NOWHERE MAN
No. First you start me with a Beatles reference, and THEN have to have the book be a coming of age of a foreign student with a wacky affability? Why this book is getting taught to young writers... PORLERJ! Course, had I known it was a Beatles reference in the first place I never would have picked it up, but man, dang. No.
RUSSELL EDSON
"Dang I'm weird. I'm gonna write something weird. And now that I can do anything I want, it will be cool enough that its 'weird.' I am captain of the weird. Fuck yeah." I don't know, yeah he's good when he's good, but really? Is he really the boss? No, he's not the boss. He's just a guy with some weird sleep habits most likely who throws it down now and again. Get off the D.
GRACE PALEY
Not buying it. Not buying that these stories are that 'new' or even that great really. That she wasn't doing anything that wasn't done better and with more BOOM in the butt by Barthelme or Hannah. I mean, it's cool that she was an old lady kicking ass on paper, but, eh, I just can't figure out what it is that makes people tout her to the grave, except that 'Grace' is a rad name.
THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
If one more person mentions this book in a 'here's how to do ____ in fiction'...
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES
Put this guy back walking around aboveground and breathing and no one would be reading him, at least not in the mindset of the second coming. I know supposedly after the first 130 pages of the narrator here supposedly finally shuts up running his mouth about being a 'poet' and trying to fuck this one girl, and how he's a poet, and how he wants to be a poet, and poet, poesy, peep. I don't give a fuck if it turns into BLOOD MERIDIAN after that: anyone who opens the first third of their book slavering over supposed 'revolution' and 'poetic fame' can eat a megacock.
I'm reading in Ann Arbor real soon for Hobart with some crazy kats.
Titular asked me to send a piece of Joyce-like for their Ulysses collaborative, and I did: a paragraph from DECADE. Right now it's at the bottom of the page.
I am finally reading Rikki Ducornet. She's real good.
