chach bag writers

I fear I already posted something with this title. But whoa, David Markson's The Last Novel totally makes me feel *GREAT*. Because other writers throughout history were WAAAAY bigger chach bags than I will ever be. For example, my coffin will never arrive in Moscow, nor will it accidentally be labeled "oysters" like Chekhov's was. I will never have a mother that is as much of a chach-bag as Schopenhauer's. I will never be as big an asshole as Gaugin. I will never urinate on my own sculptures "to add patina."

I will probably, someday, be so drunk as to leave a dinner party via fireplace, like Tennyson, though. And I am definitely Novelist, "tossing his keys into a drawer--without having opened the drawer." And I agree with Stravinsky that my art is best understood by children and animals. And I hope someday I am seen as enough of a chach-bag that someone will publish all my chach-bag quotes about masturbation.

I also love to talk shit about other writers, but now I feel sort of good about it since David Markson proves that every writer ever has done this, because we are all sniveling bags of chach with no self-esteem. I need to come up with better insults, though. Like when Mark Twain says about Jane Austin "It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death." Yeowch!

I also now LOVE John Updike for his description of critics as "Pigs at the pastry cart." Just by saying this, he has completely redeemed himself and all of his books that I hate.

What really disappointed me is that there is no more Savoy, "for poor people, sick or lame, or travelers--which also saw fit to take in struggling authors." Now only places like the Art Institute take in struggling authors, and you have to pay them to do it. That is some bullshit if I ever heard it.

Let's open our own Savoy and we will be the charity cases and we can pee on anything whenever we want to.

Also, at our meeting, can we just read this book aloud? Because it demands to be read aloud.

Tupelo Press Dorset Prize

Poets, you can now send those things you’ve been working on with all of that white space to a special prize that rewards that sort of thing. $10,000 is the reward. Also included is international fame among poets and a book launch, probably attended by a bunch of other poets who may or may not correct your grammar as small talk. (One of my first parties in grad school involved a poet who shall remain nameless saying I could not use the expression “accidentally/ on purpose” because it wasn’t “proper English.” Poets can be chach-bags too. And make money, apparently. I learn new things every day.

A Major Offense Involving Barnes & Noble

Ugh, Literati, I fear I have committed a major offense. Yesterday I bought David Markson's The Last Novel at Barnes and Noble, rather than ordering it from his awesome publisher.

My reason being that I freaked out and had to have a book to read immediately and then I was in Barnes and Noble and, well... See, the other book I am reading is called The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre. It is sort of awesome, but I hope you can understand why I needed something else to read pronto.


Please know that I did not take the Barnes and Noble cashier's advice and get their stupid card that makes you buy everything there because you can save, like, 3 cents every time you use it.

Oh Literati, please forgive me. I will sincerely apologize to David Markson in our letter, and address myself as a "chach-bag writer," to use my new favorite term, coined by Meghan Austin.

(See pretentious picture of our favorite chach-bag writer above. I will also send David a picture of myself in this same pretentious pose, but in front of Burrito House or something.)