the thing i love most is his strange relation to the reader. he speaks in a way no other narrator, or author's voice, does, that i know of. very immediate. full of holes. and the concerns of literature are successfully held at bay... for something else... sexuality, something held in common. i like how he goes into battle. i LOVE how he's not all about sounding smart, well informed, in command of the tongue, or, especially, Lyrical or aesthetic or stylized.... or even anti-stylized. he certainly has his own lyric. the less editing of his own native American English the better... and very difficult to imitate him at his best he is fearless, great prose music, doesn't blink, not macho, not ruled by habits of thought, loves sex, funny not condescending lives with and for women friend of Errol Flynn i love his relation to the general wish for transcendence. for him it seems, the place where his stories take place is transcendence anyway, even with all the fucked up things about money, power, malice, etc... he sees it plain as day, and any move for more transcendence than that (in language, message, etc) is a diminishing of that basic huge and amorphous phenomenon which bears repeating til your arm can't write any more, and your voice is too faint to dictate, and your eyes are too cloudy to see the page always surprising to me fresh open i'm often amazed that what i'm seeing on the page doesn't ruin the read... on the contrary. he escapes literature, on literature's own terms... what's that title? The Man Who Met Death a Few Times.
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JIM FLETCHER is a performer and writer. He is a longtime member of the New York City Players, Elevator Repair Service, The Wooster Group, and the English theater company Forced Entertainment (Sight is the Sense That Dying People Tend to Lose First and Quizoola!), most recently in Cairo, Egypt. In 2011: Sarah Michelson’s dance piece Devotion (The Kitchen, NYC, with text by Richard Maxwell). Film: Utopians (Zbigniew Bzymek, 2011); Bass Ackwards (Linas Phillips, 2010); Raptorious (Kamal Ahmed, 2007). He is also a participant in the writing projects of Bernadette Corporation. 2012 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence.
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Read more by and about Jim Fletcher:
Interview with Jim at The Poetry Foundation
Jim at the New York City Players
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Read more by and about Erje Ayden:
Personal Essay as Performance Text by Erje Ayden
Essay by Frank O’Hara
Friday Pick with a fresh blurb by John Ashbery
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Watch Scott Shepherd, Jim Fletcher, Sibyl Kempson, Kate Valk and B O D Y editor Ben Williams perform a reading of Erje Ayden’s work at The Performing Garage, Sunday, May 26th at 3 PM. Get tickets and event info here.
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Buy hand printed books by Erje Ayden:
Editor’s note: Erje’s books now are available only in very limited editions on eBay – see the links to selected titles below. If you’re interested in more of his works, please contact Ben Williams.
FROM HAUPTBANHOFF I TOOK A TRAIN
SUMMER FRANK O’HARA DIED
SADNESS AT LEAVING
THE PEOPLE OF IMPRISONED CITY
MATADOR