Tag: books

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Zine Review: Friends, Get Wayward

Posted on by Sonya Mann

I just got back from my road trip. It was supposed be an epic journey and for the most part, the trip held up its end of the deal. Last night I came home from driving through hundreds of miles of America, telling Alex to look at the mountains. I said that over and over again: “Alex, look at the mountains!”

Then I asked him to change the music and hand me a potato chip, another potato chip, another potato chip please. Alex was great. We listened to HP Lovecraft stories from LibriVox and it was great. (Example: The Shadow over Innsmouth.)

So anyway, last night I tore into an order from Pioneers Press that arrived while I was away. I had a lovely stack of mail to open and the Pioneers package was what I couldn’t keep my hands off of. After watching Big Love with my mom, I climbed into bed and raced through Becoming the Media: A Critical History of Clamor Magazine (informative) and Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win: The Red Army Faction’s 1977 Campaign of Desperation (brutal).

I had a hell of a time getting sleepy, so I also finished the novel On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee, which was like The Windup Girl meets Brave New World. EXCELLENT.

Can you believe that I haven’t gotten to the point of this post yet? Just now, drinking tea, I read Friends, Get Wayward. The author, Adam Gnade, might be famous. It’s kind of unclear to me, the way it always is with these indie-publishing kids. Adam Gnade reminds me of Daniel Vaccerelli but with a totally different shtick. It’s the dedication to an aesthetic, I guess.

Friend, Get Wayward is a zine by Adam Gnade
Selfies are the pictorial soul of my generation, lol.

Friends, Get Wayward was very stream-of-consciousness. The best parts were vignettes of encounters with strangers, whether direct collisions or conversations that the author overheard and recorded. He mentioned typing on his phone at the airport, and gosh, it was endearing because I do the same thing all the time. On this road trip, I lugged my paper journal with me, but mostly I have iNotes to retrieve from my email and sort.

I gotta complain about one thing: I’m sick of sad-guy writers going on about other classic sad-guy writers. The Beats, especially Kerouac, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, thankfully not Hemingway. I would never deny that these men were geniuses, but UGH, is this how y’all feel when I adulate Sylvia Plath?

I’m not doing a good job of explaining that I liked this zine. I’ll leave you with the quotable quote that stuck in my heart:

"It's a symphony of shit. It's a beautiful life. It's all we get." Original background photo by Daniel Krieg.
Original background photo by Daniel Krieg.

Ain’t that just the nature of existence? The zine costs $4 at Pioneers Press.

The Woeful (Aspiring) Writer: Industry Education

Posted on by Sonya Mann

Note: I shouldn’t be blogging because technically I’m on vacation, which is to say that I’m parked in Portland, OR, the fourth stop on a meandering road-trip through the Pacific Northwest. I pointedly left my laptop at home because I wanted to unplug for a month, but whatever. The house where I’m staying has a free-use computer. Plus, I haven’t been writing in my notebook much.

Today I can’t stop pondering my “career”, present and future. Well, mostly future. Such spells of self-reflection usually occur after I’ve glutted on essays from The Awl and its ilk (e.g. “The Plath Resolution”). Last night I found several issues of The Sun in the bathroom and squirreled them off to bed with me. Pompous-but-poignant lit mags are my jam!

The Sun always makes me melancholy, but it was nice to get some reading done. I’ve been attempting to dive into Tarot Revelations, by Joseph Campbell and some other guy, but honestly, who am I kidding? Since I said “honestly”, I must admit that I was kidding myself a week ago when I stacked this book on my “to read” pile, but actually reading it has dispelled my hopeful urge to “study”. Give me fun books or give me the mobile game that I’ve quickly become addicted to, Best Fiends. I can’t be relied on to slog through anything! Drudgery is for chumps.

Um, I was talking about careers, right? I just read Emily Gould’s essay from MFA vs NYC, retitled “How much my novel cost me”. It could be considered a primer in privilege. I have my own heaping privilege, so I didn’t look at Gould’s situation that way. My basic reaction was, “Thank goodness I live with my parents because otherwise I could never afford to stay in the Bay Area.”

The sensible choice would be to move somewhere cool-but-not-that-cool, a midsize city in one of the states that I always forget about, like Kentucky. I live in California’s equivalent of the unnamed city, but because I’m close to the internationally lauded metropolis of San Francisco, prices are still high. Plus, I’m only moderately employable.

disregard females, acquire currency
Image via Know Your Meme.

The Bay Area is not a practical place for me to build my life, not when the only prospect that I can relish is self-publishing with my dad’s laser printer. The closer I get to my self-imposed “find a real job” deadline, the less appealing it seems. What I want to do is keep making and distributing zines. The tough part is acquiring currency.

Especially since I want to acquire currency without disregarding females! But actually, one of my Tumblr friends signed up to sponsor me on Patreon, which was the sweetest thing. This post will end on that cheery note!

Dropping from the Veils of Morning

Posted on by Sonya Mann
Photo of a misty morning by Conal Gallagher.
Photo by Conal Gallagher.

Recently I discovered the poem “Morning” by Billy Collins. I love it in the same way that I love the peaceful verses of Yeats’ “Innisfree”. Ironically, I first read “Morning” late at night, because I couldn’t sleep and I thought poetry might soothe me. Oh well — the time was past midnight, so it was technically morning, right? Here is the poem, in full:

“Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,

then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—

maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—
but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,

dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,

and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.”

I found this poem on page 31 of Billy Collin’s collection Picnic, Lighting. The book’s title references a passage from the infamous novel Lolita. Humbert Humbert is describing his personal history:

“My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory […].”

Because of the allusion to Lolita, I know that Billy Collins loves a book that has fascinated me since I was a teenager. Enjoying one novel in common seems like a tenuous connection, but that’s the beauty of reading — sharing literature connects people in spite of material obstacles. Billy Collins is an elderly man and I’m a young woman, but we would have plenty to talk about.

That’s also why the poem “Morning” delights me. As it happens, I am a morning person who prefers to write early, although I’m not an espresso aficionado. Nothing feels better than starting work when the sun does. Waking up early has a significant impact on my mood throughout the rest of the day.

Reading this poem, I feel happy that my own feelings are so well-described by someone else — described in clear, beautiful language. That last image, of dew steaming from the lawn like sweat from a stallion, is so unexpected and enchanting. Yes, “enchanting” is definitely the right word: Billy Collins gave me a moment of magic. It’s trite but it’s true.

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