Who Has Time To Read?

Who has time to read? My world is one of continuous partial attention. Complicating matters is that I can no longer read anything without simultaneously writing something. Let’s call it riff-reading.

The best writing does absolutely nothing for me in the way of story, plot, character, authenticity, voice, setting or conventional meaning-making i.e. the predictable middle-brow or preprogrammed academic literary and theoretical styles that easily meet expectations. Rather, it immediately stimulates my muscle memory in a way my neurons never saw coming. Once the neurons are triggered and I am starting to go out of control, I too find myself writing-while-reading in the margins of my mind, iPhone, notepad, etc. What this means is that the best writing, the writing I come back to, is writing that awakens the writer-in-me, even if that writer is really anybody but me.

Fortunately, I often spend my summers in Portland, living and writing in my loft a mere six blocks away from Powell’s, arguably the best bookstore in America. My nightly visits to Powell’s open me up to books I might never have heard of were I to depend solely on the Internet or, worse, academic culture, to tell me what’s hot and what’s not. Which is why my summer reading is always an eclectic mix of the unexpected. This year is no different. These are the first books I have unearthed from the endless shelves that I immerse myself in:

Anne Waldman Gossamurmur (Penguin, 2013)

Christine Weirtheim mUtter–bAbel (Counterpath Press, 2013)

Melissa Broder When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother (Ampersand Books, 2010)

Kate Durbin E! Entertainment (Wonder, 2014)

Dodie Bellamy The TV Sutras (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014)

Chelsea Martin The Really Funny Thing About Apathy (sunnyoutside, 2010)

and one old guy too (who, page for page, happens to be the most underappreciated living American fiction writer):

Steve Katz The Compleat Memoirrhoids (Starcherone Books, 2013)

For more on my literary (and other) thoughts, I have two Twitter accounts:

@markamerika

@remixthebook