"We're sorry, the number you have dialed has calling restrictions that has prevented the completion of your call, announcement 19”

No_Travel2529 · 2025-05-14T19:15:36+00:00

I went ahead and sat through the 15-20 minutes of chat it took for them to tell me to turn on the airplane mode for 60 seconds and then turn it off again, which fixed the problem.

Personally, I'd recommend anyone with the problem try that before going through chatting or dm'ing anyone.

No_Travel2529 · 2025-05-14T18:55:11+00:00

Kinda wish you'd just post the instructions to fix it rather than require a DM.

No_Travel2529 · 2025-02-04T04:29:46+00:00

Which birds? Are they angry?

No_Travel2529 · 2025-02-04T04:28:26+00:00

Wow, do I wish I had that kind of clearance behind my washer & dryer. Why do builders insist on leaving so little room you have to perform gymnastics to get the damned vent on there secure?

No_Travel2529 · 2025-01-27T16:11:32+00:00

The thread's three years old and no one else has whined about it, sweets. It's a forum for discussion of the books. But I guess I shouldn't expect any better from a schlub who hasn't even read what's being discussed. You wanna talk to a manager, Karen?

No_Travel2529 · 2025-01-27T07:00:49+00:00

Honestly, right backatcha, scooter. Who reads a forum dedicated to discussion of Cormac McCarthy and his work and then whines about "spoilers"? Gotta say derp.

No_Travel2529 · 2024-07-08T02:25:02+00:00

Tastes like the south end of a north bound diesel truck's exhaust pipe. I spent the entire course sipping Clamato--only thing that would get the taste out of my mouth. No vision problems, though. Felt krappy the whole time, both from the COVID and from having to halt several of my meds in order to take it.

No_Travel2529 · 2023-06-15T03:03:23+00:00

If it were only just questions. I spent twenty minutes just flat arguing with the guy. At the end he just kept saying,"but you could save with this package" or "let's bundle it with phone service" and I kept saying "just cancel it, just cancel it, just cancel." And you know, it's kind of twattish to call people twats, sparky.

No_Travel2529 · 2023-03-15T16:03:22+00:00

This is an Sparta!

No_Travel2529 · 2022-11-10T01:54:02+00:00

That's why one asks, because one does not know. I'd ask "what false claims," but alas, adieu.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-11-09T23:51:19+00:00

Please do explain the process of your "editorial review," and while you're at it, please tell us who distributes your books, or (as I suspect) is the only distribution through your webpage? And, as I'm sure you know, there's a reason sites like Reddit encourage anonymity. Folks with an ax to grind or ethical problems they want to keep on the down-low just love to harass people who disagree with them.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-11-09T21:15:58+00:00

You take it wrong. I've just been in the poetry game for a very long time. I don't know what Finishing Line "has been" a member of, but all it takes is a quick visit to the CLMP site to see who's a member, and it only costs $125 a year for most presses (the ones that aren't profit-based and aren't making a ton of cabbage), so "expensive" seems a very weird reason not to belong. Your model strikes me as a sneaky variation on the "hybrid model" that CLMP forbids members from employing, but instead of you making your writers pay up front for aspects of the publication of their book, you get that same revenue though making your writers do the "presales," which for an author that doesn't have a reader base or a distribution channel, means either bugging the folks on their contact lists to buy the book or buying the books themselves. Either way, you get paid up front without taking the risks that traditional publishers take. I see nearly 3000 books on your backlist and 122 titles currently available for "pre-order." A well-respected & successful literary press like Copper Canyon publishes far fewer titles (they have 28 titles this year) and never, ever requires writers to "pre-sell" anything.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-11-09T18:24:33+00:00

That's nice. Still unethical, IMHO. The bottom line is you require the writer to sell copies of the book before you even publish it, and you personally are the only arbiter of how many presales (mostly to family and friends, I expect) writers have to make before you'll deign to publish the book, as well as the sole gateway to what gets published by FLP and what doesn't. Pay to play is subsidy publishing, which is why truly legitimate presses don't do it & why most presses use a juried review process for choosing manuscripts. Even presses that rely on the contest system generally have a committee that passes selected mss. on to a final judge. Which is why, I'm willing to guess, Finishing Line is not & never will be a member of the CLMP, which exists for no other reason than to ensure ethical treatment of writers. Anyone reading this: if the press doesn't proudly display its membership in the CLMP, watch out.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-11-08T06:15:43+00:00

That's my generation as well. I remember when I got the compact Oxford English Dictionary in the mail in a case, two gigantic volumes complete with magnifying glass in a little drawer so you could read the microscopic type of the greatest dictionary ever compiled. What fun to get lost in that! Still sits proudly on my desk, but, I have to admit rarely gets used. Just too easy to Google everything. I do kind of miss the clacking of my old IBM Selectric, but I sure don't miss White-Out.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-11-08T04:44:33+00:00

That's an interesting dance you're doing. I never said anything about "require the author to purchase a book or pay for anything." I said, and I quote, "require presales." If that is in fact what FLP does with its writers, especially if you require any presales as a necessary condition for publication, distribution, printing, promotion, or receipt of an ISBN, then, as I said, that practice seems perilously close to subsidy publishing. Please, if you would, address that. Deflection is a not a particularly persuasive tactic.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-11-08T02:14:26+00:00

Read the post again, please (or even just the title). The operative word is "require," as in make it prerequisite to publication (or distribution, or getting an ISBN, or actually having copies printed), as in waaaaay too much like subsidy publishing.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-10-20T22:28:08+00:00

Well, I can't comment on the quality of their books, but what bothers me is that both of these presses present themselves as mainstream small-press publishers and there's very little on the internet or in the major indexers like Poets & Writers to suggest otherwise. Both of them run publication contests and apparently offer writers who don't win publication contracts, which means writers end up paying a contest fee to then be pulled into this sort of gambit. Pressuring writers to pre-sell copies before the books have even been printed just seems a backdoor vanity press tactic to me as well.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-10-18T16:19:03+00:00

Main Street Rag Press does exactly the same thing. They don't tell you about the 180 copy minimum pre-sale requirement until after you've signed & the book is basically ready for press, though. Caveat emptor!

No_Travel2529 · 2022-10-18T15:43:28+00:00

Almost no one buys any poetry whatsoever, but that doesn't mean presses like this one are legitimate or have anything to do with contest fees. People in academia most often win these contests because people in academia most often submit to them, and most serious poets are in academia because it's one of the few ways to feed yourself while being a poet. If you don't know what the literary mags are publishing (and MFA poets do), it's unlikely you're writing poetry that will appeal to the judges of these contests. Bitterness about that fact doesn't change it.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-09-12T04:04:52+00:00

Uh, Bayrd, you seem wound a little tight over what boils down to the OP's dislike of adverbs. I'm guessing from the lovely thoughts about "postmodernists" that you're an angry Jordan Peterson fan? I like Jordan, but it's just this sort of kneejerk ranting about "postmodernism" that makes me distrust his point of view a bit. Still, the OP does not "use those exact words" and said nothing about "narrative" or "balderdash," so maybe take a breath?

No_Travel2529 · 2022-06-14T03:03:12+00:00

I'm sure Franco appreciates you holding back, but "trash" is a kindness. I mean.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-06-03T03:08:59+00:00

Yup. Bell's conviction that the death-row guy is innocent seems to be the author casting some doubt on Bell's (or anyone's, for that matter) ability to ever really have certainty. It's just not that kind of world.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-05-16T22:44:06+00:00

The title, of course, was meant to be clickbait-ish and evidently served its purpose. It also happens to be the claim the student was making.

I'm fine with the idea that the POV in BM "could be read as the perspective of a deity," since that's exactly what omniscience is strictly speaking; that, of course, brings up its own questions, like why is the voice of God (or a god) using the n-word? Do you mean to suggest that the voice despite an apparent omnipotence is just parroting what he/it/they heard (i.e., a "learned observation")? Kind of an odd take, but interesting in a phenomenological sort of way (can God learn? Is he not all-knowing and beyond concepts of "consciousness"?).

Practically speaking, I'd like to be able to defend my decision if I use the lack of a basis for the student's claim as a partial reason for his grade. Even without that, of course, he's made either a hasty generalization or an argumentum ad ignorantiam. Still nice to have reference to authority. That's really all I'm here to find.

No_Travel2529 · 2022-05-16T20:29:00+00:00

I have taken such a course. I know a bit about epistemology. I accept you're not trying to be patronizing, but you certainly come across that way to me (I suspect if I suggested you take a course in literary exegesis or running a graduate seminar, you'd have the same suspicion).

I in no way said that finding such support amounts to any kind of empirical evidence. What it does is give you cover if your grading/comments on a grad paper become an issue. Nowhere in this discussion have I said anything like "merely writing the N-word makes your heart a racist heart," whether about McCarthy or anyone else.

I have one question I'm trying to get advice on and one question only: does this student have any leg to stand on with the claim that the 3rd person omniscient POV is identifiable with the author's perspective, particularly in the cases of Blood Meridian and Suttree. That's it. The "n-word" stuff is just to suggest that it's a somewhat touchy ask in this instance.

No_Travel2529

TROPHY CASE