'spring' has 'arrived'

you can now read my interview in anp quarterly (pg. 1, 2) and thing in paste magazine (click to enlarge)

i encourage you to read the interview; things were said, i think, thoughts were articulated, i made some jokes, jokes were made, bright eyes was referenced in a vague manner

bright eyes is referenced in both articles for some reason, i do listen to bright eyes a lot, i think my favorite bright eyes songs are off 'lifted,' i believe that album was very 'mature,' he was like 22 and exhibiting 'signs' of being 'enlightened' maybe

eeeee eee eeee is shit on consistently at goodreads, it has a 3.49 rating (bed has 3.85 & you are a little bit happier than i am has 4.00), here are excerpts from one-star reviews

i had the vague feeling the entire time spent reading this... that i would have found this book for sale at urban outfitters, or h&m. for those of you know know me, we are all aware of my hatred of reading material specifically marketed for "indie kids." this book also made me feel guilty about listening to the music i do, dressing the way i do, and basially everything about how i am, which made me a little grumpy. i may also have enjoyed this book more if i had been smoking a big fat b the entire time (fucking talking bears and dolphins?!) [...] i was looking for south park, but instead got family guy. from what i hear, this dude's poetry is the shiz, but until i read some, i am hating on him hardxcore, yo.

[...] I saw Tao Lin read at The New Yipes in Oakland. I ate one of his grapes when he wasn't looking. I talked to him and told him I liked his blog and his book of poetry. I did like his book of poetry. That was before I had read this book or Bed (which is much better). His fiction is not very good. Tao Lin would probably argue with that and say that I am using an abstraction and using abstractions is contributing to pain and suffering. That's true. Tao Lin's fiction also contributes to pain and suffering, namely, mine.

This book was truly godawful. Hipster pretention at its absolute worst.

This is the worst book i've ever read. It was as non-sensical as a dream. A bear suddenly appears in your car and talks to you......but it wants to detonate a bomb somewhere with your help...and in the meantime you have a crush on some girl you work with. Noooo...i couldnt take it.

when i worked for money in a library i sat every day reading lexus nexus archives of newspapers, i think i read every review of lorrie moore that exists in the lexus nexus system, i probably read every article in existence containing the words 'frederick barthelme,' 'bobbie ann mason,' 'ann beattie,' 'lydia davis,' 'kmart realism,' and 'joy williams,' i learned that michiko kakutani has a low tolerance for meaninglessness and tends to interpret fiction symbolically

sometimes i am clicking some link somewhere and then i read some sentence about how whatever famous writer or musician doesn't read reviews of their art, i am not like that, i read everything that exists on the internet about me, there is enough time to do this, there are many moments in my life when i think things like 'okay, i've edited the novel for 3 hours in accordance with my to-do list, now i can search for myself on the internet and read about things i am involved in and interested in or i can go on youtube and watch videos of lemurs and ocean sunfish or maybe go on gmail chat and type things like "i want fried bread dipped in agave nectar," what should i choose, i think i'll go google myself'

i don't know, what else am i supposed to be doing all the time? i don't watch tv, i already read gawker and bookslut or whatever, i look at shoes online, i search 'richard yates' on ebay without warning sometimes (i will be thinking about what to eat for dinner and then see that i have typed 'richard yates' into ebay), and i read like fifteen blogs and their comments sections

i don't know what people do when they are alone

a lot of nights i look at the books i've already read a lot of times and read a few pages from each

last night i lay in bed and opened 'good morning, midnight' by jean rhys and 'tracer' by frederick barthelme and 'eeeee eee eeee' by tao lin and read pages from each

i saw things in 'tracer' (1985) that were said in the same way as in 'good morning, midnight' (1939)

i know from interviews that frederick barthelme likes jean rhys

while reading 'good morning, midnight' i thought a lot of times that jean rhys was 'original' and i thought about her life and what she would be like in real life, i thought that i might be able to communicate with her, but i'm not sure, i thought about how she lived to 89

i thought about how the books i like i can open to any page and read it with the same enjoyment as if i read it from the beginning

i think i really want my next novel to use the names 'haley joel osment' and 'dakota fanning'

journalists and people interviewing me will focus only on that probably, i think i will like this, i don't want to think about literary criticism or narrative arcs

i don't have the same interest i used to have in searching for things people are saying about lorrie moore or whoever, i used to google news search kurt vonnegut and lorrie moore almost every day

i feel no interest today in what other people think about joy williams or lorrie moore

i feel like people will just say what they think to affirm their own identities or something, i have no interest in that anymore for some reason, or something

i don't actually know what purpose joy williams or lorrie moore have for me except for 'something to do,' i know for sure that i am not becoming 'happier,' 'better in social situations,' 'healthier and with nicer skin,' 'all my laundry is done,' 'my personal relationships are improved,' 'a better dinner guest,' or whatever by reading 'anagrams' or something

i don't 'understand' the sentences inside book reviews talking about things, i really do not 'understand' what is happening when i read book reviews or hear people talking about writing beyond 'i like it' or something

my brain does not process a lot of things anymore

i have nothing to say really about anything

i don't know, does that make sense, i type so much on this blog

i don't know what i am typing about really though

i try to view everything as 'art,' as purposeless, i am not successful at all in this i don't think, or maybe i am, i don't know

i feel enlightened or severely detached somehow

i'm not sure what i'm talking about

i know that in my real life there are a lot of hierarchies, my entire life is 'controlled' by hierarchies pretty much, and i have justified this in that it works against 'meaninglessness' and 'insanity,' but while doing things in concrete reality based on hierarchies i am almost always having thought processes convincing my brain of the arbitrary nature of things and 'falseness' of hierarchies

but i know all of that, i'm aware of it, so i still feel justified thinking i feel enlightened

i 'understand' the 'falseness' of identity sort of

i read my own books and i know that to some degree 'i' have as much 'connection' to that book as philip roth has to some article in 'good housekeeping'

people are not enlightened

i don't know if anyone in 'the canon' is enlightened in these ways

i don't know why i would feel disinclined to read books by people who are not enlightened, i'm not sure if this is behavior that is 'enlightened' of me or not

lydia davis seems to be enlightened and so does joy williams

i value enlightenment or something

certain things are impossible if you are enlightened

you can't get angry or feel seriously depressed, certain emotions become inherently 'amusing' or 'sarcastic,' the idea of 'philip roth' becomes inherently 'amusing' and 'sarcastic'

'sadness' becomes 'emo'

'despair' becomes 'existential despair'

i'm really screwing around right now typing these things to myself

i don't know why if i was enlightened i would feel inclined to read books by people who i feel are enlightened, that doesn't seem enlightened

in 'the art of loving' by erich fromm he said that as part of the 'art of loving' people should avoid people who speak and think in cliches and stock-phrases, but that it was impossible to do that, since so many people speak and think in cliches and stock-phrases, so it was 'best' to avoid them as much as possible

i'm not sure what that has to do with other things i typed in this post

thank you for your time