Wednesday, October 21, 2020

brief book reviews

here are the three most recent books i've finished reading.

After Denver by Big Bruiser Dope Boy (11:11 press): i liked BBDB's first book(s) on clash, which i bought based on a tweet by troy james weaver. after reading that book, i interviewed BBDB for vol. 1 brooklyn. i've had a few stilted conversations with BBDB on twitter, mostly for/about the interview, and once when there was some drama about an editor giving his book 4/5 stars on goodreads. based on these poems, and on his tendency to express frustration about reviews of him/his work on twitter, and his emphasis on accuracy/clarity in writing (both in things he's published and in editing my interview with him), i feel proactively self-conscious about anything i say in this review, but which is good/fine, since it's public, and i should feel confident in what i write, or not write at all. this is a very small collection and i read it over two 'sessions'. 11 of the 16 pieces in this book have appeared online and i think i read maybe 8 of them before getting the book and so they were already familiar to me (i have strong but yet-unarticulated opinions, for no particularly good or defensible reason, about books consisting mostly of already-published material). this collection consists of something like 8 mid-length poems, 8 stories, and an epilogue (i don't have it with me and am probably getting the ratio wrong), with sectioning based on whether the piece takes place before, during, or after BBDB's time living in denver (the epilogue functions as a manifesto of sorts to emphasize/clarify that these are all autofictional, and that writing about oneself with little-to-no literary intervention should be pursued as the correct way, or a correct way, to write). each piece, aside from maybe one poem and the epilogue, revolve explicitly around what feel like formative, related-ish experiences from BBDB's life, with an emphasis on working at bars and a high school crush. since these are autofictional, there are thus some consistent themes and images throughout and emphasis his previous (two) major relationships, male authority, and being an autofictional writer. i like the poems the most, i think, in particular the longer narrative one about a customer who obsesses with/harasses him. some other poems are sort of post-modern vents of frustration about writing/publishing and being understood/interpreted, as i understand them. he tends to leverage a sort of angry absurdity, as i read it, a sort of "is this what you want, fucker?" attitude about 'tropes' and ideas in his writing, the (in)ability, for others to separate identity from art, i think. i can't pretend to understand the reality that leads to the complex emotions behind this, but i can empathize, i think, to some degree, maybe, or at least i hope i can, and the fact that i have found myself thinking about them a lot leads me to feel like he's effective at expressing them. the prose section mostly consists of "Slabs", a set of interlinked narratives about having a crush on a fellow football player in high school. in these pieces, he employs many complex and unexpectedly (to me) expressive sentences and a wide vocabulary (i think he refers to ass cheeks as 'orbs' at one point, which stuck out to me because of some twitter discourse i saw once about young adult and/or fan fiction overusing 'orbs' for 'eyes'), but i personally found some of this descriptive language distracting and dense. but i like that there is a dark sort of humor expressed via long, complex paragraph punctuated by a short punchline-type sentence, and these punchlines (for lack of a better term) include some of my favorite lines/imagery, such as a line that's more or less like "I spent most of the summer eating mint ice cream and masturbating" following a detailed description of the summer training for junior varsity players. in terms of sequencing, i felt curious about what seemed to me like a sort of imbalance, with one subsection including all the 'slab' stories plus one story about a married man having a bed wetting problem, the inclusion of which felt "inexplicable", both in terms of the flow of this section as well as the epilogue, which decries attempts at obfuscating ones life through literary invention - since i don't think BBDB is married, the artifice of the story stands out a lot to me. i felt similarly about the end of the Slab sequence, with what is a more or less straightforward, realistic narrative ending with an absurd, surreal, nonsequitur-seeming scene. i liked this ending, actually, and enjoyed thinking about it, and how to interpret it, but the epilogue then made it less fun, i think, to think about, and more confusing. after this section, i think the story about his dad is a highlight (with its earnestness and clarity in style), and the story about working at the bar in Minnesota is a lowlight (with how it underscores the main plot with a text messaged paragraph summarizing the plot), but both of which (alongside everything else), i think, contribute successfully to this sense of holistic self-examination; BBDB isn't trying to frame himself any one way in this collection of autofiction, but presents all of himself, from his maturity/strength to his immaturity/pettiness. in this sense i think it's a good collection, is successful at doing what i understand he wants it to do, and i wish it were longer.

Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell (Feminist Press): my wife read and recommended this to me, but i'm not sure where she came across it. it is relatively short but took me a while to read. it is a loose, mostly plotless narrative about a 30-something Black, gay man who grew up in Alabama but then moved to California. the plot mostly revolves around the protagonist attending to funerals/deaths of men in his life - father, lover, uncle, etc., with each physical location (house, church, apartment, store) serving as a launching point for a reverie from his past revolving around family or previous lovers. the prose isn't very consistent or exciting, and is often awkward in an amateurish, copyediting way (confusing pronoun reference, confusing pacing, etc.), sometimes leaving me confused as to 'when' a certain thing is happening relative to other things, but it is still readable due to the continual, sometimes surprising and exciting little flourishes, like some turns of phrases or unexpectedly clear/brutal punchlines. there is also a strong adherence to comedy, exaggeration, silliness, shock humor, etc., in a way that makes it feel like a lot of the stories are being told over some casual family gathering or meal. there is a big emphasis on tying homesexuality up with trauma/abuse, on a proposed circularity of young boys being abused and turning into men who abuse young boys, and on how families and communities can often 'absorb' these traumas, or something, toward a path of forgiveness, or framing personal experience within a larger context of societal experience, which i have feelings about, on its surface, but which i don't feel qualified to say anything about. i think the book mostly serves as an intense, in-your-face, intersectional exposure of a lot of personal and cultural experiences that are generally hidden from straight, white, affluent people, or as affirmation for those who experience similar lives. most of the (white, straight, male authored) writing i've read has, for example, a certain approach to religiousness/christianity, a sort of condemnation of and alienation from the church, whereas, in this book, the characters that you'd 'assume' would be most alienated from their church find a supportive community because of these absorbed traumas. i feel unqualified to really say anything about this book or its purpose, but i think it's a good book and i enjoyed reading it, especially because of a particular scene toward the very end, which i feel was exceptionally provocative and put the entirety of the novel up until then into a different light, for me, which instantly transformed the book, in my mind, from a particular kind of book into something else, in a good way.

Human Tetris by Vi Khi Nao & Ali Raz (11:11 Press): this arrived as a free bonus with my order of after denver. i think several people received this book as a free bonus, based on pictures i've seen posted on twitter, which made me think that it was an unpopular/uninteresting book that they had published too many copies of, or something, seeing as how it's the default free bonus book. it is a collaborative collection of ~100 'personal ads,' like from craigslist, but written to be poetic, provocative, etc. the formatting of the book is such that each piece is printed sideways, with the title printed normally, so the reading experience kind of sucks, and requires holding the book in a stupid way to accommodate reading the perpendicular lines (i read several without first reading the titles, because of this, but then realized the titles often function as part of the text). i think the square shape of the book helps when holding the book this way, since there is more bend/give, allowing you to sort of hold it fully sideways more easily. each ad revolves around 2-3 themes for riffing, e.g. "cinderella + food", with the posted locations seemingly unrelated to the text (but sometimes sporting a joke) and a pun-based social media handle. i felt like after reading ~10 of them, i 'got' the idea of the exercise and felt uninterested in continuing, but continued anyway, only to find that little changes from piece to piece. the general pattern is to mix some real romantic/sexual content with non-romantic/sexual content, often in mixed, sort of meaningless but evocative metaphors. for example, i'm making this one up: "me: a starving cyclist with a bad case of road rash. you: a horny recumbent bicycle from the junk heap. let me ride you while lying down and eating a cliff bar, then we can ride off a cliff together and splash around in my jock strap." it reminded me of momo's mcsweeney's piece about doing kung fu, which is unfair to these authors and all the probably thousands of people who have done these kinds of projects in the past, but i bring it up because it feels like something that'd be interesting on mcsweeneys, but not in a book. some of the reviews i looked through mention a strength in how it treats race, gender, and sexuality, but in general it felt like, aside from a couple satirical kind of riffs (esp. in the first poem), these aspects play very little role in the conceit of each ad -- it felt like the details of each piece could have (or may have?) been randomly chosen or procedurally generated. the book would probably be more interesting to someone who has used craigslist or other personal ad services and/or engaged extensively in online dating, which i haven't done, such that it functions as a sort of parody text, and so if you're familiar with the source text, it's probably more interesting/nostalgic/etc. I'm in a bad mood, i think. it's a fine book.



Thursday, October 15, 2020

unpublished manuscripts

i don't have a particularly clear vision for this blog post. recently i've been reading more unpublished manuscripts. socializing 'as a writer' (i do not identify as a 'writer', i think, but i am a writer, i guess), as i understand it - or maybe because of my inability to understand anything, and so i rely on this as a form of socializing because of not knowing what else do to - means, more or less, talking about 1) recent experiences with publishing (rejections, acceptances, places under consideration for submission), 2) thoughts on/recommendations of certain books or stories, 3) complimenting or otherwise reflecting on someone's recently published piece of writing, and 4) trading manuscripts of unpublished material.

i enjoy reading someone's manuscript of unpublished material but i'm unsure why (i'm unsure why i like/do anything). part of it may just be because it's what people do, and i have nothing else to do, and/or am following along with the existing social etiquette. i have had productive DMs and email exchanges with many writers now regarding the above topics. many of these correspondences also involve small talk, personal confession, and discussion of current events (both world news/politics and indie lit drama). i have come to appreciate the way in which social media (maybe just twitter, due to how it's constructed) obfuscates, or easily allows for the obfuscation of, personal information. most writers i see in my little sphere and end up engaging with in some way are, more or less, complete mysteries to me. i do not know what many of them actually look like or sound like, where they live or where they're from, what they do for work, what their education background is like, etc. I have had many preconceptions about writers in this weird small sphere challenged once these conversations begin. for example, i have learned about both "secret MFAs" and "community college dropping out", about which authors people have or have not read, and even personal and/or romantic relationships with other writers vaguely within the same community. i enjoy learning about these kinds of things and seeing the way that it colors my understanding of the community, the people involved, their aspirations, etc., both in terms of general curiosity as well as helping me better understand myself, my aspirations, etc. in general, i feel like more people than i expected have some sort of desire to 'make it' as a writer, e.g. get long-ish literary fiction into prestigious journals, acquire an agent, and publish a book on (an imprint of) a major book press.

i feel like i am more or less open in most of my correspondence and i worry that this comes off as self-centeredness, which is a fear i've harbored since ~4th grade when my dad pulled me aside to tell me that i often talked over my friends (since that experience i have, generally, in person, become more reserved, meek, and dispirited in most casual conversation in person), and so i make, generally, a concerted effort to reflect on what i've said and emphasize asking follow up questions and/or including compliments, etc., in these kinds of conversations with other people. i tend to write lengthy, neurotic emails in a tone that is much different from  my tone here in these blog posts, my tweets, and my fiction/poetry. i feel, to some extent, like a failure for so poorly constructing a thoroughly consistent 'persona' across modes of conversation, as compared to other people. i feel worried that this discrepancy in communication style makes communicating with me jarring or frustrating or disappointing. i am often also easily overwhelmed by maintaining personal correspondence, especially via text message. i am currently sitting on a backlog of something like 8 people i need/want to send emails to (and thus several manuscripts i want to give feedback on).

anyway, the point of this post is about reading unpublished manuscripts i've been sent as part of these kinds of correspondences. as a means of being a conscientious, 'reciprocal'-minded conversation partner, i make an effort to ask people i talk to about what they're working on and for them to send it to me. i also 'solicit' manuscripts from people in a non-publishing-oriented way, out of genuine curiosity/interest, if, for example, their website is outdated with broken links, and i'm curious to read more of their writing, or things like that, in situations where we don't otherwise have an ongoing unrelated conversation. i have received 3-4 'manuscripts' that way, and several more from the 'exchange' type of conversation. i'm not sure if i'm making sense. i have a worry, as someone involved with a small press, that these kinds of interactions 'carry some weight' re: publishing, which i dislike, since it usually comes from a general, genuine interest/curiosity and less an active plan on 'scouting manuscripts'. sometimes people don't send me anything, citing its unfinished nature or nonexistence, although sometimes those people eventually send me something a long time later, citing a delay due to various personal reasons. i think, in general, from my personal experience with expectation/hope/etc., that these kinds of manuscript exchanges/solicitations 'result' in something publishing-related, cf. a friend of a friend passing on a demo to a record label executive, and i expect this vague hope is usually mutual, but so far i don't think it has happened, aside from me expressing interest in publishing two books for back patio press. in general, i do not know how someone initiates this kind of exchange with asking someone to read my own work, but it seems to be a thing people do, and do successfully. i have considered reaching out to people to ask them how they initiate these kinds of conversations.

i struggle with giving useful/good/reasonable/acceptable feedback on manuscripts for a few reasons. one is that i have basically no experience with 'workshop etiquette' from e.g. BFA or MFA programs or paid independent workshops, which means that  people who have this experience will expect a certain approach to feedback that i am unfamiliar with, which has resulted in me overstepping boundaries or making careless assumptions about a variety of things, resulting in me to some degree hurting the other person and flailing uselessly in apology. related to this is how to separate or communicate personal preference from helpful/useful/objective feedback. for example, i would not feel comfortable trusting my opinion on genre fiction because i do not know what makes genre fiction 'good', and/or i feel some vague sense of disagreement with what makes it good. this applies to 'literary fiction' in a similar sense; i have more or less strong personal convictions (probably misguided and stupid) about literary fiction. i think everyone is the same. i do not know how to give good feedback. i am bumbling through it, generally. i think i have an arbitrary insistence on high standards and am bad at just saying nice things. for example, one time i was talking with a coworker about the pastries from coffee places near where we worked and she tried convincing me that a certain place had really good cheese danishes and i insisted that she was probably wrong. she eventually bought me one to 'convince me' and i maintained that it wasn't very good. relating this story to my wife, she informed me that my coworker was most likely trying to connect with me on a human level and i had been an aloof asshole and that i should have just lied and said it was a very good cheese danish and that we should go to that place for pastries with some frequency, as friends. because of my failures at being a good manuscript exchange partner, i am now overly self-flagellating re: the 'force' with which i suggest or describe anything. i'm trying to think of a word here but can only think of 'demure', which doesn't make any sense and isn't a verb.

as a result my lack of experience/familiarity with providing feedback on writing, i often spend some amount of time dipshitily asking for what kinds of feedback would be useful to the sender, although i rarely get a clear sense of expectations, which isn't anyone's fault, i think, aside from mine. in terms of what kind of feedback that i have found useful for a given story, aside from generic 'praise' which functions as encouragement and copyedits (for typos, etc), i have benefited from hearing interpretations of the 'purpose' of a piece and how the choices in style, tone, etc., affect the execution of that purpose; in general, if someone feels 'confident' in how to interpret a piece of my writing, it feels like a sort of failure on my part, operating from a vague desire to write ambiguously and combat the idea that any given piece of writing must have a discernible 'purpose/moral' aside from evoking an emotion or presenting some kind of unique imagery. i'm not sure what i'm trying to say - usually if an editor, as part of a 'tentative' acceptance for a literary journal, suggests rewriting the ending of my story, i feel like this is evidence that i should not change the ending, based on how i feel about the endings in most stories published by the relevant literary journal. i do feel, however, that feedback on a manuscript as a whole, in terms of sequencing, pacing, size, etc., is very useful and informative, maybe because i tend to have lots of strong opinions about these aspects of a manuscript/book, and so it would feel validating maybe to see other people think of a manuscript in terms of these things.

i'm trying to think of instances in which my feedback was taken into account for a published book. i sent cavin extensive copyedits and some sequencing/cutting/rewriting suggestions for his book I Could be Your Neighbor, Isn't that Horrifying?. the largest impact was recommending that he cut ~3 chapters/stories that developed a sort of subplot that i felt was distracting from my understanding of the purpose of the book. he seems to feel like this was a good idea. i gave some general copyedits for Time. Wow. and suggested that one story be rewritten based on my understanding of a scientific observation which neil had gotten backwards; someone i told this to noted that it was funny to bring up scientific accuracy in a collection of fantastical, calvino-esque interpretations of scientific observations, but it felt important to me for some reason, and neil simply cut the story as opposed to rewriting it. i recommended that tj larkey cut 2 short non-sequiturish chapters from his book Venice, by way of messaging Cavin, who messaged tj, which he agreed to do. i think i gave useful feedback on giacomo's Chainsaw Poems but i can't remember what that would be, i think maybe some suggestions on a couple specific poems as he was writing them and not so much during the compilation of the book. i think i recommended that mike cut or reorder certain poems in an early manuscript which was later reworked into gateway 2000. i have been giving dan some edits/suggestions for watertown from a 'cohesive manuscript' perspective as well. nick farriella claims to have reworked an unpublished collection of his i read a while ago and in retrospect thinks it benefited from things i said, or something to that effect, which felt good to hear.

i also have embarrassing experiences of misunderstanding 'how things work' and not realizing that people charge money for manuscript consultations even though, i think, they don't explicitly advertise that this is something they do for money. in this way i feel stupid for having 'lead someone on' for a sale without realizing it and feel like this kind of interaction has negatively impacted my relationship with people. i don't begrudge anyone who does this but in general i personally feel uncomfortable with paying/charging for manuscript consultation (feels hard to articulate a personal opinion without sounding judgemental of others, cf. being a vegetarian - i think it's ok to charge/pay for manuscript consultation if it's important/useful/good for you).

Monday, October 12, 2020

brief book reviews

here are the books i've most recently read. they're all four very short books, which is funny to me, and is why i am writing this review so shortly after the last review post. they are also all, more or less, "alt lit", which is also funny to me
 
Thank You by Zachary German (AFV Press): i don't know much about afv aside from that they were/are like the norwegian contingent of alt lit, working with david fishkind on Logue but publishing mostly norwegian language chapbooks (i don't speak norwegian and can't parse out much about the site). this zachary german book is available as a free pdf. zachary german (now going by Jocktober the Mesh) was a kind of dickhead wunderkid back in 2008-2009 with a novel on melville house and some stories on bear parade, ny tyrant, logue, muumuu house, etc. this (chap)book is short and, for me, is primarily interesting in that it is autofiction and came out/was written (presumably) after the events in megan boyle's Liveblog, in which german and boyle 'broke up' but continued to suffer through living together and having sex for a week or something. my sense in reading Thank You is that this alt lit hey day and its associated relationships (both friendly and romantic) had a permanent, negative impact on him, and these stories are, maybe, an attempt to understand his life through a sort of detached, objective lens, which was also basically what his novel was like, but in this one the drama is more intense (less focus on fashion and college parties, more focus on abortions/international travel/hard drugs). in terms of style, Thank You is kind of more jaded and doesn't shy away from complex sentences (there's a good tao lin x zachary german interview where he notes that he edited Eat When you Feel Sad to preclude any complex clauses and introspection/evaluation, so there are a lot of instances of the same sentences throughout, which i think is cool, personally). the stories here are written with a mixture of journalistic-style clarity (few adjectives, lack of authorial 'opinion') but which, most interestingly to me, includes clear statements of not remembering things right. so most stories focus on a few key details and are awkwardly paced and include things like "he was holding a bow, like a gift bow, because it was his birthday, or someone else's birthday - I don't remember which." so this clarity of detail and lack of clear context is, for me, the strength of the stories in terms of writing. it sounds wistful, rambling, but also curt and bleak. the content is mostly interesting as another entry in the convoluted interpersonal drama of the alt lit figures, with some 'updates' from his life pre/during/post Liveblog, although there are some intense and provocative moments divorced form this context, like the scene in which he tries to mercifully kill a cat that had been hit by a car. this is a quick read, probably like 30 minutes of dedicated reading. i would read a longer version of this collection i think. zachary german/jocktober the mesh is currently suffering with addiction and seems to solely shitpost about politics and rap on twitter now.

I am Dave_Hello by Dave (self-published on amazon): Dave appeared mysteriously on indie lit twitter maybe two months ago and seemed to be a divisive shitposter/reply guy with an annoyingly positive attitude. Big Bruiser Dope Boy called him something like a "boomer steve roggenbuck" because of Dave's over the top typos and bad social media etiquette. there has been some discussion about "who dave is" (i have been accused of being dave, but i cannot fathom having the energy to post as manically as he does). i bought this book on the recommendation of kkuurrtt and cavin, who posted favorably about it on twitter, and because it was only $4, which seemed worth wasting if it turned out to be stupid. this is a book of poetry, and even though it's something like 120 pages, the font is mostly very large (and some pages are blank), so it's a quick read. the poems have that "boomer roggenbuck" vibe, with lots of typos, changes in font, strange formatting, smiley faces, etc. (i should clarify that i have never read anything by roggenbuck, i don't think, but i feel aware of his brand involving stupid typos and helvetica font), and content-wise range from bad/funny puns on his name to some kind of provocative imagery (i like the one about a cardinal dying the most, i think). the word "dave" is on every page (instead of page numbers?) and is frequently used in the text of poems, or as a sign-off, or as a address, or even a title, maybe. i'd say something like 30% of the text is the word "dave", sometimes coming both before and after a poem. reading the book makes it function sort of as a punctuation or something, and i think, weirdly, was effective in somehow tempering the pacing of the book. cavin described the book as "goofy", i think primarily because of its square shape, but i think it's a good adjective to describe the entire text. the funniest part of the book is the recurring references to Josh (i assume josh sherman? if i had to guess, i'd say he's Dave) and other indie lit writers in a non-malicious (maybe) way. he calls BBDB something like "Big Brother Doper Boy", for example, and talks about getting Doak to follow him on twitter. i think it's very clear that the book is written with an attempt to sound naive or autistic or something but it feels clear to me that it was written to be funny, sometimes more clearly in places than others, so that is maybe a point of failure for the book, where it feels like it's trying to make the humor seem accidental when it feels pretty carefully constructed. for example, there are several pages dedicated to asking for 5/5 goodreads reviews, but as far as i can tell, the book is not on goodreads, and there's a section toward the end where he includes blank lines and asks you to write you own poems with some words of encouragement after them, except for the last one, where it says "not very good, too many clichés" or something like that, which i 'get' and thus feels like a miss. i felt kind of uncomfortable/worried reading it, as it feels like it can turn malicious/mean at any point, but doesn't seem to actually do that. in this sense it's a sort of compelling read.

Nervous Assface (Gangster Remix) by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Gene Morgan(?) (Bear Parade): i don't think i ever actually read the entirely of the original nervous assface, and i'm unsure how i accessed the pdf for this gangster remix (doesn't seem to be easily found on the site, but comes up when you google) but i started reading from my kindle at night sometimes and loaded it up with all the random pdfs i have of stuff like this. anyway, it's the same as nervous assface but the character names (and a few other details) are changed to make the book about Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, and other rappers. the way that it was modified makes it clear that it wasn't just a 'find and replace' thing since one character is replaced by the entire group of Bone Thugz n Harmony and so required further modification of the text to say stuff like "one of them at a banana", but this was done sort of halfway in places, so i enjoyed thinking about whoever made this edit doing so manually, imperfectly. this is short, basically a chapbook, with little resolution to the plot. this one is maybe better than his poetry book because it's less navel-gazey and puts the anxiety into third person characters. i like gorrell's writing style, i feel like he was/is a sort of underrated alt it figure between this and his muumuu house book. he has a good way of escalating things into absurdity without it feeling dumb or predictable, for example in the scene where snoop dogg starts hitting on someone (successfully) at the bar, and in creating a sense of tension and humor in juxtaposing short declarative sentences to create a series of short, bristly loose threads in the narrative, or something. a something i didn't like was how there isn't much of a plot, so starting each (more or less unrelated) chapter feels like it requires a sort of cold start in terms of getting motivated to continue reading, but each chapter is worth reading, in general. i wish he was still writing/publishing. i would read a full-length novel by him. googling around, there's an interview on bookslut where it says he had written an unpublished novella. i just emailed him about it. maybe he'll send it to me. i have not heard back from him after ~5 days.

Weed Monks by Chris Dankland (self-published pdf): i've read this before, or i read most of it then didn't finish it, but then just recently (re)read it start to finish. i know about chris dankland by way of xray lit (he is a founding editor and boyfriend/husband/partner of jenn) but he was also involved with alt lit gossip at some point and has stories on the internet. this is a short collection of aphoristic-type, religiously phrased narratives about a mystical, mysterious sect of more or less independently-operating "weed monks." also included are crude photoshops of religious (christian) imagery with weed paraphernalia. there is a self-insert of Dankland as the 'scribe' who records these stories onto the notes app of his phone. it sounds on its surface like a completely stupid book but it actually is, in my opinion, very good. most of the stories focus on a single, life-defining moment of a particular weed monk, in which they use marijuana to achieve a sort of enlightenment. some of these have stuck with me, for example, comparing our time and purpose on this earth to that of a cloud of weed smoke, something about making others high before we dissipate forever. i can't really articulate why i like this collection so much. i think it's just very thematically consistent, unique, and clever. the length of each piece works well in terms of pacing and keeping you entertained, and the conceit doesn't overstay its welcome. seeing the weed monks in different contexts and hearing different apocryphal stories across different types of topics was engaging, to me, and the tone is consistent, never over-the-top or lazy, and there is a heaviness, emphasis on life and death, time. i have recommended this collection to people and think more people should read it.