Lit Randomness: Andrei Codrescu, Seth Godin and negative book reviews

As I try to do every Mon and Wed, here’s Lit Randomness. Send links over to deckfight [at] gmail.com.

Interv. w/ Andrei Codrescu: At 3 A.M.
I was introduced and then inundated with Codrescu while living in NOLA…but he still always offers a quality perspective. His new book is The Posthuman Dada Guide.

The best: “You should live in at least seven countries for a minimum of one year in each before you are seventeen, and must speak and write at least five languages in order to be a half-decent poet.”–Codrescu

Seth Godin on what authors should do to promote themselves: From Godin’s blog (h/t booksquare).
The best: “Far better to obsess about a little subset of the market–that subset that you have permission to talk with, that subset where you have credibility, and most important, that subset where people just can’t live without your book.”–Seth Godin

Why book critics won’t stop: At the WSJ. (h/t book bench)

Finally downloaded Ben Tanzer’s new book from CCLAP. It’s been out a couple of months, but will review it soon.

interv. w/ author tao lin about money

The Urban Elitist is putting together a series of interviews with not big-time authors about how they make money. Here’s one with Tao Lin. Anybody who visits random literary websites has run into Tao Lin. He’s all over the place (I think he once tried to befriend everyone on Goodreads). His style is jarring in a good way, and his comments always pithy and sarcastic–like he’s putting on performance art for himself like Joaquin Phoenix’s recent binge. (h/t largehearted).
The best: “I feel that having a blog increases the amount of abstract space “Tao Lin” takes up in people’s lives. When a person looks at my blog they see my name and the books I have published (the header), causing other information that they “know” to exist less, to a degree, and be replaced by information about me and my oeuvre, which causes them to be more inclined maybe to buy my books or talk about me during awkward silences…”-Tao Lin

interv. w/ Benjamin Parzybok

I don’t know who Benjamin Parzybok is either. His book, Couch, sounds kind of cool though in this interview from Bookslut. The story is inspired by trying to move a couch from a secondhand store across Portland.

The best: “People were interacting with us, they wanted to sit on the couch or know what we were doing. I began to think how the phenomenon of a collective act — in this case moving a couch — would change someone who felt like an outcast.”-Benjamin Parzybok

interv. w/ richard nash of soft skull press

Conversational Reading is doing a series of interviews with small(ish) presses to determine how the recession is hitting them. This one is with Richard Nash of Soft Skull Press who says that his press had a great year. I mostly know Soft Skull from Matthew Sharpe’s stuff, but Tim Wise is quite a controversial fellow. (Thanks to HTML Giant).
The best: I believe that times of social disruption are tremendously fruitful for writers who are basically creating little social laboratories in which society gets to act out the changes.

They gave it a 9.6 and here’s the interview

You know the “they.” And here’s an interview with the recipients, Animal Collective. I was sold when I heard “The Purple Bottle” for the first time on the college radio station. Looks like they’re heading out to Europe first, (besides the big three) and then hit up the states in May. This concludes the most Pitchfork-centric post I’ve ever written.
The best:
(Dave Portner): We don’t always like to be so forceful with what [our songs are] about, because a part of listening is developing your own thoughts or emotions about something. And volume of vocals plays a part too, because we don’t always put the vocals at the loudest level for people to understand every word of our songs. Sometimes we think we have, but even then, people don’t always understand what we’re saying [laughs].

…interview with Jim White

…a popmatters interview with singer/songwriter Jim White. His longboard story is pretty interesting.

…”the wire” interviews

…the end of “the wire” links and interviews:
Slate started a good list of The Wire interviews.

One to definitely highlight is the LA Times article with a lot of the cast.

Here’s an excellent interview with David Simon by Sepinwall.