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(This is not a review of) The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford’s lost classic of...
So what’s this book you liked so much? It’s called The Dragon Waiting. It’s a 1983 novel by a guy named John M. Ford. It’s this erudite historical fantasy, or maybe fantastical history, that— Wait,...
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A Review of Sonic Life, Thurston Moore’s Rock n’ Roll Fantasia
Thurston’s Rock n’ Roll Fantasy Thurston Moore’s memoir Sonic Life kicks off in 1963 with his older brother Gene bringing home a 45 of the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie,” blowing open five-year-old Moore’s...
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A review of Alasdair Gray’s novel Poor Things (and an anticipation of Yorgos...
I. What I read I read Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel Poor Things. It was the second time I’d read the novel. I first read it close to ten years ago, after I read Gray’s superior but more flawed cult novel...
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On Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, pp. 1-47 (frozen words, tender bastard,...
I first read Max Lawton’s translation of Vladimir Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard in the summer of 2022. It totally fucked me up. I was in the middle of a nice fat interview with Max at the time, ostensibly...
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An interview with Max Lawton about translating Vladimir Sorokin’s masterpiece...
Max Lawton is the translator of many, many works, including a number of books by the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin. The recent publication of two of those translations, Blue Lard and Red Pyramid was...
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On Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, pp. 48-110 (sheep’s fat, bourgeois voice,...
The following discussion of Vladimir Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard (in translation by Max Lawton) is intended for those who have read or are reading the book. It contains significant spoilers; to be very...
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On Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, pp. 111-61 (L-harmony, 2 measures of red...
Previously on Blue Lard… pp. 1-47 pp. 48-110 The following discussion of Vladimir Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard (in translation by Max Lawton) is intended for those who have read or are reading the book....
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On Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, pp. 162-87 (indigo pill, fecal culture, piss...
Previously on Blue Lard… pp. 1-47 pp. 48-110 pp. 111-61 The following discussion of Vladimir Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard (in translation by Max Lawton) is intended for those who have read or are reading...
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A review of June-Alison Gibbons’ unsettling novel The Pepsi-Cola Addict
Fourteen-year-old Preston Wildey-King has a lot of problems. He’s on the outs with his girlfriend Peggy. His best friend Ryan always leers at him in a funny way, and Ryan’s older brothers want him to...
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A review of Jesse Ball’s novel How to Set a Fire and Why
Jesse Ball’s 2016 novel How to Set a Fire and Why covers a few tumultuous months in the life of Lucia Stanton, anarchist daughter of anarchist parents, now living with her aging anarchist aunt after...
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A review of The Son of Man, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s novel of atavistic...
Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s latest novel The Son of Man takes place almost entirely over a three seasons in a dilapidated manor somewhere in rural France, sometime near the end of the 20th century. The...
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A review of Dinah Brooke’s excellent cult novel Lord Jim at Home
Dinah Brooke’s 1973 novel Lord Jim at Home had been out of print for five decades — and had never gotten a U.S. release — until McNally Editions republished in 2023 with a new foreword by the novelist...
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Horrors and oneiric aberrations | On Antoine Volodine’s post-exotic novel...
Antoine Volodine’s novel Radiant Terminus is a 500-page post-apocalyptic, post-modernist, post-exotic epic that destabilizes notions of life and death itself. Radiant Terminus is somehow...
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Man is doomed to constantly fabricate new agonies for himself | On Dino...
Two years after it was first published in Italy, Dino Buzzati’s 1960 novella Il grande ritratto got its first English translation by Henry Reed under the title Larger Than Life. This year, NRYB issued...
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Charles Burns’ Final Cut explores the irreal reality of artistic ambition
Charles Burns’ latest graphic novel Final Cut tells the story of Brian, an obsessive would-be auteur grappling with an unrealized film project. Brian hopes to assemble his film — also titled Final Cut...
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Eight notes on Stephen Dixon’s novel Interstate
1, It upset me deeply, reading Stephen Dixon’s 1995 novel Interstate. It fucked me up a little bit, and then a little bit more, addicted to reading it as I was over two weeks in a new year. 2, What...
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Maggie Umber’s Chrysanthemum Under the Waves blends horror, surrealism, and...
Maggie Umber calls the nine pieces collected in Chrysanthemum Under the Waves “comics,” so I will call them comics too. The term “comics” has long encompassed a wide range of visual storytelling...
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