; that there’s no black in nature so using it in an image can seem jarring. Crows for example look black at a glance but they aren’t; they’re a myriad of oil-slick hues of green, blue, purple, and so forth.

When I’m working I’ll usually listen to music but that can be anything from Fats Domino to GWAR, via Dolly Parton.

I’m so impressed by the way he puts his work out into the world. Occasionally he will post timelapse videos of himself at work. They’re incredible to watch, the empty page slowly giving way to the image of a fighter. They make me think about how I, as a writer, work – what my process looks like. And how absolutely awful a timelapse of me sitting at my laptop would be for the audience, all my indecision, my fits and starts, hemming and hawing over the deletion of a comma, only to add it back later.

DB: A plain piece of paper can simultaneously be the source of great excitement but also of unimaginable anxiety.

I’ve grown accustomed over time to not being too precious with everything I do; some things work out, some don’t. If they don’t…what can I learn from it? I think I’m naturally a cynic so it takes effort for me to put a positive spin on a disaster, but I tell myself that so long as I’ve learnt SOMETHING, it’s not been a waste of time; that the benefits of that failure will become apparent in the future.

Another thing I think is overlooked is that we tend to look at what an artist (or writer, musician, actor, etc) has produced and there’s an inclination to sort of accept that they’re just good at what they do, that everything turns out great every time, but it’s really important to remember that the artist has editorial agency over what of their work is seen by the public. I’ve binned so many crappy, failed attempts I’ve lost count, but you – the public – don’t see those. The same is true I’m sure for even the most accomplished in any field. I’m sure Laurence Olivier had his bloopers, right?

Throughout his work in different media, elements of his style remain evident. I begin to understand the way he tells his stories. I wonder about the portraiture, about the focus on the boxer and not the boxing. I wonder about this: why not draw action shots?

Harry Greb, aka “The Pittsburgh Windmill”

DB: I think too often they look awkward, with both guys throwing simultaneously in a manner that’s not really accurate in portraying the real ebb-and-flow of a fight. That’s not to say those pieces don’t look great sometimes, but personally I prefer something with a more realistic narrative to it; the cause and effect of a surge from one fighter as their opponent tries to weather the storm.

It’s clear he is a boxing fan himself. And boxing fans are a special, obsessive breed. Other sports are known for fans who memorize large quantities of statistics, but boxing fans stockpile stories. When I ask him about his style or his artistic process, Burton is humble and brief. But I challenge him to name one fight he would recommend people watch, and I have to edit his response down for length.

DB: The one fight that keeps coming to mind as I ponder the question is Benn-McClellan. Primarily, for me at least, it has nostalgic value, but in addition to that it’s a classic story of the underdog upsetting the apple-cart; David vs Goliath; an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. There was a backstory; Benn was always a guy whose emotions ran near to the surface and McClellan had been destroying opponents in highlight reel fashion.

It took place toward the end of what, in my memory at least, had been a sort of hazy golden era for British boxing. The fight itself was so very fan-friendly, real blood-and-guts stuff with drama, controversy, and a real ebb-and-flow, but also paradoxically one of those fights I feel guilty enjoying because it’s so apparent both guys are laying it all on the line in ways that will leave them changed forever, both physically and psychologically, and that’s without the full extent of what happened afterward. You had Benn fighting like a man possessed, being spurred on by that towering monolith of muscle, Bruno, ringside in a very nineties suit; living the fight blow-by-blow as he cheered Benn on.

It’s been (understandably) overshadowed by the post-fight events, which is a shame because without that shadow it’s a great example of why boxing, on its best day, is untouchable as a sporting spectacle.

And if there is one fight he would want to go back and sit ringside for?

DB: Probably Ali-Frazier or Hagler-Hearns, the chief reason being to absorb the atmosphere of being there. We can all go online and watch these fights from bygone eras, and sure there are fights that weren’t televised at all, or fights where the footage has been lost, but fights like Ali-Frazier and Hagler-Hearns have transcended the sport to the point where they’re instantly recognisable from even the briefest of clips or a single still, but the being there; being in the moment…that’s gone forever.

To see more of his work, follow Damien Burton on Twitter via @Mr_Yib or Instagram @burtonart. Better yet, head over to his Etsy page and support the artist by purchasing a print or two of his work.

 

Issue #15 Cover and Contributors

Issue #15 publishes Feb. 1 (which is also when submissions to Issue #16 open!). It will be our first issue distributed by our new distributors Magazines Canada, which means Into the Void will be stocked at independent and Chapters/Indigo bookstores nationwide. We’ve also teamed up with a new printers based here in Ontario and the print magazine has never looked better.

Issue #15 is an excellent and eclectic one of stunning pieces from a diverse group of writers and visual artists. As always the print run is limited and will sell out.

The contributors to Issue #15 are below, and the evocative cover art pictured above is “White Orchid” by Ontario-based Liana Russwurm.

FICTION

Kate Felix
Alec Hutchinson
Kevin Rippin
Charlie Scaturro
Grace Q. Song
Brendan Stephens

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Nishat Ahmed
Rachel Sussman

POETRY

Nicholas Alti
Derek Annis
Nico Antuna Cooper
Matt Duggan
Katherine Fallon
Robert Manaster
Samuel Mangold-Lenett
Ed Meek
Kathleen Naureckas
Brian Rihlmann
Keith Stahl
Josh Stewart
Scott Strom
Ann Thomson
Jim Trainer

VISUAL ART

Jodie Day
Mairead Dunne
Martina Furlong
Sasha Giniger
Theodore Heublein
Mars Lauderbaugh
Aimee Melaugh
Chalice Mitchell
Liana Russwurm
Ben Ryan
Spyros Verykios

REVIEWS

Sly Bang by Larissa Shmailo reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp
That Summer by Robert Cooperman reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp

INTERVIEW

Writers-in-Conversation between Randy Nikkel Schroeder and Niall Howell


Issue 14 Cover Art and Contributors Reveal

Issue 14 drops October 25 and is jam-packed with goods, from a short story about a life of addiction and imprisonment to a poem about rejecting the “old” of old age.

The contributors to Issue 14 are below, and the evocative cover art pictured above is “Full Moon River Run” by three-time contributor Danielle Klebes.

FICTION

Sarah Enamorado
Anita Goveas
Don McLellan
Jessica Michael
Melissa Rosato
Erin Cecilia Thomas

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Bella Braxton
Margot Parmenter
Ellis Scott
Emily Weber

POETRY

Terry Allen
David Appelbaum
Mark Bolsover
Charlie Brice
Kelly Canaday
German Dario
George Franklin
Matthew James Friday
Joan Gerstein
Alastair Hesp
Jasmine Ledesma
Robyn Maree Pickens
Kevin Ridgeway
Brad Rose
Natalie Schriefer
John Yamrus

VISUAL ART

Alana Barton
Zoran Crncevic
Christine Kennard
Danielle Klebes
Rachel Lawell
Mahrinnart
Christopher Colm Morrin
Susana Quevedo
Aga Siwczyk
Andreea Zimbru

REVIEWS

Scattered Clouds: New & Selected Poems by Reuben Jackson reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp
The Dog Seated Next to Me by Meg Pokrass reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp


Issue 11 Cover Reveal

We’re super excited to reveal the gorgeous cover of Issue 11, “Stray” by Danielle Klebes. Danielle is a supremely talented artist we’ve had the pleasure of publishing before. Check out her work at her website.

This issue is phenomenal, and includes the three winning stories of the 2018 Into the Void Fiction Prize. We’ll be announcing the contributors tomorrow, so stay tuned!


The Coarse Grind: Part 11: Year’s End Blues

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. . . thoughts inside my head get lost inside the haunted house . . .
—Ryan Adams, “My Wrecking Ball”

for Shanti

The Year of the Cock’s been beheaded. It’s run to ground after last throes running round the barnyard spurting blood up to the sky in a fountain. Chicken Little is dead and the sky has fallen down. The pundits yap and yammer, but underneath those tired tropes and yarns on the wire, and beneath the heads of steam and blather from the President and Congress, is the reality we’re all being fed. It’s all a line and will be until journalism prevails and otherwise propaganda and sloganeering. In far less ominous tones, the news is only entertainment. We’re the worst part and by we I mean you and me, Brother. Sister. We’ve taken to this complicit role stationary. The News and outrage culture is how we distract ourselves. The world is a cold and dark place where the rich get richer and the poor are stripped of healthcare or die in a border jail, and we watch it all from a screen.There are more perfect exemplars and warriors of true journalism than me out there to go at it—this diaphanous and quarreling mass, and pull out whatever spark of truth can be garnered from the New Century. Even when no truth is gleaned, the work of these great intelligences is to our benefit. What I mean is no answer is an answer and that’s heaps better than what the masters want us to hear. It’s all a line they’re feeding you while they’ve got one hand in your pocket and the other on the strings. I’ll leave politics to those who do it well and I’ll stick to the inner life, report on the strange and grisly turns I’ve been taking in the Night Kitchen and otherwise report on the findings of an intronaut, if you will—let you know I’m still struggling and the struggle is real.

I’ve lost someone dear to me but nobody died. She didn’t move away or find somebody else. The truth is, she lost me and it was to depression. This column and posts at Going For The Throat are approximately a highlight reel and I’ve no compunction about that, either. Victories should be celebrated. Especially for lifetime sufferers of a depressive disorder. Negative self talk can reach debilitating levels, can run round and rampant in the mind and make you ashamed and feel awful about the past while leaving you in no shape to do better. Depression is as real as a black hole—it's got no bottom and the quality of its darkness is in worldly tones.Everything seems real until it’s not. You think your feet are on the ground until you realize you’re falling. I’ve mastered nothing and gone nowhere if, at the end of the day, with five collections published, I can’t discern when laying on my love seat for five days is a bad choice, or even a choice at all, and anyway what I prefer over the sweet, laughing company of a woman I adore. Loss is our greatest teacher here and I’m writing you, today, December 30th, just before the New Year with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. There’s a world map, screwed to the wooden fence in the carport, I can see from here. I drilled in the bottom corners at an angle so the screws wouldn’t jut out into the neighbors yard and scrape the snouts of their mutts. The result is the thing is getting blown out, sagging and waterlogged and the world is slowly sliding into the mud of the drive—getting heavy in the rain and anyway heading for the ground.

I don’t do Best Ofs and it’s not because I’m too cool. I’ve had, in turns, my head in a hole between listening to new releases from DOG Power, Winter Dust, Eddy Dyer, Protomartyr and re-releases from The Sweetheart Parade and Archers of Loaf. I haven’t read enough to rightly consider myself an informed writer. Anxiety and depression won that round. I wrote about the same beat and track I always pander and putter and I’m thankful for the work. The bottom of this tentative-at-best offering of The Coarse Grind has dropped out. I feel the familiar racked and curling fingers of dread, pulling up at me from the gut, phantoms very real and eager to swarm and strangle out any good feeling I’ve found writing this and spending this time together. Whatever. I’ve written my way out of depression enough times to consider it a career and work towards that end in 2019. I’ve become the columnist I always wanted to be, however different this beat is though. Uncle Hank‘s out there like a punk rock Twain, stalking the territory with a camera and restless mind. Doc Thompson banged on the doors of high offices closed to the people and he got in with a keen attention to detail and the utilitarian wisdom of an outlaw. Papa just reigned in his own way, deep in the solitude of his radio nights typing and his genius was the simple yet profound line. At least that’s how it looks from here.

I’ll never know the affliction these men suffered and they’ll never know mine. We only have their highlight reel, as sturdy and useful and joyous a torch that it is. They’ve got their blues and I’ve got mine. I’m still breathing and better. I’m still putting out work into the world. To read back over these columns is to know at once how vital those beat dog hours were, clinching on the day labor/night writing circuit. How bleeding and cutthroat it had to be which of course is overwrought and romantic and perfect for the written word—point is, looking back and all we can glean is vainglory. We forget the pain and as well we should. But not completely if only because our pain won’t forget about us. It’ll rear and choke out what we thought was our life. It’ll kill the rooster and chop off his head. If I could sum up why I hate formulaic essay-writing it would be the closure it offers and that I need so bad. See, this is where I continue my beheaded Year of the Cock metaphor into a pithy homily about chicken soup or sucking the marrow out the bone. Truth is, this year, Art has won the round and I’m happy and proud about that and in great appreciation and awe of you for helping me make that happen. Something else has won though too, and that’s depression. It’s made its presence known, set me to rights, sure, but not before it took someone I hold very dear. This of course is for you, Good Reader, and to another year pulling our heads out the oven and for her—whom I’ll have to treasure in my own private and solitary way, alone.


Can Artistic Influence Be Accidental?: Exploring Jonathan Lethem’s ‘The Ecstasy of Influence’

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The line was stolen, but I’d said it often enough to make it my own.
—Jonathan Lethem, Gun, with Occasional Music

I’ve been engaged in too many stupid arguments over the last several years, debates encompassing a whole host of topics, from the general study of ethics to attitudes of the homeless population in the United States, and even one spanning years that focused on the evolution of black metal as a subgenre of the extreme music scene. An unfortunate pattern evolved in every one of these arguments: my opponents all thought their positions were original thoughts or ideas. They couldn’t conceive of the possibility that what they were espousing had already been said before by someone else, as if originality is even really possible. In the argument about homeless people, for example, my opponent voiced a rendition of the bootstrap myth with no sense of irony, blissfully unaware that his position reeked of Calvinism and social Darwinism. I’ve been chewing on these arguments recently, not because I care about the outcome or trying to prove these people wrong, but because of Jonathan Lethem’s article, “The Ecstasy of Influence.”

Lethem opens this article with a discussion about where fiction comes from. He starts with the evolution of Lolita, from a short story written by an obscure author to the monolithic novel by Nabokov that it became, then goes into the music of Bob Dylan, a musician known for sampling words, quotes, and lyrics from every conceivable source, before finally laying out a truth that too many artists are afraid or unwilling to speak out loud: all art is stolen. Pablo Picasso is infamously quoted as having said “good artists borrow, great artists steal,” and Lethem is speaking truth to this claim, pointing out some of the best examples of artistry in the realms of fiction and music from the twentieth century were thieves. There’s another side to this claim that artists routinely take from other artists, one that often gets overlooked but is no less important: ideas do not exist within a vacuum.

Jonathan Lethem (MPR Photo/Euan Kerr)

If all artists steal to some degree, then it stands to reason that there has to be something for those artists to steal. Going back to my arguments, the opponent relying on the idea that a homeless person is able to just go get a job is presenting a form of the bootstrap myth whether or not they know that position as the bootstrap myth. They are using an argument made by others, stealing those others’ work, for their own purposes even if they don’t realize it. Accidental theft aside—for is willful ignorance ever really accidental?—the concept of the bootstrap myth had to exist in the social consciousness for this person to be able to utilize it as part of that debate. The same can be said of Lolita in the form of short story; that idea had to exist in some form before Nabokov could write his famous book. It should be noted that Lethem asks if Nabokov had ever even read Heinz von Lichberg’s short story. My point is that regardless of if Nabokov had read the story, it existed as part of the literary fabric. This begs the question, though, if theft can still be called theft if it is accidental. What if we change the word from theft to influence?

Can influence be accidental? Is it possible for an artist to be inspired by something without any conscious effort on their part? Absolutely! I would argue that there isn’t an artist—whether they be a writer, a musician, a painter, what have you—that hasn’t been inspired by something that they didn’t consciously seek out. However, I also don’t think we can conflate inspiration and influence. Let’s take writers for example: writers read, a lot; they consume fiction, nonfiction, poetry, ingredient lists, nutrition facts, Ikea instructions; and when they sit down to write, everything they have put into their head is available for use in whatever project they are pursuing. They might have been inspired to write that project because of a news headline or a street performer or a half-eaten bagel resting precariously on the lip of a garbage can. These moments, though, have no bearing on influence. Influence comes from what has been consumed.

To get a better picture of this, let’s look to Lethem’s first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music. This novel is a neo-noir powerhouse steeped in literary science fiction. This book oozes Raymond Chandler and Phillip K. Dick, as if the two authors had a lengthy discussion inside Lethem’s head as he wrote, constantly asking what would have happened if Phillip Marlowe found himself trapped in a world where Substance D was rampant on his streets. Every major review of this book commented on this odd coupling of hardboiled detective and outlandish sci-fi, claiming that it was this coupling that made the book so compelling. I tend to agree with these reviews, but want to take their comments one step further. I think Lethem was intentional in letting his influences shine through, that he set out to copy Raymond Chandler’s style and put it into a world that Phillip K. Dick would have created.

To fully unpack this idea of purposeful copying, of active theft, we need to first explore creative pursuits as a form of digestion. A human being eats or drink calories and nutrients; their digestive organs absorb what is necessary to sustain life; and their bodies then expel whatever remains as waste. Well, the act of creativity is a very similar process. A creative consumes the art they want to consume. For Lethem, that was very clearly detective stories from the 30s and 40s and science fiction stories from the 60s and 70s. Then, the creative digests these ideas and information, absorbing what they view as necessary for their work, discarding what they view as superfluous. It would be interesting to see Lethem’s earlier drafts of Gun; what other kinds of stories might he have originally been influenced by? While digesting, the creative is also marrying disparate ideas and thoughts together in their own head, playing with concepts that other creatives may not have thought to put together. Gun is a brilliant example of two genres mashed together that aren’t normally friendly to one another. Here is where the creative process differs from physical digestion: in digestion, it is waste that is expelled, waste that is defecated or regurgitated; in creation, it is the final product that is expelled. We could call creation a willful act of digestion.

What Lethem did in Gun, with Occasional Music was not just recognize that creation is an extension of consumption, but also actively engage with the works that influenced him. Consumption is often looked at as a very passive activity. It’s hard to argue with David Foster Wallace’s prognosis in Infinite Jest that there is an addictive quality to entertainment that could be exploited and lead to a loss of meaningful existence if it is consumed passively. This passivity is not the only option available to us, however. Lethem shows us in “The Ecstasy of Influence” and Gun, with Occasional Music that if one consumes with purpose, one can then create some very beautiful art. This article, coupled with this novel, provides a theoretical process for active consumption, an engagement with influences that recognizes not only their aesthetic value as works of art but also their functional value as pieces of the great artistic puzzle that can be changed and manipulated by other artists, and a practical example of this theory in work.

If Lethem stopped there, his argument would still have so much merit, but he keeps going. For the artistic community to be able to actively consume influences, for writers and other creators to be able to steal from other writers and creators, there has to be a framework in place to allow for such behavior. That isn’t the world in which we live, and Lethem spends a great deal of time in “The Ecstasy of Influence” railing against modern day copyright laws. His argument is that copyright laws don’t really protect individual artists, but instead are designed with corporations in mind, that these corporate entities are more often than not the ones reaping the benefits of the laws that were supposed to be designed with creators in mind.

Copyright laws protect the copyright holders from infringement on their intellectual property. Notice that I didn’t say creators, but copyright holders, because more often than not, some corporate entity—be it a record company or a publishing house—ends up with the rights to a given creator’s work. It’s a very unfortunate fact that this late in the game of capitalism, most of the creative industries still rely heavily on the old-world system of patronage, that in order to be a successful writer or painter or musician, you have to depend upon the benevolence of a patron (in this day and age, a publishing house or record company) to derive any sort of livable wages from your art. These corporate patrons have taken the rights to intellectual properties from their creators and held onto them. For a clear picture of this, just look to the mass exodus of artists and writers from Marvel Comics in the early 90s who went on to form Image Comics; these creators wanted more control of the characters they had created, and when Marvel said no, they left and started a company that still allows creators to keep the rights to their work. But what of Disney buying out Marvel? Since Disney is notorious for suing any and all who use characters and images that could even be construed as resembling some property it owns, so all this buy out really did was give the conglomerate more properties. More properties could mean more lawsuits.

This is Lethem’s quarrel over copyright laws. As a creator, he wants to make money off of his work, as every creator wants to do; but as a member of the community of artists, he wants his work and ideas to be available to others so that they can expound upon them. Just as he put a Raymond Chandler character inside of a Phillip K. Dick universe to see what would happen, he wants other creators to be able to use his ideas. Lethem is arguing for an artist-wide shared universe essentially, where many different creators have access to a wide range of publicly accessible properties, so that the best possible art can be created. One writer might have a good idea, but their follow-through could be terrible. Why not have another writer pick that idea up then, and see if they can make a better follow-through?

“The Ecstasy of Influence” was first published in 2007, several years before the controversy surrounding the Robin Thicke/Pharell Williams song “Blurred Lines.” In her most recent novel/academic essay, Anatomy of Thought-Fiction, musicologist Joanna Demers explores the legal case that erupted around the song and awarded the estate of Marvin Gaye damages and royalties. The trouble with this award, Demers points out, is that this was the first time that copying another musician’s style was viewed by the courts as a copyright infringement. This decision not only shook the music industry for creating such a precedent, but leads to many questions about the very nature of plagiarism and copyright infringement. I’m aware that this is a slippery slope fallacy, but what is to stop a company like Disney from suing individuals who merely copy their style now that this precedent has been established? What about the estates of Raymond Chandler or Phillip K. Dick going after Lethem? As Demers asks in her novel, should this case give us all pause, and will it do sufficient damage to the idea that creators should be active in consuming their influences? Will the act of theft in literature and art and music be fully outlawed by the legal code and what will that mean for creators going forward?

All art is stolen in one form or another, a reality Jonathan Lethem recognizes theoretically in the article, “The Ecstasy of Influence” and practically in the novel, Gun, with Occasional Music. Lethem doesn’t just let this reality stand, however, but explains that it is necessary for the continued sustainability of art in all its forms, arguing against the current state of copyright laws. Joanna Demers offers a bleaker picture in her own work (which is hard to classify as either fiction or nonfiction), Anatomy of Thought-Fiction, pointing out that copyright law is a tightening noose, that actively consuming influences and regurgitating something new based on that consumption might soon be against the law. In light of Demers’ exploration, is Lethem’s prescription of a healthy public catalogue even still possible? It’s kind of up to the writers and artists and musicians who create to decide.


The Coarse Grind: Part 9

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I have written every single day of my life since that day 69 years ago.
—Ray Bradbury

In one of Ray Bradbury’s “website talks” the prolific science fiction and fantasy author tells the story of how he became a writer. It was an apocryphal story of meeting Mr. Electro at the carnival, Labor Day Weekend 1932. His favorite uncle had passed, and on the way to the wake Bradbury insisted his Father stop the car. The twelve-year old hopped out and went down to the circus tent by the river. He’d seen Mr. Electro the night before, and, as was part of his act, he came out into the crowd and touched his sword to the heads of children in the front row. It was to Bradbury alone, however, that Mr. Electro leaned down and commanded him to “Live Forever!” Bradbury wanted to know why and what he meant. The answer Mr. Electro gave him that day set him off and down the path to becoming the writer he was to be. Bradbury concludes he had indeed found a way to live forever and it was in his work, like you do. I don’t have a similar story. Mine is at once utterly blue collar and mundane—two things quite often in tandem except for those hearty Pop-Pops of Ray Bradbury’s generation, and Philip Levine‘s poetry, who found a way to do what they had to without becoming bitter.

The bit about Bradbury is what they call a “lede” or “hook” in the Personal Journalism business—an intro, for narrow-brained plebes like me who were unfortunate enough to take a course called English Composition I or II in college. I failed II twice because I was working full-time, and the class was at seven a.m. but the bus to campus came at five; and my teacher was a white-bearded Hemmingwanabe who smoked cigarettes in the court with us and would’ve been a perfect shot for the stray bricks that crumbled off the buildings and littered the campus of Delaware County Community College that fall. The first time I failed was in night school, and my teacher called me fascist for liking Ayn Rand. He was a thin and weakly man; I don’t remember his name but I remember the aforementioned and hated prof with total recall. His name was Macaluso, Thomas—but I’ve really gone off the rails and should’ve failed a class that instructs on how to write persuasively. The truth is you're on your own in writing.If you can’t persuade the reader to believe you then you haven’t found your voice yet but even if you have you won’t make a living at it unless you supplement your income. Teaching is one way to do that. You can wear sweaters and look academic, thwart the ambitions of a punk-rocking bass player with an attitude problem and fondness for the Beats. Or, you can shuck and jive, like I have going on twenty-five years now and as recently as last night humping tables and coolers and serving Polomas to the Mexican mafia for $15/hr. It is what it is. I guess. Macaluso got a cush job at the community college and Trainer stands on his feet for eight hours straight. He gets a salary, I get a pocket full of ones and fives. His total literary output? I’m guessing it ain’t much and if it is it’s probably overwrought Jack London fare. Real correct and stoic. Perfect sentences and the like.

Fuck him. This isn’t about him. Or Ray Bradbury. That’ll wrap my lede though, and as you have correctly surmised, I blew it. I should’ve failed ENG COMP II twice and even if I took it a third time and had to suffer that prick again, failed it once more. My collusion of choice and fate happened years later, in public and on the digital pages of Going For The Throat, right around when the money ran out and I ended up owing the state close to $1,600 in overpayment of unemployment compensation while I drove drunk through the east side of Austin with a green-eyed nurse who wanted me to shove my cock down her throat. We all have regrets. She’s not one of them. I wish I had done her more, sure, but I became a writer when I started the blog. I took a really dumb path to be honest but it was the only one I knew. I know better than to try and maintain my working class status as a point of pride but it’s in no way to my shame either. You’re anything but wealthy in this country and you’re a sucker and that’s no deficit you were born with Brother. It’s just that it’s a sin to be poor and you’re a sucker to think it’d be any different until you can somehow scale the wide walls of the country club as an athlete or tech bro or dumb as dogshit celebrity and live out the rest of your rich life entitled and racist with the vampiric aristocracy and top two percent of “earners” in this country who have healthcare and security and nothing wrong every day.

Apocryphal tales about carnival barkers are the yarn you spin when you’re a successful science-fantasy writer. Your college prof was right and wrong about everything. You can’t go home again but if you’re anything like me I bet you wish you were teaching at community college right now, or if not somehow invested in the high wire act of writing despite the atrocities of your workaday life. You wish you could be inspired, find some way to call out into the wilderness or peer into the abyss, stop time and fetishize your pain, and cast yourself as the hero. Well that is where we part, good Reader. This 1,067 word missive has shattered and wiped its ass on every rule of English Comp, I and II. I should’ve stayed in school, work sucks and I’ve no idea how I’ll ever come through with next month’s column. But not this month. This month I bet on the muse and won. You either hang yourself or you hang it on the wall and it’s looking like the latter for me. I fucking nailed it up there and couldn’t think of a better place for it than where my college diploma should be.

Part 8


Issue 10 Cover Reveal

We’re delighted to reveal the vivid and mysterious cover of Issue 10, “Behind a Bush’ by Hanna Ilczyszyn. The issue goes live/on sale on October 25th! The excellent contributors will be revealed very soon. Stay tuned.


The Coarse Grind: Part 7 – So You Want to Be a Writer

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New Journalism

Christmas Eve ’95 I slept in Cromwell Park. I’d been thrown out of my Mom’s for not having health insurance. It needed to happen. And the rest . . . I suppose. What happened was I fell through about five years of daylabor and shitjobs, another five as a mad Boehme, three on the getting-sober circuit and shit, about three years working down here in the Pearl of the South. What also happened is I decided to be a writer. I had to be, as clichéd as that sounds. I was working a string of jobs that were boring the life out of me. I dealt with it the only way I knew how—with a typewriter and booze.

One of the first things I did when I got to Austin was get a library card. Checked out Locked In the Arms of a Crazy Life, a biography of Charles Bukowski by Howard Sounes. It was profound for me to discover the great poet had started writing poetry at the age of 35. I was 34.  Another thing I did when I got down here was pitch to Verbicide Magazine and write blues legend Steve James a letter, saying hello and asking for an interview. Those first months in Austin were a fertile time, days and months planting seeds and business cards. It was like I landed, dropped my bags and said, “In 3 years I will be a writer.”

Then I got a job. Then I got laid off.  I stayed on unemployment way past any reasonable amount of time, and fell sadly short of my goal of becoming a writer in three years. I had to go back to work. It was one of many crises of doubt I had experienced, going all the way back to being homeless in my hometown in 1995. I wanted to be a writer. I landed a live-in gig, in a big yellow mansion inconveniently located off West 6th. A perfectly annoying backdrop and foil for the phase of my life I proudly announced as “being a writer.” It was the being a writer period, the being a writer time.

This introduction and this column are dated. It was originally written for the PLOG, the blog of Austin-based arts collective RawPaw, who featured a poem of mine in their inaugural issue back in 2014. I could never live down the influence of my writing heroes and I share this column about their inspiration and my process to pass the torch. Allow this retread good Reader, and allow me to bring it back for you. Tell you how I got here and that I’d like you to join me. In the late night or in the bright morning, I’d like you to join me on the savage road—this is the new stuff—join me in celebration of this new media, this new age—this moment. Let’s do some shit. Send our signal out into the hungry land. Let’s send out a song of love, or better—let’s send ’em some anger. Let us burn.

A Tale of Two Hanks

I always wanted to be a writer. That’s not to say that I always knew I wanted to be a writer. It is to say that for decades I had wanted to be a writer, but only actualized it, and felt like one, when I started writing a blog. The ineffectual and fuckall years of youth are too many to count and, besides—it depends on who’s counting. If it’s the inner critic, I don’t want to know. That bastard. Too many times he’s shut me down. Told me I ain’t shit and that I needed to get drunk if I wanted to be like Papa (Bukowski) or lift weights if I wanted to be like Henry Rollins. The truth is I always wanted to be a writer but I didn’t know how. I mean I always journaled, but—did that count? Hopefully any writer reading this has felt the power of it, the magic of writing. In 20,000 Days On Earth, Nick Cave discovers that he can control the weather with his moods simply by writing about it. “Now if I could only control my moods,” he sullenly adds.

Today’s installment of The Coarse Grind is a very Zen offering, so bear with me and don’t let me off the hook. Too often lofty advice is given for the reader to pore or fawn over while the writer’s slipped out to the alleyway to get paid and hail a cab. Same goes for Spirituality. The truth about spirituality is the same as the truth about writing. Both seem equally impossible, utterly unglamorous and something entirely different than our ideas about them.But both also are redeemed when you consider that their road is the only road and that’s the one we are on, good Reader. That if you want to be a writer you must write. Simple, right? Perhaps. Do consider what can keep you from writing. Or worse—what can take the inspiration out of it until distractions become disasters that can physically keep you from writing.

I don’t need to tell you. You know your weaknesses and I know mine. The only thing that will keep you going back, sitting down and spending more long hours on the sinking throne is if you like what you're doing.Old Hank B. said it must come shooting out of your fingertips, that if it’s difficult then don’t try. But old Hank R. would probably say the opposite: It must be hard, it must be painful, because you are a no-talent nobody who must get up hours before everybody else to be on par. Now here comes the Zen so hold on to your seat. Today’s Zen of writing moment is brought to you by The Boss: “Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong.” There you have it, your religion. Your dogma? “Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.” You can thank Dorothy Parker for that one along with her priceless and biting contribution to the world of letters.

Those twenty-odd years when I wanted to be a writer? I knew I would be published when I first saw a copy of Rollins’ One From None. I knew it ’cause he knew it and Uncle Hank showed us how. Also (and here is why Bukowski is my Papa and his contribution to literature can never be underestimated), Papa told me that I could be a poet. I could write from where I was at. Which is right here, in my chair, in my house and from within the circus of my mind. Twenty-six years after first seeing a copy of Rollins’ book and twenty after reading Papa for the first time, I started a blog. Then I knew it: I was a writer.

Becoming The Media

I finally knew I was a writer when I started writing a blog. I won’t get into the saga of a backstory behind it but I had tapped into a medium that was immediate and honest. I had, or felt like I had, an instant audience. I’ve always looked at writing like performing so blogging really gave me a charge. The way you feel right before you go on stage. Super, all too, human. From that saga of a backstory I will offer this: my heroes have taught me well. My heroes were on the outside and they broke in. The rules didn’t apply to Hunter Thompson which was hardly always glamorous.

This will not be a recipe for how to be a successful writer, at least not the accepted definition of success. Do consider however, if you want to be a successful writer, one who gets paid, then you must write. Have a system or M.O. that you know will keep you writing. Willing. Enthusiastic, even.The thing that keeps me writing is my interest in it. Sadly, what is of most interest to me is myself and nothing else. In fact, current events really bum me the fuck out and opinion pieces are odious. It all feels like programming to me, and it just swirls into a hulking barrage of sights and sounds, horrors and “truths” that I must isolate myself from. Thank God for writing because it has become my refuge from the dark spinning world.

My point is why would campaign manager Frank Mankiewicz attribute Hunter Thompson as “the least factual, most accurate” reporter on the Campaign Trail in 1976? And, why are we finding out now that this country was dragged into war under false pretenses, that the freedom we were fighting for was only being taken away from us by those same warlords, when we have a free press in America, and reporting is held to a high standard of objectivity and truth? Without the internet or a distant relative living in the middle east—without Twitter, for Christ’s sake—we would have no idea what the Arab Spring was about. Well, we’d have some idea but probably a spun one, provoking a reaction that could then be reported on until it was true. I started Going for the Throat as the Arab Spring started rumbling, just as the stanchions under memorials to dictators were giving way in parks and plazas and out on the street. I’m not a journalist. But I am a reporter. And that, good reader, is the magic of writing.

None of these are reasons why after almost twenty years on the daylabor circuit I knew I was a writer. I know that I’m a writer because I write. I don’t ever not write. And it’s all because I have found a medium that is as inexhaustible as it is exhilarating. I have instant material simply by getting out of bed in the morning and with the click of a mouse it’s out there with all the “real” journalism. I have stepped into the Arena. I’m up there in the hot lights with all the shit-savvy polished faces and grim intellectual voices of news media. Is what I write true? Better believe it. Or, don’t, and start your own blog. You’ll thank me later. I hope to get a follow from you because that will mean you have begun and I will know you have arrived.

 

Part 6