Photos by Jamie Millard 

Ray Becoskie

Rosalux Gallery

TERRENCE PAYNE

Amelia Biewald

Amy Terry

Jarmo Koponen

Here’s your excuse to stay in one night this weekend: three ringing indie game recommendations by a superficial stranger. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

Proun

Proun by Joost van Dongen

The “abstract racing game” is a long-standing trend I am fully behind. Not many racing games are known for their realism, so fully abandoning that for geometric shapes and jazzy music has my semi-permanent stamp of approval. Proun has been exhibited in modern art museums, and it’s easy to see why. It’s even easier to see why if you see it in motion.

For being pay-what-you-want (starting at $1.00), Proun packs a helluva punch. That includes a range difficulty settings, multiplayer capability, an unflagging soundtrack that you will hum for days, and a fine little library of user-created levels. It’s dizzying and addicting to race along and spin around that cable (or, more accurately, spin the world around you). But even with Proun’s general flamboyance, the little touches, like being able to hear the platforms whoosh by, don’t go unappreciated.

Proun is a PC exclusive. When I heard about Proun, I had an almost-working PC. By the time it launched, I was on a Mac. It’s been a long year waiting to get my fingers on this game, and I may have had to buy and download it on someone else’s computer to do it.

It was worth it.

Buy. Play.

Q – Compressing the Heart

Q – Compressing the Heart by Disco Fish Games

Q – Compressing the Heart makes about as much sense as its title. It’s a short point and click adventure that will leave you wondering. I don’t mean to say it’s a symbolic journey that is purposefully above our heads…I think it is what it is: a weird game with cool art. (Don’t try to tell me it’s an exploration of the morality of the modern man or something; that will just ruin it.)

QTCH is laced with eerie shadows and undulating flora, and while the obvious comparison is Limbo, QTCH lacks Limbo’s “emotional touchstones.” All the shadows can’t mask that the player character is a bit of an asshole, progressing through the game at the expense of others. It makes sense, maybe, as he is literally lacking a heart per an earlier encounter with a baddie.

QTCH won’t enlighten you, but it will surprise you. It’s short and free to play—enjoy it ASAP.

Auditorium

Auditorium by Dain Saint and William Stallwood

Auditorium is at the bottom of the list because you probably already know about it.

As the screenshots above clearly demonstrate, Auditorium is sexy, but its real beauty lies not in its sights but in its sounds. The thrill of solving a puzzle in Auditorium is more than just feeling clever and getting to move on—you get to direct symphonies.

Even sparser than Auditorium’s graphics is the amount of direction it provides the player. It’s a smart move, though—exploring and understanding each tool is part of the fun. Sharing an overview of the controls was against my better judgment, and trying to write that overview (“you drag, expand, and collapse the circles to direct the light/sound to the audio containers”) made it even clearer that the game can’t be explained as easily as it can be experienced.

So, as with all my recommendations, I want you to experience Auditorium. The delight of playing with a new tool, the downfall of one of your audio containers going silent, the frustration of coming back to the game a year or a day later and having no clue how to solve the puzzles again…just do it. 

There is a meaty demo of Auditorium available at playauditorium.com, but the full game is $10. Auditorium is available on PC, Mac, Linux, and iPhone.

Two of the three Paper Darts co-founders recently sat down with MNO On The Go to discuss the magazine, April's Super Super Tuesday event, and the legendary John Jodzio. Watch us chatter, or just skip to JJ reading a brand new story. Illustrations for that story below.

Thanks, MN Orignal. What an honor!

When I was living in Philly, and going to Temple University, a school situated in a sort-of-rough-but-not-as-bad-as-other-parts area of North Philly, Teri Woods came to campus. I remember thinking at the time that the whole "urban fiction" (or "hood books" as they were commonly called by people I knew in Philly, although that seems to not be the prefered term) thing seemed really stupid. 

Mostly, I'd see urban fiction books on the racks at CVS (still do), and like all niche romances/mysterys/thrillers, they did not appeal to me. But, I was in college studying English literature, and we weren't taught about books outside of a certain schema, which I get—although I maybe don't "get it" as much as I once thought I did, because here I am, devoting a year of my life to reading the books we weren't supposed to talk about. So far, it's been a really fun experience. 

Having said that, I'm not really sure where to start with Teri Woods' True to the Game. Do I start with the story or her story? 

I'll get the story out of the way I guess. 

True to the Game is a book about 17-year-old Gena who meets a guy named Quadir Richards on a trip to New York. Gena and her friends refer to Qua as "the man of life" because he is insanely rich and a major player in the local drug game. All of the girls in New York and Philly want to be with him. Gena and all of her friends seem to constantly be trying to get hooked up with men who will provide them with money. All of the men believe that giving a woman money is the same thing as taking care of them, although Jamal, Gena's boyfriend at the time of the book's opening, provides her with money, but also beats her.

Anyway, Qua and Gena fall in love, and things go about as expected for this young girl and her drug king boyfriend (who sells crack to the very people who make Gena's life in the projects hell): a ton of money is spent, a rival gang is spotted, friends die, Quadir makes a decision to escape his violent life—if you're an American who has ever read a book about a societal villan with a heart of gold who chooses to do right in the end, then you can probably guess what fate will befall him. Because this book is a "fable," Gena, the princess of this story, ends up with all of Qua's money and moves to New York. She is the main character of True to the Game II.

Honestly, I can't decide if I liked the book or not. This book wasn't written for a white girl like me, so there were plenty of cultural norms and touchstones that I just plain missed. Also, while I was empathetic on some levels to some of the characters, there wasn't one character that I liked enough to hang on to and follow through the book. But whatever, not all books are for everyone, and there certainly are enough books written with me in mind. 

While True to the Game isn't an exceptionally written work, this is Teri Woods' first book ever, so I'll save my opinions on her prose until I've read more of her work. She wrote True to the Game in the '90s and spent years trying to get a publishing house to pick it up (a scenario also encountered by Joe Haldeman). When no one else would, she self-published and sold her books out of the trunk of her car all over Philadelphia and New York. When we think of self-publishing, we should think of Teri Woods. She is a self-made, self-published millionaire. (Her books are now put out by Warner Books.) She didn't just write a book and stick it online and wonder why more people didn't flock to her genius. She got out there and made it happen, which is so awesome.

The books she wrote filled a cultural hole, indicating that there is a need for urban fiction. According to Wikipedia, urban fiction isn't a new genre, and includes books like Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. In the '60s and '70s, African American urban fiction—or street lit—became popular with a book called Pimp by Robert Beck (pen name Iceberg Slim). The genre died out during the '80s and '90s, giving way to hip-hop lit, but came back full force in the 2000s with the help of Teri Woods.

My favorite quote in my copy is not from the story, but rather from Woods' letter to the readers:

"People ask me all the time how I did it. How did I sell a million books by myself? I always tell people I've done nothing by myself. I try all the time to explain the power of my people and how they demanded this book and how they made corporate place it on those big shelves of Barnes and Noble and Borders. I love you so much for that because I could never have done that by myself. I tell people how, when I started selling True to the Game in Philadelphia, it was handmade with the white cover and the gold gun on the front. People bought that book from me for twenty dollars, even though it fell apart once they opened it because it was really handmade. To this day, they're holding that book in a plastic bag, thinking it will be worth money one day. I love you for that."

While I may not like her writing or feel her books the way she intends them to be felt, damn if I don't respect her ingenuity, drive, and passion in the world of self-publishing. 

My copy of The Forever War is front-loaded with praise from literary figures. Pulitzer Prize winners Michael Chabon and Junot Díaz, literary light Jonathan Lethem, and two authors who have drifted back and forth between science fiction and contemporary fiction: William Gibson and Iain Banks. It’s an impressive list. They all say extremely nice and flattering things about a book published just before I was born. A book that at its core is more about the Vietnam War and American politics than accurate descriptions of gravitational effects on space battles and a war with a seemingly barbaric alien race.

It’s a damn good book, one that sucks you right in. Haldeman is adept at dropping in small concepts that give you a hint of how the “world of the future” is different than ours (or post-Vietnam U.S.): conscripted sex partners among the mixed gender combat troops, rations of marijuana for recreational use, and the encouragement of homosexuality as a form of population control. I think this adeptness, this ease of just inserting concepts and not really fussing over it, allows him to spend time describing the science behind what is happening. It’s done well, in a way that draws readers into it, even those who would initially balk at the fact that Haldeman is playing the science insanely straight—describing exactly what physical laws would govern a battle in space and what would happen to those troops we would send light years away to fight a battle we couldn’t see, whose outcome probably wouldn’t be known until after we’re dead.

It’s a damn good book, one that sucks you right in.

The Vietnam parallels seem almost (almost) heavy handed these days, but you do have to remember that the book was published in 1974 and there’s still a sense that in that year the public wasn’t ready for an examination of exactly what the fuck happened there for ten years or so. (Editor’s Note: Joe Haldeman was unable to find a book publisher for years. The argument, even in the 1970s was that no one wanted to read a book about the Vietnam War.) The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now didn’t come out until at least four years after The Forever War, and Robert Altman had to make a movie about the Korean War to make any sort of commentary. It always seemed the public had a hard time with those as well.

All of the above does make The Forever War a classic of science fiction. A book in space that is about something here on Earth, right now. In fact, the myriad social aspects in the book, not just the war but the culture behind war, make this book entirely valid today. 

But I have to pass it through what I said about American Gods, like I will every other book on the Courtney’s Year of Genre list (what I’m now thinking of as the Adams’ Test): does this finely crafted work of thrilling fiction elevate itself to art?

...does this finely crafted work of thrilling fiction elevate itself to art? I’m going to have to say no, it does not.

I’m going to have to say no, it does not. I am completely and thoroughly torn on this since it is a very good, entertaining book. It has subtext and deft writing, but possibly not as deft as it could be. Is that a side effect of being hard sci-fi, where descriptions of the relativistic effects of faster than light travel and the physics of space battles make it a little dry? Maybe. I could also chalk it up to the one section where it seemed like Haldeman could’ve slowed it down and just focused on the writing: the middle part where some of the first soldiers return to Earth after decades away. This more than any section seems heavy handed and not as well-written, andd it's frankly my least favorite part of the book. That doesn’t take anything away from the message, the power of that section—it just paled in comparison to the writing elsewhere.

So, The Forever War is a classic and a great piece of science fiction I think everyone should read, well deserving of all its awards, accolades and general praise over the years, but it is a fine piece of craftsmanship and not a piece of art. Haldeman should be proud it is his first novel, because it is that good. Considering all the awards he’s racked up since then and his position as a professor of writing at MIT, I’m thoroughly interested in seeing what else he has to offer, because this is one hell of a debut.

AP recently decided to give up the fight on the correct usage of “hopefully,” and I didn’t really care. I’m lenient with my red pen and I never crossed out a “hopefully” at the beginning of a sentence and replaced it with “one hopes.” I have major respect for modern usage because I’m hip.

Still, my suggested edits occasionally defy what “looks better” to people that aren’t self-styled grammarians. What seems nitpicky to them feels monumental to me, and getting overruled on a suggestion as straightforward and set in stone as 2 + 2 can sting. No one wants to put their name on something they know is wrong, but now and then surrender is the only answer.

So on the off chance that AP or Chicago or Merriam-Webster is taking requests, I have some other fights that I’d like them to give up on so I don’t have to argue with people anymore. These are little ones, barely noticeable.

No one would even have to know.

Uranus, Neptune, Internet

Everyone remembers where they were when it was declared that e-mail had shed its hyphen and become the slimmer, sexier email. (I actually don’t remember who made this happen—AP? Whoever it was, I agree with them.) I want to see the same acceptance of modern usage happen for email’s older sister, Internet, who yearns to become internet. It will mean I can no longer pretend that the Internet is a proper noun because it is technically another planet, but I can deal with that. I don’t feel like I need to make arguments for it, because it’s only a matter of time before this request becomes law, but in case you want to read more, there is actually a Wikipedia article on internet capitalization conventions.

Verb:

Following a verb with a colon is verboten. At least, that’s how I learned it. Trying to pin down the source of this rule has been difficult, but finding a style guide that has a verb-colon combo in it has been even more difficult.

I most frequently see colons placed after verbs when introducing a vertical list. As far as I can tell, the powers that be don’t want you playing with colons that way.

So every time you do something this—

My top three mood ruiners are:

• shoe and/or bra shopping,

• people chewing with their mouths open, and

• rodents of any size.

—you’re actually doing it wrong. I know it looks right. I know it feels right. I also know it probably isn’t right, but I’m tired of correcting you. 

His-Her-Their

I break this rule daily and knowingly, like a renegade. My love for concise copy is how I justify using “they” instead of “he or she,” “their” instead of “his or her,” and so on.

I have a special kinship with whoever it was that wrote the entry on the singular “they” in the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition. Their (see what I did there?) annoyance is palpable. They call the common solutions for avoiding using “they” as a generic pronoun “awkward,” “ridiculous,” and “stilted,” so I know my I’m not alone in this debate.

Reworking sentences to avoid “his or her” by revising clauses or using the imperative mood used to be a fun puzzle, but I grow weary of these acrobatics. Until we have a widely-used genderless pronoun for these situations, let’s make wrong right.

Ththbhbhbhthbhhh

In general, English speakers can accept that things aren’t written how they sound, but for some reason everyone tries to compensate for how weird-slash-awesome our language is by mixing up cardinal and ordinal numbers in dates. It’s not June 1st, 2012—it’s June 1, 2012. You still pronounce the latter one “June first,” you just don’t write it that way. You just don’t.

You can, however, write 1st of June.

I don’t want to see this rule change. I like this rule. So I’m proposing an impossible compromise. We can keep “st” and “rd” and “th” attached to our days of the month, but only if we start writing dates the British way. Day first, no exceptions. 1st June 2012. 01/06/12. If you think about it, it makes more sense than how we’re currently rolling.

When I first decided to pick up To the Lighthouse, I admit that Virginia Woolf and I weren’t on the best of terms. Yes, everyone had been telling me that I couldn’t be a Serious Novelist until I had read it, and yes, word on the street was that it was her most successful book, but the last Woolf novel I had read was Jacob’s Room, a near-incomprehensible failure (in my humble opinion) and a big, fat, stream-of-consciousness F-YOU to her reader. I don’t mind working to read a good book, but I admit I’m far more interested in character-driven novels than idea-driven novels, and Woolf’s cerebral voice has put me on edge for years. Most of the time I just want to shake the characters in her books and tell them, “Talk more about your deep, empathy-inspiring feelings, dammit!”

However. Despite my reservations going into it, I loved To the Lighthouse—both for nerdy structural reasons and for the vulnerability and nostalgia (in a good way) of its prose. I don’t want to become one of those reviewers that ends up talking more about Woolf’s personal life than her writing, (SPOILER ALERT: SHE DROWNS HERSELF IN A RIVER OMG MAYBE SCHIZOPHRENIC WTF!!!!!!!!!! #TRAGEDY) but TTL is the most autobiographic of Woolf’s novels and also the most emotionally revealing. Coincidence? I think not. In her diary she wrote, “I used to think of [my father] and mother daily; but writing The Lighthouse, laid them in my mind.” The characters tap into a deeper well in TTL; Woolf reveals not only the workings of the mind but also the broken chambers of the heart.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. My main tip o’the hat should be for Woolf’s use of time and the overall structure of the book. Written in three parts, TTL is shaped like two funnels stuck together: thick, full sections over a concentrated period of time (one day) bookend the novel, and the middle section is very short, spare, and detached while spanning a ten-year period. It’s kind of like those “Where Are They Now?” celebrity programs, except a bajillion times more poetic. The reader glimpses the Ramsay family and their houseguests at the family’s house in the Hebrides on one summer day; and then, ten years later, the reader returns with the Ramsays et al to that house and observes how both the place and the people have changed. Wordsworth was all about Spots of Time, and Woolf is all about Moments of Being: how one day is not just part of a life but in fact encapsulates the entire life. For Woolf, life is not a linear series of events but rather a few essential moments that we forever carry with us. Form and content merge beautifully here, and the middle section of TTL has earned a spot on the Best Shit Ever Written list, and rightfully so.

The other big plus about TTL is that unlike some of her later work (The Waves comes to mind—that book is my bane), there is a narrative here that propels the reader forward. One can expect beautiful prose and a good story—a rare treat! Yes, it takes some time to get used to Woolf’s writing style—and you can’t tear through the pages at the rate you read, say, a Franzen or Eugenides novel—but in this case, I think the effort put into reading is well worth it. I spent at least a week fantasizing about walking along the waves and painting beautiful canvases à la Lily Briscoe, and the descriptions of the lovely Mrs. Ramsay were enough to make me start using my anti-wrinkle cream again. 

Check out my Pinterest board for more Lighthouse-inspired goodies.

All rights reserved to Sally Franson.

I'm almost through with the fourth month of my Year of Genre, and thus far my expectations of fun reading times have been met. Mostly. 

I didn't post any opinions on The Outlander because they were very similar to Josh Wodarz's, and Josh definitely said it better than I would have. One thing I would like to add, though, is that when I purchased the book (which I had been assured is romance) the man at BookSmart found it for me with ease in the Historical Fiction section. When I asked him if it is, indeed, romance, he said it's a mix of historical fiction, fantasy, and romance. Perhaps all genres are so fluid, but maybe I should have picked up a Nicholas Sparks book instead.

While my romantic experience may have been a little lacking, my sci-fi experience was just incredible. 

When I had told my friends about my reading plans for the year, many people made suggestions, but a couple awesome friends actually bought me books, sealing the deal on what I would read in those respective months. One of those gifts was American Gods, which, while enjoyable, wasn't the hard fantasy I was expecting, though my friend who bought it isn't an avid fantasy reader. On the other hand, The Forever War, read for my sci-fi month, was given to me by a friend who spent his youth (okay, and all of his adult life thus far) steeped in nerd culture. He definitely knew what he was doing.

To be honest, I didn't want to read it. Playing Skyrim and binging on Game of Thrones had me in an earthly, fantasy, folklore heavy mindset for the beginning of March, and I didn't want any noise about worlds unrecognizable. As it turns out, though, the worlds weren't unrecognizable. 

The Forever War is an extended metaphor about Vietnam, the war in which Joe Haldeman, the author, fought in. (I need to pause here and tell you that just remembering and collecting my thoughts about the book to share with you is delighting me to no end.) Initially, when he shopped the book around in the 1970s, most publishers said no. "No one wants to read about Vietnam," they said. Once published, though, the book was a smashing success in the sci-fi community and went on to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards. 

Since the book is so detailed, I just want to give you some basics about the plot, and hope that it sounds interesting enough to get you to read it:

• When we meet William Mandella (the character readers spend the next 3,000 or so years with) he is in basic training to go into space and fight the Taurans, an alien race that no one has ever seen, on a planet where no one has ever been. Mandella is such a fantastic character to follow. He is honest and funny and terrified. 
• Mandella isn't a soldier—he is a physicist who is recruited along with a bunch of other non-soldier types because the government wants an array of the the smartest people, not the strongest. 
• Moving through space to fight the Taurans must be done through the newly-discovered space phenomenon the collapsar—a worm-hole type thing that allows thousands of lightyear's worth of travel in seconds. This is a problem because while Mandella is through the collapsar in seconds, much much more time is passing on Earth.
• In the future, there is no money only calories. 
• In the future, everyone is gay. They call this homolife. Being heterosexual is considered a sickness.
• In the future's future, no one is anything at all, except for those who return from war. 

Though I've read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which is beautiful and heartbreaking and also about Vietnam, The Forever War helped me understand the war in a much deeper way by isolating the story inside of the impossible, thereby distilling the important bits and creating a clearer picture. 

What a fantastic book. Damn.

It’s time for the somethingith edition of Wild and Free and Visually Appealing Indie Games [name pending]. Today: freaky not-hospitals, surreal playrooms, and juggling cephalopods. 

Closure

Closure by Tyler Glaiel and Jon Schubbe

Closure is remarkable. It has more atmosphere and feeling than anything ought to, but it also stands on its own as a fun game. If you ask me, anything that marries enjoyment with artistic merit is worth a try—and doubly so when it’s free. 

Closure’s combination of puzzle solving and platforming has a twist that can be summed up like so: If you can’t see it, it isn’t there. Each new level is nearly pitch black, and the key to advancing lies in transporting orbs that give off light to the right places at the right times. Stepping out of the light will lead to a long fall, but the darkness isn’t without advantages. For example, a wall that halts your progress is just a barrier that’s easy to hop over if most of the wall lies in shadow.

By the same token, light isn’t without disadvantages in Closure. The more of each level you see, the more you wish you couldn’t see it. Ominous messages scrawled on the walls, gnarled trees, hospital beds…y’know. Horror shit. In the end, Closure leaves itself up for interpretation without thinking it’s cleverer than the player, and that is as rare now as it was when it the game was released in 2009.

BONUS: A brand new Closure is available now for PS3.

Windosill

Windosill by Vectorpark

Here’s a true-life anecdote about Windosill: The first time I found it, I didn’t realize it was a game. I clicked around the first level, thought cute, and left. When it cropped up again, I noticed the toy-sized door in the corner. Fast forward to me exploring and making possibly embarrassing gigglenoises and, once I made it through the demo levels, not hesitating to fork over $3 to play the full game.

Windosill is a puzzle-driven surrealist’s playroom that’s high on charm and has low barriers to entry. The only skills you need are “click” and “drag.” The game is short and sweet, and so is this preview. Shut up and play.

Booty Juggler

Booty Juggler by Robin Davey and Thought Den

In Booty Juggler, you control the many tentacles of a pirate octopus trying to protect his treasure from falling bombs. There’s not much more to it than that…and why should there be? It’s as much an interactive illustration as it is a game—Patch the Pirate Octopus looks like he’s straight out of a children’s book I’d want to read, and the playing area’s page-like proportions and papery texture only add to that effect. You deserve to be delighted—give it a go.

There's been a lot of talk about literary rockstars lately. Does that include poets? Hell yes. The Great Twin Cities Poetry Read is a shining example of poets melting faces from the stage. It's a rapid fire line-up with 30 or so poets reading a single poem one after another. If you missed the two previous shows, you're in luck—the 3rd annual read is this Saturday. Every poem read will be published in the anthology Poetry City, USA, Vol. 3.

This fast-paced, poetry funtime features a great line-up of readers, some of whom we have included titilating tidbits about below for your reading pleasure:

Adam Fell 

Boredom makes Adam begin a project, write, wonder, wander. Distraction is his real enemy.

Dobby Gibson

Dobby wishes he could make a poem sound like it was recorded inside an evacuated space station using a Speak & Spell.

Lee Ann Roripaugh

Lee Ann Roripaugh is very fond of moles and mole-whacking.

Feng Sun Chen

Feng Sun Chen loves the Hovercat. In fact, she loves all animals. Even the ugly ones, because they are divine.

Betsy Brown

At Betsy’s first corporate job, she typed up Denis Johnson's poem "Now" and taped it to her cubicle wall. For 10 years.

Peter Campion

Peter morphs into a huge tortoise every time he opens a Word file.

Lightsey Darst

Lightsey has a gruesome imagination and says it’s the “birthright of the Southern writer.”

Bruce Covey

Bruce sometimes claims to secretly be Nora Roberts.

In the days before our Super Super Tuesday event (gig?) at the Nomad, Paper Darts got some really good press about the show. Most interesting among the blurbs was Gregory J. Scott's opinion that Paper Darts "treat[s] [our] readings like rock shows," which I had then thought was, though complimentary, a little overstated. How could a reading be like a rock show? It's like some hip Mad Hatter had posed me a modern riddle without an answer. 

But then, after watching Lindsay Hunter read her story "Like," ending every few sentences by emphasising a word with a gutteral, savagely sexy, growling grunt, which eventually fell into a rhythm that hypnotized me, I actually thought to myself (and embarrassingly enough told her in a sort-of-drunk manner), This is like seeing Hole in 1995, and started viewing the event in a different light. 

Though literary readings may not ever be exactly the same as seeing a killer band perform live, does a good reading have what it takes to be similar in some respects to a rock show?

1: MusicPhoto by Thomas Purves

While most readings don't have music, some of them do. I just saw a spoken word reading recently where there was music playing while the poet was reading. That's hip hop, dawg. Super Super Tuesday featured Amelia Gray singing, so we definitely had it. 

2: Drugs

I'm not going to say that drugs make a good rock show, because that's just not true. But when I think "rock and roll" it usually comes with the words "sex" and "drugs" preceding it, so it sould be on this list. I don't make the rules. While Dessa had mentioned overhearing a discussion about drugs in the bathroom, I'd like to draw your attention to something a little less nefarious: alcohol. It's a drug, and it is ever-present. I do believe that a good reading can always use a little bit of alcohol. Also, say no to drugs (real drugs, not alcohol).

3: Sex

Do people really have sex at rock shows? Probably, I guess. People will get to sexing just about anywhere if the mood is right. Were there people knocking boots at our reading? Those bathrooms are pretty small, so I'm guessing not. However, I did see two young and lovely ladies canoodling all night near the front of the stage. 

4: Fainting

People did it for the Beatles, Elvis, and Michael Jackson. People have done it for Chuck Palahniuk. (For much different reasons, of course, but it counts.) Though no one fainted at Super Super Tuesday, there were a lot of awkward fan moments for me that made me want to faint. 

5: Sweat

Yeah dude, it was hot in there. 

Photos and words by Jamie Millard

I'd never been to a fashion designer's studio before, but Sarah Holm's expansive, sunlight-drenched loft in Minneapolis' Northeast Arts District was exactly as beautiful and mysterious as I'd imagined. Recently, Courtney and I stopped by to interview and photograph Sarah for an upcoming Paper Darts feature (keep an eye out). While Courtney worked her interview magic, I wandered around the room, getting lost in all its nooks and cubbie holes, each one bursting with the trinkets and tools a fashion designer needs and squirrels away, to await the perfect project.  

A huge thanks to the over 150 Twin Citians who packed into The Nomad for last night's reading! With the "Oh my god!" gasps from the audience, mentions of bathroom drug use, and most importantly Amelia Gray literally rocking out on stage, we can officially declare last night's Super Super Tuesday a super super success.

Books are back, baby. And they’re sexier than ever. Of course, this is all thanks to Paper Darts." —Minnesota Monthly

We almost wrote one too many Supers there because this really is The Super Tuesday everyone is talking about. —Secrets of the City

Super Super Tuesday's Literary Rockers:

LINDSAY HUNTER
JOHN JODZIO
DESSA
DYLAN HICKS
AMELIA GRAY

A month later...

I can't get over how AWP is such a perfect treasure trove of stuff. (I don't meant that pejoratively.) 

All of these works start as one idea somewhere in the brain of an artist, become lumped into one conceptual entity as varying forms of literature, and then become different, new ("found") ideas that hold extra fascination to strangers because they were discovered. It's a beautiful movement from one place to another.

PLAY

This is my favorite AWP discovery. Not only am I exceedingly thrilled to now know about The Cupboard pamphlet series (Jesse Ball authored the first volume) from Lincoln, Nebraska, but this particular volume (I either totally lucked out, or they are all this fantastic, in which case the whole world lucked out) is just unbelievable. Play describes 29 children's games with titles like "Crossing the Brook," "Cat & Rat," and "It Looks Like War." Each section outlines the rather poetic rules to terrifying games with nightmarish, illogical objectives, although some games make more practical sense than others. My personal favorite is a game called "Jiggle the Knife," which is meant for two players. The description begins, "One child is the hunter & one is the knife. One child is the ocean & one child is the silver of metal stuck in the pad of the thumb." The game itself wonders why one must do anything in this world at all, outlining the passing of days and the stasis of the world, and ending with this excellent real-world advice, "A black velvet bag could contain anything, but you should never stick your hand inside it." 

HORNET HOMILY

The Octopus Books table just happened to be next to the Cupboard table, and also had fantastic looking little books. (Is there something about being a woman that drives me to purchase everything small in size?) Each book on their table had a cover more lovely (and intriguing) than the last, leading me to go the Holy Grail route and choose the one with my least-favorite cover, in the hopes that it might contain the greatest treasure. Sadly, it did not. While Patrick Culliton's poetry is sound and interesting, it's just not quite my style. However, I will never, ever get over this stanza:

I feel a cannonball rising up in me. Root
beer belly jellied out of my singlet, hair a slick
of coils. I am buffalo sauce, I am hot wings
throwing snake dances into the nostrils of the forsaken... 

I love the discovery that reading offers.

THE AGRICULTURE

Gosh, if your eyes and hands are longing for something that is "cool" in a mysterious and indescribable way, then The Agriculture Reader is probably what you're going to want to buy right away. Edited by Jeremy Schmall and Justin Taylor, and published by X-ing Books, The Agriculture Reader is top notch from its established (volume 4 featured Mary Jo Bang and Ben Lerner) and up-and-coming contributors to its look/feel/smell (like the virgin paper of a notebook)—not to mention, volume 5 included these freaking adorable "all occasions cards" (Fuck You, Thank You, and Sorry), the whole of which is titled "You Me and the Royal We," which is so cute I could just about die. 

STRANDED IN STRANGE WATERS

Oh, Idiots'Books, why are you so amazing? Creators of approximately a million books, and three children, husband and wife Matthew Swanson (author) and Robbi Behr (illustrator) are a super team of awesome. The particular book I bought is a series of short, paragraph-length stories—which are generally silly, and sometimes oddly touching—are paired with illustrations that I would describe pretty much word-for-word as I just described the stories. They also keep a fantastic website (which is a pit of cute), and have digitized a previously print-only book which features interchangeable sections of stories and illustrations, which can be rearranged into a ton of new stories (sounds confusing because I'm using my words poorly, so just go check it out here). 

How do they do it all? I'm assuming they're involved in some sort of artistic dark magic. They're clearly inhuman, but know exactly what we humans want/need/desire in the realm of entertainment. 

TRNSFR MAGAZINE

How cool looking is this, guys? This is TRNSFR's fourth issue and features tons of poetry, short stories, and art (presented in the form of tear-out postcard-sized prints), along with "hidden texts" and a freaking "flip movie." With breathtaking design and content like the short story "Bald" by Brandi Wells (about a woman with Trichotillomania), TRNSFR magazine is kind of where every (non-school affiliated) lit magazine should aim. What a treat to discover, buried among countless other treasures at AWP. 

Illustrations by Hannah Watanabe-Rocco

I believe in being a true fan. In unironic, unadulterated adoration. There is such a thing as taking your love too far, but I suspect my standards for normalcy are low. I say this because I am constantly amused by and am willing to defend fandom—and in the case of this particular blog, fanfiction. (Here’s a primer.)

The thunderous rise of the 50 Shades of Grey series, a trilogy of erotic novels that were originally Twilight fanfics, has put a spotlight on fanfic and the communities that spawn them. The conversations generated go like this: Are fictional characters copyrightable? (Not exactly.) Does filing the serial numbers off your fanfic mean it can be published as an original work of fiction? (I guess so.)

The latter point is a lot of people’s big beef with 50 Shades and the apparently rampant Twilight profic phenomenon. My main beef, however, is a little more grassroots…grassfed, even.

I think pulling your fanfic to publish it professionally stands in direct contradiction of what fanfic is.
 

A carefully laid out universe and cast of characters waiting to be molded into something new is one helluva creative prompt. And a surefire way for an amateur writer to get lots of eyes on their craft is to thrust it into a community of super-fans waiting to see their favorite stories expanded or renewed. Not many fanfic writers are destined for or even seeking mainstream success, though a fair few of them do make a career out of writing—be that original fiction, journalism, marketing copy, whatever. I don’t think I’m wrong in believing they see writing fanfic as, first and foremost, “joyful play.”

And when it comes to writing for fun, few venues can match fandom. With a little talent, a fanfic writer can gain a dedicated following, a pool of insightful reviewers, and maybe even a beta reader or two. This is because fanfic communities are inherently participatory. Encouragement, constructive criticism, and volunteer editing are currency in that economy. The writers aren’t getting paid, and readers know that the fuel that keeps them updating is reviews. In the end, a good fanfic is oftentimes as much a product of the community as it is a product of a single writer.

So when a story vanishes from ff.net then crops up at a bookstore with a price tag a few months later, it’s no wonder that fandom and the creators of the books, films, games, TV series, and comics that inspired them get pissed. 

I bristle and hiss whenever popular authors like Anne Rice and George R.R. Martin come out against fanfic. Were I a real writer with characters and fictions, there would be no sincerer flattery than seeing someone turn my story into a crossover with Weeds then make all the het males kiss each other. What can I say? I’m new school. So I’m ashamed to admit that in the face of E.L. James making a jagillion dollars on her Twilight fanfic that suddenly…I see their point. 

I doubt E.L. James is cutting into Stephenie Meyer’s livelihood, but she is certainly treading on her patent on abysmally written romances with intolerable lead characters. Combined with all the non-LDS sanctioned premarital sexy sex in 50 Shades, this could convince Stephenie Meyer to go back on her thumbs up to Twilight fanfic. If you’ll let me indulge a slippery slope theory for a moment…who’s to say other authors won’t follow? That The Powers That Be won’t try to cut these shenanigans off at the root with tighter copyright laws? And that, in the meantime, fans of fanfic won’t lose the will to participate, to support and uplift good writers that might opt to professionally publish fanfic from their vault rather than create truly original fiction?

E.L. James (or should I say Erika Leonard? [or should I say Snowqueens Icedragon?]) is by no means the first fanfic author to break the code, but she’s certainly the most high profile to date. Here’s hoping that her success neither kills fanfic nor inspires floods of double-derivative shitty romances. Because really, guys. I’ve had enough.

It’s weird how science changes the world and us. Things that had previously been mysterious subjects of folklore, legends, and superstitions lose their ethereal nature and become earthly—logical, manageable, and tangible. Of course, science in itself can unlock new mysteries, create fresh superstitions, and baffle us to no end, but sometimes it can shed light on things we might prefer dark.

Such is the case (in my case) with dreams. Growing up it seemed like no one knew why we dream (or, maybe I’m thinking of yawning…), and I was happy that way. I looked to dreams to tell me stories about the world and myself that I didn’t know I knew. My déjà vu has always been about having dreamt a moment in time. Dreams were an escape to a world where anything can happen, with or without reason; an unlimited form of primitive entertainment—television before TV, storyteller when lonesome, and best passer of idle time.

However, once I heard the Radiolab episode on dreams, my dreams about dreams were slightly crushed. Dreams aren’t wild fantasies bringing messages from the astral plane—no! They are didactic and useful. Dreams are life lessons wrapped in bat wings and swirling colors. Dreams are both an escape from and a practice for life. Science taught us this through tests, curiosity, and a desire to dip into the previously unknowable and prove it wrong.

Look, I’m glad I know in a way. But sometimes I miss it—when a nightmare was just a nightmare, and not practice for enduring an assault; when a dream about winning the lottery wasn’t a how-to of human interaction and coping with the possibility of success. Still, science can’t tell us everything about our dreams…yet.

And to celebrate this moment in time when we have brain worlds that are still our own dank caverns of hazy adventures and inexplicable feats, the Loft and Paper Darts invite you to spend one fantastic night working to capture your weirdest and best dreams and save them for later.

Join the Loft and Paper Darts at Open Book for Northern Spark (June 9-10, 2012) for an evening and morning devoted to discovering, uncovering, pinning down, and exorcising your wildest dreams. We’ll have space for micro-naps, dream interpretations, and plenty of paper to write down what happens in that magnificent brain of yours while you sleep. Paper Darts will be present the whole night, taking written work, photographs, and quotes from the evening and turning it into a beautiful zine.

Over the course of the event we’ll hear stories and poems from guest readers (Eric Vrooman, John Gordon, and Sierra DeMulder to name a few), and there will be one room dedicated to a continuous loop of crowd-sourced videos showing people recounting their dreams.

Speaking of which…We want you to submit!

Participate in our Northern Spark event by making a 1-2 minute video of you talking about a dream you had and send it to us! Please do not interpret your dream, or discuss why you think you had it. We just want the (bizarre) facts. Once complete, please use WeTransfer.com to send your video to LoftVideos@loft.org.

Poet Gretchen Marquette, whose poem “Transmigration” is forthcoming in the next print issue of Paper Darts, shows you how it’s done:

Reblogged from The Loft's Writer's Block.

I’ll admit that I have always thought of the romance genre as dirty books without all the good parts. And if there happened to be any good parts, there would be frequent use of side-splitting euphemisms like “purple-headed love warrior.” I can say that Outlander by Diana Gabaldon follows neither of these tropes. However, I have no idea if Outlander is truly representative of romance as a genre.

The book follows the adventures of a married World War II British nurse magically cast back into the 18th century Scottish highlands. As she plots a way to get back home, she finds herself forced to marry a Scottish lord (well, not really forced—more of a political arrangement) and the drama that ensues as various persons, Scottish and English, try to figure out who she is, all set against the backdrop of a potential Catholic uprising in Scotland.

And if there happened to be any good parts, there would be frequent use of side-splitting euphemisms like “purple-headed love warrior.”

In your local books store, Outlander can most likely be found in contemporary fiction. Not romance, but contemporary fiction. Barnes & Noble and Amazon cross-reference the book online as romance, contemporary fiction, and historical fiction. I suppose all of them could apply. Like many of the books on Courtney’s Year of Genre list, it is a work capable of transcending its genre, up to a point. But over other romance books, this one has a leg up on the bookshelf…just as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road has a leg up on any post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, or even a bigger leg up on the exquisitely written comic book Walking Dead.

And the book does transcend its genre as I see it, to a point. It’s also intriguing to me in the ways that it seems to rise above genre fiction. For example:

• It’s 100 pages before the main character ends up in the 1700s, and almost 100 pages more before there is any hint of romantic tension.
• There is frequent use of antiquated Scottish/English words that needed to be looked up every two pages.
• The repeated and nonchalant use of the term cock as a euphemism, and seemingly the only euphemism used in a way intended to be titillating.
• A couple of pivotal and fairly explicit sex scenes, one of which was so heavily Dominant/Submissive that it would not have been out of place in the Year of Genre: Erotica entry The Story of O.
• Allowing the main character to fall in love with her 18th century husband by including an identical ancestor of her 20th century husband who is evil, mostly gay, and 100% rapey.           

The sex scenes were sort of shocking. So was the use of cock, but makes sense if you use the common assumption that romance books are for women, so the author may have been looking for a durable word for male anatomy that allowed her to avoid referring to “purple-headed love warriors.” Overall the book was extremely well written, but not in a way that I would say elevated the book above fine craftsmanship, as there is also no real subtly or intended subtext to the work.

The sex scenes were sort of shocking.

The book was also amazingly frustrating for me. The amount of time devoted to 18th century Scottish life and politics, though seemingly well researched and full of 200-year-old knowledge, were excruciatingly boring. Having an identical ancestor of the main character’s 20th century husband—the aforementioned evil, rapey, gay man—who has the hots for her in the 18th century was highly offensive to me. It was used as a device to allow the main character to overcome her feelings of guilt by falling in love with another man. And all the men seem to have a touch of rapeyness to them, it’s just that they make this one evil, you know, because he likes men.

Overall the damn thing is 688 pages (my eBook was closer to 800) and there is too much distance between plot points to make this book a compelling read in any way. The only reason the book is a page-turner early on is to see if she’ll even get there.

In the end, I’ll admit, I did not finish. I reached a point where I was confident I knew how the author wrote (about 600 pages into my copy), and that though I did wish to know what happened to the characters, I wasn’t willing to slog through any more of it. Plus, it seemed all the really good sex scenes were already over. So, you know, if anyone knows about any good sex scenes after Claire and Jamie reach Jamie’s family home, let me know and I’ll take a gander.

So, I guess, if this is exemplary romance, I’ll have to say romance is not my personal taste. Even when it has all the dirty parts, as there just seems to be too many boring parts.

To prepare for the upcoming  Super Super Tuesday event on April 10th (featuring readings from the likes of John Jodzio, Dessa, Dylan Hicks, Lindsay Hunter, and Amelia Gray—judge for our amazing short fiction award), I'd like to present to you a set of five (stalked) facts about our out-of-towners and talented babe extraordinaires, Lindsay Hunter and Amelia Gray. 

1. Lindsay likes things both horrific and beautiful. Lindsay’s examples of “beautrific”: Alf, baboons, a vagina.

2. Lindsay has a shameful love for murder/crime shows like Wicked Attraction and 48 Hours Mystery.

3. Lindsay says she is "always listening for voices." When she was growing up (in a pretty religious family) her brain used to play tricks on her saying things like “I worship the devil” or “I love Satan,” and that was scary as hell.

4. Lindsay Hunter is extremely comfortable talking about sex. 

5. Though she’s a vegetarian and hates the sight of a fish flopping on a hook, Lindsay Hunter loves the idea of fishing - especially the idea of a tackle box and all it can hold. Also, she was obsessed with WWF as a kid and had a huge crush on Bret Hart. 

1. Amelia Gray once saw a squirrel eating a pancake outside her home office window. 

2. If she could have coffee with anyone, dead or alive, Amelia Gray would have coffee with F. Scott Fitzgerald to "tell him that a Super Bowl reporter trotted out his 'There are no second acts in American lives' quote to describe a quarterback in the game. He'd ask what all that meant and then we'd laugh and go cliff diving."

3. Amelia Gray is obsessed with revision, going so far as to even revise super old pieces in her head while on stage reading a different work. 

4. When she was younger, Amelia Gray would tape secret notes to the undersides of seats on the city bus. 

5. Amelia Gray has said that the following things (among others) inform her creative process: Thinking about wasps and their nests, eating fish, eating salad, and eating chicken.

To prepare for the upcoming Super Super Tuesday event on April 10th (featuring readings from the likes of John Jodzio, Dessa, Dylan Hicks, Lindsay Hunter, and Amelia Gray—judge for our amazing short story contest), I'd like to present to you an interview I did with Dylan Hicks about his new book, Boarded Windows, from Coffee House Press back in January for the Twin Cities Daily Planet. You can read my review of the book here.

What's it like to have your first book completed and published?

I just reread Phillip Lopate’s “Waiting for the Book to Come Out,” a great essay about the year before a book’s release, when the writer passes through, as he puts, “every emotion in the house, from rosy anticipation to exultation, megalomania, brooding, dread, cringing humility, avarice, guilt, and, finally, stolid acceptance.” As I write this the release is still four months away, and I’m more in the dread and brooding stage. But it was hugely exciting to have the book accepted, and so far I’ve gotten some kind responses to it, and have enjoyed working with all the people at Coffee House. 

Do you have a second book swirling around in your head?

Yeah, although alas it’s been swirling around my head more efficiently than it’s been expanding in a word-processing document. 

Tell me a little about Bolling Greene. It's not a real band, right?

Yeah, Bolling Greene is a fictional country singer-songwriter, mostly remembered as a second-tier figure in a moment I’ve modeled very closely on outlaw country. He’s something of a phony, but has grown rather honorably into his adopted roles, as persistent fakes sometimes will.

How many bands in the book are fake?

Perhaps about a quarter of the musicians referenced in the book are fake, and there are also invented movies, comedians, writers, brand names, and lots of made-up places. Sometimes it’s a blend: a fake album by a real artist, for instance, or a real painting in a fake anthology. A few of the fakes have been borrowed from other books in which invented artists appear, so I guess those fakes are in some way realer.

There are a lot of parallels in the book, between the names of many of your women characters, and the relationship between the narrators mothers and his love interests. Are there only so many types of people in the world?

I think that started when I realized I’d inadvertently given two characters—Wade and Wanda—similar names. I was going to change one of those names, but then decided I liked how it paired them. Later I decided to set a scene at a protest in support of the (actual) Marxist sociologist Marlene Dixon, whose name was close to that of one of the narrator’s mothers. Again I thought about changing the names to avoid confusion, but instead, perhaps perversely, chose to make the names even closer, so that we now have Marleen Deskin, Martha Dickson, and (passingly) Marlene Dixon. I guess this amused me. And in some goofy way it made the story more plausible: If this were fiction, the narrator might argue, wouldn’t the names not be so cumbersomely alike?

Anyway, while the narrator has no trouble distinguishing his biological from his adoptive mother, he is confused about their motivations, and about his origins in general, so having the nominal confusion in the book seemed to help amplify that. Those names are echoed again by the Maryanne character mostly because the narrator at one point thinks he has an opportunity to reproduce and improve a period from his childhood, the one in which Wade was his de facto stepfather, and moreover thinks this opportunity might have been elaborately orchestrated for his benefit. From Wade, Bolling, and others, he’s picked up some no doubt misunderstood philosophical ideas about copies and reproduction, and these ideas interact with questions surrounding his parentage. As to your question about the world’s limited types of people, there’s a line from Goethe that gets paraphrased in the book a few times: “If you ask what people are like here, I have to say: like everywhere!” I’m not trying to endorse or advance any grand theories with all of this, though; I was mainly just following hunches that seemed right for the book’s narrator and its form.

What do you hope to achieve by writing a story that is partly rooted in our world, and partly chained in a fictional one where Bolling Greene exists?

I like fiction—I’m thinking now of stuff by Borges, Nabokov, and Thomas Bernhard, but also recent work by Dana Spiotta—in which historical and invented artistic figures intermingle and perhaps blur. I love it when art criticism of a sort is joined with fantasy. Since many of the characters in my book are of questionable reliability, I sort of want the reader to be uncertain as to what’s real and what’s fake, even if the uncertainty sometimes arises at a passing reference to a romantic comedy or a hip-hop band. With pop music the line between real and fake is often fuzzy to begin with. I saw a presentation a year ago by Diane Pecknold, who was talking about Disney groups such as the Jonas Brothers. During the Q&A she related how her young son or daughter (I can’t remember), having recently learned about the Monkees, asked, “Mom, were the Monkees a real band?” Well, yes and no.  

Why have a companion album? Why do you think this isn't done more often with books? I know it's not really the same situation, but I remember reading this Whitley Strieber book called Billy the same year the Tripping Daisy's I Am Elastic Firecracker came out, and every song seemed to fit the book so much that it seemed almost intentional. I typically associate music most with movies—if I had to choose a media to associate it with—but it's nice to make that connection with books, too. 

It is rare, but I guess it’s happening more and more, and will probably get still more common as it becomes easier to incorporate music into ebooks. A fellow called Jesús Ángel García, for one, did something similar last year. Music was my only real creative pursuit during my teens and twenties. About a decade ago I grew disenchanted with playing music, and stopped writing songs for a long time. So it was fun to feel compelled to write these Bolling Greene songs, and then to write a few more that aren’t, to my mind, by Bolling, but derived from the book in other ways.  

Is this how Bolling Greene would actually sound in the 1970s?

No. It’s sort of as if I were in a cabin with a copy of his greatest-hits album, but no stereo, but for some reason I tried to cover his songs from memory, or just from a title. There are a few lyrical anachronisms, such as to Pac-Man and Costco. And though I played with some country motifs, and the band and I nodded here and there to seventies singer-songwriters, there wasn’t a careful effort to make a pastiche, which I probably couldn’t have pulled off anyway.

With the Smithsonian kicking off its The Art of Video Games exhibition, the recent release of games-as-art standard setter Journey (seriously…look at that shit), and the discussion of artistic integrity and precedent surrounding fans’ tooth-gnashing and demands over the—uh—unpopular resolution of BioWare’s Mass Effect series, March seems like a perfect time to revisit some arty indie favorites. I didn’t need a reason, but I did need an intro. So now that that’s over with… 

Paper Moon

If I had to marry a free indie video game (it’s a wild world out there, guys…you never know), it would be Paper Moon. And I’m cool with sharing, because no one should have to miss out on this gem, which is a collaboration between Infinite Ammo, Adam Saltsman, and Flashbang Studios.

Paper Moon is a sidescrolling platformer offered in the finest monochrome. Aside from being adorable, perfect, etc., its unique draw is a mechanic that has the player “pop” different parts of the scene forward and backward, like cutouts rigged up to something on the Z axis (they even make a squeaking noise when you move them, as though someone’s operating a rope and pulley off-screen). Needing to ensure the next platform you hop on is actually lined up with you rather than lurking in the foreground or background adds a fun challenge, especially when you can knock yourself (or enemies) off the screen, depending on your timing.

There are multiple paths and a lot of room for exploration—provided you don’t run out of time. And even if you do run out of time, you will want to come back and start over. Paper Moon is drowning in charm, from its cutout aesthetic to its nickelodeon-era piano soundtrack to the sweet little expressions on the player character’s face. It’s so heartbreakingly precious, you should be prepared to confess your love to it, spend the rest of your day musing about it, and then replay it when you have a chance. 

Play it.

Coil

Coil is an experimental game by Edmund McMillen—whose game Aether was in the very first of these roundups and would be second in line if I had to marry a free indie game—and Florian Himsl.

Enter Coil with an open mind. It involves fetal development. It’s possibly about rape, definitely about death. I don’t know much about pregnancy, but I’m willing to guess the in-game embryo we’re dealing with is alien.

If my stuttering and shuffling has not made this clear, Coil is a little weird. Each level is a unique minigame involving tasks like guiding sperm to an egg, separating cells, or feeding the babything using its umbilical cord like a lasso (I assume this is how it works with human babythings as well). The controls walk that familiar line between intuitive and baffling—if it takes you a few seconds too long to get off the title screen, don’t worry…you’re not alone. The wobbly soundtrack is reminiscent of the collective brain of Danny Elfman and Tim Burton, so if nothing else about the game causes you discomfort (see: those text screens), it should do the job.

I may have played Coil with a raised eyebrow and wrinkled nose, but I write this with love and wonder.  After all, it’s not easy to get nominated for an IGF Innovation Award, which Coil most certainly did.

Play it.

Hippolyta

Hippolyta, a free indie by Evil-Dog, depicts the Amazon legend’s escape from slavery. I don’t think magic girdles or A Midsummer Night’s Dream ever factor in, but I don’t know for sure because I never got to the end. This didn’t surprise me. Evil-Dog points out right away that “This game is hard! Your reflexes will be brutally tested.” So, watch as I wrap my lack of natural skill in an almost-legitimate excuse: I did not have time to become good at this game. You can reuse that one if you want.

Still, don’t be discouraged! You should at least try the first level. For a little browser-based game, the graphics are intense—the colors are rich, the scenery seems infinitely layered, and everything moves at full charge. If parallax scrolling woodlands aren’t a big thing for you, take a moment to appreciate the epic music and breast physics.

As with any difficult action game, your victories are always sweet. As the levels progress, you’re forced to adapt Hippolyta’s fighting and fleeing style, making longer jumps, timing the arrival of arrows, and determining which enemies to spear, block, outrun, or trample (practice yelling “EAT HORSE”). The game is so pretty that you’ll want to improve so you can progress to the next color scheme and set of shouting Athenians.

Give it a go! And tell me how far you get.

Writing, unlike other art forms, is generally an unobservable act. You can watch someone pound away on a keyboard without being remotely privy to what's happening on the page. But if you were to watch somebody paint, or shoot a film, or write and record music, you'd witness something taking shape in real time. The outward gestures of visual artists, filmmakers, and musicians naturally create this kind of display. A novice can follow their actions, learning from and imitating them. People who want to learn these crafts often begin by observing others in the act, perhaps even working alongside experienced artists until they are confident enough to act independently.

Writers have the luxury and the hindrance of being able to hide behind their screens without sharing their struggles or triumphs with anyone until they have something presentable. People often workshop and share works in progress with peers, but the process of getting to those stages gets erased. No one wants to be watched while they're writing, maybe because drawing words from the depth of your mind feels so personally expressive, like it's a direct representation of who you really are, all unchecked platitudes reflecting poorly on your intelligence.

The Wasteland in revision.The issue here isn't that it's not physically possible to watch someone write. It just seems awkward and stifling for a writer to have a live audience. But there could be another way. Imagine getting ahold of the original Word document of a story you love. You could press undo until the entire thing is blank, and then watch it appear again, studying all the writer's various attempts and false starts, insertions and deletions. You could watch the writer hesitate over a clunky phrase, deciding if it's salvageable. One word might be changed fifteen times. The changes might be fast and reckless, with entire extraneous paragraphs, scenes, and characters flourishing and disappearing abruptly. Think about all the backstory that might have been omitted. Maybe you'd get twenty pages in before the story you are familiar with actually begins. Or maybe the whole thing was an improvisational burst with minimal edits. Or maybe it was written completely out of sequence and then carefully ordered into place. But in the end, no matter how many detours and deletions, you'd see the finished story rise out of the clutter.

If by some miracle this could happen, I think it could humanize great writing. We often get a sense that brilliant work just comes out that way. And that's sort of the trick—to make it seem as if a specific combination of words just had to exist as written, as if a great story or poem is an authorless, naturally occurring phenomenon. We don't see the endless revisions and facepalms that were necessary to get there. But aside from just feeling better about ourselves, maybe there's something to be learned from watching a talented writer's process, just as an aspiring painter benefits from watching a teacher paint, highlighting different techniques and their uses.

Does anyone out there have the gumption to share a time-lapse of their writing? I sure don't, but if I did you'd probably see heaps of overlong sentences and paragraphs that slowly get whittled down to something more cohesive, or quick bursts that I'm too stubborn to change. Is that similar to others? I really have no idea. Writing is something that everyone kind of figures out for themselves, trying to reverse-engineer a desirable outcome using only the finished products of other writers as reference. But maybe seeing the way others approach writing would allow us to better understand the good and bad parts of our own processes.

While I knew for quite some time that men provided most of the reading material I was forced to read throughout my school years (S.E. Hinton wasn't a man, but felt the cultural pressure to write as one, so I'll even count her among their numbers), it wasn't until I read Fight Club that I realized that there might be a place in the world of literature where my vagina was at least slightly unwelcome. 

Though I read the book, there were parts that maybe I couldn't read the way the author had intended for men to read. I didn't feel left out (*sniff*sniff*tear*), but I felt rather that I had gotten a fleeting glimpse into what it must be like to be a man—something my youth as a tomboy had left me to contemplate over the course of many awkward interactions and quiet midnights. Still, the concept of being a man and writing specifically for men was unaccessible to me on levels that I was both aware and unaware of. 

Later, as an adult, Hospital for Bad Poets by J.C. Hallman left me feeling unsatisfied in ways I hadn't expected. Beautifully written, each story had more to do with the state of being a suburban man than the last, and I found no truth within those pages that I could hold on to. A mystery, unintended. 

Cut to me coming across the Bull: Men's Fiction table at AWP, and feeling my blood boil. Men's fiction? I thought. More men than women get published every year. As if men need a journal to call their own. Who is the joker behind this bull? 

This joker is Jarrett Haley, a stay-at-home dad, who is very nice and very willing to talk about his mission because he is certainly not joking about creating a lit mag for men. In his own words, Haley explains: "The compulsion was to create what I wished existed already—a place that one could rely on for a reading experience that catered to male sensibilities, and explored and broadened male understanding. There was absolutely nothing like that out there. When I googled 'Men’s Fiction' and up came little more than gay erotica sites, I knew something was lacking. It was sad, really, and frustrating. But I figured I might quit whining and actually do something about it."

Truth: I wanted to write a very even-handed journalistic blog about this, but I just can't, because I don't think that this discussion can be presented in black and white.

When I first walked up to the Bull table and spoke with Haley, I was furious. "Men's fiction? What would you say to the idea that 80% of works published are written by men?" I asked. Haley looked at me, smiled a little and said, "Well, I don't know what I would say to that except that only 30-40% of readers are men...I want to get men off video games and reading again." Though this idea left me seething with rage—I can definitely serve as proof of the fact that playing video games and reading books are not mutually exclusive—over the past few weeks I have teetered back and forth between softening to the idea of publishing just for men and raging against the idea. 

On one hand, more men are published per year than women. And, while it's hazy on whether or not that is because more men submit work to publications than women, or that more editors accept work from men, it is also pretty clear that the market is dominated by women. Though (as NPR notes, if you follow that link) the difference in readership may have something to do with biology, perhaps it does have to do with cultural expectations, or something. (If you Google "Why men don't read" a lot of very interesting results turn up.) In those terms, more power to Bull. 

HOWEVER, I don't think it's fair to expect that one sex should read writings from the other, but not expect reciprocation. I feel similarly about the normalization of works by white (male) authors, while it becomes a cultural study to read works by any other ethnicity (or gender), thereby creating a culture where it is only under special circumstances that these valid stories be heard. 

I'm not really sure how to wrap this up. While I feel like men have enough in this world, and don't really need a special space carved out just for them anywhere, I can't argue too hard against something that's meant to get more people reading, even if those people aren't me. (This is weird because I don't hate programs that get kids reading even though I'm not a kid.) I guess that if I had to leave you with one takeaway here, I'd like to present all the women reading this with an idea: submit your work to Bull. 

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that they DO publish works by women (such as Sara Lippmann), but only if it will appeal to a male audience.

It’s been two and a half years since we had our very first meeting about our little literary empire, and a lot has happened. We’ve produced three print magazines, released our first book, and published over 200 writers and artists from across the creative spectrum through print and on our website. But, most importantly, we’ve fully embraced a special presence in the amazing Twin Cities community that has supported, encouraged, and inspired us from the very beginning.

With spring comes some changes, including our first-ever round of internal staffing changes. After two and a half years in the trenches, Co-Founder Regan Smith is officially stepping down from her role as Editorial Director. Though most of her energy will now be focused on creating original feature articles for Paper Darts’ partnership with Pollen, her freelance writing career, and her position at Works Progress, Regan will continue  to be a part of the PD family in her new role as Contributing Editor.

This transition has been in process for the past couple of months, and one of the developments we are extremely excited about is the repositioning of our staff.

• Courtney Algeo will be taking over as Paper Darts’ new Editorial Director

• Holly Harrison is stepping up as Paper Darts’ first ever Senior Editor and Community Manager

• Meghan Murphy has transitioned from Creative Director to Editor-in-Chief (still continuing her role as lead designer)

• Jamie Millard continues her managerial duties as Paper Darts’ first Executive Director

Courtney Algeo, Editorial Director
Courtney started with Paper Darts in October of 2010 as our first editorial intern. She quickly proved an invaluable asset to the PD team and came on staff as our first Managing Editor in mid-2011. Paper Darts is lucky to have someone as talented and respected as Courtney to fill our Editorial Director position and help to shape our voice for the future. Well-known throughout the Twin Cities as a literarti celebrity, in her non-PD working hours Courtney is the full-time Marketing Coordinator at The Loft Literary Center and writes the weekly column Lit Lyfe for the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

Holly Harrison, Senior Editor and Community Manager
Without a doubt one of the best young copy editors in the Twin Cities, Holly has lent her red pen to Paper Darts since our first published piece. Known for dazzling our readers with her grammar tips and indie video game roundups, Holly’s new role moves her from behind the scenes to front and center. She is our social media voice, keeping things fresh on Twitter and Facebook and actively engaging our followers and fans. Beyond just copy editing, as Senior Editor she’ll have a hand in developmental edits and solicitations, and will weigh in on everything that comes through the slush pile.

People have frequently told us “Can’t wait to see what you guys do next!,” and to be perfectly immodest for a moment, neither can we! To give you a sneak peek: we’re digging deep into the production of  Paper Darts Volume Four, which will be bigger, badder, and more cohesive than any of its three print predecessors. We’ve also launched a new partnership with Lars Leafblad to usher in the next era of the community newsletter Pollen at BePollen.com.

Thanks to all of you for your support over the past two and a half years. To kick off the next ten, please give Courtney and Holly a big congratulatory hug—or tweet.

Cheers,

Jamie, Meghan, and Regan

Blog by poet and translator Zackary Sholem Berger
Illustrations by Max Mose 

For years I have been waiting for a happy throng to corner me in the street demanding my translation secrets. That hasn’t happened yet, so I’ll share them here uncoerced. 

Pretend for the sake of argument that I have already name-checked translation theory, mentioned the Italian pun on “translator” and “traitor,” and gravely intoned that true translation is impossible. I don’t care about any of that. Translating is like falling in love: without imperfections, the whole wouldn’t be worthwhile. We learned in school that sexual reproduction freshens the gene-pool smoothie with new flavors. Going outside one language is like that, and staying within is like parthenogenesis—just as generative, but not as much fun.

A translator is a magpie, hunting gardens for eggs to feed her young. We are writers who can’t leave well enough alone, stealing into other literatures and rooting underneath their mattress for wads of foreign bills. It’s not the Flauberts or Dostoyevskys or Cervanteses we’re looking for in the grand library, but the untouched vial of elixir abandoned in the corner, still bearing the seal of the High Priest. We break it open and describe the scent in our mother tongue.

The benefit of translating from a minority literature (like Yiddish, which is what I translate most often) is that everything has been overlooked. We have our great writers—and those are overtranslated too—but compared to say, War and Peace or In Search of Lost Time, no one remembers a previous generation’s translations of smaller literature. We are after the alternative and transient, those works which elude the gaze of prize committees and bestseller compilers.

Our job is not to produce a definitive rendering, but to create something that couldn’t exist without the language leap. I can try to explain how it goes, but it’ll sound not all that much different from things you do all the time.

First you read. Then you really read, trying to understand all the words you skimmed over the first time. You might buttonhole a stranger in the library stacks or a Facebook friend, asking them what they think a word means, what bells it rings for them. You understand the poem more than you ever have. You have begrudging respect for the word choices you raised an eyebrow at before. Like a parasite, you are now feeding on the guts of the poem, digesting what others ignore.

Then you write, feeling guilty that such a door into creation has been vouchsafed—in this moment—to you and no one else. You delude yourself, for a sweet second, that you are giving birth and not a surrogate. If you could call this your poem, you would.

It is yours, of course, at the same time that it isn’t. It is both birth and adoption, borrowing, theft, and return. After you write, you read it time and again till you convince yourself that you have produced not an exploitation but a gift. Then you go searching for the next forgotten vial.

 See Zackary's beautiful translations here.

Gosh guys, AWP was so amazing this year! There were so many exhibitors that we didn't even get to see (then stalkerishly photograph) all the fabbest tables and booths. Sad. However, many of the tables we did see made us weak in the knees. If you thought our last post contained the only displays we loved, you were wrong as the day is long, busters! Here is another collection of bold showings from presses whose names we write in our notebooks and frame with scribbly little hearts.

Scout Books

Adorable, handmade booklets from Scout Books. Not only do they publish their own collection, they'll also publish your projects with unmatched style with a recycled aesthetic we all love.

Ugly Duckling Presse

Lies! Ugly Duckling Presse is actually a beautiful fucking swan.

Featherproof Books

Featherproof Books is a publisher after our hearts. We love with a kindred passion their sense of humor and hand drawn covers.

Slice Magazine

Where has this literary magazine been all our lives? Slice has both beauty and brains. Not only do they regularly feature a fantastic assortment of illustrators, their mission is to publish  emerging writers alongside the established. Not to mention their coveted interview with Alan Moore. Our hearts are fat and happy after a slice (oho!) of this literary pie.

mojo

The mojo table was empty except for a giant tablet featuring their online magazine, and yet the table was irresistible. The charming editors lured us in with free matches. Then they lit the matches on fire. Then they waved them at the university press across the aisle and heckled their editors. If anything went down, we had their backs.

Hobart

Flasks and shot glasses? Yes please. Hobart is a beauty (especially the silkscreened page edges).

Spork

Spork may be our favorite indie book publisher at AWP. Do you ever have that rollercoastery feeling in your belly of crazed reverence and envy? That about sums up our feelings about Spork.

If our excessive tweeting and squealing has not already brought this to your attention, Paper Darts is at AWP in Chicago. This blog comes to you from the front lines, photographed in the southeast hall of the bookfair and written behind our table (table S7, like S Club 7 without the club).

The following are the most eye-drawing displays in our litle corner of the big Hilton Chicago.

PANK Magazine

It's no surprise that PANK has one of the sexiest displays at the bookfair. Their table is overflowing with their bold and finely designed merch—the trick is fighting through the throng of PANK lovers to get close enough to reverently touch it all.

Polaris Magazine

Polaris, an undergraduate art and lit journal from Ohio Northern University, drew us in with their fossil and fish head covers and kept us due in small part to a bit of Ivory Tower nostalgia. Among their merch were sweet handmade chapbooks with microfiction tucked in their accordion folds.

Wave Books

After row upon row of dazzling book covers, passing the Wave Books table is a surprisingly welcome stroll into unsullied whitespace. Their droolworthy typography made each cover stand out—somehow, even their barcodes looked classy.

The Drum Literary Magazine

The Drum is "a literary magazine for your ears," perfect for the audiophile literati. They worked their magic with just half a table, tucking an iPod in a vintage book (which matched their logo—smart, smart) and offering their headphones for your listening pleasure.

Birds, LLC

Birds, LLC is badass. The four guys responsible for bringing these beautiful books to the world stand behind the table like a smiling assembly of rock and roll viking gods. If a highfive were a group of people, it would be the crew of Birds, LLC. Not only are their books pleasing to the eye, but they also had a fucking crow on their table. Smart and spooky.

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It's been a long time since I talked about my bookish heart. Mostly, those spaces in that little (by the sound of it, it's actually pretty big and gross, probably) beating organ of mine are reserved for one totally awesome dude (not Jesus), and the occasional movie character that refuses to disrobe before a gunfight, but sometimes there's room for another. 

Have you heard of Mark Grist? If you frequent this thing we call "the Internet" you may have heard of him—he's most famous these days for being that primly-dressed school teacher laying a verbal spanking on a young MC during a Don't Flop rap battle which can be viewed here (NSFW, use headphones), but he's also a freaking bard. Mark Grist, who is actually no longer a school teacher because he's on the road to poetic success with some awesome side projects, is the Chief Bard of the Fens. (He was also Poet Laureate of Peterborough between 2007–2008.) And, I guess, since I cannot find any Internet evidence to the contrary, he might remain Chief Bard of the Fens forever, or at least another Eisteddfod is planned, so that's pretty cool.

The history of the bard is a pretty simple one where rich folk (patrons) used to pay talented artistic folk (bards) to write poems and stories about the rich folk's family, most of which were probably inflated and inaccurate, but awfully purdy and rhythmic. 

Sure guys, I get that the idea of the bard has changed, and that in the modern world a bard could be anyone who is a poet, storyteller, author, or a singer-songwriter. But you know what? Not just anyone can win a poetry battle and therefore enter in to the annals of history as a certifiable bard, so don't be so smug about your beatnik bardsmanship, Bob Dylan. 

What is it about the idea of a bard that is driving me so wild right now?

For years, when I thought of bards (which wasn't often, really) I'd imagined stodgy old dudes writing bogus shit for money, which I guess is sort of true, but Shakespeare (The Bard) wasn't really as stodgy as I had assumed when I was a kid, and in fact, I came to learn that he was pretty badass.

Let's face it, writers rarely get paid what they're worth these days, so the fundamental idea of a bard—though probably more a form a artistic indenturement than I'm giving it credit for—sounds excellent to me right now, but this is probably one of those anachronistic views that people hate.

You know what it is, though? (And Dylan can back me up on this point.) There are laureates and then there are bards, and while the patronage system has died, and bards—I guess—don't get paid for their work anymore, laureates, at least here in America, do. While American laureates aren't required specifically to write poetry about this country or any officials, and may use their $35,000 per year as they so desire, they're still beholden to the reputation of the country.

What about bards—are they working for the man? Hell no. Which is probably why Mark Grist can write about whatever the hell he wants and still garner enough respect to be both a laureate and a bard and then go do rap battle against some strange kid and say disgusting things about moms and vaginas, without giving a second thought to it. 

But wait, there's something about my argument here that isn't right. I'm saying that bards are more badass than laureates, but Mark Grist has been both...oh right, but that's still badass because traditionally (at least in terms of the country) laureates in the U.K. have been paid in both money and alcohol, although who knows how they roll in Peterborough…maybe it's just all about respect, which is probably better than anything.

Illustrations by Max Mose

If you’re reading this, someone once taught you an invaluable thing: how to read. Shortly thereafter, you were likely taught how to write, and then write properly—how to use correct tenses, where to place prepositions, etc. 

Some learned to be very good at following these directions. They went on to bleed red ink all over their peers’ papers. They approached storeowners and informed them that their signs should read “5 items or fewer.”

I used to be one of those people. I thought that my propensity for proper usage made me inherently intelligent and literary. It’s easy to make the same association I did—grammarphiles find themselves in fanatical company. There exists a Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature (SPELL) whose sole purpose is to point out grammatical errors. Many books have been published under the premise that if you misuse grammar, there could be deadly consequences.¹

All right, so there are rules, and these people are only trying to enforce them. But to what end? It is one thing to pride yourself on your perfect prose, but why does everyone else need to strive for grammatical perfection? It’s at best disingenuous and annoying, and at worst self-serving and elitist.

Constantly correcting the improper grammar of others isn’t just exasperatingly dull.

• It fosters a state of language where people are afraid to make mistakes and are consequently afraid to express themselves.
• It puts the focus on the medium of communication, rather that what is being communicated.
• It shifts the purpose of language from being a means of communication and vast expression to being foremost an indicator of education and/or class.      

Nine times out of ten, when someone corrects another’s improper grammar, it isn’t because there is a misunderstanding about what is being said. The latent motive is to say “I’m smarter than you” or “I’m more educated than you” or “I’m of a higher social strata.” It’s hardly about “saving the language.” As long as editors exist, someone will be propagating old usage. Meanwhile, the rest of us will be inventing new usage; turning nouns into verbs; misusing idiomatic expressions, and creating the sometimes rich, sometimes simplified, always democratized parlance of tomorrow. 

Lingual heresy? Far from it. It is a drastic misunderstanding of language to safeguard its rules. Language thrives on new interpretations and misunderstandings. Ask the poor saps at the Oxford English Dictionary trying to keep up with it. If you don’t like an addition to your language, don’t use it. No one will force you to, and likewise, you shouldn’t force your ideal language on others.

I’m not saying to hell with grammar. I only mean to disavow the grammar-first culture that believes others’ trifling errors warrant confrontation. Yes, if you take a snapshot of a language, it is a static thing with set rules. And when precise communication is called for, grammar and proper usage will always have their place. But if someone asks me how I’m doing, our conversation has no need of exactitude. “Good” is just as acceptable as “well.”


¹ Eats, Shoots & Leaves, anyone? From the Amazon.com description: “Eats, Shoots and Leaves adopts a more militant approach and attempts to recruit an army of punctuation vigilantes: send letters back with the punctuation corrected. Do not accept sloppy emails. Climb ladders at dead of night with a pot of paint to remove the redundant apostrophe in ‘Video’s sold here’.” Gag me.

There’s a statement by Douglas Adams that always comes to mind when I think about genre and fiction.

He said, “There’s nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, ‘Well, okay, I’m going to do something of high artistic worth.’”

He the went on to muse that Ian Fleming’s James Bond books had set out to be literate but not literary and that Fleming had achieved this, demonstrating a high level of craft and that he “knew how to use language, he knew how to make it work, and he wrote well.”

I first read that statement by Adams around the first time I read his friend Neil Gaiman’s Americans Gods, and as such the two are always linked in my head. It’s not just the time frame and friendship of the two authors though, it’s the fact that I’ve always inferred that Adams meant that high levels of craftsmanship can elevate an end result to art. He may not have meant it of Fleming, but I believe such a statement is true about American Gods.

American Gods is the work of a master craftsman.

Though it was Gaiman’s first true solo novel from the ground up, it’s clear that the book is the work of an experienced and dedicated writer in the prime of his career. Thematically some may see it as the same ground as his comic book Sandman (gods in the modern world, what happens when gods die/quit, etc.), but then again it is practically his final say on the subject unfettered by the amount of editorial interference that can be common in the comic book world.

I do not easily get weak in the knees over language, but it is Gaiman’s language that I think elevates this book beyond mere craftsmanship, showing a mastery of understatement and loaded, symbolic sentences. Stephen King recently mused what his career might have been like had the infamous Gordon Lish edited his work in the same manner Lish had edited Raymond Carver. Mr. King, I respectfully present you with a glimpse into that world: American Gods. King is a skilled craftsman himself and he has created some works that I would say are worthy of being considered art, but possibly not as much as he could have.

Other skilled craftsmen that have elevated their work frequently:

• JG Ballard
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Cormac McCarty
• Margaret Atwood

All of whom have written their fair share of genre books—quite a few, in fact. All of them, along with King, can be found in whatever section passes for “Literature/Literary Fiction” in your chain bookstore and most likely your library as well. Yet, you will not see Neil Gaiman there.

Genres are both useful and destructive. They guide readers to books they might enjoy and they allow others to marginalize authors and works.

To some in the “literary fiction” crowd, genre works can be seen as less than. To those in genre, “literary fiction” is a genre itself…and one that thinks way too much of itself. Both attitudes are a disservice to the written word. Gaiman has been a wildly successful writer in various genres and media. Had his career began writing more down to earth books about a college professor’s writer’s block or a book of social criticism dealing with generations of a family or a large, overly complicated treatise on entertainment or consumerist serial killer fantasies and then wrote American Gods, he may have won a PEN or a Pulitzer for it. I guess if your first novel is a superbly written examination of belief in modern society that manages to bypass the complications and hang-ups of Abrahamic religions by filtering it through old world mythology and fantasy you’re not supposed to be considered a “serious writer.” I think Gaiman is probably happy with all the other awards American Gods swept up and the even further success of The Graveyard Book, which due to its dual Carnegie/Newberry awards will be in elementary and middle school libraries in perpetuity.

That’s okay. I’m pretty sure Jonathan Franzen doesn’t think elementary school readers are serious readers anyways.