Letters and Sodas

I'm not sure why I didn't add this to the sidebar sooner. My friend Matt is blogging over at Letters and Sodas about book publishing, music videos, the South, the North, and places and things in between.

Libarian 56212, could you add that to the sidebar?

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell.

Thanks, Librarian 56212.

Shouldn't you be writing a story instead of posting to your blog? Or even writing a full blog entry instead of posting about an addition to your sidebar?

Did I ask you?

No.

Just because you share traits with my mother doesn't mean you have to act like my mom. May I have my earl grey now?

Get your own, Mr. Mitchell.

Look Skyward, Moron

This is a cover of Beat Happening's "Indian Summer" by Luna.

I moved out of Brooklyn and back to the Midwest. Upon reaching the trees in Pennsylvania, I felt a sense of relief, but once the road trip with my buddy Colin was over, I just felt odd. I made this playlist for a friend who left New York six months or so before me. She came through Independence this past weekend with her boyfriend, on the way back to California from a wedding in Chicago. They were running low on cash and happiness and they crashed on my parents' couches. We sat in the kitchen waiting for their laundry to get done, drinking Boulevard. My parents stayed up til 1:30am and we ended up being the ones that wanted to go to bed first, not them. It was like my New York life came swinging through my Independence past.

"Be Where You Want to Be"

1 - "New York Telephone Conversation" by Lou Reed

2 - "Living Waters" by Silver Jews

3 - "Sideshow by the Seashore" by Luna

4 - "Stars of Leo" by M. Ward

5 - "Writer's Minor Holiday" by Calexico

6 - "Bukowski" by Modest Mouse

7 - "So Far Around the Bend" by The National

8 - "This Year" by The Mountain Goats

9 - "When You Wake Up Feeling Old" by Wilco

10 - "Lived in Bars" by Cat Power

11 - "The Golden Age" by Beck

12 - "Junesong" by Talkdemonic

13 - "Windows Blues" by Band of Horses

14 - "Old Movies" by Mock Orange

15 - "11673_nmgproduct_L_train" from The Free Sound Project

I found an apartment in Carbondale. It's a little studio that looks kind of like a dorm room, but it's a grad only building and it's only two blocks from the rec center and a few blocks from the building where I'll be teaching and taking classes.

Substitute "Home" for "Drum" and this is maybe how I feel this month:

(I should say that Joe Villella showed me this skit when he was subletting from me, or he'll gripe that I steal his cool to impress ladies)

Back from Dodge City

"I can't work and hang around New York because I never learned how to do it. When I hit New York it's like somebody coming off a long cattle drive in the old days into Dodge City."

--- Hemingway via, image via

A Complicated Banking Problem

It's been rainy here in New York lately, which makes my friends complain that they feel like they're in the Northwest, so it feels like a good time to be rereading Brautigan. This time when I came across the story "Complicated Banking Problems" in Revenge of the Lawn, I was reminded of Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain". Some parallels:

Brautigan's "Complicated Banking Problems"

- Set in a bank.

- Series of people are annoying in line. An old woman who wants to deposit "the shadow of a refridgerator filled with sour milk and year-old carrots." Siamese twins, one of whom is withdrawing all his money while the other makes a small deposit. A man who wants to deposit 237 checks.

- "I look up at the ceiling of the bank and pretend that it is the Sistine Chapel." - Brautigan's tendency to insert the classical or religious into the everyday.

- The presence of death: the human skeleton the narrator found in his back yard clutching an old coffee can filled with rustdust material.

- Take away one-liner: "His checks completely cover the counter like a success snow storm."

Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain" is about a complicated banking problem too.

- Set in a bank.

- The teller and then the two women in front of the narrator (Anders) annoy him.

- Where Brautigan gives two one-liners about imagining the ceiling is the Sistine Chapel, Anders is forced to look at the ceiling and then can't help but criticize the mythical Greek scene painted there, which is his downfall.

- Death.

- Take away one-liner: "She looked at me with drowning eyes."

Different stories, Wolff's ends up being heavier maybe, but the basic parallels are there. I'd heard Wolff is a Brautigan fan. And then there's this scene in Wolff's "Mortals" where the narrator brings up Brautigan but Givens hasn't heard of him. When I think Wolff I think realism or "dirty realism" as most people do, but there's an element of Brautigan's sprung whimsy (and melancholy, for that matter) in his stories that I see now that I'm reading them with an eye for it. Looks like someone has already written a paper about that, in a way.

And then there's Wolff's story's title, and how towards the end of his life, Brautigan was no longer smiled upon by most book critics. The whole thing resonates.

We'll Always Have Random House

Little Midwestern Boy

"It was as if all his fiction described a big dance to which he had taken, as he once wrote, the prettiest girl ... and as if he stood at the same time outside the ballroom, a little Midwestern boy with his nose to the glass, wondering how much the tickets cost and who paid for the music."

--- Malcolm Cowley, quoted describing F. Scott Fitzgerald in the biographical note to This Side of Paradise

@shawn_mitchell is a twit

I joined twitter.

Not sure if I'll update much, or just follow people like John Roderick of The Long Winters.

Veganism and Healthiness

My friend Carolyn is blogging over A Lotus Grows in Brooklyn, on healthy things that sound better for me than the slice of pizza I eat every other day. Unnammed Librarian, please add that to the blogroll.

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell

Save Paste

Paste is having some financial trouble.  If you donate some money, you can d/l mp3's from John Roderick, She & Him, Thao, the Decemberists, Ben Folds, Neko Case, Of Montreal, Passion Pit, and more.  I did it.  It felt warm and fuzzy.

Also, Sparklehorse + Danger Mouse + David Lynch = Wow.

The Fiction Advocate

My friend Brian is blogging over at The Fiction Advocate!  About fiction!  Recently, he was taken to task by Tom Bissell for trying to trash talk DFW!  ROFL OMG!

Resident Librarian Lucille, could you add that to the blogroll please? 

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell. 

Thanks, Lucy.  Hey, wait a moment.  Lucy is my grandma’s name.  That’s all kinds of creepy, that I’ve been calling you that.  I’m going to call you Cindy. 

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell, but that’s your mom’s name. 

Oh. 

And she’s a librarian. 

Oh my. 

Uh-huh. 

Oh dear.  Could you bring me my afternoon earl grey now, please? 

Sure thing, Mr. Mitchell.