Stephen Elliott Interview

Stephen Elliott, the author of seven books including The Adderall Diaries, and the Editor of the online literary site, The Rumpus http://therumpus.net, sat down with 12th Street’s Jennifer Sky to discuss the politics of writing and the lure of the website for the literary world.  This is the premier interview of 12th Street Online’s monthly author series.  Enjoy – Liz Axelrod, Editor in Chief

12^th Street Online: What was the catalyst to starting your online literary magazine, The Rumpus?

Stephen Elliott: I was done with The Adderall Diaries—that was my seventh book—and I didn’t really have the urge to write another book. I wanted to do something else. I thought, “Well, I should get into editing,” because that’s kind of what I know how to do. If you write long enough, eventually you learn how to edit because editing is such a huge part of writing. So I thought I would start editing somewhere.

I was actually talking to Arianna Huffington about joining The Huffington Post. I had all these ideas—pages and pages of ideas—about how I wanted to build a book section for The Huffington Post and all these cools things I wanted to do with it. Then at some point I thought, “Well, it’s just a website. If I have all these ideas why am I giving them to Arianna Huffington?” You know, I’ll just do it myself. So I started The Rumpus. I didn’t know if I was going to make any money or if anyone would read it. That’s the same way I write. You start it and see what happens. It’s like I do everything.

12^th: The Rumpus has already carved out a pretty invaluable place in the online literary community. How do you account for its popularity?

SE:  Huh… “invaluable.” I don’t know about that description. Can a literary website really be invaluable? The Rumpus is good. There’s a lot of good content. It’s updated frequently. So if you have some shit job and you want to distract yourself and you want a website that is updated all day long, there are a lot of options, but there are also not a lot of options. There’s Gawker, which is really mean and kind of spiteful. There is The Huffington Post, which is so stupid, so full of so much overwhelming idiocy. There’s Slate and Salon, which are pretty good but they are writing about the same things. They’re chasing clicks all the time; they rarely introduce us to something new. They always have stories about Obama or whoever else is the popular person for that day. They are kind of always behind what’s happening, as opposed to setting the agenda. There are not that many options for somebody if you want a site that is about literature, smart, updated frequently, and is going to introduce you to new people—that strives to have some integrity. We never do any pop culture on The Rumpus. We never do any smart essays about Britney Spears. It’s a Britney-Spears-free zone. There’s no Paris Hilton on The Rumpus, ever. And even though we love Obama, we don’t do anything about Obama because he’s over exposed. We try to introduce people to new culture, to culture they wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. We are trying to take that role of curating a little more seriously than I thing people are currently taking it. And so I think that’s why The Rumpus is popular.

12^th: Does The Rumpus have a mission statement? Do you operate under any specific guiding principles?

SE: If you go to the website, there’s a post describing what The Rumpus is, which is available from any page on the site. It talks about that, while the web was supposed to diversify content, it hasn’t; it has just focused attention on the same few things. It has become the lowest common denominator, in a lot of ways, and that The Rumpus is the place you can go to get away from pop culture. It’s okay if someone’s popular. We will write about Dave Eggers, Malcolm Gladwell, Joan Didion—these are popular writers—but we won’t write about mass-produced culture, culture that is created by marking executives.

Advertisement

 

The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott

“…I became curious about things and my curiosity kept me going.”

The Adderall Diaries, S.E.

Note: Adderall is a brand-name medication intended for people with ADHD. It increases alertness, libido and concentration, and, because it affects the mesolimbic reward pathway in the brain, it is as addictive as cocaine and methamphetamine.

Stephen Elliott’s memoir is a cocktail of sadomasochistic sex, hardcore drugs, emotional abuse and the altering perceptions on self, culture and the fine line that disguises the outcome of truth and fiction. But it’s more complex than a list of what it is and what it isn’t. As he mentions in the middle of the book: This book begins with a suicidal urge. If I was going to kill myself anyway, I could write whatever I wanted. And that’s what I started to do. He begins by mentioning that his father may have killed a man—a fantastic beginning. We follow the unraveling story, but then detour towards a murder trial set in San Francisco where Hans Reiser is accused of killing his wife, which Elliott has committed to write about. Through this suspenseful, edge-of-the-seat prose that pulls the reader along, underneath lies the tender and raw exploration of self that truly makes this work worthy of literary attention.

In a world where he finds comfort hogtied and abused, Elliott is an honest and straight-forward narrator. He is as sharp as a paper cutter in his approach to contemporary culture, like in moments when he amalgamates Paris Hilton’s incarceration with the Iraq War, showing the irony of how the media’s attention glamorized the beauty of a caged celebrity while war continued. He takes us through the detailed account of the murder trial throughout the book, and as he does so overlaps it with his tumultuous relationship with his father. By the end of the novel he confesses that it’s the most important relationship he’s ever had, even though his memory of it is terrifying: It wasn’t the handcuffs or the beatings or his shaving my head. That was nothing. It was the terror.

A denouement never arrives, only in regard to the trail in which Hans, the accused, finally confesses to the murder and is sent to a minimum of fifteen years in prison. In the last chapter Elliott refers to having read Robert Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance numerous times as a teenager, hooked by Persig’s sense of resolution, trying to make it feel true to him. But he felt it was too much, too sweeping. The last line of the book can’t possibly be true, he felt. Instead: Neat conclusions do nothing for me. I write to make sense, to communicate, to connect, which is the overall sense you feel when reading this work.

The Adderall Diaries is an excellent, deft and provocative meta-memoir that becomes a strange, beautiful thing by the time you reach its last page.

Reviewed by Mario A. Zambrano

Editor’s Note: Look for 12th Street Online’s interview with Stephan Elliott, coming soon.

 

Great House, by Nicole Krauss

‘I wanted to be judged on what I did with my life, but now I will be judged by how I described it.’ – Great House, Nicole Krauss

Sensibility veils the language in Nicole Krauss’ new novel Great House, not in the way that obscures the images of life on the other side of the narrative, but in a way that perceives a character’s past—reflecting on loss, the inheritance of one’s history —in a sort of nostalgic embrace that finds poetry in meditation: ‘When at last I came across the right book the feeling was violent: it blew open a hole in me that made life more dangerous because I couldn’t control what came through it’/ ‘…my mind went to it like a tongue probing the tender spot of a missing tooth.’

All the narrators that compose this orchestrated collection share a poet’s sensitivity and point of view. Two of these characters are writers: Nadia, a middle-aged novelist in New York City who has a brief affair with a Chilean poet named Daniel Varsky, who gives her a wooden, nineteen-drawer desk, once owned by Lorca, to look after when he goes back to Chili, and Lotte Berg, a former Kindasport chaperone (her story his narrated by her husband Arthur Bender) who writes elliptical stories in the privacy of her attic studio, on the same desk Nadia looks after years later⎯the desk being the object that threads together all four narratives. Other participants in the trajectory of ‘the desk’ are Leah and Yoav Weisz, children of an Israeli furniture dealer who specializes in retrieving heirlooms lost to the Nazi’s during the war. And finally, there is Aaron, a man writing to his estranged son Dov after his wife’s death, trying to piece together the puzzle of their relationship that has been obscured by misunderstanding. Dov, who left Israel and went to London to become a judge, is alluded to as the connecting line to Nadia, who narrates her story to a judge, ‘Your Honor’, whom she has fatally injured in a car accident in Israel.

Reviewed by Mario A. Zambrano

*Editor’s note – there’s so much more to this review – click more and keep reading.

 

The Abracadabra by Luke Sirinides

The Abracadabra: A New Poetry Game

I invented this game during Paul Violi’s poetry workshop “Romantic Rebellion.” Two examples of the Abracadabra—“Four Reviews” and “Four School Subjects”—are presented below. Read the rules, check it out, and play along!

Rules:

The player chooses a general topic and four subjects within the topic (e.g. Critical Reviews: Theatre, Book, Food, Film and School Subjects: Math, History, English, Science.)

The player writes four poems—one for each subject (these together make the Abracadabra.)

The poems are written in Dactylic meter—each foot has three beats: Stressed, unstressed, unstressed. ONE, two, three, ONE, two, three. It’s like waltzing. (NOTE: This rule can be broken. If you find a meter better suited to your purposes, you must use that one.)

The rhyme scheme is ABCB. You may write as many quatrains as necessary—but less is more!

The player must use each letter of the alphabet in order throughout each of the four poems. You do not have to use one letter per line, only in order.

In the A-Z words, you may not use the same word twice in the Abracadabra. (This rule can be bent. For example, using “X” to mean “crossing out” is not the same as using “X-” as the prefix for “X-axis.” But try and stay diverse.

* Editor’s note: Click MORE to view Luke’s poems and play along – leave your magic poems in the comments box.  Have fun!

 

Stories & Songs Residency

On Sunday, September 26, New School Professor Joseph Salvatore gave an amazing and ardent reading at Googies Lounge. The room was filled with a community of readers and writers, former students, friends, and literary admirers sweating in the oppressive humid heat while anxiously waiting to hear the piece from his upcoming book of short stories, To Assume a Pleasing Shape. The story he chose to read “Whatever, Forever” kept the crowd rapt and dramatically raised the temperature of the room. The passion, torment, beat, and gothic sensibility mixed with just the right amount of pathos moved the crowd from gasps to laughs to audible sighs. Not often does one get to witness a master in peak form entertain and enthrall with such brilliant use of language.

Here’s an excerpt:

“… she wouldn’t mind a nice set of claws, claws like her winged friends have, claws that could hold onto ledges of dizzying height — like the stone belfry of Old Salem Church, from which foggy perch she could peer down upon her entire Witch City, peer down upon Salem Harbor with the hillside cemetery of Marblehead off across that dark water, peer down upon the old lighthouse overlooking the salty mouth of the Atlantic, down upon the dry-splintered eaves of the House of Seven Gables, down even to Swampscott, to the gallows there where, contrary to popular knowledge, were hanged the wise women of her township, the women who did not need men — claws that could act as protection, as weapons, while she flies through the night air, her outstretched wings a dark sail billowing behind, the moon above a flaming penumbra; claws that could scrape down a lover’s back, down even (yes, she wasn’t afraid to say the name) Angie’s back, Angie Kosinski’s freckled back …”

To Assume a Pleasing Shape, will be published in 2011, from BOA Editions.

Reviewed by Liz Axelrod

 

Peter Orlovsky Memorial at The Poetry Project

The East Village was alive this past Wednesday night with both those who haunt and those who need to be haunted

In St. Marks Church on 10th Street, hundreds of people filed into the Poetry Project’s Memorial for the poet Peter Orlovsky who died this past May. His name becomes more recognizable when it precedes the fact the he was Allen Ginsberg‘s lover and life-long companion, immediately positioning Orlovsky as a shadow amongst the great Beat poet. He never howled as loudly as Ginsberg, but he was bursting with creative energy and feelings so dynamic that when Ginsberg encouraged him to write, it was only natural that he did so.

Throughout the evening, music, poetry, storytelling, and memories compounded in unraveling Orlovsky as a true poet. Some friends, like Patti Smith, recalled “always being in the same room with Peter, but never speaking a word to one another.” They bonded through the unspoken – from being surrounded by an intellectual circle of those who were accustomed to speaking.

 

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go is that rare book that eludes categorization. Is it literary fiction, or sci-fi? A thriller or a quiet rumination on the human condition? Is it a dystopian tragedy, or a coming-of-age love story? Astoundingly, the answer to all of these questions is simply “yes.”

It’s difficult to review the novel without giving away some of its more surprising plot points—discovering the world of Never Let Me Go is both its joy and its sorrow. (The film adaptation is premiering this Oscar season, so read the book before the movie hype spoils it for you.) I’ll reveal only as much as the first ten pages do: The novel is narrated by Kathy H., who works as a “carer,” in England, in the 1990s. She and her two best friends, Ruth and Tommy, grew up and were students together at Hailsham. Kathy H. has had a chance to reconnect with her friends after many years apart, since they were both “donors” she “cared” for. Hailsham, which seems very much like a boarding school, was much better than any of the other places. We see the “guardians” there are interested in art and creativity—the students take classes in drawing, poetry, music appreciation …and little else. One “donor” shudders when Kathy asks where he went, however, “he wanted… not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it was his own childhood.” Indeed, Kathy’s observant yet naïve reminiscences allow it to become our memories as well (though we learn in Chapter One that she’s not exactly sure where Hailsham is.)

 

Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann

Who would’ve thought that in this craze-filled city, on an early morning in 1974, most every New Yorker would’ve stopped what they were doing to turn their heads and see, 110 stories above them, a man walking a tightrope from one twin tower to the other? Philipe Petit spent forty minutes dancing on air with a smile on his face, as if he were telling a joke to the world, proving that life is equally absurd as it is beautiful.The only other moment in the last few years that has been able to capture that kind of attention, especially in New York City with it’s unstoppable ambition, was when those twin towers fell. The comparison of those two awe-occurring moments, though not explicitly, is at the outset of Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann. The novel begins, “Those who saw him hushed.” Immediately, there is a quiet suspense in the language, and on the morning of 9/11, New Yorkers, along with everyone around the world, with their eyes glued to the television, hushed also. We saw those buildings blaze, then crumble, then gone.

That sort of feeling, the drop of the stomach, is present when you read Let The Great World Spin. Not because it leaves you feeling vapid, but because there are hard punches in the narrative, emotional undoing

s, and devastating degrees of faith that support the pillars of love and loss that seem to sway and crumble at their own accord. By using Philipe Petit as a focal point, McCann somehow suspends the present in a way that makes one evaluate the country’s cultural climate. And the composition itself, of the 1974 phenomenon and the fall of the Twin Towers, is beautiful. What is so admirable too is how human transcendence, ach

ieved through the stories of this inter-mingled cast, echos the lives of people experiencing life in the present: sons at war, the economic downfall, a distrustful government. The overlap is a sort o

f hologram, and the result is a heartbreaking literary work.

The cast offers different points of view and the structure as a whole is built like a collection of short stories. It is bound together by two Irish brothers named Corrigan and Ciaran who find themselves in the middle of New York meeting prostitutes, artists, housewives and judges, all of whom become effected by the state of the nation during this one day when a French man dares to defy all reason and walk onto a line of impossibility. I absolutely loved this book.

Colum McCann received the National Book Award for Let The Great World Spin in 2009 and currently teaches at Hunter College.

Reviewed By Mario A. Zambrano

 

Your 2010/2011 Staff

12th Street Website:

Online Editor-in-Chief: Liz Axelrod
Online Literary Editor: Philip Anderson
Assistant Online Editor: Jennifer Giglio
Assistant Online Editor: Jeff Vasishta
Online Edit God: Patrick Hipp

12th Street Journal:
Editor-in-Chief: Mario A. Zambrano
Managing Editor: Liz Axelrod
Interview Editor: Patrick Hipp
Fiction Editor: Eric Marsh
Nonfiction Editor: Tony Grassi
Poetry Editor: Rebecca Melnyk
Readers: Jennifer Sky Band, Noah Beigelmacher, Myriam-Skye Holly, Rachel McAlpine, Adam Hansen
Editor-at-Large: Luke Sirinides
Faculty Advisor: Rene Steinke

MFA Teaching Assistants:
Print: Addie Morfoot
Online: Alex Wilson

 

Big Event & Closing Remarks

Business first:

Tuesday, May 18, 7pm
12th Street Magazine Issue # 3 Launch
33 East 17th Street, Barnes and Noble Union Square
Celebrate the launch of the third issue of 12th Street, the literary magazine edited and published by the students of the Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy. Robert Polito, director of the New School Writing Program, will host an evening of readings by students and novelists Mary Gaitskill and David Gates.

This could arguably be the most festive Riggio event of the year, so I encourage all who can attend to do so.

Now, a personal note: as another academic school year comes to an end, so must the majority of activities we – students, professors, scholastic community members – have come to embrace over the last nine months. For some, this time represents only a break in the pursuit of an extensive educational goal. For others, it is the culmination of years of hard work and academic devotion. I implore you all to be proud of what you have achieved.

That said, another year has come and gone for the staff of 12th Street magazine. As on-line editor, this was my first. The group of individuals who produced 12th Street, Issue #3 is bigger than the sum of its parts and will, unfortunately, exist only in the record of this year’s journal. There are those of us who will graduate next week. Many of us will return next year, perhaps in different capacities, and there will, of course, be new contributors to 12th Street, who will bring fresh and exciting perspectives to the magazine. But, the team that produced this year’s journal, like all things, must evolve. For myself, I am grateful and proud to say I was a part of this team, be it in my small (and yes, somewhat removed) position as on-line editor. Like many aspects of the journal, the 12th Street website is still in its infancy, and only time will mold it into the comprehensive media outlet I and the remaining staff wish it to be.
As on-line editor, I had a generous amount of unexplored territory to navigate. At times, I may have stumbled, to which I acknowledge my shortcomings. For all that I accomplished, I have to give credit to those who helped, particularly Pat Hipp, Liz Axelrod, and Julie Carl. Their assistance was invaluable this past year, and they have my sincere gratitude.

I don’t wish to make this a long-winded affair, so I’ll leave with this final request: contribute. Not just to the journal itself, but to the website, as well. No one appreciates print more than I, but this is the new media and it’s important that talented and authoritative voices be heard here. Bear this in mind next year when you’re developing your work for 12th Street. Whether it’s myself or someone new, 12th Street Online looks forward to your contributions.

Have a great summer.

~Tony

 

Pictures from the latest Riggio Reading Series

Don’t forget to come by the Lang Center this Friday, May 7, for the finale in the Riggio Reading Series. Graduating seniors will be reading excerpts from their thesis projects. It’s an event not to be missed. Formal attire is expected.

 

12th Street: Writing & Democracy event

12th Street Celebrates the Release of Issue Number 3!

The literary journal of The New School’s Riggio Honors Program, Writing
and Democracy, will celebrate the launch of its third issue at Barnes &
Noble in Union Square at 7:00 PM on Tuesday, May 18th. The reading will
feature New School undergraduate student contributors, Robert Polito,
Director of The New School Writing Program, and special readings by two
writers interviewed in this issue – David Gates and Mary Gaitskill. 12th
Street is edited and published by students in the Riggio Honors Program:
Writing and Democracy at The New School.

The Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy is an innovative
sequence of writing workshops and close-reading seminars designed to
offer gifted undergraduate writers in the New School Bachelors Program a
balanced and substantial literary education. As one part of the Leonard
and Louise Riggio Writing and Democracy Initiative at The New School,
the honors program accents “the writer in the world,” and extends to
undergraduates the mission and accomplishments of the New School’s
well-known graduate program in Creative Writing.

 

Launch Time

Monday, Monday, Monday!

April 26th is the New School’s 12 Street Magazine launch party. Contributors will be reading excerpts from this year’s journal. Refreshments will be served.

The launch will be held at:

66 W. 12th St., Rm. 510
@ 7:00pm.

We look forward to seeing you there.

 

Behold, the Spring 2010 Journal

It is alive!

Don’t forget: Next Monday, April 26, is the New School launch of 12th Street: Spring 2010. More details to follow.

~T

 

The Moment is Soon Upon Us

12th Street: Issue 3 is scheduled for release April 15.

This year’s contributors include:

Ben Clague, Vesper T. Woods, Selene Sonrisa, Julie Buntin, Jeff Vashista, Luke Sirinides, Patrick Hipp, Jay Boss Rubin, Buku Sarkar, Paul M. Capobianco, Mario Zambrano, Rachel McAlpine, Finnegan Brantley, Marisa Frasca, Aaron Simon, Zoe Miller, Jeanette Anderson, Liz Axelrod, Rebecca Melnyk, G. Collins, Joey Cannizzaro, and Jesse Stewart

Please note the following dates –
April 26th will be The New School Launch Party for 12th Street; time & location: TBA

May 18th is the Barnes & Noble Launch Event with special guests Mary Gaitskill and David Gates. This will be held at Barnes & Noble’s Union Square location.

Be sure to check back for more updates and a sneak peak at this year’s cover.