i'll be sharing

[N]

I haven't actually finished Larry Angeles yet

I read like a quarter and then I forgot about it (nothing to do with the book's contents, I do that with nearly every book, even my textbooks for university)
Need to have another go at it. It just ended up in a box with the 50 other books I bought with every intention of reading. Would this book be classified as bizarro?

Congrats and best wishes anyway!

[jenkins]

sweetie i believe that what you're forgetting is you never bought Larry Angeles xx

the main text of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is creative nonfiction, except i categorized it as fiction / black humor. because there's not a fucking moment that describes me doing anything i've done. none of it has happened, actually. i had a lot of fun writing it. i don't know of another book like it, kind of. i had already begun writing it when i started reading The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney, a selection i made from bookstacks in my room, searching for a book it'd be a good idea for me to read while writing this, and a certain shared spirit between me and that book was one of those marvelous cosmic coincidences. but my tone and narrative intention are quite dissimilar to that book, which is almost like mad at the reader and mad at oneself. i'm pissed at the world, you know, and Ferdydurke helped me realize i can be a bit pissy, if i want to be, and my tone and narrative intention were also a result of Água Viva allowing my sense of self unlimited space, and The Argonauts was the book which made it clear to me that the world of nonfiction was serious business.

the first fragment shared in the book, mentioned within the novelette, is an imitation of a style i learned from Horacio Castellanos Moya. it's straight up a 54-page one-sentence expression of personal anxiety.

the second fragment is the beginning portion of my planned bizarro fiction book. so this part is classified as bizarro, except i didn't write it long enough to fully express that subgenre's loveliest features, which features i do twice describe within OWTPODG, also emulating the genre within the book's overall mechanics, since there's cosmic harmony between me and this idea: "strives not only to be strange, but fascinating, thought-provoking, and, above all, fun to read."

there's also an adult-kids book, which to me just seemed like an obvious good idea for a type of book.

[N]

Regardless, that sounds quite interesting. A 54-page single sentence sounds super tricky to write, grammatically. If I recall correctly DFW's short story Incarnations of Burned Children is only a single sentence? That could be wrong, actually I know it's wrong because I just looked it up and there's full stops, but it was about the only fragment of literary expertise I could muster in the attempt to form a purportedly lucid response. If that fails my backup plan is to increase the bandwidth on the bandpass butterworth filter for my vocabulary mid-sentence, and use overly specific and ill-fitting technical analogies to hopefully confuse you into thinking I have any idea about books.

For some reason I can read non-fiction at twice the speed of fiction but that's generally because there's no subtext in computer science. Good non fiction I imagine could be quite poetic and concise, like Nietzsche or something. Or if Nabokov had written The Origin of Species instead of that lunatic.

I've got an exam in an hour, probably should've written this reply after, if I remember when I get back I'll check out those links in detail.

[jenkins]

oh that's right, i don't understand how to read my reports. may it be that the "sweetie" and "xx" pay off, and in my opinion the ending of Larry Angeles is strong.

we're at the happy ending. of course i loved the way you talked about how you're currently thinking of writing, which segued into self reflection. i think you'd like OWTPODG. it's perhaps more of a guy book than i'd necessarily want it to be, based on within OWTPODG the reader i imagine is often a rational person who sometimes seems frustrated by my emotions.

[N]

That's actually a pretty cool idea, similar to what Dostoevsky did in Notes From Underground maybe. What I remember of Larry Angeles was well written but I had trouble relating to LA having never been there, but I suppose I have actually been there in your camera. Forgot what your short film was named, something to do with roses or something? That film was fantastic anyway, shame on me for not finishing Larry Angeles, but don't take it personally, I still haven't even seen the entirety of 2001 either.

[jenkins]

well i figure if you (the reader) like me you already like me, so i'd like to imagine myself getting along with someone not like me. and find avenues for reflection upon shared aspects of the human condition. that's the basic setup. Gooses was the name of the short but i would've titled it Something To Do With Roses Or Something? in a heartbeat. no shame, only forward xx

[polkablues]

Hey everyone, look what came in the mail today.



For fun, here's the first cover design I made, which is nice and I like it on its own merits, but I like the one that ended up being used much better. Still, a nice little easter egg for the completists out there.

[jenkins]

xx. i should've put it in the book. i would've been happy with either of course.

its sale is currently on pause, as i'm reading a physical copy and noticing final things. maybe 13 typos i've noticed, which number i'm biased toward and is semi-accurate, within 170pgs. they all rush me to the computer and none of them break my heart or destroy the spirit. in literature land the ones with the typos are the collector's edition.

polka thanks again. i mean, it's really fun to thank you. i'm not sure why but thanks. i'm posi that if you got a capsule review to help the community it'd help the community. but ultimately like the mother says in Volver everything about us is up to us. i've done what i've thought i can do. the book was sent to 4 writers. so i did that too. the final scenario is at least that the next news will be the release of my new book. it's ridiculous to think of me walking away from writing.

[polkablues]

I want to reread it first, plus read the additional material in the book that I haven't seen yet, then I'll definitely post my thoughts.

And thanks for giving me the opportunity to design the cover for you. It was a fun process, and it's a pretty cool thing to be able to hold in my hands and put on my shelf.

[WorldForgot]

OK so, I have just finished Larry Angeles.

Mostly, I am so glad for this book -- thank you jenkins (Shawn, Larry, etc.) -- for coming into my life when it did. Forever dreaming of word planet, my fate brought me eventually into this city, wherein Larry is, too, losing himself. The construction of a sentence is a peculiar thing, and each word holds its own life. There were times when I wanted to be as much a part of word planet as Larry, although I am, as I had been before, when writing created gambits rather than blocks.

Portions of this book I read aloud to my family (about I Just Want To Pee Alone and solitary habitats [it recurred often in my life that my father, brother and I would live among a Barnes & Nobles for hours on end, weekly, rather than pace repeated mall routes]) about streets and buildings, which we have just met for the first time this February, about The Great Escape (a favorite of ourz, too, of course [though, I did not share the trash bin lightly, and we DAMN'd Larry aloud for this singular instance, in sympathy of a blu-ray, but more than that...])

I'm going to revisit this book. This I know because it is of the sort I most treasure. Honest witticisms via self-referentia. Maybe i think how Larry thinks he feels and so communicated, THUSLY to the writer. However it goes, it went like good, like really happy great. After a few days with Larry Angeles, on the weekend, during a PS2 bout of TimeSplitters 2, I pitched the novel to my friend (from Houston, fond of literature, and admittedly snobbish about reading priorities) as a compassionate alternative to Bret Easton Ellis' works. I pitched it as such because Glamorama is (on most days[?]) my favorite novel of all time. And because the creative nonfiction, fictitious flirtations of subconscious identity and self-aware method make for the best of pen palz.

Idk that I wrote that right, but idk that there is a wrong way to write what I mean, other than be grateful for Xixax.

When I received my copy I thought, Wow! This was printed in San Bernardino the very day I ordered it, and I can tell on that other today that it was yesterday because it is tomorrow and I have received a beautiful paperback, inscribed on its last page as just the last day.
Wow!

[jenkins]

general "xx", followed by --

The construction of a sentence is a peculiar thing, and each word holds its own life.

i very much like and appreciate how you said "each word holds it own life." this is how a friend described my writing structure --

There are so many sentences that inspire me. The prose feels so delicate and deliberately chosen. Even your sentences that don't contain wonderful thoughts or strange realities are a joy to read owing to rearrangement and consideration of verb/subject/preposition/punctuation placement (or perhaps you've become a word musician playing like a soloist in a bebop band).

The Great Escape (a favorite of ourz, too, of course [though, I did not share the trash bin lightly, and we DAMN'd Larry aloud for this singular instance, in sympathy of a blu-ray, but more than that...])

this escapade with my blu-ray troubles is a running joke reference for readers, which i adore.

Honest witticisms via self-referentia.

that's like 80% of me. i'll say this: as everything, it has its pros/cons, in terms of reader appreciation.

as a compassionate alternative to Bret Easton Ellis' works.

i appreciate you mentioning this. what can happen is certain elements of despair and frustration can overwhelm the reader. but for me those elements are ingrained, and it's the fight that's worth it. there's a certain optimism in me, no doubt.

Idk that I wrote that right, but idk that there is a wrong way to write what I mean, other than be grateful for Xixax.

dude you wrote it right into my heart. thank you.

Portions of this book I read aloud to my family (about I Just Want To Pee Alone

this section, for the xixax curious --

   ⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿⦿

Dialogue from when Larry is paged to work as a cashier during his shift:

“I wonder what it’d be like to be a mom. There are female writers now, you know, who write about specific female topics...”

“Yeah...”

“Yeah, and recently I heard about the book I Just Want to Pee Alone. I felt philosophically sympathetic to the title.”

“There’s a word for it... I forget the word for a mother thinking and worrying about her kid when she’s in the shower.”

“You can’t even shower without thinking about your kid?”

“Exactly. I listen for my kid when I’m in the shower, think about my kid at night before I sleep. I bet your mother worries about you.”

“She does. So not only is it difficult to be physically alone, but psychologically alone. You’re helping me think about this more.”

“Yeah. Well, I’ve heard that book title maybe. Maybe I’ll read it. I’m a mom, and it’s comforting to hear from other moms about being a mom. The number of things you go through in a day, all the things, they can make you feel insane. Until you read about someone else, then you don’t feel alone with your fights that make you feel insane.”

“Isn’t that the purpose of art, to make a person feel less alone in this world? And I like how contemporary art is made with direct relatability for specific types of people.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to buy a bag for a dime?”

“No thanks.”

“Cool. Here are your books.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you. I didn’t know I’d have this conversation today.”

“Neither did I,” she says as she smiles and he smiles and she walks away.

[jenkins]

this is the first chapter to the upcoming Stormy Fortune. i am taking longer to write this book than i guessed i would, and i'm now writing it differently than i thought i would. this chapter does not speak in the first person, this chapter is not about me. this chapter is about the history of humans and California. i believe this chapter is worth sharing at xixax for this reason. i believe this chapter is worth reading because i wrote it. this chapter does indeed build up to the book being about me, although currently the book might actually become a series of build ups toward being about me, without ever being about me. this is maybe becoming a book that wants to be about me but isn't. but also i'm just having fun saying that and there's still a lot of work ahead of me.

i would appreciate silent support, i would adore conversational feedback. again: this chapter is building up to being about me, but this chapter is about the history of humans and Los Angeles, California.

Chapter One


Back before all of everything established these days, including the concept of days, back before science, before poetry, no poetry, goddamn… you are here, before language, when ineffability was everything, here you are. Knowing not a name for your hands, you know your hands are yours. You see an animal which is now extinct, and you cannot explain the effects of your head or heart, but still you live by day and dream by night. Your higher consciousness is new to this old planet. Imagine.

For humans only: creating models of the universe within one’s mind; conceiving of reality from an objective and temporal perspective; conceptualizing one’s interior; implementing reason and sometimes guessing while feeling emotional. The universe had/has/always will have life's ingredients, but only humans write the recipes.

Today’s humans possess an elevated concept of cosmic awareness—and yet still they don’t know where they’re headed toward or coming from. Fact: contemporary humans who act as if they live in the future and know everything are hilarious because every day is ephemeral within eternity, and we do not know nearly everything. What’s tragic is that we know our Sun one day will die. And Earth, our first love, all we have known so far, it may die before the Sun. This will be a tremendous life obstacle, but it is surmountable, based on evidence from human history, science, and the abstract concept of belief. Forever: strange land becomes new land we live upon.

In the reality of humans living forever, some day one day today will have taken place upon a dead planet in the far-flung past. So how does today matter, among that many days? Like this: yesterday happened for today; today happens for tomorrow.

In terms of what’s known of the history of existence, it’s known that it’s rather mind boggling really. No one can make contact with the last universal common ancestor. Narrowing down to humans: still mind boggling. Neither the Mitochondrial Eve nor the Y-chromosomal Adam have been discovered. A beautiful phylogenetic tree indicates abundant human migration spanning time, but the human path to the Americas is a ginormous scientific mystery, with archeological records of initial sites submerged beneath the rising waters of an unstable Pacific coastline, creating uncertainties related to potential human migration over the Beringian land bridge and/or coastal migration across the Pacific Ocean.

But this world is as it is, and this is the mental task which requires thoughts of another world: imagine if the Americas were never once discovered by anybody, nobody ever stepped foot on the Americas, throughout the entire past and future of humans on Earth. If that were reality, then, there being less known of the exterior world, would humans know less of themselves—and the real question is: are we always the same as we are, unrelated to what we do or do not know of our world?

In reality, one-third the total population of Native Americans lived in the land that became California. The highest population density of its time; hunter-gatherers; practitioners of religion; practitioners of hallucinogenics; developers of unique cultures, such as the La Jolla Complex and the Pauma Complex; explorers of possibilities within human existence; explorers of personal meaning within a sense of being.

The name of California first appeared in a romantic novel written by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, read by Spanish conquistadors, and included within Don Quixote’s library, Las sergas de Esplandián (The Exploits of Esplandián):

   Know that on the right hand from the Indies exists an island called California very close to a side of the Earthly Paradise; and it was    populated by black women, without any man existing there, because they lived in the way of the Amazons.

The mutineer Fortún Ximénez first landed a ship upon the land believed to be ruled by Queen Calafia. At first on maps the Baja California Peninsula became the island of California.

In a later reality a northern portion of this land became Alta California, the Tongva people became Gabrieleños and Fernandeños, living among the Diegeuños, Luiseños, Juaneños—and people of Spanish ancestry migrated here as pobladores, becoming Californios who lived, for example, in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles (The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels). And ranchos flourished in Los Angeles to such an extent that, after Mexico won against Spain their War of Independence, then amid manifest destiny, after the Siege of Los Angeles, after the United States captured California, later during the Gold Rush, this pueblo became known as Queen of the Cow Counties.

A Mexican land grant, Rancho La Brea, transformed into new names upon American real estate maps, in this city where land is gold. The name for Hollywood is said to have first appeared in the honeymoon minds of Mr. and Mrs. Whitley. But the Mother of Hollywood was Daeida Wilcox Beveridge, born in Hicksville, Ohio. She and her husband placed Hollywood on a map. She named Sunset Boulevard. She installed Hollywood’s first sidewalk in front of her house, on what was Prospect Avenue but became Hollywood Boulevard, after the city of Hollywood merged with Los Angeles (for its aqueducts). It is well-known that early moviemakers adored the paradisiacal weather of Hollywood. The first movie shot in Hollywood was a Latino melodrama, In Old California, a period piece set in days when Mexico owned California. Its director D.W. Griffith returned to New York City with news of this wondrous land; quite similar to the information of Queen Calafia’s land being discovered by Fortún Ximénez, in terms of cultural imagination having a direct impact upon emerging landscapes. Movies were a science, an industry, an art. Movies were portholes into possibilities and people across the globe began to peer inside. Hollywood became a Dream Factory within a country made by and for dreams. Hollywood reestablished The American Dream, for when reality would kill dreams, as reality often would, movies would grant them life again.

South of Hollywood are the La Brea Tar Pits; and Park La Brea, the largest housing development in the U.S. west of the Mississippi River. This is Wilshire District, which is called Mid-City West. Here there is Miracle Mile, with its museum row. Here is Carthay Circle; true. And here there is what became, after WWII, the center for Jewish settlement within Los Angeles, Fairfax District. The past and future of Los Angeles stretch back and reach forward in ways dependent upon the distinct reality of each citizen, in whose chest and head the raw materials of dreams are stored, so in Fairfax District is The Raoul Wallenberg Square, which is named for a provider of protective passports to Jewish Hungarian citizens during the Holocaust; always: reality is more important than a dream. A dream is more important than a movie. And a movie is better than reality. This is the philosophy of Los Angeles.

Fairfax District is south of West Hollywood, which is its own glorious microcosm, and where Sunset Strip grew, this city-in-a-city that was initially named Sherman, by its founder Moses Sherman, but a realty business inspired its change. This book is being written on the second floor of a Spanish Revival home, in an apartment one street back and one street over from Raoul Wallenberg Square, so outside the limits of Fairfax District, and below West Hollywood, within Beverly Grove. The name Beverly Grove is a realty concoction which references two neighborhood malls: Beverly Center and The Grove. This is next to Beverly Hills, below which is Beverlywood.

Beverly Grove does not posses a rich cultural history. It has Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, with its holy name. During the time this book is being written, in relation to diverse ethnic potentials within the city of Los Angeles, Beverly Grove is not especially diverse. Though its percentages of never-married men and women are among the county’s highest. This is a neighborhood creating its identity within the shadows of human history. This is a neighborhood building its own character, and it can do it if it does it, by pulling itself by its own bootstraps, which is the way to do it.

Here are ecstatic essays written by the straps of Beverly Grove boots, since humans write what history becomes, as the beginning of this chapter mentioned in another way. All this is possible since life squeezes inside of words the same as life squeezes inside a city, and also this city and these words have clouds made of dreams, so with those two factors combined, that’s how all this is possible.

[polkablues]

This is probably my favorite passage that I've read from any of your work. Your writing, when its explicitly autobiographical, has a tendency toward being distancing, self-conscious, ironically opaque. But somehow you writing about any random thing outside yourself has a way of turning on all the lights and throwing open the curtains. The more you write about whatever random things, places, or concepts interest you at that moment in time, the more I feel like your writing is letting me know you.

Hollywood reestablished The American Dream, for when reality would kill dreams, as reality often would, movies would grant them life again.

I mean, come on. That's so, so good. That's like your id just drafted its mission statement.

[jenkins]

this i feel is how i always write, but in this instance, and in continuing chapters of Stormy Fortune, and different from my other books, the iceberg below me is not myself. i'm a fan of both styles. i mean i have to be because, me and you, next to each other now, this is how i'd act: distancing, self-conscious, ironically opaque. and i think there would be another way to look at me. thanks for your kind words, they keep me going forward, away from what i think of as purity, and from which one must leave indeed.

[polkablues]

i'm a fan of both styles. i mean i have to be because, me and you, next to each other now, this is how i'd act: distancing, self-conscious, ironically opaque.

Ha, fair enough. I recognize that there's truth in that approach, and in real life person to person interaction, I don't think it would bother me at all. But as a reader of writing I find it frustrating. It doesn't entice me to keep reading, whereas this makes me want to strap into the ride and go wherever it wants to take me.