Rick Moody Archives • Eckleburg

August 19, 2015December 12, 2015

Eckleburg No. 19

COVER

Moustache | Annie Terrazzo

FICTION
Just About | OLIVIA CIACCI
Small Fiery Bloom | ROSS MCMEEKIN
I Am Not Who I Am | EURYDICE

GERTRUDE STEIN AWARD IN FICTION
1ST PLACE | A Song Died, ANDREW MCLINDEN
2ND PLACE | Insecticide, RACHEL HERMANS GOLDMAN
3RD PLACE | Song of the Amputee’s Mother | SHANEE STEPAKOFF

REGENDERED
A Diverse Flora of Native and Introduced Species, Beautifully Adapted to Their Microenvironment | DON HUCKS
Bomb Squad | JASON OLSEN
Her Husband Leaves Her | STEPHEN DIXON
Korean Bathhouse | JULIA KOLCHINSKY DASBACH
The Nonsense Singers of the Red Forest | RICK MOODY
from Something Wrong with Him: A Hybrid Memoir | CRIS MAZZA
The Yellow Wallpaper (1899) | CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

FIN DE SIÈCLE
The Talking Cure | VIPRA GHIMIRE
On Alois Riegl and Miley Cyrus’s Intervention: A Prospective, Postmodern Critique | RANDY LEONARD
Ernst Gombrich: Art Historican in Debate and Dialogue with Scientists | RICHARD PERKINS
Oskar Kokoschka and the Search for the True Self(ie) | DANIELLE DAY
Sixty Thousand Truths | J. R. WILLIAMS
The Password to Postmodernism Is Denmark | PETER J. GOODMAN
To Arthur Schnitzler | EMILY TURNER
What Photography Did | BARRY PALMER

NONFICTION
A Supposedly Relaxing Thing That Gives Me a Really Serious Case of the Heebie-Jeebies | BRETT SLEZAK
Along the Path to Citizenship | MAYA KANWAL
Angel | WILLIAM HILLYARD
Average Ordinary Trainwreck | RUTH BERGER
For the Greater Good | VIPRA GHIMIRE
Fractals | RICHARD O’CONNELL
I Live in a Town | CHELSEY CLAMMER
Blue | HANNAH HEIMBACH
Marginalia | ANNA MARIE JOHNSON
Famous Writers Groups | JACQUELINE DOYLE
Virginia Woolf, Illinois | TATIANA RYCKMAN
We Are Woman | AMELIA NEIRENBERG
An Open Letter to a Suicidal Friend, a Bulimic Friend, A Long Lost Aunt and Stephanie, My New LinkedIn Connection | RAE BRYANT

GALLERY
Annie Terrazzo
Kim Buck
Zina Nedelcheva
Rania Moudaress

July 6, 2015August 19, 2015

TO THE COUNTRY: New Album and Anthology by The Size Queens with stories by Rick Moody, Jim Shepard, Rae Bryant & More, Edited by Adam Klein

Enjoy The Size Queens’ FREE & NEW album/anthology/intermedia, To the Country. Music, videos, short stories, essays and more, this new intermedia project is available through iBook. Edited by Adam Klein, vocalist of The Size Queens, textual works are by Rick Moody, Rae Bryant, Joy Williams, J. Robert Lennon, Maria Bustillos, Brian Evenson, Lynne Tillman, Rae Bryant, Jim Shepard, Melanie Rae Thon, and Paul Kingsnorth. Read more at Electric Literature, The Paris Review Daily, The Rumpus and more.

**Read the free iBook, To The Country.**

The Size Queens have been quietly amassing a committed following of listeners in literary and arts circles while remaining under the radar to most of the music press. Their works have been extolled by author Mary Gaitskill (Veronica), who, in the introduction to their album III, wrote, “The Size Queens are double-sized or rather double-sided, I mean to say that they have double vision and double hearts. They are playful and serious, sparkling and sludgy, cruel, kind, capacious, intensely private and alone.” Author, Rick Moody (The Ice Storm) and poet Michael Snedicker wrote a lengthy review of the band’s record, Magic Dollar Shoppe, for The Rumpus website, and the band’s videos have premiered on major literary sites, including Electric Literature and Ninth Letter. The band’s fifth record, Consumption Work: Tammy, Cybertariat, At The Aral Sea, will be released as a single, 48-minute song cycle and accompanying video.

“The Size Queens take you to the country, whatever that is, whether a place to escape to or to escape from. They deliver you into the arms of predators, concerned but confused families in their un-foreclosed homes, sweat lodges and “compounds,” houses on the sun, and crossroads of every kind. The country, where we mine and frack, preserve and worship. A place that binds us to language and custom, expels us, exiles us, and ultimately buries and consumes us. It is the country of the mind, a place where one is simultaneously lost and found. The iBook from which these songs are drawn provide a chance to question the fence between song and text, and to trespass across the digital commons. Join us, but don’t ask us to guide. These places have no proximate entrances or exits, but encroach endlessly, weed over, subsume.”

Credits | Released 31 May 2015. All Songs Michael Mullen and Adam Klein copyright Comfort Bringers Publishing, BMI, 2015. Wally Sound, Danny Pearson, Ruger Pearson, Mike Carnahan, Carlos Forster, Gen Swarts, Carletta Sue Kay, Michael Mullen, Adam Klein, Ethan Gold, Brad Parker, Chin-Sun Lee, Nicole Brodsky

The Size Queens are double-sized or rather double-sided, I mean to say that they have double vision and double hearts. They are playful and serious, sparkling and sludgy, cruel, kind, capacious, intensely private and alone. —Mary Gaitskill

The Size Queens derived its name from the early Bush/Cheney years, ruminating on crass American exceptionalism, the promise of “immeasurable” satisfactions through shopping and the mindless boast of phallic leadership and military might. “Consumption Work” continues to paint a portrait of an unsettled globe, unsustainable, environmentally wrecked, economically and triumphantly returning to migrants and dust bowls. Perhaps only working out its ultimate destiny, one entirely removed of the basic requirements for life, yet filled with mass produced goods, self-service pavilions, and the terrible narcissistic need to be heard. Listen, also, to The Size Queens’ album, Consumption Work, that premiered at The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review.

December 12, 2013July 19, 2017

STAFF SPOTLIGHT | Peter Goodman

Eckleburg‘s Editorial Assistant, Peter Goodman, discuses his experience in the M.A. in Writing at Johns Hopkins University, what type of writing draws him in, and some of the pieces Eckleburg has published that his life would be incomplete without.

Q: How did you learn about/become involved with Eckleburg?

Peter Goodman: As I was nearing the end of my M.A. in Writing at Hopkins, I took Rae Bryant’s (Editor-in-Chief of Eckleburg) course on literary publications, aesthetic and writing. What a great class! The course met predominantly online and was my first exposure to such a learning format. Through Rae and this class, I was introduced to The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review.

Q: What role at Eckleburg do you have?
PG: I recently joined Eckleburg – my area of interest and focus is on website design and fiction, with a strong interest in the journal’s art submissions.

Q: What are you looking for in submissions?
PG: Something that grabs my attention right away. A piece’s first sentence and paragraph are critical. After my interest is piqued, I look for stories with momentum, a strong voice, and an emotional grip.

Q: What have been one or two of your favorite pieces you have seen in Eckleburg so far?
PG: Rick Moody’s “Nonsense Singers,” and a piece, “Boys” he read at the Rue de Fleurus Salon event in Washington, D.C., and “Smoke” by Chad Simpson. Both stories evoked emotion and were gripping pieces.

Q: What are some of your publications?
PG: My first book, Win –Win Career Negotiations, was published by Penguin Books, and my new children’s book series, We’re All Different But We’re All Kitty Cats, was published in 2012. Both polar opposites from my adult prose – quite paradoxical.

Q: How do you approach writing?
PG: I must be passionate about whatever the subject matter is. Rather than being overly analytical about structure, I just begin writing. A powerful and evocative opening that tugs the reader right into the story poses the biggest and most important challenge with any work. One of my rules is that I don’t mind breaking the rules of writing.

Q: In 5 words or less, describe what kind of a journal you think Eckleburg is.
PG: Visceral. Edgy. Artistic. Honest. Engrossing.

Q: Anything else you want to share?
PG: My favorite stories/novels/poems are those that are dark, soul searching and real – reading about characters that live on the fringe of life and plots that take me into an unfamiliar world. One of my favorite books, which I recently read, is Requiem For A Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.

Peter J. Goodman’s first book, Win-Win Career Negotiations, was published by Penguin Books in 2002. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly, among other national publications. He is currently earning a Masters of Arts in Writing at The Johns Hopkins University and resides in Washington, DC.