brief book reviews

i have had a lot going on since december, when i last posted book reviews on this blog, and for a brief time didn't read very much, or write much, but then started trying to more actively read and write this summer, which was a good decision and resulted in me being very productive in both things. these are all the complete books i read since december 2024. i noted having started and either abandoning or pausing several others, which i don't review here, in my recent email newsletter. versions of a couple of these reviews also appeared in beyond the last estate. i also read several print literary magazines and possibly 500 board books/children's chapter books. but you don't care about those as much, do you? didn't think so.

 

 

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (FSG, 2024): I enjoyed the emphasis on staccato half-thought sentences and general stylistic progress that Rooney brings here relative to her earlier books, but plot-wise this one is more or less indistinguishable from a Hallmark Channel rom-com. i felt like there was an above-average pandering emphasis on lit-chick romance by way of to the interiority of the narration, which allows us to marvel at a 22 autistic chess master virgin feeling like he's virtuously "protective" of his partner during most of their fuck sessions. mostly hated the polyamory b-plot with the brother, in which one woman with a physical disability and another woman with just some kind of general baseline stupidity merge Voltron-like into the perfect woman vis-a-vis throupledom. would recommend for the writing, wouldn't recommend for the horrible aftertaste the plot left me with.

The Valeries by Forrest Muelrath (Expat Press, 2024): an email-rant-as-slim-novel about blackmail, transness, adrenochrome sex party conspiracies, and synthesizers, among other things. enjoyed the Hannibal Lecter-esque of our narrator, the smouldering tragic ironies, the moments of digression into less plot-central memories (like about the painting in the office building), and the diaristic temporal structure. Ddidn't enjoy the pomo wrapper or some of the writing line by line, where it's hard to tell how much is because of the character's voice or the author's style. felt like more elements could have been fleshed out and beefed up to really let the reader into our interlocutors' intriguing histories, because the conceit is interesting and well-constructed. a rare case of a book that could have been longer and still be good/better. curious to see more by muelrath that isn't locked into such an extreme character.

A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (1929): got this because crow recommended it, i think, but i associate it with sebastian castillo for some reason. a strangely paced, vaguely picaresque novel that follows a few children on a journey from jamaica to england by boat. i liked a lot of the phrasing and the general voice; it's from the end of that era where punctuation is all over the place, with lots of colons, semicolons, and dashes sort of intermingling and touching each other sensuously. structurally and stylistically i felt confused in a good way; it often reads alternately like a children-oriented adventure story and a work of great literary fiction; for a while i thought it was simply a children's book by a sort of outsider writer, or something. i greatly enjoyed the brief moments of extremely dark humor, the strange psychological analysis of the children, and the way he'll include interesting scenes that serve little 'purpose' for the greater plot. i didn't really care for what i imagine was some of the humor of the era, and felt frustrated and confused by some of the beginning chapters. felt like some of the passages dragged on. both enjoyed and didn't enjoy the ending – on one hand i liked the sort of profound and dark ending, but on the other hand i felt like it invests too much into emphasizing what felt like a sort of lesser plot point, thus making the whole arc feel imbalanced. would recommend.

Waiting for Godot by samuel becket (1952): i've previously read and enjoyed two of becket's novels and a portion of another, and had never read this despite its fame (i found it at the thrift store). a two-act, existentialist, vaguely absurd play about two old, destitute men waiting for godot. felt surprised and confused by the presence of pozzo and lucky, which made the play sort of different from what i had expected, i think. enjoyed a lot of the lines (e.g. "that's how it is on this bitch of an earth") primarily for their unexpected delivery. enjoyed the blocking and movement notation. enjoyed various other little aspects. feels like i will never be able to write anything as masterful. would recommend.

Woodswoman by anne labastille (penguin, 1976): purchased on a whim at a used book store. a memoir about a woman divorcing her husband and building/moving into a cabin on a remote lake in the adirondacks. enjoyed the vocabulary and nature writing, when it's there, but felt disappointed in how much of the book focuses on things other than just living in the woods, including a prolonged, romantic hike along a train track, a trip to washington dc, and extensive scenes of people visiting her and complimenting the cabin. didn't enjoy the many didactic, hamfistedly recreated conversations where people say that pollution is bad, especially in contrast with her prolonged love letter to snowmobiles. darkly enjoyed how much of her success could be attributed to people selflessly dedicating weeks of their time and use of their specialized tools and machinery for free. enjoyed various anecdotes about people dying or getting injured. felt frustrated by how little time she actually talks about living in and enjoying the wilderness compared to how much she talks about people and random historical fun facts. not sure i would recommend.

Perfection by vincenzo latronico (NYRB, 2025): originally published in italian in 2021, this is a short novel about two italian freelance graphic designers living in Berlin. it is mostly an empathetic critique of gentrifying eurohipsters, opening with a 4 page description of an immaculately inviting apartment rental (full of monstera plants & turntables) and ending with a similarly inviting bed and breakfast resort (natural wines, custom furniture), but the two protagonists are insecure, overworked, and embarrassed by their failure to enjoy having everything they want. i like the stylistic play of tense and aspect – early chapters are plotlessly in the imperfect (they would go here, they would do this) while the final chapter is in the future (they will do this, they will go here) – but didn't feel like it offered much beside the surface critique of cyclical hipsterdom, (already outdated) social media usage, and the role of gentrifying tech expats in hip cities. the characters are formless and vague by design – as stand ins for presumably any number of italian hipsters in berlin – but this makes it hard to root for them, or even hate them, which maybe is the point, although it ends up feeling as impersonal as the helvetica neau-tinged websites the protagonists make on their macbooks. as such it serves more of a svelte and hip, surface-level critique of something that doesn't really even matter enough to merit critique. 

All Fours by Miranda July (Penguin Randomhouse, 2024): I've read and enjoyed two of July's previous books and watched and enjoyed at least one of her movies before. this is a new autofictional novel about miranda july emotionally cheating on her husband (part 1) and then physically cheating on her husband (part 2) and then more or less dissolving her marriage to have a bunch of sloppy sex with people and cry to her husband when they dump her (part 3). i enjoyed aspects of july's eye for insightful, strange imagery, which i think are reflected in her films well, but found the story overall to be frustrating and uninteresting and the prose to be generically action-oriented and style-less. i had a hard time finding anything redeeming about the character of july and i don't really find her journey into perimenopausal lesbian sex particularly liberating. the character feels like a narcissistic, selfish black hole, which i think has the potential to be interesting, but you can tell the author supports and identifies as the character in such a way that there is no real takeaway or insightful commentary on this aspect of the plot, or really anything the book covers. the recurring panic flashbacks about a scary birthing story, in my read of it, reads as a manipulative motif to create a sense of empathy in the reader, and is hamfistedly breadcrumbed as a b-plot the entire book in a way that feels hopelessly "big press literary fiction". enjoyed the moments of gender-bending sex scene writing, e.g. when she describes masturbating as "jerking off", such that the end results reads almost identically to some bad erotica a 14 year old boy would write. enjoyed other random snippets of scenes or the occasional turn of phrase and, like i mentioned, intriguing physical imagery and description, like the spraypainted chair. disliked the imbalanced structure, with part 1 comprising half the whole book (slow, weariness-inducing), and part 4 only being like 5 pages (rushed, pointless-feeling). would not recommend.  

moth girl by calvin westra (expat press, 2025): have read and enjoyed westra's previous two novels. this one is told mostly via short paragraphs describing text message exchanges filled with patented westraesque references to strange circumstances/in-world-pop-culture via slow reveal (e.g. a breakfast skillet that can kill you, bird-operated fighting mech battles) and a john darnielle-style ominous horror subplot. enjoyed the narrative device of quoting and summarizing text messages, the humor of the characters, the setting (mostly in shittown colorado), the slow drip of the explanation of bewildering references, and the audacity of such a solid non-sequitur ending. quite liked the way the conversations via text message include a natural messiness for comedic effect - people talking past each other, getting confused, etc. felt like the first two sections got a little repetitive by the end, and i mostly enjoyed the metafictional third section for its narrative ambition/cleverness, but vaguely felt like it also sort of undermines/over-explains the intriguing narrative of the first two sections, and also frustratingly reframes the book as autofiction (albeit possibly not real autofiction) than something more progressive/experimental. felt like the typesetting included too much white space/large font, so the book is needlessly physically big, but i like the cover a lot. overall i think it's good, readable, compelling, and unique. would recommend.

 

rejection by tony tulathimutte (william morrow and company, 2024): never read anything by him prior to reading this, but got it due to it being a widely praised, alt-adjacent big press collection; the internet/press materials seem unclear whether this is a story collection or novel, but in any case i feel like it fails at either/both, so maybe it doesn't matter. it's composed mostly of long, 1st person diatribes by caricatures of contemporary life people, with strong emphasis on social media/internet shit, politics/culture war bullshit, and sexual/racial identity. my biggest complaint is that the stories/chapters never really surprise or delight: each starts as an obvious, mean-spirited caricature of some loser asshole and then just makes the same caricaturizing joke over and over again until it ends (albeit sometimes in a pointlessly slapstick way). as such there never feels like any narrative propulsion or reveal to any of the stories - most stories/chapters just protractedly bludgeon you with their 'comedic' thesis statement over and over again, often based on trying to ridicule some particular amalgam of contemporary stereotype (social justice warrior guy, lgbtq poly people, instagram addict chick, startup entrepreneur dude) and 'showing off' how much random internet-brained jargon and references he knows. i was having a hard time understanding why i didn't even feel compelled by the super long, absurd, fantastical description of a ridiculous, cartoonish porn video request, but i think it's because there's still so little development throughout, the same gag more or less repeated in slight variations for fifty pages with no character or plot development, reflection, or even interaction between characters. there's then a needlessly melodramatic and 'clever' mfa-workshop-style list poem about rejection, and some shoehorned in jokey nod toward metafiction (an invented internet conspiracy about timothy being the author of an in-fiction story) and then – jesus christ, really – a fake rejection letter about the book you're reading that, again, doesn't do anything novel after the first page, but goes on for some ungodly number of pages anyway, trying to preclude itself from serious criticism by self-consciously listing problems with the book you just read, as if trying to manipulate you into thinking it's better than it is. wouldn't recommend.

 

first snow on fuji by yasunari kawabata (1958): a collection of short stories. i don't really remember much about any of them in particular, aside from one of them actually being a vaguely incomprehensible play, but i remember liking them. very much standard kawabatan fair; i think one was about a flower that bloomed in a small divot in a large boulder. would recommend, i think.

 

beauty and sadness by yasunari kawabata (1964): a short-ish novel that continually surprised me in terms of the plot development but ends in a sort of silly way. it's about a novelist visiting kyoto and thinking about getting in touch with a beautiful female artist he knows from his past. enjoyed the slow reveal about their relationship, him being kind of a huge piece of shit with an idiot son, the rumination on autofiction, the lesbian subplot, and the denouement hamfistedly using a man-made lakeside resort as a symbol for japan's modernization. never really knew what would happen next in both a literary and thriller-y way. not sure it stands out in terms of his nature writing or interpersonal drama writing, so unsure i would recommend relative to his other novels.

 

breath by james nestor (2020): a nonfiction book about breathing, with emphasis on the negative health effects of mouth breathing and consuming processed foods (lack of time/effort spent chewing). explores a mix of contemporary scientific study, first-hand experimentation (starts with him plugging his nose completely so he can solely mouth-breathe for two weeks, then does the reverse for two weeks), and historical curios (catacombs, nepalese yoga, mewing, psychedelics, a theory about reciting the rosary as breathing exercise). found it mostly engaging, curious, non-preachy, and informative, and have been personally inspired by it to tape my mouth at night (and use a magnetic nostril expander), which seems to have cured the severe sleep apnea i unexpectedly developed in the spring (highly recommend doing this). would have enjoyed more advice on practical application of some of the discussed exercises and practices, but i think - in a good way - it's designed not to be be a "this is how you fix your life" self-help books but instead a series of open-ended questions based on a number of interesting observations. found it readable, albeit occasionally confusingly written, with rushed endings in most chapters. would recommend. 

 

american lit by jennifer greidus (querelle press, 2025): jenn is my friend (mark kozelek voice) and editor/founder of x-ray lit. this is a novel about a gay teenage boy who navigates blossoming high school romance, marijuana/sex addiction (due to the trauma of his father dying before the novel starts), and trying to seduce his american literature teacher. i found it competently-written, readable, moody, horny, well-paced, unpredictable (positive), and engaging, despite realizing that it is more or less definitionally a young adult romance book with a light dennis cooperian turn in the second half. found it interesting that all the (living) adults are absent, stupid, manipulative, and/or evil, while all the teenagers are friendly, supportive, and kind. laughed imagining a school where 99% of the boys are gay, due to the frequency with which the protagonist mentions having hooked up with every male background character. enjoyed the very fat, heart-of-gold drug dealer character who constantly rubs and pats his big fact belly. would have enjoyed more about tennis (and the associated trips to play tennis) and less about the teacher. would recommend.

 

fresh, green life by sebastian castillo (soft skull, 2025): sebastian is my friend (mark kozelek voice), but even is he wasn't, i would still have enjoyed this book. it's a short novel about a silly, self-serious adjunct professor who goes on a brief, ill-fated adventure to the philadelphian suburbs. enjoyed the voice/style and the misanthropic demeanor of the idiot protagonist and the slow, comedic reveal of certain plot points/context. really enjoyed and laughed at lot at the scene with the old advisor, which i think is the highlight of the book. didn't care for the longish, detached/oblique description of social media websites. enjoyed the various small and comedic scenes, like seeing people watch tv through a front window and the lecture. found it overall a strange, clever, funny, and absurd book that takes many refreshing structural and narrative risks, despite the way most reviewers seem bent on discussing it just in terms of culture war bullshit and inceldom/masculinity. would recommend.

 

spring tides by jacques poulin (archipelago press, originally published 1986): a short, kind of funny, kind of cozy novel about an autistic-seeming comic strip translator whose boss sends him to a deserted quebecan island, but then the island slowly fills up with silly characters (and two cats). in this sense it's vaguely kafkaesque, but much more calm, silly, and romantic. i enjoyed its simplicity, mood and tone, humor, elements of nature writing, and the brief digressions about translation. enjoyed the different characters, such as the lazy/shitty novelist, the slight ambiguity in interpersonal action and relationships, and the general arc of the story. includes some full reprints of shitty old newspaper comic strips, like the one about a viking, which i've never seen before in a novel. enjoyed a lot and asked for another one of his other books-in-translation for my birthday. would recommend.

 

autumn rounds by jacques poulin (archipelago press, originally published 2002): a short, cute, wistful, meloncholic, and romantic novel about a near-elderly driver of a bookmobile touring northern quebec and falling in love with another near-elderly woman. enjoyed the emphasis on nature writing, the simple day-to-day minutia, the amount of coffee and hot chocolate consumed, the emphasis on people loving books and music, the inclusion of short nonsequitur-seeming scenes, and the straightforward, earnest progression of the story. would recommend. ordered two more poulin novels after finishing these two.

 

self-romancing by l scully (dopamine, 2025): i have done several readings with L and enjoy their poetry in a general way. this is a collection of affirmations culled from their instagram, as i understand it, and presented as a poetry collection. as such the poems are blocks of text, with each sentence often starting with "i will" or "i don't", etc., but, instead of what you'd expect from typical affirmations, these leverage enough oblique references to specific, personal events, feelings, and situations so as to function like a form of list poetry. enjoyed the structure/format and effect of the affirmation format to do poetry in general, the juxtaposition of certain ideas and topics, the humor, the refrain of certain elements, and the moments when they break the format to continue a thought across multiple sentences.

 

alone with other people by gabby bess (civil coping mechanisms, 2013): a collection of short prose and poetry by someone i see mentioned re: Alt Lit a lot but who i've never read. enjoyed unironically the alt litness of it, such as the Tao Lin-y "ingesting caffeine"-erisms and minimalist affectation, didn't enjoy the pretentious chapter headers and subheaders, from both content and design perspectives. enjoyed the stories more, where depressed 20 somethings with shitty jobs make droll observations about America and Love, although the poems offer some great moments of interpersonal insight and bleak wisdom. would have enjoyed two separate, fuller collections of each form. would recommend.

 

kill rudy johnson by rudy johnson (pig roast publishing, 2025): a collection of poetry (and some MS Paint art) lightly framed in a choose-your-own-adventure format paired with an intentionally-broken-seeming website accessible via QR codes. the poems are more or less all multipage pieces with internal narrative arcs, focusing on video games, mental illness, the military industrial complex, childhood, race, and self-loathing. enjoyed the incredibly bleak, dark humor present throughout, the free-associative connection of elements within each piece, the moments of unironic introspection/autobiography, and the over-the-top sci-fi-style conceits used by some of the poems. didn't enjoy the choose-your-own-adventure framing of the book as a whole, since the choices seemed jokey and the results arbitrary - also felt like i would end up in a loop sometimes, which was frustrating. didn't feel compelled by the interactive website element, which again seemed jokey and with arbitrary linkage between the particular book page/text/section and webpage (and probably not optimized for cell phone). didn't like the choice of font (plain times new roman) or cheap white paper (gotta go creme, baby); i have a personal beef with the proprietor of pig roast publishing and consider him beneath me in all ways, and thus relish in whatever petty means i have of dumping on him and his press. but i like rudy's poems. would recommend.

 

phallic symbols by cletus crow (pig roast publishing, 2024): a collection of mostly short poems revolving around penises, primarily from the lens of homosexuality. i like cletus and his poetry, and published some of these poems on the back patio website. the individual poems are frequently funny and intriguing, and have hints of both classic and contemporary influence, but it sometimes felt a little scattershot as a collection; felt like it would have benefited more from a narrative or stylistic through-line instead of just relying on the penis theme to make it cohere. unrelated to the text, the front cover seems riddled with jpeg artifacts (somehow) and the back cover is the laziest excuse for a back cover i've ever seen. as such one could argue that the pig roast design team should be executed and dumped in a pit before they are allowed to ruin any more nice books. but i like cletus's poems. would recommend.

 

bipolar cowboy by noah cicero (civil coping mechanisms, 2015): a collection of poetry that is very explicitly about a failed relationship with someone; includes a timeline of events (though few seem relevant to the text) as a sort of preface. really enjoyed it for its often bare, vulnerable, emotionally volatile style which emphasizes explicit events, memories, locations, and people, thought felt it sometimes dwells too much in self-pity and borders on obsession. enjoyed the structure/conceit of the book as a raw-emotion retrospective of a break-up without hiding behind shitty metaphor overall. i have always liked noah's unselfconscious approach to writing and this scratches the same itch as his other books. would recommend (there seems to be a new edition out now, from a different press).

 

 

 

 

brief book reviews

found myself accidentally only reading books by women early in the summer so decided to continue this theme and do some kind of "brat summer" but for literary fiction. it went well and i enjoyed it.

girls, visions and everything by sarah schulman (seal press): found this in a little free library and felt like it looked interesting. this is a 3rd-person, presumably autofictional novel about a 20-something jewish lesbian living in new york city in 1984. the protagonist is an acolyte of jack kerouac and frequently opines for an on the road style life in a way that made me laugh in how it contrasts with the general 'problematic' vibe people have about young male lovers of the 'ouac. the story is mainly a straightforward love story but full of rumination on and fear of settling down, which results in an interesting, bleak, comedic ending. but the majority of the story consists of little character sketches in her social circle - endearing drug dealers, avant garde actors, other writers - and detached discussion of gentrification, racism, and homophobia. felt surprised by how contemporary a lot of the political discourse felt (which speaks to how 'behind' the mainstream is) - she capitalizes the B in Black, she gets mad that her stories are rejected for describing characters as 'fat', she worries about the looming reelection of reagan, and so on. enjoyed the way she writes about the protagonist's burgeoning relationship throughout the book and the minor, engaging intimacies they share. felt confused at times by the number of characters with generic names who do and say similar things. felt like the scenes intended to show off the crazy artsiness of her social group were uninteresting in a predictable and embarrassing way, but there were only a few of these. overall very much enjoyed it and found myself feeling frequently impressed by some insightful, well-executed line, observation, or stylistic effect. would highly recommend.

earth angel by madeline cash (clash books): a collection of short stories. a couple read as relatively straightforward cultural commentary by way of near-future dystopia, but with an emphasis on character and relationships that i found enjoyable and engaging. enjoyed the more 'literary' nature of these stories compared to those in my first book (the two authors are friends, or something, as i understand it), with the higher level of ambiguity, detachment, and experimentation; the book's best stories imo are when there's room for ambiguity, strangeness, and comedy, like the story about hitting her sister's leg with a sledgehammer, or the longer, more 'normal literary fiction' stories about complicated characters navigating love. i also enjoyed the more minimal tone and style, reminiscent more of the traditional early tao lin-type alt lit which has always appealed to me. to continue comparing the two books in a minor way, i found it interesting that the first and last stories in my first book were the most engaging, but in earth angel, the opposite is true: the first story is a short, vague, more expressionistic vignette, and the last story is a boring, self-referential riff on autofiction. i think the book would have benefited from either drastically more or drastically less self-referentiality. as it is it feels a little less cohesive as a collection than it could have been, but overall would recommend. feeling optimistic about cash's future stories.

this should be written in the present tense by helle helle (soft skull): a short, bleak, scandanavian novel about a weird anxious person moving to a new small town and navigating various relationships. enjoyed the minimal style and emphasis on daily minutiae, clothing, and food, and the sparse background/context for the story. also enjoyed the emphasis on exploring femininity through consumption/shopping/image - i don't think i've ever read a book that explores the realistic avoidance behavior of just buying things as clearly as this, and this does it well and consistently, sometimes to comedic effect, sometimes to sad tragic effect. enjoyed the descriptions in general, emphasis on clothing/materials, awkward conversations, and detached nature of the narrator in contrast with her relationships with others. didn't like that the penultimate line is the title of the book, which, combined with the seemingly nonsequitur turn of the narrator getting into writing (presumably writing this book) and last-minute shift in style, made the ending disappointing. overall would highly recommend.

the beans of egypt, maine by carolyn chute: found this in a little free library somewhere and felt interested in it based on the title and description. a style and voice-heavy novel about the Bean family, a large, poverty-stricken, insane, fecund family living in a rural, shitty area of maine. greatly enjoyed the style and narrative quirks (such as words in ALL CAPS for youthful emphasis), the strong emphasis on dialect and setting (logging trucks, houses without electricity, etc), and strange, evocative, poetic imagery.  enjoyed the progression of characters from children to adults and the interesting, depressing inter-generational commentary this allows for. greatly enjoyed the overall bleak, fucked up-edness of the whole thing; often found myself alternately shaking my head/cringeing and laughing out loud. would highly recommend - possibly the best book i've read in a long time.

conversations with friends by sally rooney: a novel seemingly about a young woman in a major city sleeping with a married man; lost my copy somehow, unsure where it went, maybe read 30% of it. very much enjoyed the detached tone and the emphasis on the narrator describing and being aware of her own emotions and bodily movements, using phrasing that felt impressively concise, accurate, and evocative, but felt like the story overall was uninteresting and straightforward. would enjoy reading other books by her, maybe, or finding my copy of this book and finishing it.

the book of x by sarah rose etter (two dollar radio): read the first and last pages and felt thankful i didn't bother reading any of the other pages. there you go. that's a good snarky review. how does that make you feel

drive your plow over the bones of the dead by olga tokarczuk: technically a murder mystery with some elements of european small village life and long rants about astrology. feels "quirky" in the same way that the author sporting polish dreadlocks feels "quirky." didn't really keep my interest.

alphabetical diaries by sheila heti: a collection of excerpts from heti's personal diaries presented in alphabetical order, with each chapter corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. enjoyed reading the first two chapters and seeing the interesting juxtapositions, repetition, contradiction, and recurring characters, but didn't feel sustained enough interest to read the whole thing. felt vaguely disappointed in learning (i think via back cover synopsis or somewhere else in the book) that the collection was extensively edited and 'worked on' by the author instead of just being a raw alphabetized dump of her diary entries -- this, i feel, is antithetical to the project's whole concept as found art and further makes me feel disinterest in finishing the book.

end of brat summer (literary fiction edition)

dandelions by yasunari kawabata: a short, unfinished novel that was originally published serially in a magazine. mostly consists of a protracted dialogue between a woman and her soon-to-be son-in-law after they've committed the daughter/fiancée to an insane asylum. really enjoyed the unhinged and uncomfortable turns in the conversation, the subtle sexual tension between the two characters, and the way long flashbacks are unceremoniously woven into the story. enjoyed the classic kawabatan themes of talking about flowers, intergenerational tension, exploration of domesticity and sensuality, and people traveling to interesting areas in japan. unironically enjoyed the temporal inconsistencies (noted by the translator in a footnote) due to its unfinished state, felt like it could have been an intentionally surreal choice and be expanded upon. one of my top 4 kawabata novels, i think, along with snow country, wild geese, and thousand cranes.

follow the brush by tyler dempsey (self-released): a generally themeless, grab-bag collection of short stories and nonfiction. some stories are very 'experimental', silly, donald barthelmian pieces, some are very straight forward mini-essays, and some are standard 'serious' internet flash fiction fare. i think dempsey is best when he plays it straight and earnest, and i would enjoy, i think, a memoir in flash kind of collection from him. some of the zanier fiction stuff is fun but feels a little too undisciplined to really land for me. would have enjoyed the book more if it had a consistent theme or mood as opposed to being an eclectic mix of what he's done recently, but i think the project was borne out of him writing exclusively while on the toilet and then self-released, so it also makes sense for it to be kind of loose and playful instead of striving toward a larger stylistic statement; as far as i can tell dempsey has been exploring many different kinds of writing and releasing very different kinds of books instead of working toward solidifying a more specific voice, so i'd be interested in seeing him take on a more ambitious project that refines what he does well. overall i enjoyed it and support him in self-releasing it (and sending me a copy) and seemingly having fun making a book end-to-end. i would recommend, but you can't buy it anymore, so fuck you all, eat my shit and go to hell. just kidding. he'd probably send you a pdf if you asked. made myself laugh imagining including a line here talking shit about tex's typesetting of this book (i recommended tex to tyler).

the third realm by karl ove knausgaard: the third of what i think is a 5-book series about a sort of biblical apocalypse set in modern day. generally a big fan of his writing, and greatly enjoyed the previous books in this series. this book however is more or less a 'mirror image' of the first book, the morning star, in that it's basically the same chapters/stories but told from different perspectives. as such plotwise there is little overarching development until about halfway through the book, and i felt disinterested in the characters themselves to want to read the material i was already familiar with from their perspectives. found myself growing weary of the more expositional "i put coffee in my mug, slurped it down, and went out into the hall, closing the door behind me" style, likely due to the lack of newness in the story. also noticed more annoyingly redundant scenes of characters thinking something, then explaining that something to another character, then possibly explaining it yet again to another character, or something, which made random parts drag on needlessly. felt slightly embarrassed reading the passages describing a black metal concert and frustrated by the big plot 'reveal' feeling obvious early on then being very slowly dragged out. surprised by how many negative emotions i experienced while reading it relative to his other books, even the other books in this series. the second half picked up a little, i felt. curiously-constructed series.

the flowers of buffoonery by osamu dazai: i've read and enjoyed two of his other novels in translation. this one was just translated last year (apparently more have just been translated); this is my favorite of the three i've read so far. this is a very short novel about a guy who fails at a double suicide, but the text is maybe 50% asides by the author talking about how he feels like a hack. enjoyed the simple, clever plot, the small cast of entertaining characters, and the subversive style, and the ending a lot. excellent book. would highly recommend.

Skull Slime Tentacle Witch War by Rick Claypool (Anxiety Press): i have read and enjoyed two other novels by rick claypool and enjoyed them to a great degree despite what felt like straightforward prose and some needless emphasis on action sequences. i liked that they are inventive, psychedelic, and astoundingly bleak for sci-fi, a genre i read as a kid but have generally avoided as an adult. this is another action-packed sci-fi like the others, but it impressed me with its new and expert emphasis on style. i like its humor-leaden minimalism, repetition, fun use of ALL CAPS, and focus on mundanity/humanity/shittiness (despite being about mutants on the moon who puke knives and etc.) i also appreciated his commitment to absurdity despite its earnest preoccupations, and both are cranked up to an impressive, insane degree. a truly strange, endearing, phenomenal book that i recommend to everyone.

brief book reviews

i was in a bad place in many ways for a very long time, so hadn't been prioritizing reading or writing reviews, but i have read a few books since the fall. i also wrote some reviews that are supposed to come out in beyond the last estate, so i haven't included them here. you can add 3-4 books to this list, mentally, if you are trying to keep tabs on my reading habits.

 

holy cow by david duchovny (farrar, strauss, and giroux): a really stupid (derogatory), short novel by the guy from x-files. checked it out from the library partially because i liked the cover and partially because i was curious to see if it was any good. this is a brief, 'comedic' adventure story about a few farm animals trying to travel to different countries to escape being eaten (the cow wants to go to india, the pig to israel, the turkey to...turkey). full of bad farm puns, dated slang to make fun of teen girls (the cows say "amazeballs" at some point), and weird jewish stereotypes (although the most interesting scene is when the pig decides to get circumcised). feels comically "un-politically correct" in an old-fashioned, "hollywood humor" sort of way (e.g. unfunny, relies on tropes/stereotypes, generally mean-spirited, lazy). felt bothered by the internal logic inconsistencies (the cow doesn't know what tv is, calling tvs "box gods", but also makes frequent references to pop culture, including tv and movies) and by the core plot being a lazy, childlike premise (they don't eat cows in india so the cow wants to go to india). relies heavily on the post-modern affect of referencing the writing and editing of the novel for long passages and several barely-motivated decisions to move through the plot. not very good, but mercifully short and relatively snappy. thinking on it now, i'm unsure what the 'purpose' of a book like this is. i liked the ~4 drawings by natalya balnova a lot, though. wouldn't recommend.

woman world by aminder dhaliwal (drawn and quarterly): saw this on the staff recs shelf at the library and wanted to 'expand my horizons'. this is series of mostly disconnected 1-2 page comic strips set in a near future where there are no men. there is a slight subplot about a character pining after someone who is already in a relationship and a child being obsessed with a dvd copy of paul blart: mall cop. the humor felt blisteringly dated and bad (cf. paul blart jokes), and sometimes the attempt at a pun is so brutally stretched that the result is nearly nonsensical (e.g. the sperm bank is 'maxed out', meaning they are 'out of sperm from people named max'). also felt like the attempts at pro-trans messaging is weirdly crammed in/lipservicey and inconsistent with the world building/other aspects of the story (only female sexed babies are born, but also there are still trans women, but also the semen supply is limited from the reserves when men were still around). enjoyed making my wife read various pages to upset her with how bad it was. would not recommend.

house of hunger by uzodinma okehi (self-released): uzo manically messaged me about several things, including asking to trade books, and has since accused back patio press of being run by a racist cabal of nyc writers or something because he convinced himself some shitpost tweets were about him (many people have believed this to varying degrees with varying results); i feel like he enjoys being annoying and mischaracterizing what people say to him because of some sort of victim complex or to stoke engagement, which i don't respect. anyway, this is a very short narrative about a guy going to college in iowa city and feeling horny and alienated. the style is very heavy on comma-heavy list-like descriptions and flashes/snatches of action/conversation to propel the brief narrative, i think to intentionally evoke a sort of graphic novel/action movie flow, since the protagonist is an illustrator who wants to make an action movie. enjoyed the characters that are more fleshed out, like the movie auteur who gets addicted to mario 64, but most of the characters are zero dimensional, existing only to deliver one line of dialogue or entertain one single thought. the impression i got is that there is a lot of story in the author's head that didn't make it to the page, making the female characters confusingly interchangeable and more or less nonexistent, and some of the long impressionistic sketches of scenery/buildings unengaging/unclear. thought it was interesting that, while presumably autofiction, the most direct exploration of the racist manipulation of men by women in the text comes from a sort of monologue from a random south asian guy over the phone who we know nothing about, and not from the protagonist's own specific experience, which is stated as the fulcrum of the story despite only being alluded to a couple of times. enjoyed the culminating scene being a terrible blowjob. enjoyed the pointlessness of each chapter being titled "house of hunger". overall felt confusingly short and underdeveloped despite what i thought was an interesting/promising premise and setting. felt mixed on the style/presentation. felt impressed by the poor-quality printing, seemingly worse than print on demand books. slightly curious to read his other, longer book, but not that curious. would recommend if you get it for a good deal; seemed fine. would not recommend interacting with him on twitter.

diaries of an oxygen thief by anonymous (simon and schuster): bought this used because i had read a publisher's weekly article about how it was an 'indie hit,' which actually ascribed its success to 1) the author receiving 1,000 free copies of the book from his friend, 2) the author being a marketing executive able to quit his job to focus on selling the book in new york city for over a year, and 3) the alluring cover; it went on to sell 10s of thousands of copies and was rereleased by simon and schuster. this is a short, repetitive, annoying, protracted, frustrating novel about a rich loser guy who breaks women's hearts and then later has his heart broken, kind of, barely, not really, by a woman. lots of space is spent hyping up its own narrative and culminating event which was, ultimately, severely underwhelming, uninteresting, and confusingly written; the 'comeuppance' the book hinges on appears to be that the woman tells her friend that the protagonist has a small penis in a public setting, and they try to photograph him looking upset in a bar. overall a very poorly balanced, poorly edited, poorly executed story. severely would not recommend. 

the lone ranger and tonto fist fight in heaven by sherman alexie: a collection of interlinked short stories that sort of read like a novel in that they mostly follow the same characters (though sometimes from different perspectives) through different stages in life. focused on family, native american identity, alcoholism, and life on the reservation vs. the big city. really enjoyed it in general - the dialogue, the setting, the themes, and characters - but laughed at some of the heavy handed similes/metaphors used to evoke/emphasis native americanness, e.g. things like (i'm making this up) "his smile felt like a promise, an occupation, a treaty." enjoyed the moments where absurd irreality is simply stated for interesting effect (e.g. (making this up) "i slept for 400 years"), not quite in a dramatic metaphorical way, but a sort of wry, defeated way. enjoyed the emphasis on basketball as a throughline. felt mixed emotions about how some of the stories are written with "MFA"-style attempts at different voices/affects, and disliked when the prose veered into the more melodramatic framing. checked wikipedia and saw that the screenplay for the movie smoke signals, which i like, was very, very, very loosely based on the characters in this collection (and written by alexie). would recommend both the book and the movie.

molly by blake butler (archway editions): never read/enjoyed much by blake aside from his chicken essay in the pets anthology; i remember starting 300,000,000 and feeling disinterested in the writing style. this is a memoir about his first wife, the poet molly brodak (i have only read a few poems by her), committing suicide, and as such has been the topic of prolonged literary discourse. in terms of the actual content, i found it to read overall moderately self-aggrandizing and thoroughly, consistently critical of/angry toward molly in an off-putting way. felt like it reads like a slow mystery thriller about an evil, lying wife who sucks and you should hate. i think it's fine he wrote the book, and support him in writing it however he wants (enjoyed the inclusion of the suicide note and other details), but i was surprised by how aggressively anti-molly it reads almost from the beginning and how uncharitable it is toward her despite frequently proclaiming love and admiration for her (or her work ethic, mainly). this is expecially contrasted with how quick he is to only performatively slap himself of the wrist when it comes to examining his end of their relationship. for example, his own infidelity early on is addressed in a short passage or two and he emphasizes that he had already resolved to be better before he was found out, and he glibly claims to not have a gambling problem despite admitting to frequently screaming and breaking things in a blind rage whenever he loses a bet, etc. meanwhile he spends a long time slowly examining the minutiae of any given time molly possibly lied to him and what it says about how terrible of a person she was. it feels difficult to critique these aspects of the book without the criticism being viewed as a moral or personal judgement but i do feel like it affects the narrative and structure of the book in a negative way; considered that if this were a novel written entirely about made-up people, it would feel like a very obvious attempt at writing an unreliable narrator. my most common complaint about autoficition(/memoir) is a lack of introspective honesty despite in-text and/or metatextual claims otherwise, which i feel applies here as well. however, my real complaint is that the book is simply written in a style i don't really find engaging, and that it is very poorly edited, in terms of its often redundant and awkward syntax and also in terms of plain copy editing, e.g. the same exact needlessly complex multi-line simile is copy and pasted, verbatim, twice, in the span of a page and half (including in the 2nd edition). i relatedly found the dependence on showy but generally meaningless and clunky similes distracting, and found myself becoming overly critical of the writing the more i encountered them, e.g. getting mad that he describes a feeling as if he had a "black stone in [his] stomach" and dismissively asking myself "what does the color of the stone impart to this feeling? what if it was a blue stone?" i was also surprised by the number of awkwardly artless cliches and expressions (such as 'spill the beans'), primarily because of how overwrought the similes and vocabulary tend to be otherwise (blake rarely "says" anything but frequently "iterates" things, etc.; my father in law read most of the book while visiting and once frustratedly moaned "i get it, you got a degree in writing!"); i found the resulting style confusing, frustrating, and unstimulating. i also want to note that i have found people oppose my off-handed critiques of the writing/editing by saying they would consider it understandably difficult to write, let alone line edit, a long, personal narrative of loss like this, ie. "imagine being put in the position of giving editorial feedback on someone's description of finding their wife's corpse, of course you wouldn't suggest a lot of changes." i understand this feeling but also don't think it holds any merit if we're trying to make good, worthy books, which i otherwise assume blake would argue in favor of. ultimately i would classify the book as the kind that depends on its premise/idea more than its execution, which is a kind of book i don't like much, and so the book's draw for me simply becomes one of bleak voyeurism. wouldn't recommend.

my first book by honor levy (penguin randomhouse): i vaguely remember reading (and not being gripped by) her story on tyrant, and have mostly only been aware of her due to discourse about/reviews of this book and its emphasis on 'terminally online' internet culture; wanted to read the book to see what all the hubbub was about (assumed it would be better than people were saying). aside from the first and last stories, however, which i assume is intentionally sequenced to bookend with the aforementioned 'online' effect, the book felt relatively straightforward, grounded in mostly irl scenes or relatively older internet experiences (e.g. 'internet girl' discusses using the internet in like 2004), and only casually references memes and contemporary pop culture/internet stuff -- instagram is mentioned a couple times, a story talks about a lot of people being 'cancelled,' caitlyn jenner is mentioned a few times, there's a brief critical discussion of facetuning, etc. i disliked how the bulk of the stories read like mid 2010s personal essays (note: on 1storypod, honor mentions being very excited when she learned about 'creative nonfiction', so this makes sense), with nearly every story relying on quoting a definition of some term from a website or providing a shallow survey of a topic in a very plain, essayistic format that i do not care for; i angrily laughed out loud when reading some later story that actually reads like a near-future scifi short story for 3 pages before it launches into a multipage history of an aztec god to reaffirm the fragmented essay conceit. the other stories mostly revolve around a few recurring (i assume) autobiographical themes (e.g. problematic college boys who go to greece and are mean to/impregnate college girls) or exploring the aforementioned ideas related to using the internet but with a very straightforward criticality (which helps reinforce the feeling of a personal essay in almost every story) instead of exploring any social/moral/narrative ambiguity or subverting much of anything style- or narrative-wise; i found little of the internet stuff to be truly insightful or accomplish much, aside from the first story (a sort of twitter snapshot slang-forward fairytale) and the final story, "pillow girls", which i consider a great, well-executed piece of ambiguous and subversive social commentary (despite illogically taking place in a dystopian near future yet, also, somehow, the year 2016)). i also didn't like the reliance on frequent slam poetry-style free word association, like (making this up) "we broke up, we broke down, we broke everything we touched", which to me feels lazy and melodramatic. enjoyed the stories that seem to go off on a narrative tangent by the end and never resolve the main plot and would have enjoyed more of this (could be billed as a comment on something something attention span and the internet). felt confused by the sequencing and composition of the collection in general. felt vaguely convinced that this would have become a NYT bestseller if it had been edited/promoted as a collection of experimental-ish essays instead of stories. would recommend.

the exploding tree by kevin richard white (anxiety press): kevin is a curmodgeony short story writer from philly who used to host the no edit podcast, which i  enjoyed (and was on 1-2 times). these stories seem to be deeply in the vein of carver/cheever/yates/other 'serious'/bleak mid-century writers; most of the stories revolve around alcoholism and domestic problems, often consisting almost entirely of stilted dialogue between two unhappy characters (usually a romantic couple). enjoyed some of the exotically dark/bleak ideas, such as the story about the amputee and the one about the alcoholic parents driving to the horse races, but some of the others kind of blur together. the dialogue-heavy presentation made it sometimes difficult to understand the context for a given scene and i found some of the phrasing hard to parse due to their reliance on (i assume) certain vocal inflection or emphasis that isn't easily included in a written story. enjoyed the articulation of some of the bleak observations/ideas that the characters entertain but didn't enjoy some of the prose itself, which leans toward a little dramatic and serious, which makes sense given the subject matter, but feels like it's trying to emulate a style more than innovate. enjoyed some brief passages for their sense of dark whimsy, which was unexpected and promising. noted that all of these stories have been published online before, which i don't like, but can't really articulate why. also disliked that the cover image seems ai-generated. would recommend.

the satanic verses by salman rushdie: listened to an interview with rushdie on a podcast and he said something about how the fatwah against him due to this book has unfairly given it an air of austerity and religious seriousness despite being whimsical and humorous, so i checked it out from the library. a very long, wordy, post-modern, whimsical novel about two indian men who survive a plane crash and one sort of becomes a devil and the other an angel, or something (i don't really know the full plot, having only read 1/5 of the book). definitely a 'humorous' book with an emphasis on post-modern narrative play, mixed up vocabulary/register, pop culture/political references/satire, and extensive wordplay. felt unable to really get into it due to how long and self-indulgent everything is, with every scene/dialogue spanning pages and pages. i did laugh out loud at one joke, but otherwise felt like it was trying too hard to be clever and witty. felt like it seems 'good' in its execution and is probably worth finishing, but i didn't have the stamina for it. would recommend.

septology by jon fosse: have read and enjoyed several books by fosse before and started a ~15 person book club online to read this book. i think maybe 6 people finished it very quickly, 6 people didn't read a single page, and 3 people gave up toward the end (i am one of the 3). enjoyed the book club twitter groupchat while it was active but felt disappointed in myself for not being a better host or being able to finish the book (my life had fallen apart, generally, at this time). generally enjoyed the book but found the (infamous, intentional) repetition to eventually wear me down. enjoyed the moments where he is able to capture/create a sense of anxiety about something going wrong without things going wrong (usually). enjoyed the descriptions of foods and various humorous scenes (the dog shitting, the guys talking about delirium tremens, the name of the cafe). didn't enjoy some of the reliance on various 'traumas' to create tension. enjoyed some of the religious rambling and discussions of art. enjoyed reading it at the beginning knowing that it uses a very limited vocabulary -- felt excited every time a good word (like 'shit' or 'piss') was used. felt like i was able to enjoy it despite not finishing it in the way you can enjoy a piece of ambient music. would recommend.

awful people by scott mitchell may (death of print): traded books with scott based on reading praise of this book by people whose opinion i value. this is a novel told mostly in interview format about some kind of government agency investigating some kind of supernatural incident involving a woman in the center of some kind of love triangle thing. very reminiscent of david foster wallace with its conspiracy/government agency plot, intentionally mixed registers, rambling dialogue, and wordplay (lots of instances of characters breaking apart/riffing on common expressions). read about half of it and got distracted, didn't finish. not very excited by dfw-styled novels like this, but i understand their appeal when writing them. seemed fine if that's what you're looking for.

the rainbow by yasunari kawabata: have enjoyed several novels by kawabata. this one wasn't translated until last year for some reason. overall enjoyed it, similar in many regards to his other novels: lots of scenes of aristocratic people quietly suffering family drama, walking through fancy gardens, and talking about flowers. enjoyed the moments of soap opera-level dramatic reveals mixed in with insanely dark and cutting observations/meditations on death. enjoyed the 'light touch' he brings to certain themes and narrative arcs, where the 'point' is clear but not overwrought. felt like the structure/focus was a little inconsistent, in that the book sort of changes 'main characters' 2/3rds of the way in. felt like there was some needless, distracting repetition that i assume is related to the novel having been serialized originally - would have enjoyed a snappier, better-edited version. not my favorite by him but has some good moments. enjoyed that the first line is about the eponymous rainbow.

brief book reviews

lost my job and am struggling with a sense of guilt about writing book reviews instead of looking for jobs (have applied to ~150 jobs) but have still been spending time reading. here are some book reviews:

varamo by cesar aira: a small silly book about a hapless, neurotic bureaucrat stumbling through a bunch of satirical situations about south american history/politics. some of the gags were funny but overall it felt kinda whatever by the end, all the separate little scenes merging/connecting into the greater narrative in a sort of clever way i don't vibe with much. lots of emphasis on a sort of absurd idea taken to a logical extreme as a source of humor, e.g. lots of discussion of a car racing thing that involves trying to drive 35mph as consistently as possible the whole distance, but some of the stupider jokes were appealing, e.g. the extended scene of the guy trying to taxidermy a fish to make it play an instrument but realizing too late that fish don't have arms. would also probably be better (in terms of the satire/humor) if i cared/knew more about south american history. wouldn't recommend relative to his other books that i've read but overall seems fine.

the driftless area by tom drury: pretty solid drury (my 4th book by him) but with an unexpected supernatural/ghost story bent that i felt was, initially, distracting, but then later kind of fine. i think he shines when he writes about small town bullshit, weird little stories that contribute to a town's "lore," which is present and consistent here, but it feels like he or someone else felt that wasn't sufficient anymore so he needed to add a ghost or whatever. enjoyed the awkwardness of him making teenagers in 2005 talk about the decemberists. felt like the short 'action sequence' toward the end was confusingly written and executed, which distracted from the importance/flow of the scene, and which made me feel like it's probably really hard, or possibly pointless, to write action sequences like that. overall pretty short, felt mixed about the relatively simple ending. would enjoy reading a ~3,000 page my struggle-style series by him with no real plot.

fuccboi by sean thor conroe (little, brown): a relatively engaging autofictional novel recounting ~two years in the life of a guy trying to become a writer. enjoyed the emphasis on him engaging with literature (including a cute conversation with his mom about haruki murakami) and the overall theme of him learning (to be a better person) from selfless others - family, girlfriends, strangers, writers, etc. there's also the subplot about his confusing and stupid romantic relationships, which is frustrating in that while full of surface-level self-critique, never really gets examined clearly, in that he remains relatively coy and obfuscatory about what happens between him and these women in a guarded way; i specifically disliked the way he'd describe having sex as "being let in," which felt gross and weird and inauthentic. there's also the subplot about his crazy skin condition, which i thought was compelling and interesting and lead to the most exciting descriptions in the book - the scenes of his skin wetly sloughing off his plastic bag-taped-up feet, etc, have stayed with me. but also lead to some inconsistencies in the text which i think come from his self-described extensive editorial process, wherein he'll spend a long time talking about being more or less bedridden due to his skin problem, but then randomly he'll start aggressively playing basketball - i would wonder why his fucked up foot skin was no longer a problem during this section, for example. as such it could have been edited better, especially by the end, where some of the sequences are more like nonsequiturs and were unexpectedly presented out of temporal sequence. also disliked the sequencing/editing in that some passages required lengthy recapitulations or flashback-type scenes to communicate the point of what happens during the scenes, which added to my overall bored confusion about what happened when and with whom. also didn't like the refusal to use any names, especially for women, which resulted in any scene with 2+ people to be chaotically written with stuff like [i'm making this up] "ex-roomie bae's sister stepped up to ex-roomie bae and ex-roomie D. to talk about ex-roomie bae's hairdresser's ex-bae" kinda bullshit, which harmed the flow of the writing, which is ironic and frustrating in that a) the book is supposed to be about the good flow and b) the book is about how the book will have good flow. felt like the 'lowkey redpilled' angle that motivates the character in various scenes was underdeveloped and (i hate using this cliche) 'told and not shown', sort of hamfistedly inserted, i felt, to create tension in some scenes but otherwise rarely revisited. overall the book felt like sort of a frankenstein's monster of aimless indie lit-style musings/work life narrative (which i liked, and considered immersive and interesting) and big press-style politically/culturally-motivated action narrative (which felt overly self-satisfied and 'clever' relative to the rest of the narrative). this leads to a strange artificiality - for example, he's supposed to be a dumb meathead (he doesn't really know what a clitoris is, at one point, somehow), yet won't just straight up refer to sex as sex, hiding it behind weird euphemisms. it's like his story and character were forced through a committee to create a caricature of an entirely invented person, this coy oaf who loves joe rogan but hates colonialism, who wants to get into fights with men but just wants to snuggle and kiss with ladies. this aside, overall, i liked it. i imagine the giancarlo version, or even the pre-giancarlo version, would have been a more engaging book, or more aligned with my preferences. i also feel obligated to mention that i don't consider it a rip off of sam pink - i've read (and enjoyed) a lot of sam pink ripoffs and this is far from the most egregious example of one. and i felt like the weird invented singular slang wasn't too distracting, and resulted in some good funny moments, e.g. the off-cited 'railing a banana' and stuff like that, which unlike some of his affectations feels like something people say ironically but with good-natured intentions, e.g. today i asked my wife if she wanted "a hit of this gouda" which feels like normal millennial irony, or something. imagined now digressing deeply into a 6k word essay about ben folds.

the wolves of eternity by karl ove knausgaard: the 2nd book in a seemingly 5-part series about a biblical-style event occurring which results in people no longer dying and the boundaries between life and the afterlife dissipating. however, this book is mostly set prior to the events of the first book and focuses on a much smaller cast of characters, primarily just two, and is anchored by long, my struggle-style narratives based on daily minutiae. very much enjoyed the first major section, following a sort of aimless, unemployed 19 year old guy in 1986 who does a lot of cooking, playing soccer, and trying to hang out with his little brother/people in town. i like the meandering emphasis on scenery, food (e.g. getting mashed potatoes and a hot dog from the local chippie and looking at the mountains), place/culture. it's very un-plot-driven but also snappy, not ploddingly paced, which feels unique and like i'm being 'respected' as a reader. i liked but was overall less interested in the similarly-lengthed section following the russian woman character, which is more cerebral/philosophical in topic and style, focusing on her experiences in grad school and ruminations on biology, evolution, etc., but really enjoyed the extended passage about her time on a small island near finland. the book and story overall, like classic knausgaard, revolves languidly around the concept of death, but in i felt interesting and grounded ways. also found the underlying emphasis on interpersonal perception, subconscious/active judgement, boredom, and minor details of daily public interactions interesting, enlightening, and challenging. every character feels very real, normal, and unique, and i enjoyed what felt like difficult-to-execute moments of, for example, a sort of dumb character musing on some complex idea vs. a sort of smart character doing the same, with their distinct approaches and thought patterns. hard to articulate and probably obvious to other people, but i enjoyed inhabiting these characters more than most of the previous book's characters. felt mixed about the extended in-text essay in the middle, but enjoyed not knowing whether it was about a real person/topic or one invented for the book, and enjoyed the discussion giving some kind of alternative context to the larger narrative arc of the series. overall enjoyed the book in spite of some of the imbalance in structure (two very long passages and maybe 6 much shorter, relatively disconnected passages, some of which could have been left out with more or less no consequence), but also would have enjoyed just all 780 pages being about the 19 year old guy fucking around and not doing much.

heaven by mieko kawakami (europa editions): read and mostly enjoyed breasts and eggs by her this year. a relatively stylistically plain novel about two young teenagers in japan who were cruelly bullied but develop a friendship via passing notes. the overall story is a little slow and there were some passages i considered remarkably bad writing, surprisingly. grew to dislike it as i noticed it conforming to the same structure and pacing as her other book(s), with conversations consisting of people monologuing to one another, a character doing something weird/unexpected during the emotional denouement, and the constant references to the sky/scenery to augment/break up emotional/dramatic passages. enjoyed some small and narratively unexpected passages, including the character arc of the mother and a scene where the protagonist randomly jerks off and cums so much it won't fit in his hand. felt frustrated by some scene-level logical inconsistencies, such as a character describing how things look even though he can't see them, usually paired with cliches. enjoyed the first half more than the second. unsure i would recommend.

will we all still see each other afterward by tyler dempsey (anxiety press): traded some back patio books for this, having enjoyed an excerpt we published on back patio press this year. the story is brief and details the aftermath of a breakup and a short-lived fling. large sections of the book consist of (flirty) text message dialogue, including QR codes to spotify playlists. the style, format, and emphasis on accurate facial/body movement and spoken accents feels very sam pink influenced, replete with triple-spaced one-line paragraphs and refrains, e.g. "good for bidness". the scope (relationship drama, work drudgery, and medical problems) reminded me of fuccboi, and the inclusion of long text messages, graphic sex scenes, and coworker relationships reminded me of something gross. also includes what feels like another alt lit callback of including nonsequitor tweet-like lines, e.g. (i'm making this up) "an app that does everything for you while you lie in bed", which reminds me of guillaume morissette's new tab. would have enjoyed the book more if it were longer, with more development of the setting, park ranger/daycare jobs, secondary characters, and the dental surgery subplot, because i found all of these things relatively unique and interesting, but were used more as light set dressing for a couple key dramatic moments; overall found the book compelling but a little rushed-seeming. unrelated to the text, i felt frustrated by the size and formatting of the book - very small font with very wide outside margins and smallish inside margins - which made it kind of unpleasant to read. also features dempsey's consistent use of commas instead of dashes or ellipses to mark pauses in dialogue, which can take some getting used to, but when you're used to it, it reflects well on his ability to recreate natural speech.

the enigma of arrival by v. s. naipul: friend recommended me this because karl ove wrote about it in one of the struggles and he liked it. read maybe the first third-half then put it down. ok enough daily minutia stuff but felt like the beginning especially was poorly edited with repetitive phrasing/sequences, like maybe he had poorly stitched together separately-published-but-pverlapping passages. also slightly turned off by the pretentiousness (comparing himself to shakespeare, kind of, a few times) and emphasis on judging people over examining them uncritically. i liked the setting and time period, where the countryside quickly transforms from a more wild/historic area to a developed and fenced-off area. didn't finish. 

dog symphony by sam munson (new directions): picked up randomly at the library because it's on new directions, but weirdly not in translation (didn't realize they did any original english works). read the first ~20 pages but became disinterested. the measured, continental style felt needlessly artificial and the exciting mean/shittalky moments were too few to really save it. felt overall like fan fiction by someone who likes new direction works in translation. harsh but true! briefly googled this book/author to help justify being mean and discovered that this book has more goodreads ratings, but fewer reviews, than my story collection. didn't finish.

chapbooks

six-legged spider by coleman bomar (gob pile press): short collection of haiku, generally about the cultural/masculine friction of being gay in the south. felt most excited by the more blunt pieces (like one line just being "dead dead dead dead dead") and less excited about the more 'poetic' pieces, but overall enjoyed it and would recommend. felt cool and different without being pretentious.

parade by hiromi kawakami (soft skull): checked this out from the library alongside another book by mieko kawakami, because the two were next to each other on the shelf and i briefly thought they were the same author. i remember this coming out but not knowing at the time that it's really small, like 6"x4" (postcard sized) and maybe 80 pages, with very little text per page - the text is maybe 3k words total and features a lot of cute little (unrelated?) full-page drawings. a short story within shorter story, wherein the narrator describes a time at school when most kids had creatures from japanese folklore follow them around, maybe as a sort of allegory for puberty, or something. the story is in the context of the narrator and a sensei of some kind having lunch and dozing - enjoyed the strange, kind of rude dynamic between the two. the afterword notes it's sort of like a deleted scene or bonus riff on the characters from a novel of hers i haven't read, so i imagine its short length and lack of narrative arc is due to this. strange to frame it as a standalone novel. glad i checked it out from the library instead of buying it new; snarkily classifying it as a chapbook here on my blog.

14 poems by tao lin: purchased from someone in the UK via instagram. focused on reverie/references to specific moments without context and 'big ideas' from reading and idle thought. feel like every poem contains at least 3 relatively profound and interesting observations/statements, found myself quoting various lines out loud to my wife. i like this era of tao lin poems and would enjoy reading a lot more.

minor league all american dance club by ben saff (toho publishing): tweeted about wanting to trade books with people and ben replied, sending me this. consists of short poems with varied topics and styles. was hoping there would be more of a throughline about alligators living in the human world and doing cool stuff, based on the cover and the first poem - there are maybe only 4 of these poems but they are my favorite, including one about alligators playing baseball with a human skull. would enjoy a book or chapbook exploring just this kind of imagery more. felt less compelled by the other poems with a more florid tone, but enjoyed some of the imagery, e.g. a guy in a suit made of suction cups.

i can't see it now by alex youngman (alien buddha): tweeted about wanting to trade books with people and alex replied, sending me this and the second sex in exchange for some back patio books. i read and enjoyed alex's previous chapbook about bugs; this is a more serious/less irreverent collection of what i would call earnest, transcendental poetry. emphasis on quiet reveries and moments in/about nature - trees, rivers, birds, etc. enjoyed both the emphasis on nature writing as well as, stylistically, the brief moments of casual, informal phrasing, e.g. "that bird was so loud", in contrast to the more intentional, formal descriptions and phrasing. tex's blurb mentions thoreau, which i felt was fitting

death egg

in early september, i published Death Egg by nathaniel duggan via back patio press. this was the first back patio book since sad sad boy, which i published in March 2022.

background and editing

i had maintained a loose email correspondence with nathaniel starting sometime in 2020, i think based on him sending me a poem for the quaranzine. we talked about our lives and poetry and indie lit drama for a while after this. i had given him editorial feedback on various poems during this time and encouraged him, i think, to make a collection.

looking at my email, on february 3rd, i gave him editorial feedback including "these are just great. great poems", a suggestion to change the name to death egg, and general praise such as "i really really find the thematic preoccupations and imagery compelling. the deployment of sci-fi intergalactic, video game, deep see, apocalypse imagery all mesh well, different hues of a perfect purplish blue. i think it's perfectly executed - the video games are not reddity wining or pop culture genuflection but are used as something to comment, i feel, on the larger cultural fuckedness, the integration of escapism into the despair pondering that feels subtle, effective, and non-clichely contemporary -- video games as the 'television of today,' etc. i can't say praise right, ever, i sound insane saying nice things, but i hope this makes sense[...]thank you for letting me read it. whoever publishes it won't do it justice." he did not pay me for these edits; i have also edited various versions of his short story collection manuscript, which i think a bigger publisher should put out, because it's very good.

after back patio fell apart in 2021/2022, and after i published some books unrelated to back patio, i felt more confidence in restarting the press mostly without cavin, and asked nathaniel to publish his book. before this i had suggested another limited-run book like orz, but then felt like trying something new/normal. cavin gave me his blessing to reopen the press in may. i reached out to duggan in june, i think, over twitter DM, to confirm my interest in publishing it as a back patio book.

once he agreed, i edited the book some more over maybe 3 rounds of edits, and then later 2+ minor edit rounds to clean up formatting and stuff. most of my edits were about sequencing, minor punctuation changes, a couple additional lines (partly through talking over DM and misremembering things from the poems, which he thought were good changes/ideas). some edits include "what about an exclamation point at the end of the first line?" and "recommend replacing last period with ‘, etc.’"

i only later learned that death egg is also the name of a spaceship or something from sonic the hedgehog. i do not know if this was intentional when he wrote the poem/lines about a death egg. i think it's a good, evocative, hard-to-say title that made the book feel unique. the sonic connection is mostly funny, and resulted in some good riffing online.

design

i did the inside layout and cover design. i used ms word and ms powerpoint. we iterated on the cover, manically, for like two weeks, before settling on the general cover we ended up with. stylistic themes to drive this work included bear parade/classic alt lit minimalism and anime. for a while there was a cracked egg on the cover, but this was eventually scrapped.

he wanted it to be yellow because he liked gg rolland's book on clash, which is mostly yellow. some versions accidentally used the same pink and yellow and font as my band's cassette three trucks, which was funny, but unacceptable to me, but, frustratingly for nathaniel, one of his favorite versions.

early on he had shared with me an image of an anime title card that he liked the look of. this is what influenced the final typography on the cover - the mix of japanese and the severe all caps serif font. another source of inspiration was the dvd cover for FLCL, with its bold yellow and black. i did not have the budget or interest to get a custom-drawn manga-style cover. i remember struggling with recreating manga-style 'beam attacks' using a free picture of a satellite with powerpoint for a while, then giving up.

the drawing on the final cover is from the public domain, i think from some lost in space comic, or something. i used similar pictures for interstitial art in the quaranzines. i get most of my free graphics from publicdomainvectors.org

the japanese on the cover is mostly from google translate, but some of it is the direct translation used from sonic the hedgehog for 'death egg.' i don't know much about japanese. an early ARC version we sent out had a 'pretend bad translation' synopsis that was embarassing, and which i thought i didn't include in the ARCs i had printed. the arcs were, additionally, very poor quality paper-wise and had a lot of formatting errors, and made me laugh a lot.

we decided on sans serif fonts on the inside to evoke classic alt lit aesthetics, because of the lineage of the poems/style and our shared appreciation for early alt lit. these aren't alt lit poems in any classic sense but have many shared reference points. i imagine someone more engaging than me could write up a better analysis.

i think the final product looks good and am proud of how it turned out.

promotion - ARCS/blurbs

i asked duggan for a list of potential blurbers and reached out to folks on his behalf. everyone had kind things to say, even if they didn't end up blurbing in time for the final printing. i enjoyed corresponding with people that i think/assume dislike me to this end. maggie nelson responded, unexpectedly, and gave me an address to send a book to, but clarified she didn't really do any blurbs anymore.

i also sent ARCs/final copies to people who do podcasts/reviews, but so far we never heard from anyone about these, although one person posted a picture of the book on twitter. i included a small press release, which i confided to josh sherman as "embarassing to write," not because of the book, but because of the vapid futility of writing press releases for small press books. i sent an ARC to the heavy feather review, but it was returned to me because the editors moved/changed. i also sent a free copy of the book to ~3 authors who i just thought would enjoy it, without expectation of promotion.

Promotion - local media

i reached out to several local maine venues for promotion, including duggan's alma mater university creative writing program to organize a reading. i was ignored by all of these leads except one daily maine-based blog, who requested a physical copy. one of the venues, a local tv channel, automatically blocked my email address.

Promotion - piss

the back patio twitter account reached out to several internet sex workers asking to send them books to pee on, as a promotional video effort, but this corresponded to the same week, or possibly day, that twitter made DMing people a bluecheck option only by default, so it's possible no one ever got the messages. this also includes dasha, a podcaster i don't know anything about. but we didn't ask her to pee on any books; we just asked if she'd like a copy, because she had posted about the same anime that inspired the cover design.

we also tweeted asking for folks to pee on the book if we sent an extra copy. i had forgotten who replied to this/was unsure how serious anyone was and only sent out one extra book, to coleman bomar, who peed on it and posted a video. later someone else from tennessee ordered a book and asked for some of coleman's pee, which i do not have access to. i am unsure why pee was a central theme for the book promotion, but it worked out well, i think, and made me laugh a lot.

Promotion - preorder bundles

we also offered a bundle of a shirt, magnet, and book. the shirt making has been a shitty, still unresolved saga, wherein i tried to have them made locally to support local businesses and save money on shipping. but i ended up working with perhaps the shittiest shirt printer in the state, who would ignore my emails, ghost me, forget to email me, argue with me, etc. currently the shirts are in a store location i cannot access until friday, and they will likely not be open on friday. i regret not going through the florida-based printer we used for the liver mush shirts, who were professional and easy to work with. i opted to send the books/magnets separately from the shirts, losing ~$70 on redundant shipping costs. i ordered only 40 shirts after announcing 50 bundles, based on the total sales (~14), and will keep one for myself and send one to nathaniel. the shirts will ultimately, i feel, be a net loss, and i will probably eventually offer them for sale at cost just to not have them in my closet anymore.

Promotion - misc.

i posted links to a few excerpts from other magazines from the book via the back patio account. none of these resulted in the original publisher promoting the book or, seemingly, liking the posts. we later made tweets tagging magazines that hadn't published the poems, saying they published them, in an attempt to trick the publication into promoting the book for free and/or make people laugh. only one publication liked their corresponding tweet, but didn't retweet it.

i made a new website for back patio to collate the press/reviews materials and book descriptions. i then reached out to kevin at powell's who asked for just such a list, so i secured a small order of back patio books, including five copies of death egg, resulting in a small section of shelf space dedicated to back patio books. the tweet about this got high engagement. i should reach out to more cool stores.

i placed a quarter-page ad for the press, including a highlight for death egg, in maggot brain magazine, a print magazine published by third man records and edited by the guy who wrote the 33 1/3 book about loveless, which should be out around now. this cost me $187. i would be surprised if it ends up paying off, but it seemed like a fun thing to do, and i like the magazine a lot (i also get a free copy of this issue, apparently). some of the other ads are for punk/diy record labels based on bandcamp, which is cool, in my opinion.

josh sherman invited me and nathaniel, and other people, to read at his chapbook release reading as part of misery loves company, which we hijacked, to comedic effect, i think, to promote death egg. nathaniel did a good job reading and i posted the order page a few times when people were talking about josh's book, which made me laugh. we got ~3 book sales during the reading. we've also scheduled a back patio mlc reading for 9/29, which will include, nathaniel, cav, dan, graham, kurt, tj, and troy.

i regret not reaching out to more internet and irl places early on for reviews/interviews. however, this time period corresponded to a family crisis which resulted in me taking time off of work and not doing anything much aside from acting in 'crisis mode' for my family for over a month. i spent ~1-2 hours/week during this time working on death egg. to this end i feel guilt about not being able to do more for the book/nathaniel.

finally, we opened the magazine for web subs just prior to announcing the book. this was a partly cynical/manipulative move to drive up engagement for the press and potentially sell more books. however, i am unsure this resulted in any sales we wouldn't have otherwise gotten. but overall it was good for everyone. we all enjoyed reading and editing the pieces we got and we have published, and will continue to publish, some really cool writing. i'm glad we reopened and we will probably do it again in january. i owe kurt a lot for taking on a lot of this effort when my life fell apart in august.

sales - preorders

we announced preorders sometime in august and i shipped the preorder books around september 7th. there were 62 preorders at the time, 12 of which were for tshirt + book bundles. we have since sold a few more of each.

the free promotional stickers for orders included random mixes of black and white stickers ("i love shitty poetry", "alternative literature", "death egg cover", and "back patio press logo"), glitter stickers ("back patio in barbie font on a gun"), holographic stickers (misc. "cyberwriter" series, featuring sebastian, derek, bram, and nathaniel), and a bold yellow (but small) "ask me about the death egg" sticker. i used sticker guy for the black and white stickers and sticker mule for the fancier ones. sticker guy is very cheap but slow, and their website is difficult to navigate. sticker mule can be expensive, but offers interesting products and has frequent sales.

only 3 of the death egg orders included other books/items: one person bought my book bundle, one person bought liver mush, and one person bought good at drugs.

i sent free back patio books to ~10 random orders, and gave free art or bonus stickers to people i know/like from online. as far as i can tell this resulted in ~3 promotional twitter pictures and one goodreads review for non-death egg books.

around september 7th i sent nathaniel $301 in royalties.

sales - amazon

around when i started shipping books, i sent nathaniel all the raw book files and manically worked with him to set up the book on amazon kdp as a print and ebook. amazon kdp/ebook setup is a pain in the ass and required several different types of files and arbitrary changes. for the ebook, i had to manually add page breaks (instead of using the keyboard shortcut, for some reason) to get them to register. we set up the amazon book using his own account such that he'd by default receive all the amazon royalty payments. this approach was modeled after sebastian castillo's book SALMON and inspired by the fact that it's a huge pain in the as to do amazon royalties (especially after taking over for cavin - setting up a new bank account, etc etc). in exchange nathaniel gets a smaller royalty split on the books that i sell. since being put on amazon, we've sold 2 copies of the book through flat dog distro but seemingly many on amazon. i hope nathaniel considers the money aspect equitable.

the book peaked at #53 in the contemporary fiction (books) category on amazon, spurred on by duggan's manic promotional tweeting and "post weird twitter" networking. he had also purchased twitter blue in anticipation of the promotion cycle, which he claims de creased his post engagement, ironically.

nathaniel says he's sold 45 copies on amazon since we uploaded it, which is impressive, i feel.

sales - conclusion

so far we've sold a little over 100 books during the first few weeks and gave away ~10, which is, in my opinion. very good numbers for indie poetry that doesn't take institutional promotion tactics very seriously. incidentally, unrelated, i saw that clash had sold over 12,000 copies of some stupid looking horror novel during this time. i hope that people who may or may not be seething about the death egg hype cycle, its participants, and its aura of success consider this disparity when subtweeting/shittalking those involved.

i anticipate the book selling more copies over time, especially if we see continued press interest from local or online avenues, and natural interest in the book as people talk or post about it. it currently has 3 amazon reviews and 8 goodreads reviews.

thank you to everyone who has purchased the book.

brief book reviews

have been living through the worst period of my life and have been physically and mentally exhausted every day, but was able to finish reading some books:

everything like before by kjell askildsen (archipelago press): looked up books that had one the same norwegian literary prize that uncle kok's first book won and found this guy. unsure if this is the book that won, however. short story collection about sad norwegian people in complicated relationships. interested in its emphasis on older/elderly people. noticed a trend in sort of revealing that a given character was involved in killing someone toward the end of a story, but liked it as a conceit - exploring things like how people would, realistically, handle learning that someone they're starting to get to know is actually a convicted murderer. also enjoyed the 'classic lit fic' stories about couples in doomed/bad relationships, being passive-aggressive with one another, feeling sorry for themselves, etc., but with less self-importance or pity, maybe. also like the norwegian-style emphasis on stilted/awkward conversation, people saying things strangely/self-consciously, etc. noticed that several of the stories are more or less riffs on the same exact idea, e.g. 3+ stories about different couples going on vacation in greece and suffering infidelity problems. enjoyed most the stories where people sort of accidentally do/say really shitty things and struggle to communicate. would recommend, interested in reading more by him.

hunts in dreams by tom drury: read after enjoying the black brook. this one is much shorter and takes place over a long weekend, basically, through four alternative POVs but within each POV extends to follow some other people in their orbit. enjoyed more than the black brook. enjoyed the general vibe, flow, setting, and characters. nothing really terrible or dramatic happens. everyone seems more or less normal and relatable in spite of their unique neuroses. enjoyed the early 2000s, rural midwest setting, sort of like the end of the small town world. people wander into each other, take their time doing stuff, go out into nature, watch tv. enjoyed its joy williamsian quirkiness without the joy williamsian drama. found myself looking forward to reading it and inhabiting its world when i wasn't reading it.

the end of vandalism by tom drury: turns out this is his debut and technically involves most of the characters from hunts in dreams, but is readable out of sequence. less concise and polished than his later books but i still liked it a lot, especially the meandering slowness of the various character arcs and random scenes, the extended nature/home writing passages, and the various little jokes such as introducing the high school health teacher as someone who infamously confused a whole class of 9th graders by describing the penis, during intercourse, as "hard and crusty." cried briefly on the train during the unexpected stillbirth scene. would highly recommend tom drury, based on having read and enjoyed three of his books; lent it to my mother because it's set in iowa, and she later returned it to me while grimacing, noting she had only read a little bit of it and hated it.

nightwood by djunba barnes: bought at a used book sale because of it being described as a contemporary/modern feeling lesbian love story from the 30s. not a big fan of the style, but laughed a lot at the absurdity of the first several chapters focusing entirely on "the jewish moral character" and some loser dude, with no women or lesbian sex anywhere. skipped around and still didn't like the prose, gave up.

replacement by tor ulven (dalkey archive): had this on the shelf for a while. it's currently the only ulven novel translated into english, and comes with a big afterword by stig saeterbakken, who is an author i like a lot. it's a sort of fragmentary narrative that unceremoniously moves between different, sometimes vaguely overlapping, characters/perspectives, and shifts from third to second person early on, then back again at the end. the style emphasizes mundane lists and prolonged meditations on physical descriptions of scenes or objects, such as how the light shines through a curtained window for ~3 pages at a time, but which never feels boring or uninteresting. as such there isn't really an overarching plot, but threads between sections are alluded to, and the individual narratives are almost all separately very compelling -- enjoyed thinking of how the various sections could have been shuffled in any order and probably result in a just as compelling book, which i typically would consider kind of lame, but i think the strength of the writing here sets it apart. especially enjoyed the confidence to move perspectives without having to have some kind of third act reveal or clever framework to define/explain it. enjoyed the details and specifics of most individual character arcs, the varying levels of standard norwegian litfic personal bleakness, and the times when an image or idea is referenced across different arcs. would recommend. hoping more of his work is translated sometime soon.

sunflower by tex gresham (spaceboy books): a large book, physically, that evokes david foster wallace in both its physical largeness and writing. stylewise, it leverages chapter-by-chapter shifts in perspective/character to disorientingly describe a conspiracy involving film, aliens, murder, and nutritional supplements set in the near future. includes a lot of things i associate with david foster wallace and other postmodernists like pynchon: it is vaguely sci-fi adjacent (set in the near future to allow for fantastical/satirical cultural changes, as a form of social and pop cultural commentary), long dialogues between people with arcane passions, silly names, people with quirky/irreal character habits/traits (a guy with two ears on the side of his head, a woman who wears long read gloves to cover horrific scars, a fucked up dwarf kinda guy, a guy without a tongue, etc), and people starting sentences with variations of "and but so." in spite of this (or because of it) i generally enjoyed it, felt curious about how the plot would resolve, and considered the settings and scenes both interesting and vividly described. i felt like the jokes/ideas based on its near-future setting were a mixed bag -- there's mention of Chairman Musk and SpaceX, 'the obama assassination,' an earthquake having physically split apart california, some sort of concentration campification of fat camps, ad drones, and lots of vaping. there's also -- because it's tex -- a lot of references to film, which i mostly didn't get or care about, but never felt like were pivotal to generally enjoying the book. unlike wallace i felt like the tangents into things outside tex's purview were under-researched and less immersive when they touch on things a reader may be more familiar with -- in my case it was the bullshit jargon used to talk about programing and machine learning, so i assume this may be the case for other things. my understanding is that wallace was able to (afford to, may be key here, by way of major press advances) fully research the complex scientific/mathematical/fiduciary/literary/philosophical concepts that made the arcane digressions/obsessions in his books famous and compelling, whereas tex instead usually brushes over this with some wonky jargon and allusions to move the plot forward. also unlike wallace (or specifically infinite jest), the chapters are shorter, so the changes in perspective feel more frequent and jarring, vs. the way that infinite jest will spend a good deal of page count immersing you in the new perspective/setting/character before making oblique references to the rest of the work to connect things. here it is more condensed -- while it's a long book, i felt like it probably could/should have been longer and really explore the space and setting of everything, especially since the writing itself is good, an effective blend of moving plot and description, engaging action, interesting characters, etc.; I basically didn't think that the emphasis on quickly alluding to the overarching conspiracy plot and action sequences was required to keep me interested chapter by chapter. but maybe this is also due to shifts in literary norms, or editorial advice to sell more copies, or a meta-commentary on pop culture, or tex's love of schlocky film, or something. anyway, i'm feeling like it's unfair to knock the book by contrasting it with books by david foster wallace, but it also feels inevitable -- writing a book so deeply in conversation with another work like this will invariably force it to be scrutinized in terms of where it innovates or distinguishes itself (or doesn't). but i think it's a good book and scratches similar itches without trying to hard to seem clever, which to me is a positive. made it halfway through then lost interest, possibly due to not having read it fast enough to retain the plot/characters in my head. would recommend/have recommended to others.

memoirs of a polar bear by yoko tawada: have enjoyed other books by tawada. this one is about a polar bear who can talk and write and who writes a memoir. not a big fan of the whimsical style or constant necessity of emphasizing that the narrator is a polar bear interacting with the world, which is sort of the entire conceit. not super compelling plot or stylewise. probably won't finish.

popul vuh: bought based on a tweet i saw saying it's crazy and cool, and it is. unsure if it's the effect of the translation but i found a lot of interesting effects in the way it's told, with the frequent deployment of "just" and "only" and "right there," this sort of mix of immediacy and flippancy, combined with the strange pacing and various other details, such as the names (trash master, pus master, etc) and seemingly nonsensical things presented without comment, such as a "spherical knife" and the way in which various people are "defeated." enjoyed the odd logic in things like a guy's random ability to to transform into an eagle, a jaguar, and "a pool of blood, just a pool of blood on the ground" being framed as proof of his "genius." liked the first half, about the creation myths and the tricksters, more than the second half, which emphasizes lineages and important people. would recommend, enjoyed reading passages out loud to close friends.