Chapter 33
Streaming is genius because you get paid to share something the customer never owns.
Joselyn does market research and chooses who we promote on the front page. Morgen assists. It’s very clear Joselyn now has the Arto empire more than Morgen ever did. I’ll go with the last woman standing. Just don’t make me come out of retirement.
I’ve been an admirer of Matt Kindt’s comics work ever since I read the 2001 graphic novel Pistolwhip, his collaboration with Jason Hall. Since then, his career has seen him take on a host of genres, including working with some other high-profile collaborators. (Notably, Keanu Reeves on BRZRKR.) Kindt’s latest collaboration finds him working in the mystery genre, collaborating with his mother Margie Kraft Kindt on the series Gilt Frame. The first issue is due out this Wednesday, and I spoke with the two collaborators on the making of their new series.
Chapter 32
Morgen hands a copy to everybody.
We get letters from mothers and grandmothers and spouses from all over threatening to sue us over their sons and daughters losing their sense of reality after watching videos which they describe as “circus art” and “demonic athletic performances”.
Behold, it’s August and — for the moment, at least — the weather is almost….nice? The heat and humidity aren’t conspiring to make our lives miserable; instead, there’s something almost cozy in the air. “Cozy” and “August” aren’t two words often used together, so it’s a moment worth savoring. Also? Books. We have some we’d like to recommend. Unnerving takes of the uncanny, thoughtful works of nonfiction, and sharp explorations of familial dynamics are all on the menu; read on for what we’re reading this month.
I started My Last Resume with the Postscript, and I’m glad I did. In this short concluding essay, Di Prisco lays out a career in and out of writing, and his starts and stops as a poet. For those unfamiliar with his work, Joseph Di Prisco has been a novelist, a poet, a memoirist, a Catholic novitiate, a professional card player, a restauranteur, a high school teacher, a Ph.D graduate, an entrepreneur, and a founder of a nonprofit literary foundation. His resume is varied, full, and fascinating. That / mark in the book’s title spans a lot of ground and a life lived in service of others, as well as the written word. Di Prisco writes, “The explanation for the arrival of any poem or poet is or is not to be found, for better or worse, in the poem itself. Beyond that, maybe nothing can account for the rupture that creates the opening for a poem—or for that matter, the lifetime of a poet represented in his Collected Poems.” I was struck by the word rupture, and I realized Di Prisco’s collected works kept bringing me back to the joy and wisdom of the momentary, as eloquently championed by Robert Frost in his 1939 essay, “The Figure a Poem Makes.” Frost writes, “Every poem is a momentary stay against the confusion of the world.” This is an apt way to enter the world of My Last Resume.
Chapter 31
The original device was Joselyn’s greatest investment in the company. Her magnum opus.
She’s going to be in history books. She knows this because she’s been putting her name in the transcriptions.
Giving herself credit for various historical events. Then publishing manuscripts once thought to be lost in the violent rivers of time.
I first heard Judith Krummeck before I met her. I’d been scrolling through radio stations – years ago – on my way home from work when her voice came through on 91.5, soft yet self-assured. Perhaps she’d been expounding on the historical nuances behind a classical piece of music; I’m not sure. What intrigued me enough then to form a concrete memory about it, was how Krummeck spoke with a passion for music so genuine it was almost palpable through my car’s busted stereo. I’d never been much for overtures or concertos, but I kept listening to Krummeck’s retelling of how they came to be.
In the mid-1990s, I was in Berlin for the first time looking for the Berlin Wall. I remember walking around the Reichstag marveling how its façade was still gutted by artillery fire almost fifty years after the Second World War ended and only a few years after the momentous events of 1989. I remember learning how the Soviets had left post-war East Berlin in tatters as a humiliating reminder and punishment for the German people. What I remember most however was looking for the Wall and failing to find it where it had once stood. I had seen it in films and photos and heard stories about it. Like millions across the globe, I had watched ecstatic Germans of all sides gleefully ram sledgehammers into its graffitied sides and scale its exposed wires to reach the once perilous ledge that stood between two worlds. Stopping on the spot where I was told the Wall once stood, I was astounded to find not even the smallest marker. Meandering east and west, I came across biscotti-sized pieces of what was allegedly “the Wall” being sold for only a few marks in local tourist traps. I remember walking away feeling duped. Where had the Wall gone? What modern gang of tomb raiders had stolen it? The Wall was a part of me too, I thought, and I wanted a piece of it.