Clik here to view.
The Book of Emma Reyes (Book acquired, 3 Aug. 2017)
This one looks pretty cool. The Book of Emma Reyes, an epistolary “memoir,” is new in hardback from Penguin, in English translation by Daniel Alarcón. Here’s Penguin’s blurb/bio: This astonishing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“White Rabbits,” a short tale by Leonora Carrington
“White Rabbits” by Leonora Carrington THE TIME has come that I must tell the events which began in 40 Pest St. The houses which were reddish-black looked as if they had survived mysteriously from the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blog about the first half of Antoine Volodine’s Writers
Antoine Volodine’s collection of loosely-connected stories Writers (2010; English translation by Katina Rogers, Dalkey Archive, 2014) is 108 pages. I have read the first four of the seven stories...
View ArticleThe nightmare has no escape (Antoine Volodine)
Several creatures wake up, semi-human and semi-animal, seated on a tribunal dais. Their memory doesn’t give them any self-knowledge, they knew nothing about the affair that they must judge, or even...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blog about a list of films included in Antoine Volodine’s short story “The...
Antoine Volodine’s short story “The Theory of Image According to Maria Three-Thirteen” is collected in Writers, a book available in English translation by Katina Rogers from Dalkey Archive Press....
View ArticleClik here to view.
RIP Gene Wolfe
RIP Gene Wolfe, 1931-2019 Gene Wolfe died today. He was 87. Tor’s obit includes these details: Gene Wolfe was born in New York on May 7, 1931. He studied at Texas A&M for a few years before...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The authentic American apocalyptic novel | Harold Bloom and Blood Meridian
The Triumph of Death, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1562 Harold Bloom’s esteem for Blood Meridian may have done much to advance the novel’s reputation since its publication, especially in pre-social...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Photograph from “The Postmodernists Dinner”— Jill Krementz
Photograph from “The Postmodernists Dinner,” 1983 by Jill Krementz (b. 1940) From the University of Houston’s collection of Barthelme’s papers. The entry’s description: Left to right: unidentified,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard (Sixth Riff: 1963-1964)
PREVIOUSLY: Introductions + stories 1956-1959 Stories of 1960 Stories of 1961 Stories of 1962 “The Subliminal Man,” Black Friday, and Consumerism IN THIS RIFF: “The Reptile Enclosure” (1963) “A...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Books are made out of books”| Blood Meridian and Samuel Chamberlain
In his 1992 interview with The New York Times, Cormac McCarthy said, “The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” McCarthy’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How to Read James Joyce’s Ulysses (and Why You Should Avoid “How-to” Guides...
[Editorial note: What follows is an edit of a piece I first posted on June 16, 2010–Bloomsday. Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses. I tried...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A review of Hilary Mantel’s novel Beyond Black
In Hilary Mantel’s 2005 novel Beyond Black, a fat psychic named Alison endures the harrowing torment of a collective of ghosts she calls the Fiends, the spirits of cruel men from her childhood. When a...
View ArticleMy liver, the pain of clear thought, $5.75 for an Absolut on the rocks at the...
From “Don’t Everybody Talk at Once! (The Esquire Literary Survey).” Published in Esquire, August 1986. The “article” consists of a ten-question questionnaire Esquire fiction editor Rust Hills sent to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“Books are made out of books”| Blood Meridian and Samuel Chamberlain
In his 1992 interview with The New York Times, Cormac McCarthy said, “The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.” McCarthy’s...
View Article“It was a lone tree burning on the desert”| Blood Meridian’s Moral Core
Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian begins as a strange, violent picaresque bildungsroman, detailing the adventures of a teenage runaway known only as “the kid.” When the Kid falls in with John Glanton’s...
View ArticlePlagiarism
Thomas Chatterton (1770), English poet and forger, arsenic poisoning Heinrich von Kleist (1811), German author, poet and journalist, gunshot Manuel Acuña (1873), Mexican poet, ingestion of potassium...
View Article
