Hat Tip: Janrae
Phlea’s interview is up on Siverthought. The first part is about Bukkakeworld, with Andy Laughton; the second is about Owls, with Mark Brand.
There’s nothing more annoying or insinuating than having those salty five ounces glancing across your face whenever you try to make a creative point against the corporate mindset, again and again and again.
Unless you’re a humpback whale, 5 oz. seems a bit excessive, whether measured by volume or weight.
My aim with this book was to replicate each working day where you’re a name and not a number. This thesis was actioned by writing chapter one, copying it twenty or so times, then slowly changing the content of each chapter that would represent (what should have been) the same working day.
No. That’s not the way it works. That’s a tolerable grind. An employer who really wants to needle you forces you into a job for which you were not hired, and are not qualified, then holds you accountable for not performing it to some absurdly high standard, because “nobody else knows how to do it, either, but somebody has to be held accountable for it.”
Well, it really is a book about you, the corporate lackey, the number, the faceless. You. Yes, you are a part of the problem.
Is Andy really a corporate lackey? I honestly don’t know.
My suspicion is that if I died tomorrow the literary world would be a better place. Right?
Nah. There’s a whole legion waiting to take your place, Mikkake.
Moving along, Mikkake talks to Mark Brand about Owls.
I am a big fan of certain Manga—they just project reality onto another plane and deal with it. There are no misconceptions of it being reality based.
Like your fiction?
The ‘narrative wobble’ is probably because I don’t write to storyline. I hate clean and tidy narrative resolution—it’s a scourge on the book industry.
Storylines don’t always have to have a tidy resolution, but I’d prefer one to an owl pellet of fur and bones left on my doorstep.
This next bit is my favorite from the entire interview.
The only acceptable fallout from my work would be that writers realise they can write whatever they want, share with ‘the reader(™)’ whatever horror they can imagine, bring out in the reader their true personal horrors in a way that will make that reader go, “Christ, horror’s really horrific again . . .
His only problem is that more people will read his interview than both books combined, and even that’s merely the online equivalent of rubbernecking.
I have two novels out with publishers, YOROPPA and VIEW FROM A STOLEN WINDOW . . .
I’m envisioning a cat macro that reads “I’m in ur hous stealing ur windoze.”
The corporations are evil!
The corporations are going to get you!
The corporations will crush you!
He needs to watch Team America.
“The only acceptable fallout from my work would be that writers realise they can write whatever they want, share with ‘the reader(™)’ whatever horror they can imagine, bring out in the reader their true personal horrors in a way that will make that reader go, “Christ, horror’s really horrific again . . .”
True personal horrors. Yeah, gigantic chickens have been part of my nightmare scape since I went to a KFC when I was an impressionable young child.
“Christ, horror’s really horrific again . . .” Hm. My own thought was “Christ, horror’s really gone down the shitter if this guy’s getting published . . .”
Would that be the same “the reader” that he despises?
An interview full of DUH! Just like the insides of Mikakke’s head.
When I was a teen I had to muck out chicken coops for a farmer. I fought off cocks. Insert joke of your choice here.
Btw, Gallus gallus with spurs are Nature’s hitmen. Just sayin’.
My dog, Levy, stayed with me at a friend’s farm and encountered roosters for the first time. The birds fascinated him. He was a chihuahua, dachs, peke mix.
He would sneak up behind the loose roosters and sniff their butt, cold-nosing them. the startled rooster who jump very high and squawk. this delighted Levy, so he kept stalking and sniffing.
My Gran had a dozen or so chickens when I was a young un… I remember her teaching me how to wring their necks when I was about six years old.
I was also a pheasant plucker once in a while (not a pheasant plucker’s son 🙂
Willie
The avg amount of semen is 1-2 teaspoons. A bit less than 5 oz I would say.
I could never do the killin,’ I’m afraid. 🙂
I still hated those bastard roosters who use to fly at me. I swear it was personal.
I’m guessing that Mikke hasn’t read Max Brand’s Jennifer Government, Syrup or Company and hasn’t read William Browning Spencer’s Resume With Monsters… all of which tackle the idea of the huge faceless corporation without ‘cut and pasting’ the same chapter into a book 20 times.
If he spent less time drooling over Japanese Hentai Manga and more time reading he might be a better author.
Then again, if pigs had wings they might shit on the roof of my car.
From the Interview:
The sad part is that he doesn’t know much (anything?) about what other authors are out there doing and the boundries that are broken all the time.
He thinks JK Rowling is mainstream corportate writing, ignoring the fact that it was Rowling who basically created the YA fantasy genre (before Rowling most fantasy was written for the AD&D crowd).
He also didn’t know that Stephenie Meyers has been bringing vampires to the YA audience and I would go so far as to venture that he didn’t know that Steven Hall and Mark Z. Danielewski have brought Bizarro to the mainstream. (They don’t call it Bizarro, but The Raw Shark Texts and House of Leaves fall pretty firmly into the Bizarro genre.)
You can’t ‘get your own ideas’ when you don’t even know about the people who are out there breaking genre boundries and stereotypes on a daily basis.
. . . the moment you pull out of the car wash. 😉
Nor can you get your own ideas when you spend your time playing with your belly-button lint. Besides, as much as he whines about there being no debates/discussions at Shocklines, he’s part of the problem that created that situation. The sad part is that I think he gets off on doing it.
I can’t believe he invoked Stanlislaw Lem. He must be a moron to think he is in the same league as Lem—or even begins to understand Lem and his ideals.
Philbin: Wow, this makes me sound like I should give a shit if you’re entertained or not.
Wow. This makes me think YOU are a corporate suck-boy pretending not to be while telling all of us we are.
I just really don’t get this guy. He’s just so gorram stupid. Does he actually buy his own BS?
On the subject of interviews, does anybody know where I could find a copy of Nikki’s Literary Bone interview? I’m curious to see this thing.
I wonder what philbin will say when the book fails to sell more than a handful of copies, if that much?
Philbin must have stopped by here as he’s quoting from some of the comments on various threads at Silversnot.
http://www.silverthought.com/forum/index.php?topic=2157.msg22171#msg22171
Well, his writing certainly is horrific.
Jesus Christ, the guy’s Ed Wood and he thinks he’s Francois Truffaut or something.
Peter North
Carry on
I notice that no one commented on the Shocklines thread Dudgeon started about the interviews. How long until one of the nitwits starts bumping the thread? We should start a pool.
Dudgeon’s in Winnipeg. I’d guess it would happen by around 8pm, Central, if he can find someone to do it for him. It’d look truly pathetic if he bumped it himself hours later, as if he forgot to mention something.
*adds one wooden nickel to the pot*