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On Henri Bosco’s lovely brief novel, The Child and the River
Last week or maybe the week before last, I received in the mail a review copy of Henri Bosco’s slim 1945 novel The Child and The River. This new translation by Joyce Zonana is available now from...
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This is not a review of Fernanda Melchor’s This Is Not Miami
This is not a review of Fernanda Melchor’s collection This Is Not Miami. First published in 2013, This Is Not Miami is now available in English translation by Sophie Hughes. Hughes previously...
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Matt Bucher’s The Belan Deck is an unexpectedly moving argument for humanity...
I stayed up later than I meant to the other night reading all of Matt Bucher’s new book The Belan Deck in one cover-to-cover go. On his website, Bucher describes The Belan Deck as “a little book…set...
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A life obscene | On Cormac McCarthy’s early novel Child of God
Overflow, 1978, Andrew Wyeth In ancient Greek drama, acts of violence or sex were “ob skena,” relegated to offstage. Thus, the horrific violence of Oedipus gouging out his eyes is not shown, but rather...
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Cannibals all | On William Gaddis’s novel A Frolic of His Own
I want to comment on the themes and style of William Gaddis’s fourth novel, 1994’s A Frolic of His Own, and I’d like to do so without the burden of summarizing its byzantine plot, so I’ll crib from...
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A review of Stone Junction, Jim Dodge’s alchemical pot-boiler
Jim Dodge’s 1990 novel Stone Junction tells the life story of Daniel Pearse, a young man of preternatural talents and sharp intelligence who trains under various tutors in a secret society, steals an...
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Riff on Ursula K. Le Guin’s collection The Wind’s Twelve Quarters
Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1975 volume The Wind’s Twelve Quarters collects seventeen short stories, offering, as the author puts it in her foreword, “a retrospective” of her career to date: “a roughly...
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Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory is an abject coming-of-age novel narrated by a...
Frank Cauldhame, the narrator of Iain Banks’s 1984 debut novel The Wasp Factory, is a teenage psychopath. Frank lives with his eccentric father on an island in rural Scotland. He is an unregistered...
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Riff on rereading Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban’s post-apocalyptic...
I first read Russell Hoban’s 1980 post-apocalyptic quasi-religious coming-of-age novel Riddley Walker in maybe 1996 or 1997, when I was sixteen or seventeen, or possibly eighteen. That was the right...
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The cozy creepiness of Lisa Tuttle’s novella My Death
Lisa Tuttle’s 2004 novella My Death receives an American reprint this fall from NYRB. In her introduction to this new edition, novelist Amy Gentry expresses her hope the reprint will set off a “Lisa...
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A review of Escape from the Great American Novel, Drew Lerman’s zany satire...
Drew Lerman’s comic strip Snake Creek takes us into the world of best pals Roy and Dav, weirdos among weirdos in Weirdest Florida. Their adventures and misadventures are both absurdly comic and zanily...
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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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