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Civil Coping Mechanisms / Entropy / Writ Large Press

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Tag:

Dolan Morgan

dolan morgan
BooksNews

Coping with Dolan Morgan, Author of ‘Insignificana’

by CCM January 30, 2017
written by CCM

#CopingWith is CCM’s interview series run by managing editor Joanna C. Valente


Dolan Morgan’s book, “Insignificana,” came out on March 11, 2016 from CCM. Of the book, Nelly Reifler has said, “Dolan Morgan is eccentric, brilliant, radical, and a bit perverse: that we already knew. In this new collection he is also zealously obsessive. Over and over, organisms and other entities consume, absorb, impregnate, digest, gestate, house, eliminate, birth, and extrude other organisms and entities–or themselves. And the author himself seems to both consume and be consumed by his narrators. Cumulatively, these stories force their readers to submit to the truth: interior and exterior are mere conceits, and all of existence–including puny humans–is already inside out. Dolan Morgan’s writing makes my brain itch in the most pleasant way. Insignificana is an extraordinary book, a thrill ride of temporary madness and irrefutable sense.”

As such, we interviewed him about his book, although instead of asking boring lit questions, our managing editor Joanna C. Valente asked Dolan about everything else instead, like what his favorite meal and apocalypse plans are.

Here’s what he said:

Describe your favorite meal.

Once, many years ago, a friend woke me in the middle of the night to offer me a plate of warm, buttered toast in the dark. I’d been asleep for hours. It was snowing. The city was silent. Blankets were everywhere: around my body, across the apartment, out the window, and into the street. Blankets all the way down. I could barely understand what was happening, but here was a plate of sudden toast. I laughed into my hands and mumbled through impossible mouthfuls of bread, unsure of where I was or what we were doing. The room appeared larger than I remembered amid fever, delirium, and joy; under crumbs, the city, and a dim bedside lamp. I can sense now, more so than I could then, too, that those years of my life were marked by an acute loneliness and uncertainty.

Like most of us, I am often shocked to have emerged from any kind of past into the present moment. After the accident, you step from the vehicle into the street, relieved and unharmed. But when you look back at the car, mangled and unrecognizable, you absorb the fear that should have been there in the first place. I suspect I was very much afraid of something in those years. Or, at least, afraid of something other than the fear that animates me today. I have tried to enjoy the experience of becoming alien to myself. I don’t remember a moment immediately before or after that meal, and can no longer say how that night fits into the surrounding months or years, or when and how that particular loneliness and uncertainty abated (giving way to other types of solitude and confusion, among other innovations), but I do recall standing in rooms, not understanding where to look or what to do with my hands or how to speak to another person. And then: warm midnight toast in a snow-quiet darkness. Until that moment, I didn’t even like toast. Honestly, I still don’t. This is my favorite meal.  

What music do you often write to, if at all?

Lately, it’s been a lot of Mogwai. Another favorite is Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians.” Anything by Kate Bush will do, especially “Hounds of Love” and “The Dreaming.” But! It’s maybe disingenuous to say I really listen to any of these. That is, if things are going well, I won’t notice when the record ends, and then I’ll be listening to silence/nothing, which is the real goal. Like so many other things in life, I have to fool myself into what I want. Always, you have to walk backwards into nothingness.

What are three books that you’ve always identified with?

“Always” would be a stretch, but for 15-20 years: Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The Bald Soprano, and Sphere.

Choose one painting that describes who you are. What is it?

You remember that time someone tried to retouch and “fix up” an old, fading painting of Jesus? And it ended up looking like a kid’s drawing of a bear or a baboon? That all sounds like me Not the Jesus part, but the obliviousness and earnest failure. I feel like I’m making accidental baboons and bears all of the time while shooting for some big bowl of wonder. And that’s fine. Failure is good, as are bears and baboons. Always. And while we’re on the subject of failure: I also have a painting of Jesus that I drew over. I bought a cheap knockoff version of “The Last Supper” and used a can of gold spray paint to scrawl TRY HARDER across it in huge letters. I look at it every day.

Choose a gif that encompasses mornings for you.

What do you imagine the apocalypse is like? How would you want to die?

I wrote a book about that.

If you could only watch three films for the rest of your life, what would they be?

This is a tough question. Not because I can’t think of three movies that I’d love to watch again and again (of course I can), and not because I’m unable to create a list of movies I’d be happy to never see again (a list which might, by process of elimination, help me better name the films I’d love to be constrained to for the rest of my life). No, my preferences are not the hard part. Rather, the hard part here is submitting to the context. Any world in which I might be forced to watch only three movies sounds like some kind of dystopia. So imagining the answer to the question, “what would they be,” demands starting not from my own tastes but from the premise, constraints, and political climate of that dystopia and the whims of those who preside over it. What would they want us to watch? What would they not want us to watch? This line of thinking immediately leads to more complication–because, it seems easy enough to imagine that they might not want us to watch any of the movies that currently exist at all, nor any of the movies that could reasonably come into existence in the near future.

So, I’d be hard pressed to pick three or even one. Sure, it’s easy enough for me to conceive of a fantastical regime hell-bent on a hyperbolic extension of Walt Disney’s vision for the world (of course), and I can easily enough imagine that citizens in this new society might be broken into groups or classes, and that these groups/classes might each be responsible for watching, understanding, preserving and celebrating three animated films from Disney’s cannon (such that one group gets Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Fantasia, while another group gets The Aristocats, Beauty and the Beast, and Frozen, and so on), which they are forced to watch exclusively and extensively between grueling 12-hour maintenance shifts presiding over the nation’s crumbling theme park rides and concession stands, and that they understand their world entirely through the limited lens of these creations and demands (and where they ultimately intersect, the marriage between entertainment and work, forever)–yes, I can Imagine that, but my ability to conceive of this world means nothing for its likelihood (other than that: real terror is usually beyond our initial conceptions, and so any inkling or prediction of terror might be as good a sign as any that it’s unlikely to arrive, but that something much worse and unimaginable is instead barreling toward us).

Which brings me back to your question, which I’ll have to answer in somewhat general terms. If I could only watch three films for the rest of my life, I think those movies would most likely be brand new creations of the dystopian regime’s own design, intended to keep me in line and on track. Probably some kind of propaganda or re-education films, I guess, and no doubt I would be thankful for them, for any kind of wonder or awe or connection.  

What’s your favorite animal and why?

DOG. Is this a trick question? The answer is DOG.

What do you carry with you at all times?

Warm, buttered toast or nothing at all, and usually both.


Dolan Morgan lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He is the author of two story collections: INSIGNIFICANA (2016) and THAT’S WHEN THE KNIVES COME DOWN (2014).

 

 

 

 

joanna valenteJoanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (ELJ Publications, 2016), & Xenos (2016, Agape Editions). She received her MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is also the founder of Yes, Poetry, as well as the managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and CCM. Some of her writing has appeared in Prelude, The Atlas Review, The Feminist Wire, BUST, Pouch, and elsewhere. She also teaches workshops at Brooklyn Poets.

January 30, 2017
News

NOW AVAILABLE: The Quarter 1 2016 Catalogue

by CCM March 11, 2016
written by CCM

Lee-194x300

“To read Janice Lee’s new book, The Sky Isn’t Blue, is to remember. […] The book disappeared as it became each second ticking away in my life, reminding me that I will not be able to save it nor will I ever be able to forget. ”
–Chiwan Choi, author of Abductions

Product page | Amazon | Goodreads

 

 

 

 
RaGoransson“Love letters. Love poetry. […] Johannes Göransson’s letters to an ex-lover Ra — as well as the letters in this book to the radiator, history, Susan Sontag, America, poetry itself–come from a poet whose ‘heart [and poetics] belongs to a drive-by shooting.’ Reading them is to be invited into the theater of utterly mixed metaphors where nothing follows.’”
–Steve Tomasula, author of The Book of Portraiture

Product page | Amazon | Goodreads

 

 

 
insignificana“In the spirit of Donald Barthelme, Dolan Morgan queers the every day and leaves a sinister domestic scene behind.”
–Catherine Lacey, author of No One Is Ever Missing

Product page | Amazon | Goodreads

 

 

 

 

 
AmericanMaryx1“Told almost entirely through lyrical fragments and beautifully-observed scenes, Alexandra Naughton’s American Mary is the latest incarnation of the Great American Novella, at once unsettling and moving.”
–Michael Kimball, author of Us

Product page | Amazon | Goodreads

 

 

 

 
TheWomenFarmer“Reading Ashley Farmer’s The Women is like reading a cubist painting. […] Even as she unapologetically documents the power that systemic oppression has over our daily lives, her women emerge as brave, hungry, and resilient. The Women simultaneously made my blood boil and made me feel less alone.”
–Megan Martin, author of Nevers

Product page | Amazon | Goodreads

 

 

 
youwithyourCover“Gary Shipley’s conception of reality is more like our actual present reality than our literary culture’s usual inbred narrative realism can afford. […] Literature almost doesn’t deserve this maniac, and thank hell he’s here.
–Blake Butler, author of Three Hundred Million

Product page | Amazon | Goodreads

 

 

 

 
Mallbratcover“With pop pastiche, lyrical pirouettes, and sage insights parading as ‘confessions,’ these poems position—like a ballet class at its bar pivoting towards the mirror—the young against the old, the native against the new, and the innocent against the cynical to show them how, together, they more beautifully out of sync.”
–Monica McClure, author of Tender Data

Product page | Amazon | Goodreads

 

 

 

 

March 11, 2016
News

ANNOUNCING: The 2015 CCM Compendium

by CCM December 7, 2015
written by CCM
The CCM 2015 Compendium, CCM Compendium

Cover design by Ryan W Bradley

CCM is pleased to announce the first annual CCM COMPENDIUM. This is an idea that’s been bouncing around in the back of my mind for at least a year now, and thanks to the help of Ryan W Bradley (who created this fabulous hardcover wraparound cover design) and dozens upon dozens of CCM authors, the idea is now a reality.

Acting as a synergy of present and future, the 2015 CCM COMPENDIUM will feature work by every author published by the press in 2015 as well as samples of work from every author with a forthcoming publication in CCM’s 2016 Catalogue. What does this mean? It means you can expect writing from:

(2015 Catalogue) xTx, Brandi Wells, AT Grant, Andrea Kneeland, Jayinee Basu, Sean H Doyle, Katie Jean Shinkle, M Kitchell, Darby Larson, John Colasacco, Jamie Iredell, Brandon Hobson, Mark Katzman, Ben Brooks, Ryan W Bradley, Kirsten Alene, Brian Oliu, Corey Zeller, and Evan Retzer

(2016 Catalogue) Janice Lee, Johannes Goransson, Alexandra Naughton, Dolan Morgan, Matthew Simmons, Gary J Shipley, Ashley Farmer, Laura Marie Marciano, Justin Sirois, Sara June Woods, Madison Langston, Carolyn Zaikowski, Tobias Carroll, Joshua Jennifer Espinosa, Andrew Miller, Ctch Bsnss, Wendy C Ortiz, Henry Hoke, Helen McClory, and Mathias Svalina

At the conclusion of every yearly Catalogue, CCM will publish a Compendium to celebrate the passing of the torch, of sorts, from one year to the next. Each Compendium will be published in a high quality hardcover edition, designed to sit next to both its representative Catalogue of titles as well as other, future Compendiums. It’s my hope that by offering this showcase, readers will be able to enjoy some of their favorite writers’ work in one convenient place as well as discover (and anticipate) the work of writers they might not have known about prior to the Compendium.

The 2015 CCM COMPENDIUM will be available January 13th 2016 wherever books are sold. We’re coping.

December 7, 2015
accomplices-ramen-cats

The Accomplices LLC is a literary arts partnership and media company dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices and identities, particularly writers of color, through traditional and new media publishing, public engagement, and community building.


CCM + ENTROPY + WLP = THE ACCOMPLICES


The Accomplices is made up of the entities Civil Coping Mechanisms: publisher & promoter of kick-ass independent literature, Entropy: a magazine and community of contributors that publishes diverse literary and non-literary content, and Writ Large Press: an indie press that uses literary arts and events to resist, disrupt, and transgress.

We’re coping. No, we're thriving.

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