Shoutouts from the Universe Part 2

I'm still not sure how Google alerts missed this one but I won't complain.  I feel I should be grateful to get any press as a writer, moreover relatively good press.

Here's the part about my experimental short story, "When Silence is an Old Warehouse and Love is a Pocketful of Rocks":


In case you can't read that because you're not an Air Force pilot/weren't born with x-ray vision/never got the cyborg optical enhancements for your Sweet-16, here's what it says:

Many of the most interesting pieces of fiction examine or undermine ideas of speaker, information, or the traditional narrative arc. One notable love story about communication and art, by Jackson Bliss, labels each paragraph as either "Cubes," "Spheres," Cylinders," or "Cones." The speaker is self-consciously prolix, by turns witty and earnest, and the drama he recounts over an uninitiated conversation is handled nicely. 

Now, to be honest, I find nothing insightful about this review.  I don't personally think the narrator is prolix, though I agree he's self-conscious. I'm not convinced that my short story is about "communication + art" either as much as I think it's about the male gaze, invented alternative realities + romantic speculation.  It's about the way in which art theory/art history filters the way we understand + identify our reality.  It's also about the delusional genius/endless violence of the human mind.  Lastly, this short story is about one-way love.  The educated observer/narrator is in love with a girl he's never talked to.  She's in love with a painting.  They mirror their one-sided relationship both to each other + to their objets d'art.  But like I really care?  More than anything, I'm just glad someone's reading my shit.  On that level, I'm ecstatic. 

Short Story Published in Fiction International

After almost a year of waiting, my conceptual short story "Silence is an Old Warehouse + Love is a Pocketful of Rocks," which is part of my short story collection, Atlas of Tiny Desires, is finally available at Fiction International.  This is probably one of my strangest (coolest) pieces, but basically it's about the male gaze + one-way infatuation.  The story is told from the point of view a male admirer who slowly falls in love with a college student at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Eventually, he learns that his love is part of a mirror of one-way love:  He's in love with someone who ignores him + she's in love with a painting.  I don't wanna give away the ending, but this is definitely one of the more experimental stories I've ever written, organized according to the building blocks of cubism.  Anyway, you can buy your copy at Amazon if you wanna read it for yourself. 

1st Story Accepted in 2011

¡Yo, por fin! The drought is finally over. It's been a year and a half (actually, nineteen months) since my last story was accepted + I admit, there were many days where it looked really bleak, but fortunately for me, that drought is now officially OVER. Just a few minutes ago, I got an email from Hal Jaffe at Fiction International telling me that my conceptual story, "When Silence Is a Old Warehouse and Love is a Pocketful of Rocks" was accepted. The truth: I'm fucking ecstatic! FI has published some fucking dope literary luminaries such as William Burroughs, Robert Coover, Joyce Carol Oates, Allen Ginsberg, J.M. Coetzee + Bessie Head, just to name a few. Anyway, here is the acceptance letter:

Hello Mr Bliss,

Sorry it's taken a while to get back to you.

I like your text, "When Silence Is a Old Warehouse and Love is a Pocketful of Rocks" and would be pleased to publish it in FI's Ways of Seeing issue.

Please send an electronic version (word.doc) to my assistant M****** M***** and cc me.

Include a brief contributor's note and your home address.

Many thanks,

Hal Jaffe, editor