City of Angels: Or, the Overcoat of Dr. Freud – Christa Wolf
How does one give an account of oneself when the link to the past is not even available?
Percival Everett by Virgil Russell – Percival Everett
At its best, Everett’s self-reflexive mockery and abrasive humor closely approach the line separating productive ridicule and mere negation, but don’t quite cross it.
Unkown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division – Peter Hook
Music writing can feel so “written,” but Hook’s voice is refreshingly immediate and present.
The Tragedy of Mister Morn – Vladimir Nabokov
Watching it sounds painful.
The Unreal and the Real – Ursula Le Guin
“Naming is a widespread form of magic”
Without the sense that the characters are living in a world that matters — in which there are consequences, futures, pasts — why should the stories themselves matter to their readers?
Body Geographic – Barrie Jean Borich
Borich creates an atlas of the dislocations and longings that drive American migration.
Vampires in the Lemon Grove – Karen Russell
Russell demands our sympathies for both the victims and performers of cruelty who, sometimes, are victims themselves.
Why are his fictional works read at all? Other than the way he wields metaphor, of which he is by far one of the greatest wielders alive, we read him for his mind. We read him because it’s Gass that gives us something to read.
Shit That Happened To Me While Reading Jim Harrison’s The River Swimmer
The story, like its protagonist, floats along, held together loosely as though in liquid suspension.