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Re: This Is The Best Dupe For Le Labo's Santal 33 | Into The Gloss

Evan Bryson — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 22:26:14 -0000

! A story of wolves ! 1 month later when I checked back in—a million times yes—yes—like Goethe.

(I in fact don't know for sure tho.)

Re: This Is The Best Dupe For Le Labo's Santal 33 | Into The Gloss

Evan Bryson — Tue, 22 May 2018 17:31:30 -0000

Grand Tour confirms on its host--and I say host, because there isn't another way of describing the way Goest perfumes dwell on their subjects--a brave new erotic prestige. Lartigue is also quite hot. These scents draw curious onlookers. They announce themselves in elevators.

We're all pronouncing this "Gerst," right? I say Gerst.

Re: Duck Beater

Evan Bryson — Fri, 30 Jan 2015 17:11:28 -0000

TODDY I WISH I HAD A GOLD TOOTH AND ALSO THAT I WAS GOING TO PIRATE FEST WITH U, AND ALSO EATING MCDONALD'S FRIES RIGHT NOW.

Also all of the tequilla.

Re: Nicholas and the Beehive

Evan Bryson — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 23:52:14 -0000

The old ladies in Miami are powerful and resilient—don't worry about them, even the ones that seem out of place/out of time. The bees are a whole other world of trouble. I wish there was a supernatural answer for the bee die off, but it's entirely our fault.

Re: Duck Beater - Having made and tried a Bellini, using the finest...

Evan Bryson — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 09:03:37 -0000

I wanted the opportunity to feel very fancy! I had, indeed, already had some Jameson.

Re: Tyler Gobble’s False Voice

Evan Bryson — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 09:34:55 -0000

!!! NOW I HAVE TO READ MORE HEATHER CHRISTLE !!!

Re: A Poetry Presentation

Evan Bryson — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 21:06:39 -0000

HA! The blog has been ONLY COMEDY the last entries, JB! The comedy of High Keys Style! Etc.

Re: The New Working-Class Anthology: Emily Dickinson, Johan Jönson, and the Sound of Interruption

Evan Bryson — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 19:36:28 -0000

I am surprised by your use of the word "glitch" and "glitchy" which has a kind of technocratic/cybernetic feel (this would make sense for we contemporaries), but more to me it has a "neutral" feel—a glitch happens, a glitch is a mistake, "an unexpected setback"; whereas, I feel that working-class interruption/disruption is not a mistake, but is tactical, is structural, and befits a pattern of systematic oppression. I'm not certain why I feel the word is torqued in this conversation. Great post, though, Beth!

Re: Why I think lying is much more fun (on genre and the stream)

Evan Bryson — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 20:57:50 -0000

Drew—I remember, on my blog, sometimes inserting as a fact that I was missing a leg; that my missing leg was the product of student loan debt, of car trouble, of sexually transmitted disease, of carelessness, diabetes, wolves. Sometimes I claimed that both of my legs were missing, and that I sometimes felt awkward in crowded rooms because of my stubs, my wheelchair, my bandages. This post reminded me of the fact that I had no expectations that my readers would understand this as truth—my blog shows strapping shirtless pictures of me all the time, and with all my limbs intact—but it was my way of doing what exactly. I don't know. It was very effective shorthand for me to signal my boredom with my own unhappiness, or that the events of the day had effectively amputated me. This post reminded me that! I love this Simmons guy. What a rascal.

Re: WILTING BEHIND THE ENGINE

Evan Bryson — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 09:13:51 -0000

some feels-type reflections on audiobooks, jane austen, wolf hall, housekeeping, long car rides, but with a lot of narcissistic preening in there, too. it is strange to re-read something written a year ago, in a different moment. i wonder what i was so excited about (accepting audiobooks, jane austen, wolf hall, housekeeping, and long car rides).

Re: Duck Beater - CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

Evan Bryson — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 22:46:25 -0000

THE QUEEN MUM. Nico's brother left it for him. Her head bobs when the train comes by. It's creepy.

Re: Platitudes I Mean and Meaningly Offered My Brother, All Before Lunchtime

Evan Bryson — Fri, 06 Dec 2013 00:34:24 -0000

I quite disagree!

Well—they're platitudes, so they necessarily have the air of frivolity, or uselessness, except as matters of consolidation and consolation.

But the more I turn the phrase over, especially re choices and money, the more I think that even if my aspirational wisdom is shallow or foggy, it serves as a reminder that we can move beyond capital gains, that we can guide our actions by other lights than financial security, prestige, the like. Situations may precede choices, but what's the use of choices when they are founded on nothing, no virtues, no values? Hypotheticals are so dreary!

Re: A Bad Lesson

Evan Bryson — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 23:50:00 -0000

Haha! A bad booty call. Yeah—I think, actually, using any kind of relationship metaphors when it come to teaching are problematic. They leave one open to all the other particular exchanges in romance—like booty calls. I think too that some of it must be on the students, and then some of it also—I talked about this with A.J. this afternoon—would be approaching with what I have to offer, the framework/guidance through the material, and leave it at that, and be more accepting of the limits of the exchange. I could do for being a lot less critical of my own performance; that might in fact free me to be more engaged and more invested, to orient myself around the task with a lot less of my esteem & self-worth invested. The post is kind of a rant, because I think having a dialog with myself about my shortcomings is always fruitful, if only to realize when I am being an ass, when I can let something go. Distance is helpful.

Re: But Daylight Saving Is Over

Evan Bryson — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 14:49:09 -0000

Beth, this "workshop-style way of organizing a comp class fascinates me. Can we discourse about how that might look like? Or do you have literature to direct me towards?

Re: But Daylight Saving Is Over

Evan Bryson — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:52:28 -0000

Here is a Michael Robbin's review of _Ooga Booga_ by Seidel:

http://hum.uchicago.edu/org...

Re: But Daylight Saving Is Over

Evan Bryson — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:49:27 -0000

OMG! Yes! I do come off sounding like these things don't make my life mean or more satisfying—I experience contentment explicating a poem; I experience pleasure, actually—I come to know my own thinking and experiences better, in fact, through a poetry explication sensation is amplified for the hour that I'm thinking—so of course these things are not mutually exclusive. EEE. MAN! I wish I had set a course in describing to students that 1) this is personally gratifying, and why and then 2) it is intellectually rigorous and deploys critical thinking skills, etc.

O MAN DREW. I never think Seidel does snoozy things—sometimes cutesy things, of course. His gravity and motorcycle sex poems are so funny, too. Also his bitter tourism, his luxury. His use of form and meter, his awful punning and obvious rhymes! If you have not, maybe read _Area Code 212_? I think it really locks into decadence and sadness in such a stately, crotchety way.

Re: But Daylight Saving Is Over

Evan Bryson — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:31:03 -0000

It's funny because we were talking about conceptual poetry and the artistic gesture and the institution all last week (starting with Bernstein counting to 100), more or less, and students were looking at a MATH TUTORING SESSIONS neon printed paper sign on the wall, and they were like, "Is THAT poetry?" And I said, "Yes, in the right circumstances, given some framing, some context. I would make it FOUND poetry or something." And they were like, "Could you explicate THAT?" and I said, "Yes—but, I'd need, like, 10 minutes of alone time to gather my thoughts." So, I think what has happened is I've made the process of writing and discovery a way of papering over the banalities of this life with large words and complicated syntactical structures. So—even if we do explicate, MY explications are EXCUSES, rather than intelligent discourse, or THINGS I DO WITH MY FREE TIME TO MAKE MY LIFE MATTER TO ME—like your male bodies and film analyses! I don't know how to correct this save for being less earnest? Because the intrinsic value of reading a poem is really lost in a really profound way to these kids, but, like, watching music videos is somehow not. How to bridge the divide? How much sneaking "the medicine in with the applesauce" is one obliged to do as an instructor without feeling like a douchebag Modernist, assembling hierarchies, priorities, lineages, etc.? History and words are the same thing.

I thought too about the November problem—thus, before showing the poem I did some ruminating on the Indiana climes, to give them a MIND PICTURE of COLD, SLEET, SODDEN LEAVES, WAN LIGHT, HOPELESSNESS, and also all of my love, all of my rich, golden love for the Midwest, in contradistinction to the Miami Day-Glo Eternal June. Oh! But what helped yesterday was it was "breezy" and "dark" and "rainy," thus a pretty formidable fall day in Florida!

Re: But Daylight Saving Is Over

Evan Bryson — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 11:06:33 -0000

This is macabre: one of the adjuncts, whether in jest I do not know, told me that when the 6,000 limit was in place, course instructors would have students copy magazine articles out by hand to reach the quota by semester's end. This is strange to me because no one has ever pressed me on looking at my course syllabus, etc., to see the work to be done.

Re: But Daylight Saving Is Over

Evan Bryson — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 10:34:32 -0000

It's called "teaching to the Gordon Rule"—a word minimum that students in comp classes must reach within proficiency. It used to be 6,000, but now it is 3,000. Although 3,000 for comp 1 and comp 2—for a total of 6,000 words. ACCOUNTABILITY.

Re: Working Constraints

Evan Bryson — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 17:19:01 -0000

I think this is true: when I do commit to writing, I end up with surprising results. It's like dessert.

Re: Wild Blue

Evan Bryson — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 16:26:34 -0000

I AM SERIOUSLY SO INTRIGUED BY THIS.

Re: Wild Blue

Evan Bryson — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 15:51:13 -0000

WHAT THE FUCK JROD?

REALLY?

ENLIGHTEN US!

Re: Duck Beater - The Certainty of Kent Johnson by Jonathan Lohr...

Evan Bryson — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 21:14:52 -0000

It's funny—because I totally have that vocabulary—borrowed, of course—and when I see the photo it isn't abstracted in the least, it is somehow more resonant or heightened. I mean, in one sense, it's a psychological portrait of wrestlers—but also a formal composition in terms of color, line, shape, repetition.

Re: Mourning Diary: Seven Cities of Gold

Evan Bryson — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 13:49:06 -0000

The one by Hershel Parker, vol 2 of his opus. I think it is incredible. But it is very difficult to read in bed because it is so heavy.

Re: I Like a Bit of Parallax

Evan Bryson — Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:25:46 -0000

Hi, Sean. It was totally my mission to get Crain's book into your hands, and into many more hands, as well. I got my brother to also pick up a copy, so I feel very smug knowing my advanced copy has paid for itself and double, through my influence alone.

And thank you for directing my attention to the Glück quotation—that's pretty much nail on the head, I think, for a certain period of gay writing, certain gay voices, certain representations of gay fellowship. "Gossip." A totally concise way of describing the inflection so much queer criticism has brought to the creative works under its interpretation. And White is definitely a proponent, at least in his reviews/remembrances. In one collation of his essays, Art and Letters, he remarks on Foucault's famous assessment of the pinnacle of queer romance: that moment you put your new lover in a cab after a night of rough play. It's what one says over dinner to one's friends. (I have told this story and better to my friends.)

But I wonder, just as you're indicating, if the tide hasn't shifted a bit, and the reasons why. In the '80s it seemed especially important for gay writers to make a close semblance of their living days: to have a record that, if it didn't correspond 1:1, had the impress of 97% facticity (to borrow Guy Maddin's formulation). No doubt this was borne out by the exigencies of plague, of horrid politics, of pain; and of opportunity, as well, the joy of identity and recognition. This on the side of queer creation. On the side of queer excavation, it seems important to locate instances of clear homosexual identity in the national canon—a move towards empowerment, of reclamation. Allowing so many authors of the American Renaissance and Modernism their queer do (Melville and James especially [and tendentiously]) was a process in recovery. And arguably a great boon to queer self-esteem and queer prestige, as well. (I feel resoundingly more confident as a homosexual knowing I am in such good company. Even if Melville was a lacerative, miserable wife-beater.) You are probably very familiar with this line so I suppose I'm rehearsing it all to say, progress must look, in some way, like ending the compulsion to treat queer works of fiction as the 1:1 restatement of the author's life and times. And yet—are we not gratified when the "reality" of this experience is borne out in the world of literature, sells well, is celebrated and rewarded?

Funnily, I just finished reading a galley for Norman Rush's new novel, Subtle Bodies, and this makes the third appearance of a very conflicted gay brother-type in his novels. (Well, in Mating, there was this closeted actor that flies into Tsau and flirts with Nelson a little bit. But in Mortals and Subtle Bodies it's full-on anxiety about the main character's gay brother.) So what I want to do is ask Norman Rush, "DO YOU HAVE A COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP TO A GAY BROTHER?" Because—yes—part of queer identity might be doing a headcount to see how big our team is. Even if that involves asking our straight friends if they have gay brothers. And asking straight writers what the deal with their gay characters is. Etc.

The "trompe-l'oeil" of found material is really a seductive formulation. I think of other recent works that seem to deploy this method of invoking a reality that exists just to the left of the readership, in the haze of becoming: Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be? is possibly the most famous, or perhaps the work of Chris Kraus—I Love Dick comes to mind.