Recently Acquired:
-Facts for Visitors, by Srikanth Reddy. Sasha West, the former managing editor of Gulf Coast, recommended it to me. I borrowed it from the University's library, liked it, but never got around to get it.
-Grave of Light: New and Selected Poetry 1971-2005, by Alice Notley, which includes sections of the out-of-print Descent of Alette, which Johannes called one of the major work of the second half of the 20th century.
-Selected Poems, by Charles Olson.
-2048, by Wong Kar-wai.

***

comic corpse page 1corpse
The preceding images are part of the "Comic Corpse" project I had undertaken a couple of months ago with Lauren Kohne, Johnny Sakkis and Claire Webb. The idea was to have each one of us draw a page, pass it on to the next person and see if a narrative would emerge from this. Johnny gave it its name. I drew the first page, Lauren the second and the project kinda collapsed from there. Lauren and I thought it would be a good idea to expand the project to the four cornered room instead of just the four of us. In a sense, it might be more interesting since there would be more people involved. So if you want to add a page, just join the MySpace group, put a word there, start working and post the image of what you've done in the corresponding thread.

Comments

John Sakkis said…
man. totally collapsed. sorry about that.
François Luong said…
Johnny, no worries, really. Perhaps you will contribute a page now that we've opened up the project.
gina said…
You should get Descent of Alette in its entirity. I actually didn't know it was out of print until I read your post--copies are still easy to come by.
François Luong said…
Gina: Hum ... Yeah, I was wondering if it was available on eBay or something. Ingram says it's out of print. I don't usually trust Ingram, but well, if they say it's out of print, it might as well be.
gina said…
It must be out of print because all the starting prices on amazon & abe are around 40 dollars. Weird. I had it required for a class not too long ago, and I feel like I still see this book on bookshelves at stores....maybe I have been imagining the whole thing, but I don't think so....
Johannes said…
I'm pretty sure Descent of Alette is out of print. I wanted it for a class too, and I think that's why I wrote about it on my blog inititally. I asked Eddie Berrigan and it surprised him too. It's very strange that it's out of print as it's out with Penguin (I think).

It could be that Notley wanted it to go out of print so that she could put it in the selected. That's what Haryette Mullen did for Recyclopedia (why you have to pay big bucks to get Spermarkt on the Net).

Maybe it was hypocritical of me to say that it was a "major" book when I've been such a jerk about criticizing others for making such statements. Oh well. It's never too late to change.
François Luong said…
Johannes: Substitute "major" for "most interesting and off-the-beaten-track" and you should be fine. Hypocrisy didn't even cross my mind when you made the statement.

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