BOOKS
2666 by Roberto Bolano: a review
Andy Beta
12.26.08
Roberto Bolaño, Chile's own prodigal poet has been getting an expansive amount of respect since his novels began being translated into English over a year ago. Bolaño, the longtime junky and self-affirmed outsider, passed away from liver failure in 2003; but we now fortunately have the translation of his last great unfinished novel, 2666, a sprawling, beefy, gruesome and enigmatic hunk of prognostication for where mankind may soon be headed. Best read of 2008? You decide. Review by Andy Beta.
Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB
Michael Louie
11.25.08
We all miss Big Baby Jesus, and no we ain't talking about that little December squirt of joy, hell it ain't even Thanksgiving yet. Y'all can start shopping on Friday. And if you do, pick up Jamie Lowe's new book, Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB (that's Ol' Dirty Bastard, R.I.P., of the Wu-Tang Clan), a biography that'll make a great stocking stuffer for anyone's grandma. Michael Louie reviews, while Mr. jock draws Mr. Dirt McGirt in kind.
Swedish Death Metal by Daniel Ekeroth: a review
Adam Ganderson
10.29.08
Fanzine basically took the month off, so we get this review just in time for the remaining days of October - a month of nippy nights that creep up early and announce the Halloween season; behold here Adam Ganderson's review of Daniel Ekeroth’s Swedish Death Metal. You may have read the Norwegian side of things in Lords of Chaos, or got a taste of other non-Norwegian death metal bands in the excerpt "A Blaze in the North American Sky" from Brandon Stosuy’s forthcoming book that ran recently in The Believer. Here we get the Swedish death metal story, an instant classic, and required reading for music lovers and fanzine fans of varied yet discriminating tastes.
Review of The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness, and Baseball
Richard Parks
08.05.08
Baseball is best viewed live, though it’s also a comforting respite on a lazy day spent sprawled out on the living room couch. Speaking of couches, have you ever talked baseball on the couch at your shrink’s office? Did that baseball talk give you the answers you needed to reconcile a painful love/hate relationship with your father? Well probably not. But if so, or if you at least find the baseball-as-psychological lens interesting, you should check out Nicholas Dawidoff’s latest memoir The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love, Madness, and Baseball, reviewed here by Richard Parks.
Review of Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary
Ben Bush
08.04.08
Hypertext Lit is no longer a fad but a fact. From the earlier experiments of Shelley Jackson and Robert Coover on to today's ebooks on iPhones and Kindles, electronic literature is here for the long haul, making its mark in more ways than you'd think. Ben Bush reviews a thorough study of the subject - Professor N. Katherine Hayles' Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary.
Review of Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser
Mark Asch
03.07.08
Worlds within words within worlds. Mark Asch tackles the infinite regression of Steven Millhauser's latest short story collection.
45 More Stories by Donald Barthelme
Brian Howe
01.24.08
You'd think for the latest collection from Donald Barthelme, the man who left us the sets 60 Stories and 40 Stories, he might have settled on an even medium of 50 stories, but alas, never predictable (and dead, so obviously not making these decisions), gives up his ghost again in a new collection just 5 short of mathematical balance. Fitting for a writer whose sentences of anal algebra glean amidst an illusion of sweet anarchy (that makes no sense, I am all blurbed out). Brian Howe reviews Flying to America: 45 More Stories, Turkish delight for the Barthelme completist. Cover image of B. by Danny Jock.
Imprints 5: Tom Perrotta, Gay Talese, Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne
Zach Baron
11.15.07
In Zach Baron's 5th Imprints, a monthly books column, his theme is sex, and as a befitting follow up to Mailer, it tends towards the macho, then twists back to the humorously male deprecating. Included in the review is Gay Talese's classic Thy Neighbor's Wife, Legs McNeil & Jennifer Osborne's The Other Hollywood: The Uncensored Oral History of the Porn Film, and a new one by "lapsed Roman Catholic" Tom Perrotta, The Abstinence Teacher, a novel which pits the prurient against the pious in a high school setting.
Review of Zeroville by Steve Erickson
Scott Bradfield
10.25.07
Steve Erickson, in his latest novel Zeroville, invents a character who chooses to live his life as if he were a cinematic character. And who wouldn't? In the movies, one can jump cut, laws of cause and effect are easily manipulated, and responsibility becomes malleable or mute. The problem for Erickson's hero however, Scott Bradfield explains, is that he's unknowingly driven by the causal concerns of his deft creator, Erickson the novelist. And all that drives Erickson, drives his characters...well, read and see.
IMPRINTS 4: Dana Vachon, Doug Stumpf and Jim Cramer
Zach Baron
09.29.07
"Wealth rubs people in different ways," writes Zach Baron, who in his first IMPRINTS tackled DeLillo's Falling Man. Baron isn't through with the world of finance yet, and in IMPRINTS 4 he addresses two novels concerning the subject - Dana Vachon's Mergers & Acquisitions and Doug Stumpf's Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy. For good measure, he also gives a turn to CNBC's seemingly insane Wall Street analyst Jim Cramer and his book Mad Money: Watch TV, Get Rich.
Reviews: Denis Johnson's - Tree of Smoke and Richard Russo's - Bridge of Sighs
Vikram Johri
09.28.07
Vikram Johri reviews two new novel from old masters, Denis Johnson's oddly epic Vietnam novel Tree of Smoke and Richard Russo's memoir of childhood, Bridge of Sighs.
Reviews: Wayne Koestenbaum's Hotel Theory and Masha Tupitsyn's Beauty Talk & Monsters
Brian Pera
08.26.07
Brian Pera reviews two new books: Wayne Koestenbaum's Hotel Theory, a visually experimental work which juxtaposes two seemingly disparate texts, a collusion of dead stars and theory and into one cohesive package, and Masha Tupitsyn's Beauty Talk & Monsters, a collection of observations, "Disguised as a series of short stories," of women seeking "apartness-as-refuge."
IMPRINTS 3: Andre Aciman and David Markson
Zach Baron
07.31.07
Zach Baron reviews two novels of the summer romance variety (if you will) - Andre Aciman's Call Me By Your Name and David Markson's debut Wittgenstein's Mistress. Not your average beach books...
IMPRINTS 2: Jeff Hobbs, Steven Hall, Joan Didion, Richard Yates, John Gregory Dunn...
Zach Baron
06.28.07
Zach Baron's second installment of Imprints runs the gamut from first-time novelists Jeff Hobbs (The Tourists, touted as "your ticket to snide fun in Manhattan" by USA Today) and Steven Hall (The Raw Shark Texts, about which critical quips have not been provided by Mr. Baron, or USA Today) to Joan Didion, Richard Yates, John Gregory Dunn, and Don DeLillo.
IMPRINTS 1: Don Delillo, Simon Rich and Joshua Ferris
Zach Baron
05.19.07
Imprints is the debut of Zach Baron's monthly book review column. This month Baron reviews Don Delillo's newest, Falling Man, Simon Rich's Ant Farm, and Joshua Ferris's Then We Came To The End.
REVIEW: Philip Roth's - Everyman
Sam Sacks
05.23.06
As somewhat jaded, detached fans of Woody Allen's personal life, Humbert Humbert, Gustave Von Aschenbach, etc... Fanzine doesn't always wholly endorse its writers' opinions as moral tautologies, yet we appreciate Sacks for beautifully nailing Philip Roth on a particular annoying tendency in American literature, the clichéd sexual braggadocio of the solopsistic veteran author.
REVIEW: In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
Sam Sacks
04.17.06
Sacks argues that Saunders, the author of the great CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Pastoralia, might be treading water with the political satire on this one, a collection that is saved by a good old fashioned love story.
Put Your 3-D Glasses On and Drop Acid Now
Trinie Dalton
11.07.05
Author Trinie Dalton gives a high five to some of her favorite indie publications - BJ and Da Dogs, Paperrad, The Ganzfeld, and Picture Box