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    Geoffrey Gatza
    1K views18 pages
    "A virtuosic display of wit, humor, and surreal beauty. Like the erasures of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes and Yedda Morrison’s Darkness, Emily Anderson’s partially masticated reimaginings of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series gets inside the logic of its source text. With uncanny insight, Little reveals what had always been simmering just beneath these novels’ familiar surfaces. (Mostly doughnuts and motherbutter.)" —Jesse Miller, Reviews Editor, Full Stop There’s an icloud casting shadows over Middle America but by now “the prairie's over.” Pa is the strapping advent of mono-crops, debt crisis and consumption. Ma is bone marrow and fresh eggs, embodied westward expansion. Laura is in the bank though “the bank had scalped her.” (In)dian is what is entered (in)to, “fair profit, fair skin.” Mary? Mary is “quite in.” And “there are so many ways of seeing things and so many ways of saying ‘Sioux.’” Apple cheeked readers who curled up with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books as children and cheered the little family and their epic industriousness, please be forewarned. Anderson’s devilish re-writing exhumes and animates a series of haunting and sometimes disturbingly funny sub-narratives. Delving deep into the American psyche, Little will leave you wondering how you missed the “Certificate to Missouri” clutched in your complicit little hand. What else have you squandered? Who else have you “loved?” —Yedda Morrison (Author of Darkness, Crop, and Girl Scout Nation) "I can't remember the last time I read something so familiar and unsettling - like meeting someone you love after they come back from a long journey wearing differently-colored eyes. Like if H.P. Lovecraft had had a hand in writing The Book of Common Prayer. It's playful, and frightening, and truer, somehow, than the original." —Mallory Ortberg, Author of Text from Jane Eyre Come for the Michael Landon Flip Book; stay for the richly rewoven story that excavates hidden moments in Little House on the Prairie and pays playful homage to fan favorites like prairie bitch Nellie Oleson. Little is a new classic, skillfully foraging Laura Ingalls Wilder's much-loved series to create an (ir)reverent rereading that pioneers the new frontier of Little House on the Prairie in the 21st-century. —Alison Fraser, Author of Animalia Emily Anderson’s writing has appeared recently in Harper’s, Conjunctions, and Fence. She often collaborates with visual artists; video work created with Jen Morris has been screened in Vermont, Philadelphia, and Spain. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University at Buffalo. Book Information: · Paperback: 158 pages · Binding: Perfect-Bound · Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] · ISBN: 978-1-60964-132-0 $16

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    "A virtuosic display of wit, humor, and surreal beauty. Like the erasures of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes and Yedda Morrison’s Darkness, Emily Anderson’s partially masticated reimaginings of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series gets inside the logic of its source text. With uncanny insight, Little reveals what had always been simmering just beneath these novels’ familiar surfaces. (Mostly doughnuts and motherbutter.)" —Jesse Miller, Reviews Editor, Full Stop There’s an icloud casting shadows over Middle America but by now “the prairie's over.” Pa is the strapping advent of mono-crops, debt crisis and consumption. Ma is bone marrow and fresh eggs, embodied westward expansion. Laura is in the bank though “the bank had scalped her.” (In)dian is what is entered (in)to, “fair profit, fair skin.” Mary? Mary is “quite in.” And “there are so many ways of seeing things and so many ways of saying ‘Sioux.’” Apple cheeked readers who curled up with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books as children and cheered the little family and their epic industriousness, please be forewarned. Anderson’s devilish re-writing exhumes and animates a series of haunting and sometimes disturbingly funny sub-narratives. Delving deep into the American psyche, Little will leave you wondering how you missed the “Certificate to Missouri” clutched in your complicit little hand. What else have you squandered? Who else have you “loved?” —Yedda Morrison (Author of Darkness, Crop, and Girl Scout Nation) "I can't remember the last time I read something so familiar and unsettling - like meeting someone you love after they come back from a long journey wearing differently-colored eyes. Like if H.P. Lovecraft had had a hand in writing The Book of Common Prayer. It's playful, and frightening, and truer, somehow, than the original." —Mallory Ortberg, Author of Text from Jane Eyre Come for the Michael Landon Flip Book; stay for the richly rewoven story that excavates hidden moments in Little House on the Prairie and pays playful homage to fan favorites like prairie bitch Nellie Oleson. Little is a new classic, skillfully foraging Laura Ingalls Wilder's much-loved series to create an (ir)reverent rereading that pioneers the new frontier of Little House on the Prairie in the 21st-century. —Alison Fraser, Author of Animalia Emily Anderson’s writing has appeared recently in Harper’s, Conjunctions, and Fence. She often collaborates with visual artists; video work created with Jen Morris has been screened in Vermont, Philadelphia, and Spain. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University at Buffalo. Book Information: · Paperback: 158 pages · Binding: Perfect-Bound · Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] · ISBN: 978-1-60964-132-0 $16

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    1K views18 pages

    Little - Novels by Emily Anderson Book Preview

    Uploaded by

    Geoffrey Gatza
    "A virtuosic display of wit, humor, and surreal beauty. Like the erasures of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes and Yedda Morrison’s Darkness, Emily Anderson’s partially masticated reimaginings of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series gets inside the logic of its source text. With uncanny insight, Little reveals what had always been simmering just beneath these novels’ familiar surfaces. (Mostly doughnuts and motherbutter.)" —Jesse Miller, Reviews Editor, Full Stop There’s an icloud casting shadows over Middle America but by now “the prairie's over.” Pa is the strapping advent of mono-crops, debt crisis and consumption. Ma is bone marrow and fresh eggs, embodied westward expansion. Laura is in the bank though “the bank had scalped her.” (In)dian is what is entered (in)to, “fair profit, fair skin.” Mary? Mary is “quite in.” And “there are so many ways of seeing things and so many ways of saying ‘Sioux.’” Apple cheeked readers who curled up with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books as children and cheered the little family and their epic industriousness, please be forewarned. Anderson’s devilish re-writing exhumes and animates a series of haunting and sometimes disturbingly funny sub-narratives. Delving deep into the American psyche, Little will leave you wondering how you missed the “Certificate to Missouri” clutched in your complicit little hand. What else have you squandered? Who else have you “loved?” —Yedda Morrison (Author of Darkness, Crop, and Girl Scout Nation) "I can't remember the last time I read something so familiar and unsettling - like meeting someone you love after they come back from a long journey wearing differently-colored eyes. Like if H.P. Lovecraft had had a hand in writing The Book of Common Prayer. It's playful, and frightening, and truer, somehow, than the original." —Mallory Ortberg, Author of Text from Jane Eyre Come for the Michael Landon Flip Book; stay for the richly rewoven story that excavates hidden moments in Little House on the Prairie and pays playful homage to fan favorites like prairie bitch Nellie Oleson. Little is a new classic, skillfully foraging Laura Ingalls Wilder's much-loved series to create an (ir)reverent rereading that pioneers the new frontier of Little House on the Prairie in the 21st-century. —Alison Fraser, Author of Animalia Emily Anderson’s writing has appeared recently in Harper’s, Conjunctions, and Fence. She often collaborates with visual artists; video work created with Jen Morris has been screened in Vermont, Philadelphia, and Spain. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University at Buffalo. Book Information: · Paperback: 158 pages · Binding: Perfect-Bound · Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] · ISBN: 978-1-60964-132-0 $16

    Copyright:

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    of 18

    LITTLE:

    NOVELS BY
    EMILY ANDERSON

    BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
    Buffalo, New York

    Little: Novels by Emily Anderson


    Copyright 2015
    Published by BlazeVOX [books]
    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
    the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in
    reviews.
    Printed in the United States of America
    Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
    Cover Art by Abbey Scheckter
    First Edition
    ISBN: 978-1-60964-132-0
    Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930368
    BlazeVOX [books]
    131 Euclid Ave
    Kenmore, NY 14217
    Editor@blazevox.org

    publisher of weird little books

    BlazeVOX [ books ]
    blazevox.org
    21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

    Preface
    These little novels have been extracted from Laura
    Ingalls Wilders Little House books. I erased
    paragraphs, sentences, words and (occasionally)
    individual letters from each of Wilders novels to
    create an alternate series. Here and there Ive added
    an s or an and, but I largely refrained from adding
    letters and words, with the exception of footnotes. The
    text appears in the order of the original books.
    Erasure (or writing the negative space of the story)
    reveals new aspects of a text and allows familiar
    narratives to resonate differently. Part parody, part
    homage, I see my process as parallel to that of Wilders
    pioneer characters: like Ma and Pa, I appropriate the
    resources I findin my case, words in a given order;
    in theirs, sod, trees, stones, waterto reshape a
    landscape. Writing this book allowed me to spend
    time reveling in the imaginative possibilities Wilders
    delightful and frequently troubling books propose.
    Geoffrey Gatza observed that Garth Williams iconic
    illustrations of Wilders novels merited a visual
    response. While I collaborated with Wilders text, I
    invited artists to work with Little House and/or my
    writing and contribute images. The diversity of their
    responses to these narratives helps me to see this
    projectand the books Ive loved since childhoodin
    new ways.
    Whether their contributions took the form of
    illustration or interruption, each artist approached

    this project differently. Michael Robinson generously


    contributed a still from his extraordinary Hold Me Now
    (standard definition video, 2008), while Nathan
    Anderson, Brad Farwell, Brieanne Hauger, Adam
    Martin, Jen Morris, Abbey Scheckter, and Anne
    Straarup created new work.
    I especially want to thank Brieanne Hauger, whose
    literary and visual talents and ongoing support helped
    me ford this river.

    List of Illustrations
    Table of Contents . . . Found marginalia
    Little Woods . . . Found marginalia
    Little Woods Drawings . . . Nathan Anderson
    Farm . . . Adam Martin
    Our Air . . . Brieanne Hauger
    On Banks . . . Brad Farwell
    Silver . . . Anne Straarup
    Long . . . Brieanne Hauger
    Michael Landon Laughs . . . Brieanne Hauger
    Hold Me Now . . . Michael Robinson
    Years & Years . . . Jen Morris
    Cover . . . Abbey Scheckter

    11

    LITTLE

    Little Woods

    16

    Chapter 1. Little Woods


    He sprinkled salt.
    Never interrupt.

    Chapter 2. Winter and Winter


    Up on its legs, her little cup.

    Chapter 3. Rifle
    Dark ravines, calling and looking.

    17

    Chapter 4. Christmas

    The ravine was asleep beautifully under the


    blankets.

    At the same momentbits of silk.

    18

    Chapter 5. Sun

    The boys walked slowly, tanned.

    19

    Chapter 6. Two Bears

    (She wasnt afraid).

    20

    Chapter 7. Snow
    The sap boils.
    The sap has boiled at last.
    Keep the sap boiling.

    Chapter 8. Dance
    He blew his bugle & they braided snow.

    21

    Chapter 9. Town
    Little leaf cups fastened across the rabbits.

    Chapter 10. Time


    The empty pail, jumping with excitement.

    Chapter 11. Harvest.


    A shock. Yellow jackets?

    22

    Chapter 12. Wonderful

    Berries, purple-topped turnips and bubbles for


    supper.

    23

    Chapter 13. Deer


    He sprinkled salt. He took his gun, her little
    chair. The sky climbed down out of the tree.

    24

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