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Category Archives: Goings-on

How to love your own book
4
May 20, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

Past. As I’m recording1 this blog post I realize that I really, really don’t like using this space to relate …
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Category: Goings-on, TYFYS | Tags: Amazon, berlin, book, facebook, Folded Word, google, MadHat Press, Marc Vincenz, MBA, Sperm, twitter, TYFYS
Linguistic Cross-Dressing
2
March 6, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

«If I cannot love the typical modern German, I can at least pity and understand him. His worst fault is …
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Category: Commentary, Goings-on, Tools, Writerly Advice | Tags: Beckett, bilingual, cross-dresser, culture, dictation, G B Shaw, German, Joseph Conrad, Julio Cortazar, Klaus Mann, language, Lucy Renner Jones, Mad Hatters Review, MadHat Annual, Nabokov, nation, Pei Ying-Lin, Ring, Thank You For Your Sperm, The Atlantic, torment, W G Sebald, Wagner, Walter Benjamin
A Facebook Feuilleton
2
January 11, 2013 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

Heads Up. I’ve given you a lot of heads and citations this last month on Facebook. It’s been a month …
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Category: Facebook, Goings-on, The Picture Goers | Tags: Albert Camus, Auguste Rodin, Cynthia Ozick, Dan Brown, Emil Jannings, Ford Madox Ford, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, George du Maurier, George Gissing, Gustave Courbet, Henry James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hueffer, Ivan Turgenev, Joseph Conrad, Joseph Epstein, Leo Tolstoy, Neuchatel, New Criterion, Oscars, Pevear/Volokhonsky, Punch, Queen Victoria, Seamus Heaney, thomas bernhard, Thomas Mann, William James
How to start a novel
3
December 9, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

“The world is very big.” Writer and musician Stephen Hastings-King (SHK) said this in a recent discussion on Fictionaut titled “starting …
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Category: Commentary, Goings-on, Guest Post, Interview, Writerly Advice | Tags: facebook, fictionaut, flash, novel, Sigmund Freud, writing, sebald, Stephen Hastings-King, Tyler Findlay, Gaston Bachelard, Rene Girard, outline, formalism, Plato, spiritual, political
The Imagination of Matter
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October 30, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

All art is competition: to begin with there is the artist competing with her art’s own inner image. She imagined …
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Category: Goings-on, Stories, The Picture Goers | Tags: art, Bachelard, berlin, books, Carlye Birkenkrahe, creativity, exhibition, HWR Berlin, imagination, library, paintings, Picture
Cherrywood Shingles
1
October 20, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

Here is a dream for you: I’m climbing over the roof of a mansion. Oddly enough only parts of it …
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Category: Goings-on | Tags: Bosnia, dream, Göring, Hitler, Lukomir, vampire, xTx
That devil of denial
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October 8, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

A group therapist someone told me about keeps it all very calm and quiet but encourages histrionic outbursts of his …
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Category: Goings-on | Tags: Freud
Feet-grabbing angels
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September 28, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

I am sick of my routines. One of the routines I’m sick of is that I get routinely sick of my routines. …
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Category: 100 Days Of Summer, Goings-on, Philosophy | Tags: 100 days 2012
Recycling Facebook
3
September 14, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

Originally, I only wanted to share a few posts from Facebook over at my blog (a little like what I …
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Category: 100 Days Of Summer, Facebook, Goings-on | Tags: 100 days 2012, Action, Aotearoa, beach sloth, cathedral, Christmas, Christopher Allen, Christopher Forsley, Darwin, Elephant, Ernst Jandl, Existentialism, facebook, Figure, frank hinton, Friederike Mayröcker, Friendship, Gizella, Ken Clarke, Lego, Lettau, Mexican Dude, New Zealand, PANK, Robots, Roxane Gay, S. Teri O'Type, Serenity, Susan Tepper, Tiny Hardcore Press, TYFYS, Vatican, Veszprem, wolves
How to be lazy in 10 steps
10
September 5, 2012 by Marcus Speh (Birkenkrahe)

I am now looking forward to 3 weeks of freedom from academic freedom. I feel like a broken record drifting …
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Category: 100 Days Of Summer, Goings-on, Writerly Advice | Tags: 100 days 2012, attitude, editing, habits, laziness, writing

Click pic to order...

«At a party, I stood next to a bald guy with a beard who didn’t say anything. I noticed a nearby couple put their heads together and whisper while pointing at me. They were smiling so I went over and inquired if I could help them in any way. “No, not at all,” said the woman, “but listen, isn’t that Sir Salman Rushdie who stood next to you just now? We’re such fans.” The man nodded.»

Excerpt from: My Friend Salman Rushdie, in: Pachydermini Pack 4 (Turtleneck Press); donation dependent download.

«Tara, I look at us in that photo, taken so many years ago, I look at you sandwiched between Tom and me, with our left arms in casts, so ridiculous, it makes me think of music that is ridiculous also, music by Charles Ives with two bands playing against one another, or two melodies backpacking a third, or an instrument entering a dialog of two other instruments like a dangerous stranger. It makes me think of your musical voice and your rich hair, Tara, I’m thinking of you as my ship begins the landing process.»

Excerpt from: Friends, in: In Those Days We, available online at Issuu. Paperback version to appear.

Now at Amazon as paperback and on Kindle. See also goodreads.

http://t.co/62bmzAlNjW 56 minutes ago
RT @matt_jakubowski: "How to love your own book" @marcus_speh on how it has felt to publish his first book, "Thank You For Your Sperm" http… 56 minutes ago
James Salter reads Break it Down by Lydia Davis gu.com/p/3g2b6/tw via @guardian 2 hours ago
How to love your own book | Do you have your own love story surrounding your own (first) book? bit.ly/TYFYSlove 6 hours ago
Der Schmock nblo.gs/LyA1E 6 hours ago

Follow @marcus_speh

Marcus Speh

(Birkenkrahe) — Storyteller & Professor

I am German writer who lives in Berlin. My short fiction has been published widely. My work has been nominated for a Micro Award, two Pushcart Prizes, two Best of the Net awards and two Million Writers Awards, and a novella of mine was longlisted for the Paris Literary Prize. My short fiction collection "Thank You For Your Sperm" is published in 2013 by MadHat Press. My mosaic novel "Gizella" is forthcoming from Folded Word Press. I have a lush web site at marcusspeh.com (English), I blog on Tumblr und Deutsch auf marcusspeh.de. Join me on Facebook, on Twitter, Pinterest or send me an email.