What I'm reading

"Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-​brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s‑quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-​print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek."

-- David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

Le Sex Shoppe

When porn was sold in brick-and-mortar stores. I took this photo about a decade ago. It will appear in an upcoming book by Charles Saatchi.

It's hysterical

My friend Clayton Cubitt launched his Hysterical Literature site today, and it includes an essay I wrote: "The Last Real Porn Star."

This is the number of people who have watched a video of porn star Stoya read an excerpt from Supervert's Necrophilia Variations: 6,986,096.

Stoya is not: naked, having sex, in a porn movie.

She is: reading a book.

By the time you read this, over 7 million people will have watched Stoya read a book.

"We were at a party, you and I," Stoya reads, and everybody listens.

Shine on

If you're at Target, swing by the book section and pick up my girlfriend Lydia Netzer's SHINE SHINE SHINE, now available in paperback. It's Target's pick for what you should be reading at the beach. I loved it.

What I'm reading

What I'm reading right now: I'm Right, You're Wrong, Now What?: Break the Impasse and Get What You Need.

I found it while reading this HBR piece: "Practical Tips for Overcoming Resistance."

From the book:

The results of a recent study of 3,682 couples [...] found that women who give up and give in during arguments with their husbands are four times more likely to die prematurely than women who argue productively. The women who held it in also had a higher risk of depression and irritable bowel syndrome. The study's authors conclude that healthy arguments are good for your health and longevity.

What I'm reading

Necrophilia Variations, Supervert

Opium

"For all its drawbacks, opium had one beneficial effect for De Quincey, that of acting as the ice-axe to free the frozen sea within him." -- "The Addicted Life of Thomas De Quincy" via Arts & Letters Daily

"Talent is everything; sanity is nothing." -- Americana, Don DeLillo

What I'm reading

Tenth of December: Stories, George Saunders

What I'm reading

Currently, I'm reading The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus. It was a gift from Lydia Netzer. It is awesome.

What I'm reading

I don't know why I've been reading books like these lately, but I have. They're Tony Robbinsish. They're absurd.

On writing books

[via this isn't happiness]

Why men pay for it

Yesterday, I posted that I was reading Chester Brown's Paying for It. Basically, it's an autobiographical graphic novel about how Brown paid prostitutes for sex.

I think I got it yesterday in the mail and finished it last night. Generally speaking, I didn't really like it.

Mostly, it's depressing. Which isn't to say it's not accurate. I got the sense it was very accurate. Brown kept a diary of when he did who, and that's the structure that guides the narrative.

But Brown is a nerd/robot, and because of that, you don't get -- well, I was going to say, much in the way of feeling, but really you don't get any feeling at all.

Brown feels kind of dead.

Dead to me. To him, I think he feels like himself. He's very mechanical. Logical. Thorough.

But it's sort of like watching someone fuck a hole in the wall.

You get glimpses of the women, who are mostly disguised -- by speech bubbles over their faces or the absence of specific details -- but not a lot.

Mostly, I felt like the book read like a polemic that was pretending to be a diary. Brown is a fan of the legalization of prostitution. Which is fine. I don't have a problem with that.

There's a lot about his troubles with love, but in the end, it's like his real issue is a lack of ... passion.

Which left me feeling like I ate a sandwich with nothing in it. 

Aesthetically, I loved it. It's all tiny boxes, and little opaque people, and the sex scenes are like a sperm trying to penetrate an egg. I liked the way it looked the best.

What I'm reading

Paying for It, Chester Brown

Buy this book

My friend Adam Penenberg has a new novel out called Virtually True, and it's about:

The murder of a friend.

Conspiracy on a global scale.

A near-future, dystopic world run by corporations, where nothing is as it seems and everything is part of something else. Technology and everyday life are inseparable, and information is a weapon that can save your life--or kill you.

It's awesome. Buy it. 

An excerpt

Here's an excerpt from my "cancer novel" in progress. I wrote most of the first 30,000 words while doing chemo. Why, yes, I do experience everything as a competition. Thanks for asking.

The best thing about getting married, she had found, was that after you got married, it was like everything else in your life had never happened, and that was what she had always wanted.

Sometimes she watched the husband sleep at night. His arms up over his head like a little boy. His dark lashes on his pale cheeks. His breathing like he was pretending he was a freight train in his dreams.

The husband was always there.

"You used to live in a tuna can," the husband liked to say. "I found you by the side of the road. I call it the grand experiment."

[IMAGE]

What I'm reading

Gay Talese, Thy Neighbor's Wife

Ryan Holiday, Trust Me, I'm Lying

Lydia Netzer, Shine Shine Shine

Damon Brown, Playboy's Greatest Covers

This is significant

This is my copy of a new book that features a piece of fiction I wrote. The book is called Significant Objects. It's co-edited by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, and it features work by Jonathan Lethem, Curtis Sittenfeld, Neil LaBute, Sheila Heti, Kurt Anderson, Ben Greenman, Lydia Millet, and William Gibson.

Here's how it worked, from the Significant Objects Tumblr:

The project auctioned off thrift-store objects via eBay; for item descriptions, short stories purpose-written by over 200 contributing writers ... were substituted.

The objects, purchased for $1.25 apiece on average, sold for nearly $8,000.00 in total. (Proceeds were distributed to the contributors, and to nonprofit creative writing organizations.)

The story I wrote for it is about a necking team.

Buy it.

Porn is your teacher

My latest on Forbes: "What Your Business Can Learn from the Porn Business."

Here to help, kids!

I took this photo and some of the other photos I'm posting here at a porn convention I went to last weekend. Right now, I'm working on a longer piece on that for my Forbes blog.

I don't think I've done a piece like this since I did "They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They?"

This time, I went in trying to do too much. I was thinking about the Forbes post, the nonfiction book I'm writing about the adult movie industry for which this will be the first chapter, and taking photographs.

I should've just thrown that all out the window when I walked in and followed my porn intuition. That's what serves me best in situations like this.

Will it play in Peoria?

That's a line from this piece I'm doing now. 

[READ]

Buy this book

Today is the publication day of my awesome friend Lydia Netzer's terrific novel: Shine Shine Shine.

Buy it immediately.

It's already critically acclaimed, having scored a rave from Janet Maslin in the New York Times: "it is so full of oddities that no simple summary will do it justice."

It has something for everyone: a bald woman, a lost astronaut, math equations, robots, strange children, and time travel.

Tonight, you can attend the book's virtual launch party from the comfort of your very own home. Lydia's got the info here. I will be there.

It took Lydia ten years to write it, so get a copy, dammit.