by Tom LeClair

Weak in Comparison to Dreams – James Elkins

by

WEAK IN COMPARISON TO DREAMS [may] look like a recovery narrative, but it’s actually a re-cover-up story.

The Maladaptation of White Noise

by

Perhaps there is a tablet, a Dylar that actually works, that would make me forget Baumbach’s movie as the Gladneys wanted to forget death.

The Curse of the Zombie Book

by

The author could be working safely at their desk or drowsing in bed, and remember some improbable situation or weak sentence, and the presumed-dead book feels somehow still half-alive…

In Praise of Bullshitting

by

Coover, Vollmann, Wallace, and Gayl Jones — I believe these big, wide-ranging books are postmodernism’s best, for the Bullshitters engage more directly and profoundly than the Artistes with significant cultural subjects.

Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention – David Shields

by

If actual [David] Shields were really serious about ending the oligarchy, he’d have written a different book.

Narrator – Bragi Olafsson

by

I submit that playing along once in a while with games like Olafsson’s, games about the game of fiction, can be a useful reminder of how fiction works on us.

The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner

by

It appears that Kushner wants readers to believe — and feel — that the book is transparent, almost literally true.

The Overstory – Richard Powers

by

What if a hundred thousand humans dressed as trees and migrated to Washington? How about a “War on Christmas (Trees)”? Fleet-footed activists come out at night and spray the trees for sale on city streets with orange paint, recalling Agent Orange and disrupting wasteful tree farms.

Phone – Will Self

by

Some reviewers in Great Britain have criticized Self’s trilogy for being too diffuse, too difficult. I found PHONE not diffuse enough.

Final Words

by

On reading and writing books in two centuries.