meet my friends, steve tomasula and shelly jackson.
to explore the mind of steve tomasula go to:
http://www.stevetomasula.com/short.htm
i suggest reading the multimedia fictions and the short fictions.
to explore the mind of shelly jackson go to:
http://ineradicablestain.com/stain.html
lemme know whatchoo think.
love lidia
May 31, 2008 at 3:35 pm
ahhh Shelley Jackson! I remember when in intro to lit, you (Lidia) and a student were talking about Mary Shelley (“Frankenstein”) and me like an interrupting idiot was like “oh! she is that women who wrote that tattoo project!” meaning Shelley Jackson. not a very bright moment for me! Oh well, clearly I’ve moved on. : )
now upon looking at it, is that what the article is about? thats exciting! I guess I’ll stop rambling and read it now!
June 1, 2008 at 4:45 am
With these stories, I may just make a number of posts as I get to read different things by the authors, because waiting to make one big post feels like I would lose alot.
I started off by reading about Shelly Jackson’s Doll Games. I can draw some similarities to when I used to play with dolls as a child, including bringing in the aspect of sex. Although I didn’t go so far as to create prosthetic breasts and penises. It’s a way to express what you have no idea about, but at the same time feel that this has some kind of importance, no matter what your parents may tell you.
The characters that these two girls developed were all quite intriguing. The development of everything made it really cool to read, all of the different characters and aspects that were brought in. “The Matron” apart of her biography was striking. ‘At once mother-substitute and Gargantuan infant, Matron was a crucial element in the Doll Games’ studies of the “maternal grotesque” as well as the “infant whore,”‘
This also brings to mind our discussion last week about stereotypes and our association with their sexuality. In this character’s case, both of her titles are (pleasingly) completely against what we normally associate. When a woman is referred to as a matron, the status that comes to mind is warm, caring, motherly. The last word that is thought of is grotesque. The other title, the “infant whore” is also striking in the exact same way, it is completely contradictory to how we classically think of a character role. This character also filled an Oedipal role as well. From what I can tell, all of the characters were dreamt up when Pamela and Shelly were young.
Either way, this was an awesome read. All of the documentation is that of a fallen civilization, finding artifacts and making conjectures when something hasn’t been preserved through the pass of time. It’s like watching a documentary or something, except for the fact that it was a world created by children which makes it so much cooler.
Characters like the sister’s counter parts Mara and Melanie, the boyish-girl hero Aina, the WASP-y slut ho Dawn, the “horny fop” Harvey, the ultra-masculine and later (limbless) Christlike figure Josh McBig, make for a dynamic civilization of plastic and silicone. If this is what they came up with when they were children, I can’t wait to read what Shelly wrote later on.
HA. I have even yet to read Steve Tomasula. This week is going to be fun.
June 1, 2008 at 5:07 am
Also, having just gotten my first tattoo(s) on Thursday, Shelly Jackson’s “SKIN: A MORTAL WORK OF ART” is interesting to me beyond the telling of it.
June 2, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Okay so I’m going to just start off by saying how much I love the idea of Shelly Jafckson’s ‘Skin’. I’m seriously trying to participate, and getting the word tattooed on the back of my neck. I’m just nervous about the word which I would get. What if it was a word I absolutley hated, like….moist. That would be just awful. But i guess it just comes with the whole concept. I’m going to keep thinking about it for a while.
As for Steve Tomasula, he seemed to be a really talented writer. I could tell just by reading excerpts from a number of his short fictions that he has the ability to write about a number of different things, rather than generally using the same idea, but different words or approaches to expose it. I watched the short film, which was interesting story, and i loved how i could picture it being written, long lengthy drawn out sentences which eventually tied all together in the end. I also read all of DOG, which I cant say I enjoyed to much. Once again, the writing was great, and able to keep my attention. However I didn’t like the ending, and really didn’t enjoy the story line in general. I can appreciate a good writer, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy his work.
I love that our assignments give us an opportunity to criticize writers that may not be as famous or classical as what we have read in other classes!
June 3, 2008 at 2:17 am
The articles are pretty interesting in different aspects. It’s not to be mentioned that I definitely experienced transcendental concepts. It would be great if you could bring the questionnaires tomorrow.
June 3, 2008 at 2:29 am
I am not really sure what to post or how to post, if I have really been sure at all this term, perhaps more unsure this week. I suppose I could always coast on the knowledge of having posted everything else this term, which is probably the best option, or at the very least, a fall back option when this attempt at a coherent blog response fails.
Shelley Jackson is interesting. (Great start!) I like the traditional costume of her people. Her autobiography, “plus lies”, is kind of ingenious in a way that I cannot quite put my finger on. She seems to try to define self by marrying the tactile psyical (can’t spell psyical? to lazy for dictionaries) with the intangible metapsyical. Don’t ask me at this point how to explain that half assed sentence. She also seems to be taking the piss out of other people’s definitions of people they are not. She seems very interested in the human body at any rate. The skin thing is cool, which also seems to go with her “obsession” with the human body. Dolls are creepy, like clowns. The Doll Games thing kinda freaked me out, not to bad, palpation, cold sweat and so forth.
Steve Tomasula is also interesting. (I really suck at transitions, probably because I end up overthinking them.) His narrative style is interesting as his disembodied sentence structure. As I get older I find myself turned on more and more by wacky narrative styles and sentence structures, perhaps just for something different. Possibly becuase my own attempts at standard style prose have been horrific. Where can prose possibly go at this point? Experimental art is interesting and admirable in its attempt to reinvent mediums, but it can also miss the mark horribly.
June 3, 2008 at 6:05 am
I Like Shelley’s work. Especially “Noise.” She projects visions in symmentry and speaks in parallels but her mind and thoughts are in chaos (encoding and decoding everything at once like a giant super computer). She has a knack for entrapping you into her world and making you think about serious subjects without letting realize that your knee deep in some political message as you listen or read her stories. The Doll Project is very intriging, and the whole Tattoo thing is a cool concept.
Steve’s work is a little harder to follow for me. I find is a little boring and dry. It seems like the same old sappy dark (like there is a dark cloud constantly over the characters) kind of stuff.
June 3, 2008 at 7:11 am
Goodness. I really liked these. Both these people are very intriguing, but I really like Shelly Jackson. She sounds like someone I would want to hang out with. This may have something to do with my own odd sense of humor and affinity for “decorating” B***** dolls.
*This is Bertha, she has had a few too many face-lifts and uses too much makeup due to a tragic incident with her face being permanently stained by her hair dye (sharpie). To save (some) of her pride, emergency procedures were taken that restored her skin to a somewhat normal tone, but she was never the same. Shame about that. Her life seems to be fraught with strife. She has a twin brother who is a bisexual rock star, but he moved away and is living with my sister Shayna, so they are not speaking anymore. She never really approved of his wanting to be a rock star, she does not consider it to be a very stable profession.*
Anyway, these seem like some incredibly interesting authors. I definitely want to read “Half Life.” I also really want to check out the Skin project. It sounds awesome! “Patchwork Girl” seems cool too, but I have to admit; the first thing I thought of when I saw the title was “The Patchwork Girl of Oz.” Curiously similar, no? Any who, I WANT TO READ HER STUFF!
Steve Tomasula’s works seemed nifty too, I am on a dial-up connection right now L, so I was not able to watch the Multimedia Fictions, but the Short Fictions were cool. I wanted them to be longer though.
June 3, 2008 at 7:15 am
THIS IS BERTHA!
June 3, 2008 at 7:16 am
Click the link to see her please! (Aw, whatever, I’ll just bring her to class)
June 3, 2008 at 8:56 am
Jesse Morris- it’s spelled physical
not that it really matters, but I gotta give you crap. It’s a sibling thing.
Hey so I’ve been reading, but I don’t know what to say yet (again) I really dig Jackson’s hypertext “The Body” very cool idea, I haven’t been able to read it all yet (I’m busy trying really hard to teach myself math because Kelsey, Shayna and I got a not so good math instructor sub-guy and if I don’t pass mth95 I might lose my financial aid for a year
) – I’m good at non-mathematical tangents anyway.
I thought the part about her shaving her toes was funny because when I was a kid I asked my mom how to get rid of my little blond toe hair and having no toe hair herself she said something along the lines of “I don’t know pluck it” so I did and holy shit does that hurt!
I also thought the tattoo story idea was really cool. Although unlike Heather I am not even remotely interested in participating, what if the word did suck? Like even worse than moist?
I read part of one of Tomasula’s multimedia fictions -the one about voyeurs and surveillance. I thought it was interesting, but long. My boyfriend was curiously reading over my shoulder criticizing Tomasula’s writing and talking about the random voices involved being creepy -which was definitely distracting. Being a math & physical-science nerd I don’t think he’s down with the whole bending the writing rules for creative purposes.
June 3, 2008 at 9:02 am
I think the idea of an “ineradicable stain” is pretty cool too.
June 3, 2008 at 3:04 pm
I’m mainly going to talk about Steve Tomasula because I was able to read more of him – but nonetheless, Shelly is wonderful.
I really enjoyed Tomasula’s short fictions – he seems to take an ordinary (and sometimes a little twisted (the mouse…but I won’t talk about that one…)) occurrence and trivialize it down so much to where it is humorous and makes a lot more sense to me.
I especially enjoyed “The Color of Pain and Suffering” – it was very simple, very clean and yet was shown in sarcasm and a light hearted way that made it even more comforting, even more fathomable. But in actuality, the message was harsh and compelling. We use to have choices, descriptive choices, in our life that have been melted into very broad terms and ways of imagination – so one blood scene from another blood scene is dulled down to be the same boring blood bath scene when just the color red is the same each time – when, really, red varies so much that your imperfect eye can tell the difference with a slight glance…’oh, that’s shot by your lover blood’ and ‘hmm, that’s fell from that building off Park Lane blood’. And how everything has seemed to have lost detail, form and movement. Imagination of the masses have their own grave plots at this point. And this short fiction was I guess an eulogy of sort.
(and hopefully, once again, I make somewhat sense)
I do LOVE the SKIN idea by Jackson – my favorites (though I know they’re more for a whole entity of work, but I like to break things apart) were ‘mouthpiece’ ‘result’ and ‘fur’ especially because of my little irony with it – and also, big fan of the ‘up’ one. It just makes me think positivity. But I cannot wait to see the work in the form it’s intended, eeek!
June 3, 2008 at 4:50 pm
My body by shelly jackson took me back to the second grade when I use to watch a boy in my class eat the scabs off his legs. It use to paralyze me with disgust, but I couldn’t stop watching. I have never stopped trying to analyze what his deal was. Just a random thought. The other memory was when I was really small and i cut my leg. I remember my mom picking me up and telling me that someday it wouldn’t hurt so bad when I fell. I would get use to it and the pain would go away. This still goes through my head when I hurt myself. I am not sure when its suppose to get better? I would like to tell my mom that it still hurts when I cut myself open, just not as scary. I think she was just trying to program me.
June 3, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Kelsie -Lol you scanned it that’s great.
June 3, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Kelsie – I forgot have you heard of this project people (I think they were students) did to make a point about gender stereotypes? I forgot the name of it but they bought a bunch of talking GI Joes and Barbies and switched their voice boxes and returned them to the stores where they were resold to unsuspecting parents and children. The Barbies apparently said things like “Let’s kill Cobra!” and the GI Joes said things like “Let’s go shopping”. Shtuff I learned in psy201 with Stephanie.
June 3, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Jodie – That. Is. AWESOME! I think I just decided what to get my cousins for Christmas!
June 3, 2008 at 11:50 pm
THANK GOD THESE SHORTS ARE NOTHING LIKE BLOOD AND GUTS. It was truly a breath of fresh air being able to understand the writing as well as enjoy it. I particularly enjoyed Steve Tomasula’s work i loved how he was able to describe such a vivid moment of time in such little words. The Atlas of man jumped at me the most, i loved his description of how “a single photo of a nude man is mute, But photograph 50,000 nude men, nude women also, and just as celestial bodies divulge their temperatures to astronomers, so the bodies of the jealous, the bed wetter, the murderer, the pickpocket, and alas, also the heart-sick, will speak themselves.” that passage made me think, but not because i was confused just because of the amount of detail again, explained in so few words. I loved that i had the ability thanks to his writing style, to picture what was going on. the other readings we have done haven’t given me that ability. for a change, its nice to read something less abrasive and more delightfully simple? maybe it is because of the length of writing but still, it was nice to feel safe while reading this and not alienated or like my eyes were being scratched out.
I loved Tomasulas passage in “The Iowa Review” it was hilarious to me. “After “Hello,” how to euthanize a mouse was the first thing Mary had said to him. It was the reason they’d been introduced, so that first impression partly explained why he remembered her voice so clearly, her tone casual, familiar, the same way she’d later tell him she was borrowing his lighter. The same way she’d later ask to use his semen.” Go figure one author can talk about sex without completely divulging every single detail, again maybe it is because these are shorts and not the entire story but i loved how he described the various encounters with the mystery woman. this passage was written in a way that made total sense to me. Tomasulas style is very appealing to me, he describes an event, using as little but his writing speaks a thousand words? sorry for my wording its hard to explain how this made me feel, I have been getting used to the difficulty of some of the literature we have read in this class that when i read writing that is something as simple as these shorts, I almost think too much into what is being said. I expected some horrible graphic moment to come along at the next line, but his shorts didn’t leave me, grossed out or uncomfortable and I LOVE THAT.
June 10, 2008 at 7:13 am
Oh goodness! I know this is so late! Please still take it!!!! I don’t know why I allowed it to skip my mind, but I did and this is now the result……
I remembered this Monday night, but the class is over! Good going……I know…..
So I explored the mind of Shelly and she is an interesting piece of work to say the least. She is fascinating. I am not sure I really understand her mind, though it seems possible that she might only understand her own mind. The doll game? Way over my head……huh?!?!?
Half life? Actually, maybe it does does interesting. But where did she come up with these things? A day with her probably wouldn’t be a boring day…..
Free toy? Ok, this one……..wow……..I am in awe. You walk up to a stranger and tell them something like this and they just may run in the opposite direction in terror.