I Hate You, Kelly Donahue by Mark Svartz
Brevity is the soul of wit
In theory, well-adjusted people should be glad when friends succeed. What kind of shotgun bro wouldn’t happily cheers tallboys of Natty Light with his wheelman after pulling an awesome donut in the Wal-Mart parking lot? What golfer wouldn’t share an atta-boy high-five with a pal who just knocked in a 15-footer for birdie?
It’s when those accomplishments stack up, however, when your bro pulls the donut in front of some admiring girls (driving his brand new Ferrari) or your pal birdied his fifth hole in a row to beat you by 16 strokes (in front of some admiring girls, in front of his new Ferrari), that the sweet taste of joy curdles into a lumpy reminder of your own shortcomings. We, or maybe just I, celebrate another’s accomplishments insofar as it approaches, paces, or laps my own.
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Posted in Insults, Read It.
Tagged book review, ferrari, great insults, i hate you kelly donahue, i hate you mark svartz, i see dead people, insults, mark svartz, my own shortcomings, pugilism
Sam Lipsyte @ McNally Jackson Books
I'd like a hug from Sam Lipsyte some day
I’m trumping my laziness and ignoring my backlog of insults. I met Sam Lipsyte at McNally Jackson last night.
He stared me down. He blankfaced me like I’d picked the dumbest fucking idea in the world out from between my teeth and flicked it on his lapels. And what was I even doing here, coughing out some stumbledrunk idea about insults. Plus, I had bad breath. Shit breath. Gargling turds and talking nonsense, why didn’t I just go home? Why didn’t I go to yoga instead? In the 20 seconds it took to mumble my usual introduction with decreasing volume and enthusiasm, I’d decided to run away on the opening lip-twitch of rejection like some frightened base runner going on the pitcher’s first twitch.
It wasn’t the reaction I’d expected, the blank look. It was theretofore inconceivable that Sam Lipsyte would be the type to spurn my insult. His books are the off-beat, dark kind of funny that’s right in my wheelhouse. This is the guy I’d loved like a literary Happy Meal during my toddler days of seeing myself as a capital-W Writer. Home Land was the book to pass along to friends I’d made in English and creative writing classes to prove my literary hipness. It proved I was the type of reader/Writer who of course read the classics and requisites fed to me but also found good books by looking. I sensed that his prose reflected back on me; by being the one to “find” his book — and it is a damn good book — it was somehow an affirmation of my taste, and by association, my skill as a writer. I got more traction in the undergrad literary scene out of Home Land, Hanif Kureshi’s Buddha of Suburbia, and my fake understanding of Barthelme than I had any right to.
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Posted in Insults
Tagged geoff dyer, great insults, holy shit, home land, insults, literary boner, mcnally jackson, poker face, sam lipsyte, the ask, the subject steve, venus drive
Given my experience, I'd say I'm lacking the aridity and paucity
Amy Sedaris draws a young, excited crowd. Even at the very back of a packed Barnes & Noble reading space (where I was stuck squinting up at the craft-related action on-stage), otherwise jaded and cynical hipster-types — types who’d normally sneer at any physical show of excitement or participation — jumped out of their chairs in response to a call for questions. I counted at least 10 Sedaris fans, some uttering little unconscious “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” noises you get from little Kids Who Know, arms raised high in classic elementary school fashion or the double-armed waving “stranded in the middle of a lake on a boat with a dead motor” SOS manner.
Despite the distance and absolute certainty that she would not be called on, one girl in my row clutched at her scarf and bounced up and down, standing with one foot propped on the seat of her chair like she couldn’t quite commit to full-out Standing-On-a-Chair-level-desperation in front of peers. This was some serious arm-raising, designed to attract the gaze of a possibly myopic (judging by her glasses) Ms. Sedaris, all to ask that burning “‘Candy” question and satisfy some core-level need for star-fucking.
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Posted in Insults, Readings
Tagged amy sedaris, book, cook book, craft book, crafts, cunt, depth, great insults, hilarious, hipster, i like you, recipes, sedaris, simple times, strangers with candy, warmth, weird
A.L. Kennedy Reading – What Becomes
A.L. Kennedy, neck-and-neck with Dave Mitchell for best burn
A.L. Kennedy is both stand-up comedian and novelist. It’s hard to see where one stops and the other starts, especially at last night’s reading at McNally Jackson Books in Soho, where she gave a sometimes funny, sometimes slightly awkward, always entertaining reading/performance/signing.
When she first came out to give a “pre-show talk” — the event had been “promoted strangely,” so that some people came expecting a stand-up performance, while others came for a reading — I had premonitions of regret and boredom. What little I knew about Kennedy I knew from an appearance in Granta Magazine’s “Best Young British Novelist. Consider me pleasantly impressed.
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Posted in Insults, Readings
Tagged a.l. kennedy, al kennedy, bawbag, great insults, insults, kennedy, mcnally jackson books, shilpit tube, short stories, what becomes, what becomes book