Last Friday, I got my second tattoo.

The quote itself comes from the last issue of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, which is — I daresay — one of my favorite works in any kind of media, and one which continues to resonate with me in strange and different ways since I first encountered it in the mid-90s.

So here’s the full quote. I used the last line:

We made gods and jailers because we felt small and ashamed and alone. We let them try us and judge us and, like sheep to slaughter, we allowed ourselves to be…sentenced.

See! Now! Our sentence is up.

I’d messed around with some designs, but nothing quite seemed to fit the test. I ended up consulting my friends Alex and Scott, each of whom knows quite a bit about typography than me. Alex suggested Rockwell as a font; with that in mind, Scott came up with a pair of designs:

I then made my way to Josh at Greenpoint’s own Three Kings Tattoo, where the design was turned into what you see below (and also on my left arm). Apologies for the blurred cameraphone image — it’s still markedly better than the photos I’ve taken since then.

After this was done, I noted that it had taken me thirty-three years and four months to get my first tattoo, and ten after that to get my second. At this rate, I may not have any uninked skin by the time I’ve reached my forties…

So. Recently, Vol.1 has begun to run a weekly series of fiction and nonfiction pieces on the site. We’ve dubbed it the Sunday Story Series, for reasons that should be obvious, and the first two have now appeared:

Justin Maurer’s “Insanity & the Russian Doll Conundrum”

Jonny Diamond’s “Standing on a Beach Canada Day 1992″

The next story in the series will appear on Sunday. (You may have guessed this already.) And if you have something you’d like to submit, you can do so here.

Today’s theme seems to involve ruminations on new publishing ventures; ergo, a couple of thoughts on The Domino Project. I first came about it via a post on Seth Godin’s blog, which served as a sort of meta-manifesto:

The book is still an ideal tool for the hand-to-hand spreading of important ideas, though. The point of the book is to be spread, to act as a manifesto, to get in sync with others, to give and to get and to hand around.

Going to their site’s FAQ, one thing in particular stood out, given their “Powered by Amazon.com” status:

Will the books be available in traditional bookstores?

Yes. Amazon already distributes to bookstores, both independents and chains, and all the titles in The Domino Project will be available to any store interested in offering them at retail.

Which, I’ll admit, made me do a bit of a doubletake. That was reinforced by this New York Times article on novels in translation, which cited AmazonCrossing. Amazon’s page for said imprint states that

AmazonCrossing will acquire and translate the works and introduce them to the English-speaking market through multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, and national and independent bookstores.

Of the seven books listed on the page, five are marked as “Amazon.com Exclusive.” One of the two that are not won’t be released until January, leaving Martín Redrado’s Sin Reservas as the only currently-available AmazonCrossing title without an “exclusive” tag. And searching for it on  Powell’s, IndieBound, and Barnes & Noble’s site only gets a hit on the last of those — and in that case, it’s available for pre-order.

All of which suggests that there’s a window here, even for books that aren’t designated as exclusives — though I am curious if the same staggering will apply for Amazon’s other imprints.

Via a post on Ron Hogan’s Twitter feed earlier this week, I made my way down to the sidewalk out in front of the Union Square Barnes & Noble after work one night. A small crowd had gathered, and a

“Ah,” I thought, “this is about Mischief & Mayhem.” (In retrospect, I’m not sure how I didn’t get this from the original post, which makes it pretty clear.) I  stepped out not long afterwards — I already knew the basics of their operation, and (here’s where I make a very awkward face) didn’t realize that a proper reading would follow the declaration of said manifesto.

With all that in mind, I’m not entirely sure what I make of M&M’s business model, or that of OR Books, with which they’re affiliated.

Mischief + Mayhem’s titles will be produced only in electronic or print-on-demand editions, and will be available, initially at least, exclusively for purchase online from the publisher. This arrangement avoids the enormous waste of the current publishing system, which ships books to stores, fails to promote them, and then sees many of them returned, unsold, to the publisher.

That said, I have been meaning to order several of their titles — namely the Gordon Lish collection, Eileen Myles’s Inferno, and now Lisa Dierbeck’s The Autobiography of Jenny X. But I’m also a fairly staunch buy-it-locally-if-you-can guy, which leaves me unsure of the ethics. Either way, I’m supporting an indie business, whether publisher or store — but the fact that OR’s model is, essentially, storeless worries me in its implications.

I also recognize that this isn’t the case for everything OR does — I could (and probably should, before long) order some of their books via my local bookstore. And they also seem to recognize this, as they just announced a partnership with St. Mark’s Bookshop.

(And there’s an entirely different discussion that could also be had, about how I don’t necessarily have this same internal ethical debate when dealing with independent music & indie record stores. On the other hand, though, my understanding of the underlying ordering structure of publishing vs. that of the music industry means that this isn’t as much of an issue. If I’ve gotten any of this horribly wrong, feel free to correct me…)

Apparently, my theme for reading this autumn is “books the size of my hea.” First, Ulysses; now, Adam Levin’s The Instructions. (Joshua Cohen’s Witz is up next, I suspect. Or maybe George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.)

Two reviews come highly recommended. Maud Newton’s is what first piqued my interest in the novel, while Bookavore’s is spot-on in its take on the novel’s ambition, its risks, and its debt (or lack thereof) to other massive/ambitious novels of recent vintage (specifically, those of David Foster Wallace).

So: some reflections. If there is a Wallace influence here, I’d say that it’s less in the way the novel plays with text and — to a much lesser extent — with media., though those qualities are definitely present, and do suggest the comparison. If there’s one aspect of The Instructions that does call to mind Infinite Jest, it’s more the structure: not quite a proper circle, but one which buries pieces of information. It seems innocuous at first, but slowly, over the course of hundreds of pages, casual references and even simply the presence of certain names begin to become hugely significant.

Levin also uses his scope well. There’s a certain cumulative effect that one can only find in a novel of a certain size — that combination of narrative or symbolic payoff with length. (The moment in Pynchon’s Against the Day in which the book’s title is explained, for instance; having made my way through three-quarters of the novel, the force of that section, of that explanation, gave me chills.) Here, it comes very near the end of the novel; it provides context for a certain passage of text, and it’s masterful.

The novel’s coda finds Levin writing in a particularly controlled yet chaotic tone, wrapping a host of speculation and possibilities in a curiously restrained way. And it’s significant that, though Levin has created a particularly striking narrator in Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee, two of the novel’s most resonant passages are written in the voices of other characters. The ambition and thematic implications of The Instructions are impressive enough. What makes this novel even more impressive are the unexpected places that Levin takes risks — and that those risks pay off as well as they do.

This week brings with it fine news — in this case, the announcement of All Hands On: THE2NDHAND after 10. I’ve had a number of pieces appear in both the print and web presences of said literary broadsheet, and I have a deep fondness for the work that they do. (Todd Dills’s editorial eye has definitely challenged me, pushed me, and made me a better writer; and the experience of reading with him twice in 2007 has also made me a better reader.)

Here’s a bit more information, from their press release:

The 300-plus-page All Hands On collects previously unpublished stories by the likes of past contributors Nadria Tucker, Patrick Somerville (The Cradle) and Joe Meno (The Great Perhaps) as well as new faces like Amanda Yskamp, Ben Stein and others. Special sections over the bulk of the book are occupied in most instances by multiple shorts from our best repeat writers, from Meno, Somerville,Tobias Carroll, and Al Burian to Heather Palmer, Jill Summers, Kate Duva and longtime T2H FAQ editor Mickey Hess (Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory).

One can learn more at the project’s Kickstarter page. Worth a contribution? I’d say so.

Ten years ago, I started blogging. Literally: the first post to appear on my first blog — hosted by a small press called TNI Books, now sadly defunct — was dated November 19, 2000.

Looking back at it, I find myself laughing and cringing in equal measure. It looks about like what it is: the writings of an overly earnest guy prone to digressions, prone to oversharing, prone to a deep enthusiasm about books and music.

In the fall of 2000, I was halfway between freaked-out and elated: I started blogging between dot-com job no.1 (duration: seventeen months) and dot-com job no.2 (duration: three months). The first post on my blog came days before my first trip out to the Northwest: five days in Seattle and two in Portland that still resonate with me. (It’s one of the reasons I’m eventually getting  some representation of the Steel Bridge tattooed on my arm — though whether that’s tattoo no.2 or no.3 is, at this point, still unclear.)

Ultimately, it’s those first few words that still set the tone, and that still bring a smile to my face.

2:06 AM right now. Red Forty’s discography is on the stereo.

It’s a start.

(And every once in a while, something like this, its timestamp suggesting I was blogging well after 4 in the morning:

aol just crashed on me.
this is the essence of what I was trying to say in a rather legnthy  [sic] post which is lost now: Portland is very, very nice. Trying to find non-chilled Henry’s Dark in Portland is kind of a nightmare. But it’s possible.

And that, too, warms a fella’s heart.)

This whole strange system of — if I might borrow Blogger’s onetime slogan — “push-button publishing” has been good to me. I’ve made friends, learned new things, had questions answered, given license to explore. Here’s to the next ten, whatever they may hold.

File under: books I remember remembering fondly. Ron Hogan discusses Thomas M. Disch’s “Supernatural Minnesota” novels at Beatrice.com, and I am very much intrigued.

…Disch used a deeply caustic and ironic voice, and a keen sense of family drama, to carve out a unique place for himself in late 20th-century horror.

I can remember reading The M.D.: A Horror Story when it was first out in paperback, close to — dear lord, that can’t be accurate — twenty years ago*. I can remember it creeping me out, and very little else; based on Hogan’s essay, methinks I’ll need to revisit said novel, along with its cohorts, and soon.