Sons

Sons are sons and daughters are daughters. We have sons; we have daughters. We have them, we look at them, we think about them, we move toward them, we move away from them.

We have us our sons. We have us our daughters.

You have neither and this is why we spend so little time in your company. You have no son. You have no daughter. You have nothing but you and it is strange and terrible.

This son here has more fingers than that one. This daughter receives messages from the stars. This son is allowed no more than ten carrots a week. This daughter will try at some point to kill a horse with her teeth.

Minor adjustments to the world, and all this would be very different. Did you know that? You might have the sons. You might have the daughters. Instead, things are how they are. They are what we see them to be.

They will not change.

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I'm in love with Grouper.



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I"m teaching a class in late January. And it will happen every Tuesday until March.

Kitchen Sink Fabulism: A Primer for Girls and Boys

There is a movement afoot in contemporary writing—a new(ish) movement with some very old roots. Calvino, Barthelme, and the fabulist writers of recent history—those writers who mined the themes of old fables for their new stories—ago have inspired the likes of Kelly Link, Kevin Brockmeier, Aimee Bender, Etgar Keret, and many more to write in the fabulist mode while also crafting contemporary, domestic tales. We will look at a number of writers in this mode, and discuss how to add elements of the fantastic to your own work in a seamless and elegant fashion.
Instructor: Matthew Simmons
Meets: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Tuesday, 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Min: 5 Max: 15

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Two readings coming up. Both at Hugo House. One is on January 19 @7pm. The second is at Cheap Beer and Prose, January 28, 7pm.

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New review of A Jello Horse, now in its third printing.

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Jello

My book, A Jello Horse, is back in print. Please consider ordering a copy.

Here are some reviews:

Open Letters Monthly
The Stranger
HTML Giant
NOTANOCTOPUS
Probably Just a Story
Goodreads

Thanks to all the reviewers.

If you would like to interview me about the book, or would like a guest blog post, or something, feel free to contact me.

Penny

More later...please stand by.

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This is my record review of the new record that I received in the mail and it only cost me a penny.

(And also, it cost me two more pennies for two more records, sure, but mostly I just got this one record for a penny and then the others for the other pennies were sort of like bonus gravy.)

The penny that I spent on this record that I got in the mail for a penny was well wort the copper or whatever that it is made from or out of. (Someone told me that inside a penny is bread for some reason. They said that if you take a penny and cut it in half, inside is like this old stale bread.) (But that is neither here nor there.) This was a penny well spent, much like because the penny was made from when I went out and did the lawn with the mower, it was also a penny well earned.

(The lawn really, really, really, really, like really needed doing.)

I see on the cover of this penny-costing record is a big blue word and some people in a photograph that is under the big blue word which is probably very likely the name of the band or the album. I like it very much when things are plain and straight ahead and no one has any trouble with the way information is conveyed to them, so I like it when a band or musical solo artist does me—and the public!—the great service of going ahead and putting their own name on the cover of the record. I am also very much in favor of a picture of the band itself, or the musical solo artist himself, or the musical female solo artist herself on the cover for ease of identifying the nature of the person performing the music on the record.

(Girls can make very fine solo musical artists, and I swear I was not trying to diminish the excellence of female musical solo artists by putting them last.)

The record itself is round in the manner of record albums in time immemorial. (That means from before you were born to remembering.) It is black and made of some sort of polyvinyl. There is a label on the center of the record and if I could read I would tell you all about the artist.

(And now you say, how is it you are giving me this record review in words if you yourself are unable to read words. The very interesting thing about me as a person is that I am unable to read, but am perfectly capable for whatever reason of writing in any sort of words I want, including words in languages that you don't know. Like, I might if I want say: watashi wa biru ga daisukidesu. Which is a lot of Japanese person talk.)

I do not have a record player of any sort so I cannot tell you if the music is any good. I hope that in the next few years I will be able to make enough money to buy a record player and then I will listen to the record and tell you about it. And then I will blog about it, but I can't now because it is impossible.

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A review of A Jello Horse.

When the book is reprinted in August there will be some review copies. Send me an email if you would like to review the book. I'm at

happy
cobra
books

at

g
mail

dot

com

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I check my book on Goodreads a lot, and every time someone adds it, I get a little short of breath and giddy. You and all your friends could do a sort of practical joke on me where a whole bunch of you add the book while I am asleep, and when I check the Goodreads site again and see a bunch of people have all added the book, I might faint. Someone could get that on tape.

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You will love this book. I loved it. You will, too.

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