Aug 02, 2010 04:23am
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson turned out to be a highly entertaining comedy in the dry, erudite British manner about a sociopathic mass murderer. The juxtaposition of such a depraved protagonist and the wit and humor with which he and his story are presented was different from anything I'd encountered in fiction before. Johnson pulls the trick off winningly and once again I thank Stuart Ross for directing my attention to another first rate book.
Aug 8, 2010 04:24am
Reading Stuart Ross's Hey, Crumbling Balcony! Poems New and Selected was so much fun I deliberately limited my intake to just a little bit every day to make it last. With a sampling of his output from 1978-2003 this is a real compendium of the wide variety of methods and subject matter Ross had chosen over the course of his career to that point and I, for one, find those choices, mixing absurdity with depth of feeling and accessible language, to be exactly and satisfyingly right. These poems stimulate with their highly creative wordplay, whimsical flights of fancy and wit while at the same time not shying away from grappling with personal issues of sorrow and regret.
A terrific book then by a writer whose forthcoming publications (a novel has been announced for 2011!) I'll always eagerly seek out.
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