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Bolaño’s Borges
Jorge Luis Borges is first mentioned in the sixth paragraph of Roberto Bolaño’s masterful short story “The Insufferable Gaucho.” In this paragraph, the narrator tells us that the story’s hero, an...
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My log has a message for you | Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 1
I’LL SEE YOU AGAIN IN 25 YEARS Chevron tiles swirl into swaying lush red curtains, into an impressionistic recap, into the framed and cabineted picture of Our Girl, into the opening bars of Angelo...
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A review of Angels, Denis Johnson’s first novel
Angels, Denis Johnson’s 1983 début novel, begins as a small book about not very much and ends as a small book about pretty much everything. Johnson has a keen eye and keener ear for the kinds of...
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Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams is a perfect novella
With blunt grace, Denis Johnson navigates the line between realism and the American frontier myth in his perfect novella Train Dreams. In a slim 116 pages, Johnson communicates one man’s life story...
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Yuri Herrera’s Kingdom Cons condenses myth into vibrant narco noir
Yuri Herrera’s new novella Kingdom Cons condenses myth and archetype into concrete, brutal noir. Gritty and visceral, but also elegant and surreal, Herrera’s prose bristles with cinematic energy in a...
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A review of Barry Hannah’s cult classic collection Airships
In his 1978 collection Airships, Barry Hannah sets stories in disparate milieux, from the northern front of the Civil War, to an apocalyptic future, to the Vietnam War, to strange pockets of the...
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A review of Leo Tolstoy’s final work, Hadji Murad
Leo Tolstoy Barefoot, 1901 by Ilya Repin Like many readers of Leo Tolstoy’s final work, Hadji Murad, I read the novella based on Harold Bloom’s praise in his work The Western Canon, where he declares...
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A review of Harold Brodkey’s First Love and Other Sorrows
One way to measure how great a work of literature is might be to ask how true (or “True,” if one is feeling particularly romantic) the writing is. We can find facts anywhere, but details and data are...
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This is not a review of Shattering the Muses, a strange hybrid “novel” by...
Rainer J. Hanshe’s new book Shattering the Muses is comprised of citations, short histories, poems, complaints and lamentations, anecdotes, essays, etchings, manipulated photographs, photographs of...
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A riff on rereading Carson McCullers’ novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
I’m not really sure what made me pick up Carson McCullers’ 1940 début novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter to read again. Actually, writing that sentence makes me remember: I was purging books, and the...
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A review of Gisèle Prassinos’s collection of surreal anti-fables, The...
I can’t remember which particular Surrealist I was googling when I learned about Gisèle Prassinos. I do know that it was just a few weeks ago, and I’ve had an interest in Surrealist art and literature...
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Hurricane Irma reading riff
I first started getting a tad—just a tad—nervous about Hurricane Irma on Monday, September 4th. This was Labor Day. I had the day off from work, and it was a good day: beer, barbecue, swimming. Etc....
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The Hobbit reconsidered as a picaresque novel
Making a weekend trip from the east coast of Florida to its Gulf shores, my family and I listened to Nicol Williamson’s early 1970s recording of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Williamson’s recording is...
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On Philip K. Dick’s novel A Maze of Death
I finished Philip K. Dick’s 1970 novel A Maze of Death this afternoon. The end made me tear up a little, unexpectedly. It’s a sad end, profoundly sad in some ways, and the unexpectedness of the...
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Jason Schwartz’s John the Posthumous is a dark, disarming novella
Knife and Glass, Richard Diebenkorn The strongest and strangest literature usually has to teach its reader how to read it, and, consequently, to read in a new way. Jason Schwartz’s new novella John the...
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A review of Blade Runner 2049
Film poster for Blade Runner 2049 by James Jean I don’t remember how old I was the first time I saw Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott, 1982), but I do remember that it had an instant and formative...
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Wherein I suggest Dracula is a character in Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666
The Self Seers (Death and Man), Egon Schiele I. Here’s my thesis: Dracula is a character in Roberto Bolaño’s dark opus 2666. Specifically, I’m suggesting that Dracula (like, the Count Dracula) is the...
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Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry’s antipodal odyssey of despair
Most of Malcolm Lowry’s dense, depressing novel Under the Volcano takes place over the course of November 2nd, 1938, the Mexican Day of the Dead. Like a reticent, dour Virgil, Lowry guides the reader...
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Not a review of Laurent Binet’s novel The Seventh Function of Language
I was a big a fan of Laurent Binet’s novel HHhH, so I was excited when I heard about his follow up, The Seventh Function of Language. I was especially excited when I learned that The Seventh Function...
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RIP William H. Gass
RIP William H. Gass, 1924-2017 I have now deleted three iterations of this “RIP William H. Gass” blog post. (If this iteration survives I will not edit it (this is the only way it will survive)). Each...
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