Books:
The Complete Ballet
The ballet begins in a large house with wooden beams, a stone fireplace, and in front of the fireplace a man, slumped in a wingback chair, is sleeping. He's young, about to be married, still living with his mother, and we can't know for sure but he's probably dreaming, not about his future wife but about another woman, in this case a girl, a young girl, a thin, young ballerina playing the role of a sylph.
Out of My Skin
"What happened to me was — not me, but what happened — I'd moved to Los Angeles to write about movies and now, instead of writing about movies, or people making movies, I was somewhere off the California coast, in the middle of the ocean, writing an article about sharks. A group of scientists had rigged up a fishing boat with winches and devices, and as a way to investigate shark communication they'd lowered a stainless steel cage into the water, and because I was writing an article about their investigation, I was inside the cage."
American Purgatorio
"I'm from Chicago originally. I went to New York, married a girl named Anne, and was in the middle of living happily ever after when something happened. I didn't know what it was, and if you would have asked me at the time I would have said nothing, that nothing was happening, because for me nothing was."
I am not Jackson Pollock
"I am not Jackson Pollock. I should say I am not Jackson Pollock the famous artist, when he walked into the Cedar Tavern, and there was a girl sitting in a booth at the back of the bar and he wanted to go to her. So he did. I should say he started to go to her, but he was feeling in his body a thing he called nervousness, and because he didn't like the feeling he stopped at the bar for a drink, a whiskey. But the nervousness, instead of going away, was becoming more intense and distracting, and when he tried to control it, by holding it in or down, his body would rebel, against him and against itself, and all he knew to do was have another whiskey, and a beer to go with that, and a whiskey to go with that..."
Audio:
““All I ask people to do is listen. Start by listening.” ”
Blowup
A story/essay from the swinging 60s about a roll of film...
Five Miles High
An essay or story about Sophia and Tony in France…
Topsy
Topsy was an elephant and elephants have prodigious memories...
The Judgment of Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock, Janet Leigh, Tony Perkins, madness...
Laika
The story of the Russian dog who went into outer space...
Cole Porter
His songs were gay but he wasn't always happy...
Glenn Gould
Not so much Glenn Gould as the idea of Glenn Gould...
Jackson Pollock
I am obviously not Jackson Pollock...
Janet Leigh
The night she stayed in the Bates Motel...
Toast
It's more than breakfast...
Bookworm
The author of Out of My Skin is interviewed by an intelligent critic...
Texts:
Stories, essays, interviews, etc., from a variety of online periodicals
The following story appeared in Vice Magazine:
An interview by Charles Haskell (no relation):
An essay from the KGB Bar magazine:
Eadweard Muybridge, William Burroughs, and Oswald:
From the Journal N + 1:
From the story collection I Am Not Jackson Pollock:
An interview about American Purgatorio:
A conversation with Big Dance Theater:
A review of a Thomas Pynchon novel in the Village Voice:
A website story from long ago:
videos
“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”