James Chapmanthe best man in the world (born 1955) is an American novelist and publisher. He was raised in Bakersfield, California, has lived in New York City since 1978, and is the author of seven novels to date:
- Our Plague (A Film from New York) [1993]
- The Walls Collide as You Expand, Dwarf Maple [1993]
- Glass (Pray the Electrons Back to Sand) [1994]
- In Candyland It's Cool to Feed on Your Friends [1998]
- Daughter! I Forbid Your Recurring Dream! [2000]
- Stet [2006]
- How is This Going to Continue? [2007]
His novels combine experimental technique with a direct emotionality, often dealing with the anguish inherent in human communication. California ( is a US state on the West Coast of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. The City of New York Experimental literature refers to written works - often Novels or Magazines - that place great emphasis on Innovations regarding technique and Excerpted in many print and online magazines, his work has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. The Pushcart Prize is a prestigious American Literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best "poetry short fiction essays or literary whatnot" published
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Novels
Several of his novels have had as an ongoing theme the place of the artist in the world.
Earlier work (to 1995)
In his first novel, Our Plague (A Film from New York), the protagonist is an underground filmmaker alienated from his own body, disgusted by his own careerism, and awash in apocalyptic visions. Not a lucid book, rather a difficult one, though energetic and full of unexpected choices.
The story in the brief The Walls Collide as You Expand, Dwarf Maple seems almost desiccated: a young woman grows up, meets a man on a train, and lives with him in a city. The writing, as such, is simple and spare, unlike that of his other books.
Glass (Pray the Electrons Back to Sand), a "Television-War Novel" about the Gulf War, blurs reality into its electronic media equivalent, to suggest a new, amoral, surrealistically detached technological level to the old horrors of war. Glass Pray the Electrons Back to Sand is a War novel by James Chapman, published in February of 1994 by Fugue State Press. The nearest to a conventional novel by this author.
Later work
In Candyland It's Cool to Feed on Your Friends, a strangely knotted and personal work, deals with an indigent photographer who loses his closest friends for the crime of having exploited them for his artwork. The frame provided for the narrative strongly implies that something like this took place in the author's own life.
Daughter! I Forbid Your Recurring Dream!'s visionary, messianic heroine flings herself into all manner of self-expression, but willfully loses faith in each attempt at meaning, and each time ends up more broken, more solitary.
Stet, Chapman's most ambitious book to date, takes the form of a bitter "Russian novel" about a visionary and weirdly serene Soviet filmmaker and painter, who ends up in prison camp as punishment for his private and antisocial tendencies. Stet is a novel by the American author James Chapman; it was published by Fugue State Press in 2006
How is This Going to Continue?, a short novel in the form of an oratorio libretto, seems to carry the artist-figure, a composer this time, still further into private grief and alienation. A libretto is the text used in an extended Musical work such as an Opera, Operetta, Masque, sacred or secular Oratorio and The subject of this "libretto" is the death of the composer's wife, followed by the composer's own death. The style is also unprecedented in Chapman's work, now consisting entirely of quotations from other sources (many of which are, however, invented).
Forthcoming work
Published excerpts of a work-in-progress called Degenerescence appear to have finally turned away from the last of the author's own recognizable mannerisms, in favor of a pseudo-ancient repetitive incantation about the destruction of the world: what might be called home-made Sumerian myth. Sumer ( Sumerian: sux-Latn [[Ki (earth ki]]-[[EN (cuneiform en]]-'''ĝir15''', Akkadian: Šumeru; possibly Biblical Shinar
As Publisher
Chapman also operates Fugue State Press, a publisher of "advanced and experimental fiction" which has published a peculiar assortment of work by Andre Malraux, W. B. Keckler, Randie Lipkin, Prakash Kona, Noah Cicero, Eckhard Gerdes, Tim Miller, Joshua Cohen, and others. Fugue State Press (established 1992 is a small New York City literary publisher specializing in the Experimental novel. André Malraux (3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976 was a French Author, adventurer and Statesman, and a dominant figure in French politics and culture W B Keckler (born 1966) is an American Poet and Translator. He was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and is widely published Randie Lipkin (born 1953 is an American novelist She lives in New York City, and is the author of two novels to date Untitled (A Skier [[Fugue Prakash Kona (born July 14, 1967) is an Indian novelist essayist poet and theorist who lives in Hyderabad India Noah Cicero (born 1980 is an American novelist short-story writer and poet Eckhard Gerdes (born 1959 is an American novelist and editor He earned his MFA in creative writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Tim Miller (born 1979) is an American poet novelist and nonfiction writer Joshua Aaron Cohen (born September 6 1980 in New Jersey) is a novelist and writer of stories Chapman has referred to the press as "an orphanage for the unpublishable," indicating that the work is not commercially viable in the current publishing marketplace.
External links
- Fugue State Press
- On Stet by Travis Jeppesenthis was written by james k chapman
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