THE (MID-) MARCH NEWS

EXPLAIN YOURSELVES: This month we’ll be adding a new monthly mini-poll to the site. Check the surrounding homepage for the culprit. (If it’s not there now, it will be soon). Every month we’ll ask you a question to help us better understand you and your needs. The results of each month’s poll will be posted in the following month’s news so you guys can also get a feel for one another. It’ll only take you a few seconds, and we’ll be really grateful.

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THE AFFORDABLE SLUTS: As vaguely promised last month, we have news on the paperback edition of ‘The Sluts.’ It’s official: the publishing house Carroll & Graf will release ‘The Sluts’ in a relatively low budget paperback edition in 2006, tentatively sometime early in the year. It will be a completely redesigned (or rather un-designed) book without Alex Kasavin’s pretty design and Todd James’ awesome illustrations. But for those of you who can’t bring yourselves to part with $50, you won’t be left out. We should have an official release to give you next month.

As for the limited edition of ‘The Sluts,’ there are still some copies left as of now, although the supply is dwindling. So get your debit cards over to the Void Books site, or visit one of the lucky stores who are selling copies in the flesh.

‘The Sluts’ continues to wow the critics. The Village Voice’s Dennis Lim calls it "as perceptive and profound an analysis of the Internet’s philosophical dimensions as any fiction writer has yet produced." Read their review rave. Or head over to Salon Salon.com, who’ll be posting their review sometime in the next few weeks. Or do a google search and discover all the other reviewers’ and bloggers’ enthusiasms for yourself.

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VISIT OUR NEW LITTLE GALLERIES: While we prepare to update the main body of the site, we’ve created three temporary offsite galleries for the hungry eyed among you. (Hit your ‘back’ button to return to this site).

Gallery #1: See some newly unearthed photos of a very young DC here here.

Gallery #2: See some behind the scenes photos taken by DC last fall in Lyon, France during the rehearsals of his, Gisele Vienne’s, and Peter Rehberg’s theater work ‘I Apologize’ here .

Gallery #3: See Martha Kinney’s photos from the Little House on the Bowery West Coast tour last November here.

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DC STORMS THE THEATER WORLD AGAIN: You probably know about ‘I Apologize,’ DC’s 2004 theater collaboration, which premiered last fall in Lyon to packed houses and no small amount of controversy. ‘I Apologize’ will have its humungous, splashy, ‘official’ premiere at the super esteemed Festival D’ Avignon this coming July. The performances run nightly from July 17th through the 23rd, and tickets are available for purchase here. But the really big news is that DC is currently working on a second theater work in collaboration with Vienne and Rehberg, which will have its world premiere in the very same festival. The new piece is entitled ‘A Young, Beautiful Blond Girl,’ and, for this work, DC is collaborating on the text with Catherine Robbe-Grillet, wife of the legendary French ‘Nouveau Roman’ novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet and quite a legendary writer and figure herself. She will also be the main performer in the piece. We’ll have some more information and maybe some rehearsal pix for you soon.

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THE MISSING-IN-ACTION PROJECTS: A number of you have written to us asking what is going with various DC-related projects that we haven’t mentioned in the news for a while. So here’s an update on some of these M.I.A.’s.

STILL ALIVE:

  1. ‘Introducing Horror Hospital,’ the movie. The Australian independent production company Arcadia Pictures has raised a good chunk of the money they need to finance the film and hope to have the rest secured by the end of summer. Daniel Johns (Dissociatives/Silverchair), who was originally slated to compose the film’s score and songs, is no longer with the project. Our prognosis: it will happen, maybe by year’s end or early 2006.
  2. ‘My Loose Thread,’ the movie. The Los Angeles-based production company Ah-Ha Films has shot a short sample reel to show potential investors and are currently trying to secure financing. Our prognosis: about a fifty-fifty chance it’ll ever happen.
  3. DC’s new book of poetry: DC tells us he’s working on five or six new poems that will complete the manuscript. At that point, his agent will find a publisher for the book. Our prognosis: A definite. In the meantime, there’s a very good chance that DC and Void Books will team up again for a even more limited edition, hand letterpress, super high quality chapbook of new DC poems. More news on that soon.
  4. DC’s collaboration with the band Pig Destroyer. Apart from a mutual agreement to do the project, there hasn’t been much progress due to the band’s ongoing touring to promote their latest CD and DC’s commitment to the theater projects in France. Our prognosis: More than likely, maybe later this year.
  5. DC’s collaboration with Detroit-based composer/DJ Ian Clarke aka Perspect. Some initial work has been completed, but the project is temporarily on hold while Clarke tours Europe to promote the new Perspect album. Our prognosis: It’s looking good.

DEAD:

  1. ‘Warm,’ the pornographic feature film directed by Carter Smith with a screenplay by DC. Why: Smith made a documentary on the band Jane’s Addiction instead.
  2. DC’s collaboration with the legendary British band Wire. Why: Wire broke up.

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SHORT AND SALTY NEWS: Plans for the previously announced conference/festival about DC’s writing in Cork, Ireland, are moving along nicely. It promises to be a lively, multi-media shebang with readings, music, art, film, panels, and DC in attendance. The event is tentatively scheduled for sometime in September, and we’ll be giving you more facts and juicy info next month.

We’ve discovered yet another great, intelligent essay on DC’s work. Titled ‘(Fill-in-the) Blank Fiction: Dennis Cooper’s Cinematics and the Complicitous Reader,’ the essay’s author is someone named Michele Aaron. It was recently published in the winter issue of the Journal of Modern Literature, but if you can’t find it in your local bookstore or library, you can read a chunk of the essay here.


DC was recently interviewed for a forthcoming feature length documentary film about the late, great writer Kathy Acker. The film is helmed by Austrian director Barbara Kasper and is produced by the same people responsible for ‘Nomi Song,’ the recent documentary film about German New Wave phenomenon Klaus Nomi.

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LITTLE HOUSE ON THE BOWERY NEWS: LHotB superstars Martha Kinney (‘The Fall of Heartless Horse’) and Derek McCormack (‘Grab Bag’) will be guests on National Public Radio’s ‘Bookworm,’ America’s most respected and popular literary program, at the beginning of April. Check your local listings for the exact time and date ….. The charismatic, elusive LHotB author Travis Jeppesen (‘Victims’) has a very strange (in a good way) new novel coming out this August from The Magic Realist Press. Titled ‘Nosfelinu the Vampuss,’ it’s a gothic thriller starring blood sucking house cats, and you can read about it here. ….. While you anxiously await the arrival of LHotB’s latest title, Richard Hell’s ‘Godlike’ (July), you can hear him read a chapter here. Plus, you can now rent or buy the newly released DVD of Susan Seidelman’s 1982 cult classic film ‘Smithereens,’ starring Hell ….. Benjamin Weissman (‘Headless’) is interviewed in the current issue of Dave Eggars’s trend-setting literary magazine The Believer. Read it here. ….. Future LHotB author James Greer (‘Artificial Light,’ early 2006) has just completed witing the definitive history of DC’s favorite band Guided by Voices. Titled ’Hunting Accidents,’ it will be published by Grove Press this November.

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DC’S MARCH PLAYLIST:

RIP: Hooboy

books:

Jerome Sala, ‘Look Slimmer Instantly!’ (Soft Skull Press); John Ashbery ‘Where Shall I Wander’ (Ecco); Darcy Steinke, ‘Milk’ (Picador); Richard Siken, ‘Crush’ (Yale University Press).

art:

Matthew Ronay, ‘It’s an Uprising’ (Andrea Rosen Gallery, NY); Jim Shaw (Praz-Delavallade, Paris); Francesca Gabbiani (Centre Pasqu Art Kunsthaus, Beil, Switzerland).

music:

Psychedelic and prog-rock albums from the late 60s and early 70s featuring the mellotron; Githead, ‘Githead’ (EP, Swim); Robert Pollard, ‘Zoom EP’ (Fading Captain).

dvd/video/film:

Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger, ‘Metallica: Some Kind of Monster’ (DVD, Paramount Home Video); Robert Bresson, ‘The Trial of Jeanne D’Arc’ / ’L’Argent’ / ’Pickpocket’ (DVD box set, mk2); The Ring 2 (in theaters).

web:

Kigurumi links:

www.doll-house.jp/

www.photogenicmask.com/

http://kigsa.hp.infoseek.co.jp/zentai.html

http://loveface.cool.ne.jp/lovemenu.html



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