With the good will of the fine folks at Opium Magazine, I’ve made the full text of my new short humor piece, “The,” available for free on Issuu.com. It is an obituary for Amélie Prouveaux, an avant-garde writer who decided that words were the enemy of literature. You can click on the animated pages below to view the story. If you dig “The”, don’t keep it to yourself — pass it on to friends, embed it on your blog, or post it to your profile. Even better, be sure to pick up Opium 6 (Go Green! But Save Me First) at your favorite book shop or www.opiummagazine.com to read the plethora of great pieces in the new issue.

text link to “The”

One of the joys of writing is seeing your blood and sweat in print. I’m proud to say Opium 6 (Go Green! But Save Me First) is now out and it includes a brand-spanking-new piece from yours truly titled “The.” It is an obituary for Amélie Prouveaux, an avant-garde writer who decided that words were the enemy of literature. I’m really proud of this little piece and the loons at Opium did a hell of a job laying out the story. Hell, they even got my gratuitous use of grammatical symbols right. Once you read the story, you’ll understand why that matters. Do go pick it up as I think it’s a pretty damn funny piece of humor (if I do shout so myself).

You can either hound your favorite bookshop to get your hands on Opium 6 or you can order it here.

My quest for global domination continues this month with the release of Opium 6: Go Green! (But Save Me First). The sixth installment of Opium, a damn fine literary humor magazine, will feature a new piece by yours truly titled “The.” It is an obituary for Amélie Prouveaux, an avant-garde writer who decided that words were the enemy of literature. This the first Bully-esque thing I’ve written since shutting down my own magazine and it was nice to flex the humor muscles a bit. You can either hound your favorite bookshop to get your hands on Opium 6 or you can order it here.

(and now cue the Sarah McLachlan sad-sack, save-the-animals music)

But whatever you do, go out an pick up an issue. Or even better, buy a subscription. As this open letter from editor Todd Zuniga details, while Opium is now on issue six, they’re trying to keep the magazine on sound financial footing. The graveyard of literary magazines has been filling up rather quickly over the past few years and it would be shame if Opium went the way of Story, Small Spiral Notebook, and others. Keeping a non-academic literary magazine afloat is like juggling elephants on a life raft, only at least with the juggling-elephants-life-raft thing, you can assure yourself that you are saving elephants. The point is running a litmag is a thankless job.

I discovered Opium the old-fashioned way: I walked into the St. Mark’s Bookshop and was caught by the eye-catching cover design. After flipping through a few of the articles and laughing out loud in the bookstore, I was more than happy to pluck down my $10. The whole approach is inventive, the pieces are extremely well crafted, and the humor is whip-smart. How often do you actually get to laugh with a literary magazine (as opposed to at it)? So do what you can — buy an issue, buy a subscription, or send cans of food or warm blankets to the editors.

If you do, we’ll be able to film a television commercial where I cradle a sad-looking Todd Zuniga and say, “Every day, more and more literary magazines are dying. These magazines are looking for someone like… YOU. Won’t you please give.”

My girlfriend, originally being from the South, has the weird ability to talk to the vegetables and fruits to learn when they are ripe and ready for eating. Being from New Jersey, I do not possess this ability.

I never thought Gore Vidal could be funny. Then I read this from the New York Times:

“As a literary showdown, Mario Vargas Llosa vs. Gabriel García Márquez ranks with some of the most famous feuds, including Lillian Hellman vs. Mary McCarthy, Vladimir Nabokov vs. Edmund Wilson, and Norman Mailer vs. Gore Vidal. (When the encounter between Mr. Mailer and Mr. Vidal turned physical, if not bloody, Mr. Vidal is said to have responded from the floor, ‘Words fail Norman Mailer yet again.’)”

I’ve been playing around on Issuu.com, a great new site where magazines, artists, photographers and even authors can digitize their printed work for viewing. People have posted portfolios, back issues, handmade books, and one industrious author has posted the entire text of The Love Book for people to read for free. The best part is that the documents, once uploaded, are embeddable so people can post them to their own blogs or sites.

But I did want to give a shout out to a few of the cooler Issuu docs I’ve found.

The first is Stephanie Wright’s “Six Sixes,” a collection of six six-sentence short stories. It’s part of Six Sentences ongoing series of pieces by various writers all agreeing to this very strict submission guideline. Being a good short story writer is tough enough without forcing a six-sentence limit on your work. But often the best art comes out of the severest limitations. Stephanie Wright shows great skill at crafting fully-formed characters and perfectly minimalist stories that are at turns romantic, sappy (in a good way), disturbing, and hilarious.

Also a nice find was literary magazine Keyhole now making its back issues available. Issue #1 is live, go check it out as its a good mix of new fiction and poetry.

And finally, you may have forgotten about ZZ Top, you may hate ZZ Top, but your band could never top ZZ Top as a live band.