this is a special expanded edition of my book reviews in which i review things that aren't quite books alongside books i've read, plus some bonus tracks (reviews of books i didn't finish and don't plan on finishing)
The Yellow Forklift, Notes on My Coworker Hank, My Mind is Not a Billboard, and Ketchup by Sam Pink (self-released): dr. pink had recently focused on some smaller, non-book-lengthed affairs of prose and poetry, and i worte most of this review before ketchup came out, so i thought i'd lump it all together. the yellow forklift is a hand-stapled (but 'professionally designed') 'zine' that features one story; notes is a single printed page with 9-point font mailed directly to customers in an envelope; and my mind is a 'professionally printed and designed' poetry chapbook released by Art We Are (they've put out various pink ephemera, such as his art book, i think, and some prints/shirts/etc). all three are, for the pinkman, pretty standard - the yellow forklift is a natural extension of his short story style, and could have come right out of the ice cream man or an earlier collection - it covers the foibles and characters inherent to some shitty menial job (delivering jugs of water), and to me the highlight was Gregorio's character. like with most of sam's stories it's pretty short - the 'book' is like a 5 minute read, maybe, but looks very nice. notes on my coworker hank is a little different in terms of formatting, anchored by a bulleted list of things about this guy hank. seems like a fun one-off goof that probably wouldn't make sense to include as-is in a collection. update: as pink has been re-releasing his old books with new covers and typesetting, he's included hank and forklift in i guess what is becoming a catch-all story collection from 2010-present which seems kind of strange but also fine, i think. anyway, it's funny, unique, and heartwarming in the typical sam pink way - a difficult-to-master balance of writing about some random dude with both humor and compassion. my mind is not a billboard is simply a very short collection of classic pink poems - i read it, enjoyed it, but can't remember anything specific about it. ketchup is good, although i can't imagine it'll go down as a pink classic like rontel or witch piss - it's more book-lengthed, although i think shorter than any of his other novels, and doesn't have many iconic characters or laugh out loud bits. i read it over a couple of days. it's good in the way his books are good and differs from his older books in some interesting, neutral ways -- notably, to me, there's more internal struggling with his 'say yes' persona, more internal conflict about liking/caring about the weird mundane bullshit the people he interacts with care about, and a higher tone of disdain for them (seems related), for example detachedly describing someone playing pokemon go, not using the name of the game to connote disinterest/superiority in/to pop culture. what's good, imo, is that, having spent a lot of time in michigan, the characters seem real and their interests/speech is familiar, which is what one should expect with sam pink's work. was hoping it would end with the main character getting killed in a sword fight in the park, kind of like "the stag" from ice cream man, but the ending as is is fine, something he does sometimes, a slow existential imaginative 'zooming out'. i liked the duck a lot as a recurring character, and the picture of the duck in the back. a few places made me laugh out loud but i can't recall which specific scenes or character names. felt curious about the behind-the-scenes aspect of the book originally being sold to soft skull and then, i guess, pulled for self-publication. i imagine he figured he could make more money from it using amazon KDP, and, i speculate here, didn't want to pad it out in length. the trade off has resulted in the noticeable inclusion of typos. felt interested in how the guy from kingshot press seems to have volunteered to design/typeset this and the recent re-releases, i'm assuming for free(?) -- they look good, definitely needed after the last versions were mostly pdf rips from the lazy fascist and house of vlad versions, but i'm feeling unmotivated to buy them currently - they would be my third set of sam pink's early/small press books.
a bunch of little zines and pamphlets by jerome spencer (public zoo press, self-released): jerome interviewed cavin and i for popscure about back patio press. we had a good conversation and discussed sharing addresses to mail each other books. i sent jerome 50 barn poems and some art, and he later sent me an envelope full of these little hand-made zine things. some are the very small 'single sheet cut in the middle and folded' style zine, some are hand-stapled a-few-8x11s-folded-in-half-and-stapled. the cover art and design is engaging and striking, and i like how they all look, basically. my favorites are a little poem about giving blueberries to a bird and the short story 'veruca', about a guy driving to see his ex-wife and discovering some kind of sinister doppelganger situation - a good mix, i think, of gritty slice-of-life with some mysterious/horror vibes without leaning too hard in either direction. would enjoy a book by jerome.
wait til you see me dance by deb olin unferth (graywolf): this
was recommended/sent to me by tao lin, who describes it as one of his
favorite story collections. the stories are mostly very short - noticed
several have appeared in places like wigleaf, the esquire flash fiction
thing, etc. Noticed a trend in (main) characters being mostly unlikeable
and rude, sometimes in a mix of kafka strangeness and bernhardian
madness/shittalk to humorous effect (like one where the main character
inexplicably shittalks some magicians, calling them "bozos"), but also
there's generally a sense of 'severity' or seriousness and a sense i
can't really articulate well of maybe trying to be seen as clever or
thoughtful for its own sake via listing off alternatives/possibility/questions, not
for the sake of the story being told - sometimes in a deflating way (the
aforementioned magicians story ending with the 'magic' being how
language can allow us to imagine impossible things, i think), sometimes
in a tedious way (one story that feels like a writing exercise based on
oblique strategy cards, although i liked one small section from this a lot), sometimes in a melodramatic way (longer story
about a guy shooting a kid). lots of stories about relationships with
problems and being an adjunct creative writing professor. i think i
liked the story about the turtles, the one about the couple captured by a
revolutionary in the jungle, and some of the very short ones toward the
end, where things are allowed to be strange and evocative in their
shortness, the most. i liked the one that's a sort of post-modern take
on a dirty joke, but it is also an example of this emphasis on
cleverness in the text that i didn't connect with much. the vibe i get
is that these are subversive but only in the context of establishment
mfa literary fiction or, like, the kind of stuff you read on the
jellyfish review and wigleaf, for the most part, where people seem
really into the idea of 'flash fiction' as a form instead of a length. coming off as overly negative in this review. i liked it, feeling curious to read more by her.
in our time by ernest hemingway - i read a bunch of hemingway in high school and early college, and enjoyed it. last winter thought it'd be fun to get some of his books to see how they hold up, now, as an adult, and because i remember liking his scenery, snippets of european life, and sports and leisure from the early 1900s. so it's that level of escapism that i sought from this story collection, which includes several Nick Adams stories and some other random stories. in this sense i feel like it's just what i wanted - stories about fishing, skiing, getting drunk with a friend, walking around european towns, etc. In fact I was surprised most by one story simply being about two 20-something (maybe?) guys going skiing, eating apple strudel, and feeling sad that they have to go to school or whatever after - this feels like something someone would make fun of, now, for being too simple and earnest (heh), especially in the context of hemigway's masculine whatever whatever whatever. basically, reading them now as an adult, knowing more about hemingway and what he's known for, etc., i felt surprised by a lot of the humor, tenderness, and sense of nostalgia inherent to the stories themselves. there's definitely a theme of things already being shittier than they used to be along the value system he employs in these stories - a relationship falling apart on a beach surrounded by second-growth timber, childhood adventures and irresponsibility, washed-up boxers slumming around, and so on. this is confirmed by what i remember about parts of the sun also rises and death in the afternoon, e.g. him talking about bullfighting already sucking by 1920 or whatever. i also feel like, at least in these early stories, his style is less minimal and concise as he's credited with, and he actually has a lot of complex constructions, flights of fancy, and weird jokes. the emphasis on war stories - specifically the interstitial vignettes about war - didn't interest me and i typically skipped them, although some are pretty funny in a very dark way. some of the pieces read a little too melodramatic and some feel a little too simple to really resonate with me. felt interested in this being his first collection. being involved/interested in contemporary publishing means, i think, i'm more used to thinking of story collections as releases centered in time, while for older authors like hemingway, you most often encounter their work in large comprehensive collections, separated from the publishing cycle and sense of time.
bonus tracks: books i gave up on reading because i didn't really like them
the cult in my garage by duncan birmingham (maudlin house): mallory sent this too me in what felt like an overly-forward request for me to read and interview duncan and pitch to a selection of magazines. i told her i wouldn't interview him or pitch it to magazines but i might read it and review it on my blog, and she sent it. duncan is a comedy tv writer and the stories read like it. he also writes about comedy writers. some of the attempts at humor were comically bad and already felt super dated, like in the first story, where a character says "amazeballs" and says that patrick stewart "fucks" - these lines are obviously satirical, meant to make fun of millennial women, or something, but in its lazy topicality made me feel embarrassed for him. i had a really hard time wanting to read more of the book after this story, so i skipped around. the stories generally felt "normal," some interesting characters facing some kind of unexpected thing, usually with a kind of serious/somber turn toward the end, eg the title story, where a guy starts a cult in this woman's garage and she decides to join the cult, and the first story i think ends with someone getting stabbed, etc. I got a lot of television show plot vibes from it, like a sort of zaniness mixed with twists in contemporary settings. One story about comedy writers is like a character sketch of an old guy who feels threatened by young people and their new sense of humor. i dunno i personally couldn't give less of a shit about ruminations on generational divides but it seems popular for some reason, and lots of the humor strikes me as topical caricature - aging frat bros, woke zoomers, wine moms, that kinda shit. feeling a low level sense of dread about comedy tv people putting out uninteresting books, which seems to be happening with a few presses.
what is the what by dave eggers: found this for a buck at a garage sale. hadn't read it before, but i think it's like his first book after AHWoSG. felt weird about it because it's written from the point of view of an african refugee living in america, so i couldn't shake this sense of like, all of it being kinda racist in a way that would prevent it from being published today. some of the prose is gripping but it definitely slogs and i couldn't shake the weirdness of him writing this character for a whole book, the early conflict of him being robbed by Black americans, thinking about race and heritage and stuff. getting the vibe that people praised it for being a famous author giving visibility to the story of african refugees. felt unsure whether the framing it was more post-modern stuff or real - just looked it up, apparently it was actually a collaboration with this real guy. strange book. it's also very slow, the main plot interstitched with like endless, repetitive tragedy porn about the guy seeing people killed by lions in africa and going on refugee marches and stuff. enjoyed learning that several colleges required incoming freshman classes read it 2007-2009. put it down after maybe 50 pages.
the brothers by frederick barthelme: have enjoyed almost all of his books i've read, but felt like this one was starting to get a little redundant in topic. while reading it, i felt confused/surprised by the introduction of the character and romance from his book painted desert, and then i looked it up and discovered this book came first, and painted desert is kind of like a sequel, based on the same characters. i felt my motivation to finish it dry up during the introduction of their romance and the repetition of ideas/plot points. the prose is good, as it usually is for barthelme - i probably would have enjoyed both books more if i read them in order. felt confused by the lack of marketing/information about this relationship between the two books.
