BURN PILE: Hey! Who are you, anyway?  Art, heart, and smoldering questions about reality and writers.

Who are you when you write? Where does the line blur between the identity of an author conjuring wordworlds, and the persona of their voice as written? How does the reader perceive the two (or more?) voices, and how do they relate to them?

    In the spirit of identity crisis, let's celebrate the late Eleanor Hibbert’s birthday. Primarily a novelist, Hibbert’s 1993 obit in the New York Times provides a long list of pseudonyms: Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Ellalice Tate, Victoria Holt, and Jean Plaidy. “She never revealed her maiden name or age,” the piece reads. “Two of her publishers listed conflicting birth years, 1906 and 1910. For years the true identity of the writer behind the three [most successful] pseudonyms was a tightly guarded secret in the publishing world.”
     More recently, we have “Dear Sugar,” the eclectic advice column at The Rumpus — the columnist’s identity revealed as Cheryl Strayed only after Wild took off. (You can find Sugar/Strayed's fabulous and famous WLaMF column here. Mind you, it’s NSFW, but all the more powerful for it.)
     JT LeRoy and the enigma of hoax versus pseudonym has pestered truth seekers since the ‘90s. Read backstory on the nonexistent JT at The Guardian, then meet the author behind the mystery in the documentary Author: The JT LeRoy Story. While you’re bingeing instead of writing, indulge in the moral horror of The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, the film made while the world believed JT was real. (Both are streaming on a device near you.)
     Meanwhile, the saga continues: Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern are at work on a film about Savanna Knoop, the woman who played (in real life) the writer who didn’t exist: “A Behind-the-Scenes First Look at Kristen Stewart and Laura Dern in JT Leroy.”

Truth, Love, and Answers may seem in short supply these days, but art — no: ART — can lead us to Heart in an unjust world. Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings gives us a look at the words of LeRoi Jones, writing as Amiri Baraka, in a “lyrical manifesto for largehearted living.” Jones reminds us “We have / each other, and the / World…” Art speaking truth to power, right? (Yes, please and thank you.) Read the articles linked within, and at the end of the page, too. 

Last note for the day: A Burn Pile thumb goes up for Lit Hub’s feature piece, “Where Are the Likes? Coming to Terms with Being a Writer on Social Media,” in which Nick Ripatrazone wonders whether our friends clicking love buttons for our successes means anything when it comes to connecting to our work… “Congratulations on publishing a poem is a second’s worth of action; reading and understanding that poem is a real commitment.”

A big CutBank thanks to all of you. Don’t forget to be kind. Don’t forget how much the world needs you. Be generous with your art, your heart, and your energy!

PS: Coming soon: Our regular feature, All Accounts and Mixture, will be presenting new works for you in the next weeks. Keep an eye out for it! 

BURN PILE: New Lit TV, Great Young American Novelists, Good Friends, and Something Funny from McSweeney’s

In this week’s Burn Pile, CutBank brings you all your essential literary entertainment needs (at least for another week-or-so). Binge-worthy TV shows, work from great young American novelists, a heartwarming story of friendship and cannons, and something funny from McSweeney’s:

·       Two new literary TV shows debuted recently: Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale and STARZ’s American Gods. Read related articles from The New Yorker here and BookRiot here.

·       The excellent folks at Granta have also released a special issue featuring the best of young American novelists. Get the issue featuring Emma Cline, Catherine Lacey, Jesse Ball, Lauren Groff, Karan Mahajan, and Claire Vaye Watkins here. In addition, read LitHub’s feature of “10 More of the Best Young American Novelists” here.

·       Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me is also coming to the Apollo stage. Read The New York Times write-up here.

·       In other news, Johnny Depp spent five million dollars on a cannon to blast Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes—what a good friend.

·       And finally meet Thad—your worst student—courtesy of McSweeney’s.
 

Stay strong, friends. CutBank out.

BURN PILE: In Memoriam

It’s been a hard few weeks for art, literature, and music. We’ve lost notable people whose art has forever enriched humanity. This week, CutBank remembers those people.

At The Paris Review, check out this story about Chuck Berry and mysticism.

Derek Walcott tells us the problem with poetry students in The New Yorker.

Electric Literature remembers Colin Dexter, the author of the Inspector Morse series.

Chet Cunningham—prolific author of 450 books—is remembered by Los Angeles Times.

And at LitHub a number of literary icons including Joan Didion, Claire Messud, and John Banville recount the legendary brilliance of Robert Silvers, founding editor of The New York Review of Books.

CutBank thanks these people for their brilliant lives and work.

Never forgotten:

Chuck Berry (1953–2017)

Derek Walcott (1930–2017)

Colin Dexter (1930–2017)

Chet Cunningham (1928–2017)

Robert Silvers (1929–2017)

BURN PILE: Lent, NOLA, and... Butter?

Lent is upon us, folks. Yes, it is the season of ascetic self-denial. But fear not! CutBank is here to provide you a literary/culinary survival guide for your time of penance. Prepare yourself for the dog-days to come, the days of gazing slack-jawed at the new season of Chef’s Table, dreaming of the grand Easter meal to come.

But what of Fat Tuesday? Even though the last day of revelry has come and gone, we can still look back at Literary Hub’s list of ten great works of New Orleans literature to help you remember the festivities you probably don’t remember.

And the Pope, we can’t forget about the Pope! The Paris Review features the story of Bartolomeo Scappi—the head chef for Renaissance popes and cardinals.

Or maybe you’re the practical kind—stoic and studious. The Millions offers you a literary reader for Lent—forty reads for forty days.

Have you ever wondered about the eating habits of your favorite writers? If so, check out Entropy’s feature aptly named Dinnerview. The feature explores the culinary lives of many writers such as Bonnie Jo Campbell, Julia Elliott, Rebecca Makkai, and Mary Jo Bang.

It is important to remember the simple things during Lent, the small delights that make the world bearable. Butter, for instance. Over at Electric Literature, Ted Wilson reviews butter (5 stars). Need I say more?

CutBank wishes you only the best in your time of atonement.

Fight the good fight.

BURN PILE: Celebrity Writers

Who ever said you had to be a poor, highly-educated, no name to be a writer? Who said you had to struggle through a sea of ramen to one day wield the authorial power of an MFA and/or PhD?

Why not just be a celeb?

Mick Jagger wrote a memoir apparently. But he also forgot he wrote a memoir. That might be the most Mick Jagger thing I’ve ever heard.

But this begs the question: what celebrity books do we really need to have? Fortunately, the good folks at Literary Hub have answered this question.

If we were to follow this line of questioning further down the rabbit hole, who is the best fake novelist on TV? Electric Literature hands out their fake Pulitzer.

All right, all right. Let’s reel this back in. Did you know that the one and only Marcel Proust starred in a movie? Take a gander here.

And for all you celeb and not celeb writers out there, Brain Pickings has compiled a list of famous advice on writing to help you as you slog forward with your next prize-winning manuscript.

As always, keep scribbling.
 

BURN PILE: Dystopia, America

Things I said way too much this week:

1)    He did what?
2)   Have you seen Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men?

Are you ready for the Cheeto-glazed descent into the dystopian future? Did you get your copy of 1984 before Amazon ran out of copies?

The Los Angeles Times reminds us that dystopias are “a great place to be a tourist. Not a great place to be a permanent resident.”

So, what can we do to help?

Hope? Yes, yes, a story of hope! A story of resistance. No, not Rogue One. How about the story of an all-but-forgotten American diplomat who resisted the Armenian Genocides of 1915 and 1916?

Or perhaps you would like a drink? The fine geniuses at McSweeney’s have compiled a list of presidential cocktails for every occasion.

Not thirsty? Maybe a trip to the movies can cure your growing despair.  I Am Not Your Negro hits the big screen today. Go see it. The screenplay was written by the great James Baldwin.

But really, why not just join the resistance? AWP is in D.C. this year, and numerous protests and rallies are being organized to coincide with the arrival of over 12,000 writers, editors, students, teachers, and publishers.

Above all, resist.

Make America Read Again.

BURN PILE: A New Year, a New President, and a Writer's Call to Arms

Today, amid simultaneous outcry and applause from a deeply divided country, Donald Trump was sworn in as the forty-fifth U.S. president. The day after the election, Dan Piepenbring of the Paris Review posted the following under the headline “Writers, Start Writing.” His call to arms bears repeating today:

“This site is dedicated to literature, arts, and culture. Electoral politics are usually beyond our remit. On a morning like this, when America has chosen a bigot and a xenophobe as its next president, my job feels pointless. But I don’t want to add to the chorus of despair, because I do believe there’s a role for art at a time like this, and I don’t say that lightly—words like these don’t come easily to me. I would rather make fun of things, and I’m struggling against an inborn fatalism. (My iPhone just reminded me to water my plants, and I thought, why bother?) The creative impulse is such a fragile thing, but we have to create now. We owe it to ourselves to do the work. I want to encourage you. If you aspire to write, put aside all the niceties and sureties about what art should be and write something that makes the scales fall from our eyes. Forget the tired axioms about showing and telling, about sense of place—any possible obstruction—and write to destroy complacency, to rattle people, to help people, first and foremost yourself. Lodge your ideas like glass shards in the minds of everyone who would have you believe there’s no hope. And read, as often and as violently as you can. If you have friends, as I do, who tacitly believe that it’s too much of a chore to read a book, just one fucking book, from start to finish, smash every LCD they own. This is an opportunity. There’s too much at stake now to pretend that everything is okay.”

Entropy Magazine, beloved by writers for its lists of "Where to Submit" throughout the year, has included a section for "Post Election Calls for Submissions." (Deadlines include Jan. 27 and Feb. 28., with Anti-Heroin Chic taking submissions through midnight tonight "on Trump, the election and the trauma/coping/resistance surrounding this event.")

If the muse fails you, and you instead feel the need to turn to the writing and wisdom of others, (a move Piepenbring also suggests), you might pick up one of (former!) President Obama's recommended books, as shared with New York Times chief book critic Michiko Katukani in a recent interview, itself well worth reading.

If all else fails, try my recipe for an essential oils blend I call "Feel Better":  Frankincense (6 drops) for grounding, Cedar (6 drops) for grieving, Lavender (6 drops) for calming, Ylang Ylang (6 drops) for boosting mood, and Mandarin (2 drops) for energizing.

BURN PILE: Fake It 'Til You Make It

Sometimes, you just have to fake it.

Whether you need to wing that last-minute term paper or just charm a stranger at the office holiday party, Lit Hub humbly offers “An Incomplete Guide to Proper Literary Name-Dropping.” If this nifty article doesn’t do the trick, you can always turn to Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read, which extols the virtues of skimming and/or gleaning information from what others say about a text, among other approaches.

Recently, the editors of the New York Times offered up their picks for the ten best books of 2016—perhaps, in a pinch, these shall be your favorites too? Of course, there’s always the chance you won’t have to talk about the books themselves, but can get by on a critique of their covers.

Meanwhile, over at Book Riot, Michelle Anne Schlinger presents her ode to “dirty books” and the good old fashioned reading that makes them so—books that have been read to death, books with broken spines and torn pages, books that take on that beloved “old book smell." Schlinger notes, “To be in such disrepair, for a book, means that you have been enjoyed.”

As the holidays approach, and with them a handful of precious lazy afternoons, I ask myself, Remember reading for pleasure?

BURN PILE: Curing the Election Blues

Well, the election happened, and Donald J. Trump is going to be our next president. That is a sentence I never thought I’d write, and it is a sentence, so many of us fear, in more than one sense of the word.

The L.A. Times argues one way to weather the Trump presidency is to head to your nearest public library. Why? Because it is the one institution most Americans still champion. In the meantime, you can read a collection of post-election-results tweets from famous authors—everyone from Stephen King to Joyce Carol Oates (who in turn quotes Samuel Beckett)—compiled by the Times.

Garnette Cadogan, a Jamaican immigrant and Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, speaks about the importance of “staying and fighting” despite Trump’s well documented stance on immigration, as well as the importance of “finding strength in poetry.”

But maybe it would be better to just slip into cushy escapism. This week the New York Times listed its top illustrated children’s books of 2016, along with a review of two new nonfiction publications, Following the Dog into the World of Smell by Alexandra Horowitz and How House Cats Tamed Us and Took over the World by Abigail Tucker.  

Dogs v. cats? Now that’s a debate I can always get into. 

BURN PILE: Shirley Jackson, Ouija Boards, and Truman Capote's Ashes

The spookiest month of the year begins tomorrow. Here are some literary tidbits of a decidedly darker nature to get us all in the mood.

  • This week marks the publication of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, a new biography of the oft-overlooked American writer best known for her short story “The Lottery” and the novels The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Biographer Ruth Franklin reports that Jackson was pegged (and promoted) as somewhat of a domestic “witch” in the early days of her career, and that Jackson took exception to this claim. Later, however, Jackson wrote the following, which should delight those of us who embrace our inner witches: 

I am tired of writing dainty little biographical things that pretend that I am a trim little housewife in a Mother Hubbard stirring up appetizing messes over a wood stove. I live in a dank old place with a ghost that stomps around in the attic room we’ve never gone into (I think it’s walled up) and the first thing I did when we moved in was to make charms in black crayon on all the door sills and window ledges to keep out demons, and was successful in the main. There are mushrooms growing in the cellar, and a number of marble mantels which have an unexplained habit of falling down onto the heads of the neighbors’ children.

At the full of the moon I can be seen out in the backyard digging for mandrakes, of which we have a little patch, along with rhubarb and blackberries. I do not usually care for these herbal or bat wing recipes, because you can never be sure how they will turn out. I rely almost entirely on image and number magic.

BURN PILE: "How to Write a Thesis," day jobs, and the joys of the "wrong comma"

Salman Rushdie reflects in the New Yorker on his time with Günter Grass. Through the late 1990s, every student in Italy hoping to earn the equivalent of a bachelor's degree would be expected to compose a thesis. Umberto Eco's 1977 advice on the "magical process of self-realization" has now become available in English for the first time: See this New Yorker piece on "How to Write a Thesis." 

Do you feel an affinity, for the plentiful, abundant use of commas, such as that favored by certain New York copy-editors? Elisa Gabbert on on the "joys of the 'wrong comma'" for The Smart Set. See the original New Yorker story here.

A newly-discovered passage cut from "A Wrinkle in Time" illuminates the author's politics.

What good is a day job? One answer can be found in a late 18th century example. For The Millions. Earlier: Nell Zink on ideal work for The Paris Review Daily. Earlier still: on "working the double shift," back at The Millions.

Sherman Alexie talks about his books being banned - again. For KUOW Seattle.

BURN PILE: Jane Austen juvenalia, nameless narrators and the power of reading

black and white boat flags Tom McCarthy on "fiction in the age of data saturation." Or, what would have happened if Joyce worked at Google.

According to a new book titled Ungentle Jane, Jane Austen's early work was "violent, restless, anarchic and exuberantly expressionistic. Drunkenness, female brawling, sexual misdemeanour and murder run riot across their pages.” Review from the Times Daily Supplement.

TKAM2 update: Harper Lee tells reporter to "go away!"

On dystopia and the nameless narrator in the New Yorker.

Memorization of poetry used to be the pedagogical norm - but what did this mean for poetry? "Orality, Literacy and the Memorized Poem" from Poetry Magazine. 

On the transformative power of reading, in the New York Times. 

BURN PILE: TKAM2, famous last lines and being twee

ICYMI: Earlier this month, it was announced that Harper Lee would publish a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, her sole publication in 55 years. The public reaction to that announcement has ranged from delight to skepticism to indignation - with good reason. At 88 years old, Casey N. Cep weighs in for the New Yorker here. See also: a look into the scandal and lawsuit regarding TKAM in Vanity Fair. Also at the New Yorker: Joyce Carol Oates reviews The Whites by Richard Price, writing as Harry Brandt. “The Whites doesn’t race so much as lurch and careen along, often with little breathing space between frenetic action sequences, emotional outbursts, and sheer surprise..." It is a crime novel of "conscience, fraught with ambivalence and ambiguity" Oates says, suggesting a crime drama that is more than just a crime novel.

On the Millions, a look at the last lines of classics including Philip Roth's Everyman: “He went under feeling far from felled, anything but doomed, eager yet again to be fulfilled, but nonetheless, he never woke up. Cardiac arrest. He was no more, freed from being, entering into nowhere without even knowing. Just as he’d feared from the start.”

Mark Spitz wrote a whole book about all that is "twee," aptly titled Twee, calling the phenomenon "the most powerful youth movement since Punk and Hip-Hop." (A movement characterized, for those who don't know, by "owl-shaped cushions, bird-print textiles and kitten ephemera...Cotton candy, gluten-free acai berry cupcakes and quinoa fritters with probiotic goat yoghurt," and more, reviewer Anna Katharina Schaffner says.) Read the review at the Times Literary Supplement.

Plus Zadie Smith on diary-keeping for Rookie Magazine. Her verdict: Don't.

BURN PILE: Feast or Fiction - Literary Food Links

turkeyIn honor of Thanksgiving, a forkful of literary food links.  NPR interviews Dinah Fried, author of Fictitious Dishes: An Album of Literatures Most Memorable Meals. 2014. Read Salon's review of the book and see another slideshow here, and read Maria Popova's take at Brain Pickings here.

Slideshow: "Ten Great Meals in Literature" from The Telegraph. 2013.

A is for Apples, B is for Booze: "Writer Food from A to Z" from the Awl. 2012.

"Food Writers Share Thanksgiving Stories," from the Daily Beast. 2011.

Scrumptious descriptions of food abound in literary fiction - see ten great examples at Flavorwire in "Fictional Feasts: Mouth-Watering Moments of Literary Gastronomy." 2011.

From Tin House magazine, a collection of writing and recipes from their Readable Feast and Blithe Spirits features.

 

BURN PILE: Nabokov, overheard haiku and Laura Ingalls Wilder

Vladimir_NabokovFiction from fact and the birth of Lolita: Sally Horner of Camden, New Jersey was abducted in 1948 when she was 11 years old. For almost two years, she was shuttled around the country by her abductor, Frank La Salle, whose convoluted criminal past went unnoticed by friends and neighbors who believed his story - that he was her loving, albeit controlling, father. Although her story didn't leave the local media, it caught the attention of one man who would use the news accounts as a springboard for one of his most important works - Vladimir Nabokov, and his Lolita. Read more here at Hazlitt, from Penguin Random House. For more Nabokov, see this Playboy interview from 1964 at Longform.org. On the spoken word, in verse: Damion Searls of the Paris Review Daily ruminates on overheard haiku: "Around half a tweet, but again, a very different form."

Laura Ingalls, even wilder: For those who grew up reading the Little House series, a researched annotated autobiography titled Pioneer Girl is available from the South Dakota Historical Society Press. Read the Slate review by Ruth Graham. 

Another childhood favorite hits the big scream - er, screen: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is being developed for film by John August with CBS films.

BURN PILE: Collaborative fiction, the history of slang, and more.

Exquisite Corpse: From Zadie Smith to R.L. Stine, fifteen writers contribute to one story for T, the New York Times Style Magazine. On poetry and popcorn: Dorothea Lasky and Adam Fitzgerald swing from snack food to the metaphysical in a conversation for Granta.

Why does science speak English? Nobel laureates for physiology and medicine May-Britt and Edvard Moser are Norwegian. So why did they, like so many others, publish in English? Michael Gordin's forthcoming Scientific Babel attempts to answer why. Until then, see Nina Porzucki for BBC News Magazine. 

Frightening BOO-ks: Ayana Mathis and Francine Prose discuss the scariest books they've ever read for the NYT Sunday Book Review.

I hear you've got swagger - and you're not the first: On the evolution of slang, from "swag" to "hipster" at the New York Times.

A Scanner Transrealistically: Somewhere between realism and science fiction/fantasy, transrealism has been part of the conversation for 30 years. Damien Walter, for The Guardian, posits that this popular cross-genre hybrid will be around for at least thirty more.

Thank you, but no thank you: Jean-Paul Sartre politely declined the Nobel prize in 1964. According to Rob Lyons for spiked, his explanation holds weight in award culture today.

BURN PILE: Food, brains and books - plus contest information!

15019001715_5fb35f2ff8_oWant more time to write? Engineer/entrepreneur Rob Rhinehart suggests that we can add 90 minutes to our day by spending less time on food preparation, consumption and cleanup. Food writer Nicola Twilley discusses Rhinehart's "Soylent" product at Aeon. This is your brain on Shakespeare: Jillian Hinchliffe and Seth Frey explore the link between cognitive science and literature at Nautilus. 

What's the point, anyway? Time Parks takes a look at the "social function of the novel" at the New York Review of Books. From Tristram Shandy to Tess of the d’Urbervilles to Uncle Tom's Cabin, literature has shaped the social conversation, and continues to do so in increasingly varied ways.

2015 Contests Open Soon!

CutBank sponsors a variety of contests, including the Montana Prize in Fiction, Montana Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry, as well as our annual CutBank Chapbook Contest. Submission dates vary so  see our full guidelines for more information. Please send only your best work. With all three of these awards, we’re looking for work that showcases an authentic voice, an original perspective, and a willingness to push against the boundaries of form. All entries must be submitted electronically.

BURN PILE: Buttering The Toast, reflections on final works and more

roxane gay On new beginnings: The Toast will launch its new companion site, The Butter, on October 15 with Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay at the helm. Gay says the site will "focus on cultural criticism and personal essays that make readers think and feel.” Which is fine with Toast co-founder Mallory Ortberg, who says the site will be "WHATEVER ROXANE WANTS IT TO BE."

And on the end: Roger Grenier, prolific French author and editor, reflects on the literary version of "famous last words" at The American Scholar. "Is the final work of a writer—or for that matter of any artist—final according to the writer, or final for everyone else?" Grenier reflects on the creative process in what a writer believes to be their last days, and what happens when the end comes unexpectedly. 

A literary salon grows in Brooklyn: At a Brooklyn bar, patrons workshop short fiction as a game over beer: anonymously. Bartender Matthew D’Abate collects submissions throughout the week and makes five of them available during his Sunday shift at The Plank. D'Abate also cultivates an email list and sends out one of the five to subscribers each week. From a recent email: “The point of Literate Sunday is to remove, if not subvert, the idea of fame, removing the ego and the names from the pieces so the stories may speak for themselves."

On the proven benefits of "slow reading," from the Wall Street Journal: "Screens have changed our reading patterns from the linear, left-to-right sequence of years past to a wild skimming and skipping pattern as we hunt for important words and information... None of this is good for our ability to comprehend deeply, scientists say."

Love from NewPages.com!

CutBank 81 has been featured for review on NewPages.com! Utne magazine calls NewPages “the best overall Internet portal to the alternative press,” and we are thrilled to be featured on their site. To read what they have to say, click here . In the words of reviewer Melanie Tague: “CutBank always delivers well-crafted pieces of work that offer fresh perspectives and most importantly inspire readers to work on their own craft.” Thanks, Melanie! To submit to CutBank 82, please see our submission page. We are also seeking submissions for our regular web features – click here for more details!