From my recent review of Frédérik Peeters’ Pachyderme:

Let’s see… in the breathless opening to this 90 page graphic novel we get a traffic jam due to a wounded elephant; a blind pigkeeper; a gray hydrocephalic baby—vaguely alien-looking—in the woods; a cavalier and alcoholic skirt-chasing surgeon; and a beanpole of a Swiss secret policeman, complete with trenchcoat, stovepipe hat, and prosthetic proboscis, who like Get Smart’s Agent 13 turns up in the unlikeliest of places. A woman—our heroine Carice—walks though it all—from her car through the woods, as if in a trance, to a hospital to visit her diplomat husband, indisposed from an auto accident. Her goodbye note, which she intends to deliver in person, is in her purse. The hospital is vast, remote, and forbidding, filled with suitable loonies. Among those Carice meets in the lobby are a paraplegic who offers to help hide her if she’s a Jew, and an orderly who insists she’s come for the annual show patients put on. The secret policeman insists she see the Don Juan of a doctor before her husband, because the former has a file that should be in the latter’s hands: a file valuable to the Soviets, detailing activities of the Red Cross. The book’s first third ends with Carice waking an apparently dead body in the morgue with her whistling. Chopin? the body asks. Carice nods. We learn of her too-early marriage, her dashed dreams as a concert pianist, and in the course of conversation realize that the aged cadaver she’s talking to is her future self.

Read the rest at Absinthe Minded!

for purchase online and at purveyors of discerning periodicals near you. Die not for lack of what is found in poems, difficult as it may be to get the news from them.

Featuring H.V. Chao’s short story “Jewel of the North” and Edward Gauvin’s translation of Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud’s “Talking Ape Clobbered by Clowns” amidst a host of superlative contributors!

Vagrants in the Hilton Lobby, courtesy Matt Rowe

Home is the sailor, home from sea
And the hunter home from the hill.

Subtropics 9, the translation issue, will be published in January 2010, featuring fiction by J. M. G. Le Clezio, Marco Denevi, Fumiko Enchi, Gyula Krudy, Ervin Lazar, and Bernard Quiriny; a memoir by Mark Girshin; and poems from the French, Catalan, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Tagalog, Russian, Dutch, Spanish, Latin, Romanian, Ukrainian, and Japanese. Translators include Alison Anderson, John Batki, Martha Collins, Fred Ellison, Michael Emmerich, Edward Gauvin, Jim Kates, Alexis Levitin, Christian Nagle, Andrea Nemeth Newhauser, Idra Novey, Jose Reyes, Marian Schwartz, and Lawrence Venuti.

Matching up names: my translation is of “A Guide to Famous Stabbings” by Bernard Quiriny, a bright star in the current Belgian Francophone firmament. Quiriny’s first book, L’Angoisse de la première phrase [Fear of the First Line], from which this story is taken, was published in 2005 by Phébus, and received the Prix Littéraire de la Vocation, a prize previously won by such notables as Christophe Bataille, Amélie Nothomb, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Didier Van Cauwelaert, and Shan Sa. His second book of short stories, Contes Carnivores (Le Seuil, 2008), won Belgium’s top literary prize, the Prix Rossel. It was prefaced by Enrique Vila-Matas, whose work is referenced in “Stabbings.” Born in 1978, Quiriny lives in Bourgogne, where he studied with political philosopher Cornélius Castoriadis, who sometimes shows up in his stories. He is a frequent contributor to Chronic’Art, Epok, and Le Magazine Littéraire.

Last Friday night, readings by Jeffrey Ford, K. Tempest Bradford, Carlos Hernandez, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Veronica Schanoes, and Genevieve Valentine, backed up by local musicians Brian Wecht, Jeremy Goddard, John Pinamonti, Nate Landau, and Charlie Shaw, conducted by Brian Francis Slattery. And boy do I mean conducted! The Nerd Rock-to-Cuban soundtrack to Carlos Hernandez’ story was amazing.

Links are to my Youtube uploads; more can be found here and here. Wish I’d had more time on my camera.
The next “Slattery Event” will be in Boston this coming Friday:

Friday, November 13 at 7:30 p.m.
The Lily Pad
Inman Square
1353 Cambridge St

Readings by Interfictions & Interfictions 2 authors Theodora Goss, Catherynne Valente,
Matthew Cheney, F. Brett Cox, and Shira Lipkin , backed up by local musicians Michael McLaughlin (keys and accordion), Joe Kessler (violin), and Joe Dejarnette (bass), conducted by Brian Francis Slattery (author). Expect sometimes raucous and sometimes sweet, sometimes despairing and sometimes joyful, and always interesting…art without borders.

Epiphany Reading, 11/7/09

So Saturday I read H.V. Chao’s story “Jewel of the North” in its entirety for Epiphany magazine’s fall issue event, the first of two. The second is this Wednesday, November 11, so please come celebrate with a launch party for Fall 2009’s WHO’S STILL ALIVE . . . / (l)ove = (o)cean from 7-9 at Pianos (158 Ludlow St.). I will be reading from my translation of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s “Talking Ape Clobbered by Clowns.”

This concludeth the flogging.

In the hope a few poorly chosen words, slightly late, are still better than none ever: Among the highlights of WFC weekend were having my Clarion mates all crammed into my mom’s house, on floor and sofa, in room and hall. Waking every morning to jaw around the breakfast table on three hours’ sleep. We also did some serious hanging out with the awesome Clarion ’08, as well as assorted Westies and past grads, largely thanks to an afternoon Clarion alum party that Leslie Howle threw Friday afternoon. While we went around the crowded room with AA-style introductions, I was mesmerized by the view of dry and distant hills from the 14^th floor: a reminder that there was a world outside, beyond the heavy curtains, carpeted corridors, deadly dull brocaded walls of conference suites. A world beyond a swarm of faces—and for a moment the prospect of another handshake felt crippling. Sunshine! Fresh air! Through the tinted window it seemed almost a back projection, or a collective hallucination, as loud an announcement as a long shot of landscape in a sweeping old epic, the green world (though it was mostly brown) they run to at the end of some cut of Blade Runner.

Peter Straub, S.T. Joshi, Tim Powers, Brian Evenson, and Gary K. Wolfe held a panel on the Library of America’s handsome American Supernatural Tales, edited by Straub, who made this astute observation: “Making the case for a canon isn’t the same as choosing canonical stories,” Hearing his tales of editorial “horse trading” and Joshi’s lively interjections was a hoot. Together, those five mugs were like a heist gang put together by Straub’s bow-tied mastermind from some B&W noir like Rififi or The Asphalt Jungle. Evenson would’ve been the muscle, Wolfe the bookie, and Powers the safecracker.

For some reason, the soundtrack in my head that weekend was The Velvet Underground’s Peel Slowly and See… I mean, the whole album, on repeat. Right after I’d had my second Red Bull of the morning I’d be thinking, “I’m Waiting for My Man.” In the post-dinner slump, it’d be, predictably, the languid “Heroin.” Saturday morning, it was “Sunday Morning,” because I was that tired already, and in the presence of some people it was definitely “Femme Fatale.” And after all my Clarion buddies had left the house, and I was alone, I turned “once more to Sunday’s clown / And cried behind the door.” Where shall I go, and what shall I do indeed. The long-awaited sunshine seemed a bit paler than before.

Author Alan DeNiro, a Michigan Clarion vet I met at WFC, has a few neat roundups of WFC events here. In his Day 2 report, he mentions the Fantasy in Translation panel, where critic and blogger Cheryl Morgan announced the tremendously exciting Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards, for works of foreign-language speculative fiction translated into English.

She gave fervent argument for the award, which is really her brainchild: “In running the Science Fiction Awards Watch web site, I see non-English speaking countries all around the world give awards for translated fiction. Only in English-speaking countries are translations not specifically rewarded. We aim to change that.”

The first awards are expected to be presented in 2011, for works published in 2010. Already the list of organizers at the site is impressive: Other members of the energetic and informative panel included Viz Japanese fiction editor Nick Mamatas, Weird Tales editor Ann VanderMeer, Guest of Honor Zoran Živkovic, IMPAC-longlisted author of Escher’s Loops, and Israeli editor-translator Rani Graff.
As Small Beer is bringing out Châteaureynaud’s selected stories, A Life on Paper, in May, I admit to having a personal stake in this. Apparently there just weren’t enough nominees to fill out this award category in past years! I’d love to see this trend overturned next year: new translations by Michael Kandel, Doryl Jensen, or Sheryl Curtis? New work by Johanna Sinisalo, or from Japan, or the Philippines?

I’m about to head off for the annual American Literary Translators Association conference, where I hope to stir up notice and enthusiasm for this award. It feels like “mainstream” and “genre” literatures are both turning to translations, and it seems like these “worlds,” if separate they are, should cooperate, should be able to pool promotional resources and lend mutual support in this respect. The theme of the Words Without Borders December issue is speculative fiction. Editor Susan Harris used to publish Lem and Zivkovic. What better way to kick off cooperation?

Before any more time goes by—yikes, it’s been a week already!—some afterthoughts on WFC. The blogosphere, ADD as it is, has long ago up and moved on, and everyone else has filed their reports and coverage. So please indulge me three quick posts pertaining thereto. First, huge congrats to all this year’s nominees and winners at World Fantasy Con!

• Lifetime Achievement: Ellen Asher & Jane Yolen
• Best Novel (tie): The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow) & Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin; Knopf)
• Best Novella: “If Angels Fight”, Richard Bowes (F&SF 2/08)
• Best Short Story: “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss”, Kij Johnson (Asimov’s 7/08)
• Best Anthology: Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, Ekaterina Sedia, ed. (Senses Five Press)
• Best Collection: The Drowned Life, Jeffrey Ford (HarperPerennial)
• Best Artist: Shaun Tan
• Special Award – Professional: Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant (for Small Beer Press and Big Mouth House)
• Special Award – Non-Professional: Michael Walsh (for Howard Waldrop collections from Old Earth Books)

Another round of applause from this section for my former teacher Jeffrey Ford, and the publishers of my upcoming translation of Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s stories, Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant. And w00t for the Paper Cities upset!

Thanks to Jeff VanderMeer, Amazon has listed Interfictions 2 among the Top 10 Books of Science Fiction & Fantasy for 2009. (Insert Kermit arm-waving) More details at the IAF site and blog.

LiveJournal user rymenhild attended the Interfictions 2 Borderlands reading in San Francisco last Tuesday, where she heard editor Delia Sherman read from “L’Île Close,” and sent Ellen Kushner this message she kindly passed on to author Lionel Davoust and me: “Hello. This is… the medievalist who came to the Borderlands reading…. I read the rest of ‘L’Ile Close’ on the way home that night—a metatextual post-Sartre Arthurian story! It read as if it were written for me personally!—and totally humiliated myself by cackling all over the subway when I got up to the point where the Grail was singing Monty Python.”

Interfictions 2 Auction Opened November 1st

In honor of Interfictions 2, a wide array of artists — dollmakers, painters, jewelry-crafters, knitters, and more — were invited to create pieces inspired by the stories in the first and second Interfictions anthologies. Through the alchemy of word and imagination and raw materials they have created over 30 stunning pieces, ranging from an evocatively alien sculpture by Jane Washburn (inspired by Theodora Goss’ “Child-Empress of Mars”), an eloquent necklace by SToNZ (inspired by “Valentines” by Shira Lipkin), complex and exquisite handmade art books from Wendy Ellertson and Erzebet Yellowboy (of Papaveria Press), a hat that can be both worn and read from Kate Schaefer, and many other intriguing pieces that are themselves works of interstitial art: illustration and handcraft, fine art and utilitarian . . . all and none of the above.

The online Interfictions Auction began November 1st and will run through early December. All of these pieces make excellent holiday gifts. Opening bids will range from $10-$50, though of course the value of many is much higher. All proceeds go toward supporting the Interstitial Arts Foundation and its projects.

To learn more about the auction and see previews of the available art, please visit IAFAuctions.com.

Thanks to IAF Board Member Geoffrey Long, there is a beautiful new webpage full of interesting things, including:

• The IAF Annex, an online museum of interstitial works. Currently, we’re featuring eight wildly interstitial companion stories to the forthcoming anthology, Interfictions 2.

• Recommendations In this section, members of the IAF share some of their favorite examples of interstitial work. We’ve also included write-ups of several interstitial courses from academia and compiled a list of interstitial sites and organizations.

• Essays What does it mean to be an interstitial artist? In this collection of essays, an array of imaginative artists and writers from Holly Black to Charles Vess share what interstitiality means to them.

Yaaay HOLLY BLACK!