1. Muumuu House:
Muumuu House is an independent publishing company set up by Tao Lin. it publishes short fiction, poetry and other things on its website. so far it has published three books -- Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy, During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present by Brandon Scott Gorrell, and The Brandon Book Crisis, a limited-edition 'thriller' by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Tao Lin. i like Muumuu House a lot. i feel glad that it exists.
2. picture of During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present by Brandon Scott Gorrell on the floor of my flat:
3. short review of During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present by Brandon Scott Gorrell:
i first read this book as a word doc. about a year and a half ago. it doesn't feel like that long, but i just checked by looking at an interview i did with Brandon on gchat, shortly after i read it. click here for the interview. the poems in During My Nervous Breakdown ... in my opinion epitomise a certain kind of writing -- 'internet writing' or something. it feels to me like almost everything good about that style of writing is summed up in these poems. shortly after i read During My Nervous Breakdown ... for the second time, i had a dream where it was the end of the world -- there was a giant fire slowly consuming everything, moving towards Manchester -- and i was trying to decide whether to be burnt alive or shoot myself in the head (i'd found a gun from somewhere). i don't think i made a decision in the end. i just woke up and lay in bed for a while. i like the poems in this book a lot.
4. picture of The Brandon Book Crisis on one of the hobs in my kitchen:
5. short review of The Brandon Book Crisis by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Tao Lin:
i read this on a train journey. it took about an hour or so to read. the book is selected correspondence between Brandon and Tao -- text messages, emails, gmail chats -- and the employees of Thomson-Shore (a book-printing company). Brandon and Tao are trying to get copies of During My Nervous Breakdown ... printed. there are problems with the cover, with the colours not being 'rich enough' or something. a lot of the emails and gchats are about trying to get the colours right for the cover. one of the problems they faced was in getting a 'rich' enough black. i noticed that if you put them next to each other, the black on During My Nervous Breakdown ... (left) is indeed 'richer' than the black on the cover of The Brandon Book Crisis (right):
i think this is maybe a visual in joke. The Brandon Book Crisis taught me what RGB and CMYK were. between the cover discussions are conversations about small things going on in their lives. it's funny and very likeable. i enjoyed reading Brandon's and Tao's 'professional' emails to the Thompson-Shore employees. i felt a lot of empathy. i don't know. it does actually work as a 'thriller', too, maybe, kind of, i don't know. there were moments when i was sort of 'willing' everything to be okay, regarding the cover problems anyway. i think i would enjoy reading this, even if i'd never heard of or corresponded with either of the authors. Jimmy Chen wrote a much better review. click here for the much better review.
6. missing picture of Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy
[i can't find my copy. i have looked behind things and underneath things. i looked in my bag and behind the books on my bookcase. i looked under some DVDs. i looked around in my bedroom even though i was almost 100% sure it would not be in there. it wasn't there. oh dear.]
7. extremely short, apologetic, one-sentence 'review' of Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy
i liked this a lot and recommend it highly, but currently feel unable to review it due to not being able to find it anywhere in my flat + my very rubbish memory + generally feeling useless and distracted.
8. i asked Tao Lin some questions about Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy and asked him to answer them in percentages:
mehow proud are you of publishing ellen's book?Tao: 90%me: how proud do you think ellen is of having her poetry book published?Tao: 10-90%00:49 me: how much do you think ellen's book will alleviate depression in general in america in 200900:50 Tao: .0000001-.05%00:51 me: how much would 'someone's mom' like ellen kennedy's poetry book, if they found it in their son/daughter's room, if, for instance, they were just in there cleaning?Tao: 0-100%00:52 me:00:53 how much will ellen's book be talked about in serious poetry/literature MA (UK)/ MFA's?Tao: 20.340389710493784-80.1029378120947% me:how much is the 'content' of ellen's book similar to other future muumuu house books you either know or imagine will be published in the future?Tao: 62-96%
