I would probably describe it differently based on who wanted to know about itin short I would probably just say it's online literature, or literature that exists outside of the MFA world and the NYC publishing worldmy usual response to questions like this is to try and describe it by showing examples, here's my tumblrhttp://neatomosquitoshow.tumblr.com/

yes, in the sense that I believe men and women should have the same rights and opportunities as men, which is something the world has definitely not achieved yetin college I took a gender studies class and read a lot of essays and books for that, but that's probably the limit of my knowledge about feminist theory and the feminist movementin general I think that overt political agendas do not mix well with artin general I'm not into Jezebel and tumblr feminism and activism outrage machinein general I think it's limiting to value works of art based on whether they promote a social good or notfor the last two years I've been working on a novel about two rich internet-famous teenage girls, and I tried to get some loose feminist themes in thereI wrote almost three full drafts of it, none of which I feel very good about -- but I gave it up a couple months ago because right now I'm not a good enough writer to try and tell the story of two teenage girls, I've never been a teenage girllately I've been writing stories about Houston, and that's going so much better now

sorry this answer is so late -- I've been sort of depressed and stoned lately, and I've been flaking on everythingI'm not sure if I can answer this well because I'm not exactly sure what u mean by surface-y, feel free to elaborate if u want toI feel like Robbe-Grillet and a lot of the 'nouveau roman' writers would describe their books as being composed of pure surface, but those books are pretty different from Hemingway...in particular I'm thinking about 'The Erasers'if u mean surface-y in the sense of books that don't focus on what's going on in the characters' heads, Cormac McCarthy is pretty famous for that, and another book that comes to mind is 'eat when you feel sad' by Zachary Germanmy own subjective interpretation of what a surface-y novel would be is a book that spends most of its time describing objects and scenes, almost like a painting or a collection of photographsI don't think that Bellow is a surface-y writer (he's probably on the other spectrum), but this question made me think about this paragraph from Herzog, I like this paragraph a lot:"At the corner, he paused to watch the work of the wrecking crew. The great metal ball swung at the walls, passed easily through brick, and entered the rooms, the lazy weight browsing on kitchens and parlors. Everything it touched wavered and burst, spilled down. There rose a white tranquil cloud of plaster dust. The afternoon was ending, and in the widening area of demolition was a fire fed by the wreckage ... Paint and varnish smoked like incense. The old flooring burned gratefully - the funeral of exhausted objects. Scaffolds walled with pink, white, green doors, quivered as the six-wheeled trucks carried off fallen brick. The sun, now leaving for New Jersey and the west, was surrounded by a dazzling broth of atmospheric gases."that's my idea of surface-y...like a whole book of nothing but scenes like that -- no narrative & no characters & no bigger point to be made -- only realistic descriptions of things happening in the worldthanks for the question

thanks, I'll check that out for sure -- I've heard about that oneI'm halfway through Blake Butler's latest novel '300,000,000' (which is the death count) -- it's not a zombie novel at all but it does have lots of mass murder and cannibalism and fucked up shitmy main complaint about zombie movies is none of them are insane and disturbing enough to really match the reality of something like that happening, but imo Butler's book gets close to thatthanks for the reccomendation

hey :]these are some jobs I've had:fast food / secretary / receptionist / parking attendant / chemistry stock room person / house painter / mail room person / event coordinator / data entry / newspaper delivery personfor the last 5 years I've been a substitute teacher, and I've taught esl classes and done esl tutoringI like teaching better than all the other jobs I've had, teaching fits me pretty well I thinkI can only think of a handful of writers who are able to survive without working a day job -- it's possible to do that, but it takes a lot of work and the pay can be very uncertain, it probably won't be a reliable source of incomeI'm not sure that I would enjoy writing full-time...I usually have a lot of free time during the summers that I can dedicate to writing, but I lose all of my social skills and become a hermit pretty quickly...teaching keeps me human and reminds me of how many people are in the worldwriting is not easy to make money from but it doesn't cost money either, the only thing writing costs me is timeI don't need much money to be happy...but if books were somehow taken from me, I would get depressed and unravel pretty quickly, I thinkmoney is a necessity for my survival, but books are necessary for my survival too -- I try to think about it that way

these are some of my all-time favorite zombie movies:Night of the Living Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Dawn of the Dead [2004]
Return of the Living Dead
Zombi 2
28 Weeks Later
ZombielandI think we can all agree that most zombie movies have extremely unimaginative titlesafter I read this question I got stoned and watched 'Rec' which was ok...I liked the last 10 to 15 minuteszombie movies used to scare me, but they don't anymore...one thing is probably that zombie movies which are actually good are rare -- but I also probably watched so many that I just adjusted myself to the ideaif the zombie apocalypse hits, I will get devoured by the undead horde very quickly -- no surprises thereif u have more zombie questions feel free to ask, I've watched a million zombie moviessometimes I think about the feeling of being super stoned as something similar to what it would feel to be a zombie (stupid, slow, hungry, bad at conversation) -- my goal is to adjust myself to being perma-stoned, so if I do inevitably get turned into a zombie maybe I'll be able to maintain a bit betterI really like this font, does anybody know what font this is

Kurt Russell, all day & 4ever

that's a good question, hmmmthe books that come to mind for me are 'Room' by Emma Donoghue -- 'The Room' by Selby -- 'Room Temperature' by Nicholson Baker...can't think of any other that truly fit the premise'Travesty' by John Hawkes is set inside a car -- a man has his girlfriend and daughter trapped in his car, and it's 100 pages of him talking to them while he speeds down the road, planning to crash the car and kill everyone insideI haven't read 'Corrections' -- I'll put that on the reading list

yeah I've thought about that a little bitit's hard to predict how you'll feel in the future but I think that I won't mind people bringing up alt lit, and I won't mind talking about itI feel proud of the minor role I played in everything -- I think this is an interesting time in literary historyI can't deny that alt lit was my entrance into a bigger literary world, and that I learned a lot from it -- in many ways I feel like the last two years have been like an apprenticeship where I payed very close attention to how writers were adapting to and making the best of a new digital world, that's a subject which I'm very interested in

no, I don't think so -- Bolano isn't the first person that would spring to my mind w/r/t that question but yeah I can see some of that, that's interestingI feel like Lin's sense of humor is similar to Lynch's, and Murakami is almost always messing with the audience's sense of reality in a way that's very Lynchianall of those comparisons makes me think about the parties involved in a different way, thanks for sharing yr pov with me

no prob, thanks for talking with meI wonder...can I post gifs in here? lemme try it

that's question is sort of tricky in the sense that I'm sure everyone has a slightly different pov about what Lynch movies are like, but some of the books that popped up in my mind are:'There is No Year' by Blake Butler -- that's about a suburban family that lives in a fucked up house / neighborhood / world...I think Butler has said that Inland Empire was an influence on him in writing that'Babyfucker' by Urs Allemann -- that's about a guy who...fucks babies...but it's not really about that...it's a difficult book to summarize, but it's very experimental -- I think about that one as being more like EraserheadJames Purdy is such a bizarre and idiosyncratic writer, that's someone I thought of...he has this weird mixture of folkiness and sentimentality combined with very extreme visions of evilone of my favorite Purdy novels is 'In a Shallow Grave' -- about a horribly scarred war veteran who comes back to his home town...the book also has some weird supernatural elements, it's very dream likealso 'The Duchess of Malfi' by John Webster reminds me of Lynch, but that's a play

cool, I'll check that out for sure -- it's interesting to imagine what Joyce would have / could have done with the internet and today's technologyon the subject of technology, I like a book called 'Irritant' by Darby Larson, he 'collaborated' with text bots to produce ithttp://www.vice.com/read/if-you-build-the-code-your-computer-will-write-the-novelin terms of digital writing, I feel like there's the opportunity for technology to play a big role in how literature gets made in the future...people forget that there are way more bots online than there are humanslots of bots are probably 'reading' this message right nowJames Bridle talks about twitter spam bots as being like newborn babies that are trying to learn how to talk to us (in the sense of convincing us they're human, and to click on a link), and that's a cool / spooky ideasorry for the digression -- thanks for recommendation

was gonna say a mountain of weed but I guess you couldn't really smoke in a space shuttle...a mountain of weed browniesI'd probably want to bring an e-reader with all the world's books on it, it would take a long time to get to Mars

sweet, I'm just gonna give a long answer b/c I feel that at least a couple ppl are interested in thisI admire Finnegans Wake as a concept, but I haven't read the whole book -- in college I tried to really sit down and study the book like I did with Ulysses, in terms of unpacking all the meanings that Joyce stuffed into his sentences, but I didn't get very farI spent several weeks reading the first twenty pages, and then I spent a month reading the Anna Livia Plurabelle chapter, and once I got fully immersed I loved it in many ways, but honestly it was just too much work for me and I eventually got exhausted with it and moved on to other thingsI kind of agree with what Pound said: "Nothing so far as I can make out, nothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clapp can possibly be worth all that circumambient peripherization." -- the books takes an insane amount of workI've read more books about Finnegans Wake, than Finnegans Wake itself -- I almost prefer Joseph Cambell's and Anthony Burgess' commentaries about FW to the actual bookon the other hand I feel like maybe Pound is wrong -- maybe FW really is nothing short of a divine vision, and all the work it takes to read and comprehend it is more than worth itideas that I respond to in FW:the world, and all of history, is a dream that bleeds and mixes together in the mind of...??? -- one person? yourself? a collective unconscious? all of humanity? God? Joyce? who is dreaming the world?language as a sort of bizarre DNA where all the thoughts and feelings and histories and myths of humanity are encoded -- I love how Joyce used puns in the book (cobbled together from many different languages) to create new words (like 'funferal' ... funeral + fun for all)that history, and maybe the nature of reality, is cyclical...Giambattista Vico was a huge influence on FW, and all throughout the book Vico's theory of history is there in the background...the idea that history progresses from an age of theocracy, to aristocracy, to democracy, to a post-modern age of chaos in which everything from the past gets recycled in shorter and shorter bursts until the world explodes in some sort of great disaster, after which humanity goes back to the beginning, cowering in their caves fearing the tyrannical rule of God(s) -- that is genius, I love that ideait feels like these days the amount of time for something to be considered 'retro' is getting increasingly shorter...maybe humanity is getting too big for its britches, and the time is right for another Black Plague or nuclear war which will remind everyone of what insignificant ants we are in the grand scheme, that's a scary idea*sparks a blunt*so that's my very long answer to that very short questionif you're an FW fan, I recommend checking out this video of Terence McKenna talking about the book...I listened to this like a month ago and it made me want to sit down with the book againthanks

if I was at your computer I'd probably tell you to get some sleep, I don't want u to be tired the next daybut I can relate in the sense that I've done that a million times, stayed up to read something online when I should be calling it a nightmy favorite hours of the day are from midnight to 5, those are usually very peaceful and productive hours of the day...sucks that I have to sleep in order to functionhopefully you're reading this because u find it somewhat interesting, thanks for staying up

hey paige !!!I think writing has gotten shorter and has adjusted itself to fit the modern attention spanI think it's harder for writers recluse writers like Pynchon and McCarthy and DeLillo to gain audiences...I think readers want more contact with authors and don't feel as satisfied by just reading a book...like they want to learn more about the writers they're reading, which is both good and bad in different wayspublishing keeps getting more affordableI think literature is moving towards a digital format...there will always be books, but maybe 100 years from now the book format will be more like how buying vinyl is now a daysthose are some of opinions about how things have changedshouts out paige, I dropped something in the mailbox today for u

I think that's awesome, I feel like literature almost always benefits from including outsiders and those who don't necessarily have literature first and foremost on their mindit can bring a fresh perspective to things, and I think it's healthy in terms of knocking down literary traditions and overly revered iconsI can't pretend that I'm mostly just interested in literature, my interest in the internet is mostly only to the extent that it can serve and expand literatureand I can't pretend that I don't love so many of the books that are included in the canon -- like Scott McClanahan said, books are the only true time travel device we have...I'll never get over the fact that I can open a book and have an experience of what the world was like 300, 800, 1000, 2000 years agoa library is the history of the world -- when you don't know history, the world can seem very small and fragile but shit's been around a long timeI also like a lot of obscure and uncelebrated books tooI like to read as much and as widely possible because to me it would be like trying to make a song when you've only heard like ten albums...I think plenty of people have written amazing things without being very well read, but I like to hear everything -- I want to hear everything that literature has to offer, it makes me bigger insideI think net nerds and book nerds have a lot in common in the sense that net nerds stare at a screen all day and book nerds stare at pages all day

I'm gonna start saying 'tunes on your dial' more, maybeI like radio -- or maybe more like the idea of radioit's like telepathy, things being beamed through the airthe internet is that way, wirelesswriting is like telepathy1) I've been listening to Aphex Twin's new album2) Sun Kil Moon's album 'Benji'3) Andy Pratt's s/t album4) Blaze Foley, he's coolI've been posting songs I like on here:
http://neatomosquitoshow.tumblr.com/

it's cool, it doesn't bother me -- in terms of literary stuff, I pretty much have rhinoceros skinif anybody wants to make fun of me or troll me, you're more than welcome to try -- I don't take it personally come test me and see what happens lolI'll ask u some questions in a second -- everybody check out Ian Mack's ask.fm, he's a really cool guythanks for the support

good questionI was born with a head made of smoke, and as far as I know I am the only one of my kindmy smoke is my thoughtsu have to be standing close enough to me to breathe in the smoke, which then travels to your brain -- that's how I truly communicate irl -- beyond that, I have my writingidk how I see, and hear -- I've been tested, but no doctors have been able to explain itthe way I eat is by stuffing handfuls of food down my neck hole

paige probably asked me this one, sweet -- shouts out paige gresty my james joyce buddyI’ve read Ulysses maybe four times all the way through, I probably know Joyce better than any other writerthe first time I read Ulysses was in high schoolI probably understood less than 10% of what was going on – but then I got to the third chapter and fell deeply in love with it – that’s the chapter that most people quit on, because the language is so denseI know some people don’t relate to the idea of ‘sound’ in literature, but what initially hooked me was the sound of the sentencesthese are some excerpts from Ulysses that I like:http://www.altlitgossip.com/post/88976894459/bloomsday-excerpts-from-ulysses-by-james-joyceover time I’ve come to see Joyce’s complexity as more of a weakness than a strength – but he wasn’t writing for a large audience, he was writing for a small group of Joyce fanatics who would be willing to put the time and attention that his books demand -- it's worth the effort thoughimo Ulysses has an incredible amount of emotion and humanity, it isn't a dry book at all -- but u do have to spend a fair amount of time studying the book to see all of itwhat I will say is that Joyce is smarter than 99% percent of other writers, and his control and knowledge of language is, to me, kind of unparalleled – Shakespeare had that kind of mastery, Milton had that, Dickinson, and maybe just a few othersthe ultimate revelation I got from reading Ulysses – which has never gone away – is that every single moment of our lives is overloaded with details and meanings and intense complexitiesthat life is a sort of web that we are all entangled in along with everybody else, and nothing really happens in complete isolation – even our inner thoughts somehow penetrate the worldJoyce was obsessed with language, and that’s something I feel a lot too – I admire how dedicated he was to literature, and I admire how little he gave a fuck in terms of offending people – Ulysses was a very shocking book that was considered dangerous at the timeI’m sorry for the long answer, I could talk about Joyce all fucking day honestly

YES IT WAS, GIVE ME BACK MY BRAIN TUMOR !! WHOOO STOLE MY BRAIN TUMORgreedy humans aaaaahrhhrr *breathes fire*

happy to be annoying u, good job meearlier today I was listening to some older KCRW Bookworm interviews…one thing I’ve always liked about Michael Silverblatt is that he doesn’t spend his energy tearing down books he doesn’t like, he just promotes the ones he finds interesting – that’s the approach I usually try to takea lot of the stuff I promote has an extremely small audience...books in general have an extremely small audience -- I want to create more readers in the worldI enjoy encouraging writers and promoting books because I have a lot of love for writers and books -- it’s hard to get tired of something that u naturally enjoy doing

lol, like 1 or 2in 6th grade I got my first 'girlfriend' after joining a band with two of my friends -- I was the singer, and I sang Glycerine by Bush to some girls on the phone*facepalm*but one of the girls really liked it, so...but that was before puberty hit and my voice changedDON'T LET THE DAAAAYS GO BYEEEEEEEEvery occasionally I'll do karaoke if I'm drunk enough, just for the sake of participation -- I'll usually sing a country song or something'Friends in Low Places' is a karaoke song I pick a lotu don't have to sing that one very well, just loudly -- and ppl in Texas like to sing along to that one, so that takes some of the pressure off my performanceGarth Brooks can sing