Never Mind That We Could Only Grow Gray Things

Nobody claimed the Elkin when it was offered a few days ago, but Dalkey Press sent me an email yesterday saying it had shipped both Part One and Part Two of Marguerite Young's Miss McIntosh, My Darling after an representative emailed me last week saying Dalkey was out of Part Two, was unlikely to get more, did I want another title, and  I asked for a Stanley Elkin The Franchiser with the intention - hence the offer - of giving it away here. (And I ordered, and already received, Part Two through an evil motherfucker's company, I've never denied here my complicity.) So if I get The Franchiser it's still available to claim, if I get Part Two of Miss McIntosh, My Darling, it's yours if you want, why would you want Part Two of a novel I've no idea, I'll no doubt own two until I next bag up books and give to local public library to sell when I'm clearing out shelf space for more books.

UPDATE! Dalkey just sent me a $1.20 refund on my purchase, the exact difference between Elkin's The Franchiser and Part Two of Miss McIntosh, so I assume I'm getting the Elkin, which Jim claimed this morning in comments.

• Chris Watson interview.
• Look who's alive!
• I'd written about the Coke ad during the Helmet Bowl where America the Beautiful was sang in different languages by different ethnic groups and my knee-jerk reaction that it was a transparently bathetic appeal to gross patriotism and others knee-jerk reaction that singing America the Beautiful in any language other than English is a traitorous sin, but I've abbreviated it to this sentence which ends with the two words fuck it.
• It comes back to where it comes back.
• How to begin from the beginning, by his generation's greatest academic fraud, and I say that admiringly.
• Been a while since I did that gag, but then it's been a while since I've seen anything new from Žižek.
• On the Dylan Chrysler ads.
• Map of Georgetown 2028.
• White Oak!
• 2100 words on why DCU should play a diamond 4-4-2.
• I cannot wait until this summer when The Special One quits Chel$ki to take over for The Beloved But Fired Saint Benny. The Special One makes me root for Chel$ki, I cannot emphasize how big a feat that is.
• On reactive football.

• I'm told my father and brother and wife were mocking my music this past Saturday. Finding the Chris Watson interview an hour ago is why there are field recordings here today. The mocking is just a side benefit.

• Silliman's always generous lit-links.
• Joyce's birthday was last Sunday.
• Two days late too, New Inquiry's Sunday Readings.
• Handke, for those of you who do.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.

• I don't begrudge The Cure for continuing to make a living being The Cure, but meh.
• Something I missed three days ago: Destination:Out is closing up shop.
• Why Bach moves us? Not all of us, though I don't think you nuts if he moves you though many I've met in life think I'm crazy I'm not of the body too.
• Morton Feldman, for those of you who do. Those of you who don't should. I don't think I'd heard that piece before. Yes, this will shorten the time between my last Feldman fix and the next, but it's not today, click on the label for more.
• Prunella's latest playlist, for those of you who do. Those of you who don't should.

THE FUTURE OF TERROR/1

Matthea Harvey

The generalissimo’s glands directed him

to and fro. Geronimo! said the über-goon

we called God, and we were off to the races.

Never mind that we could only grow

gray things, that inspecting the horses’ gums

in the gymnasium predicted a jagged

road ahead. We were tired of hard news—

it helped to turn down our hearing aids.

We could already all do impeccable imitations

of the idiot, his insistent incisors working on

a steak as he said there’s an intimacy to invasion.

That much was true. When we got jaded

about joyrides, we could always play games

in the kitchen garden with the prisoners.

Jump the Gun, Fine Kettle of Fish and Kick

the Kidney were our favorites. The laws

the linguists thought up were particularly

lissome, full of magical loopholes that

spit out medals. We had made the big time,

but night still nipped at our heels.   

The navigator’s needle swung strangely,

oscillating between the oilwells

and ask again later. We tried to pull ourselves

together by practicing quarterback sneaks

along the pylons, but the race to the ravine

was starting to feel as real as the R.I.P.’s

and roses carved into rock. Suddenly the sight

of a schoolbag could send us scrambling.