Last Bender

THE QUESTION The question most writers face is, “What if no one wants to hear what I have to say?” This is not the same question writers also face, which is, “What if I have nothing to say? The answer to that question is, “Then don’t say anything, don’t write, and for god sake, don’t [...]

LOVING By Henry Green INTERVIEWER When you begin to write something, do you begin with a certain character in mind, or rather with a certain situation in mind? GREEN Situation every time. INTERVIEWER Is that necessarily the opening situation—or perhaps you could give me an example; what was the basic situation, as it occurred to [...]

Morning burns and crackles in the leaves and the nuns of Villa Maria are gone. Where their dusty wombs once sat is a conference center.

JIM KRUSOE: GIRL FACTORY Jim Krusoe’s first novel Iceland was a devastating nightmare told in a beguiling and simple prose that promises, at the outset, to be an ironic, poppy story of obsession. It begins when the hapless hero discovers a beautiful woman swimming naked in a pool. They have sex of course, but the [...]

A thousand spleened suns Could not turn off the barking The fleas themselves were all afire And i scratched till blood Matted the hairs of my scalp It was a wineglass victory A headless triumph It was graeco-roman alchemy on the Nile I was a Jack Lindsey joint In a Spike Lee monograph And it [...]

Have they not got law schools in china Why do i have greasy lips What have you been kissing Are the results in yet Are the parameters just Where are the tastes On what part of the body Do we climb yet or sit down There is nothing here i don’t know People have been [...]

CHAPTER SIOUX           I knew Junior would be pissed, but I didn’t know how pissed. I didn’t sleep, I sat with a bowl of cocaine and the girls in the living room until the Priest showed up around ten one morning with contracts for the Air Stream deal to sign. The morning sun was shining [...]