So Much to Look Forward To!

These are the not yet released (or re-released) books I'm most eagerly anticipating:

Reading Log

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.

Reading Log

July 25, 2010 04:27AM


I found James Tate's collection of prose poems Return to the City of Donkeys to be perfect for dipping into desultorily as during lulls at work or whenever a few spare minutes should arise over the course of the day. Nothing earthshakingly original or profound here, just quietly well crafted light entertainments in the mild to moderately absurdist manner spiced here and there with wit and whimsy. Nice stuff.


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July 28, 2010 01:12AM


With the new English translation of Bernhard's 1967 collection, Prose, I must admit to being somewhat disappointed with the unevenness of these early stories. The best ones are the first three and my favorite of all is the opening story, "Two Tutors", which has all the hallmarks of his mature style: the obsessed narrator on the edge of insanity, the comically exaggerated language, the inexplicably weird series of events, etc. "The Cap" and "Is It a Comedy? Is It a Tragedy?" also deliver much of the searing wit I look for in Bernhard. These qualities are either absent or lack the coherence to be very effective in the remaining four stories including the long (40pg.) "The Carpenter" which ends the book. So, worth reading, but primarily for those first three.

Naked Croquet by Doug Melnyk

Canadian author Doug Melnyk's Naked Croquet is another very fine example of narrative fragmentation which fascinatingly coheres into something like the form of a novel. There definitely seems to be a distinct group of writers from north of the border practicing this technique including Lance Blomgren, Geoffrey Brown and most notably, Ken Sparling. Dating back to 1987 as it does, Naked Croquet precedes the published work of these other writers and might possibly(?) have served as their inspiration. Melnyk's book is one of the best examples of the form I've encountered so far with its continually surprising weirdnesses and its subtle profundities. I'm amazed that it seems to still be in print from Turnstone Press. Thanks to Stuart Ross for recommending this one.

Reading Log

July 15, 2010 03:57am


The prose pieces collected in Alison Bundy's Duncecap are a bit difficult to generalize about because of the various genres and styles employed. Some are brief character sketches or vignettes reminiscent of the feuilletons of Robert Walser (a point made to me by Evelyn Hampton) while others are flash or microfictions which frequently display the elusiveness of prose poems. Some, on the other hand, are full length short stories which tend toward the style of the traditional fable. The most interesting and effective pieces for me were the "Walserian" vignettes and the flash fiction pieces which are some of the best examples of their kind with engaging wit and sly conceptual disjunctions. The longer works, while entertaining and absorbing, struck me as less distinctively original creations. All in all, a very stimulating read.

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Joanna Ruocco's Man's Companions initially (the first 5 or 6 stories) had me very excited by the subtly intelligent humor and the perfectly judged lapidary quality of these mostly flash sized fiction works. There are quite a few in the first third of the book that are truly outstanding (e.g., "Canary", "Mice" and "Lemmings"). Unevenness begins to affect the later pieces though one fascinatingly quirky and original longer story ("White Buffalo") also comes along toward the end. I'm quite curious about Ruocco's novella The Mothering Coven after seeing what she's capable of in this book.

Reading Log

July 6, 2010 05:06pm


James Kaelan's We're Getting On is a very absorbing novella which is quite clearly intended to pay tribute, as acolyte to master, to the work of Samuel Beckett. Readers familiar with Beckett's fiction and theater pieces will recognize multitudes of allusions, themes, images and uses of language directly referencing the older writer's oeuvre. The title itself refers to the famous final line from The Unnamable: "I can't go on, I'll go on." and the book begins with an epigraph from the same work.

Aside from its obvious function as homage, Kaelan's book is also a gripping and thought provoking story on its own. The writing is highly effective in conveying the coolly crumbling obsessions of the central character and the increasingly desperate circumstances faced by his band of followers as he proceeds to strip every last vestige of civilization from their lives in the remote, inhospitable, wilderness to which he has led them. If it doesn't completely rise above being a pastiche of its models, it nevertheless is a very satisfying two hour read.

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I finally managed to get a hold of an elusive copy of Sam Pink's first book, I am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It, and once again was laughing out loud and reading excerpts to anyone around who would listen. Yes it's totally twisted, despairingly negative and nihilistic but it's so, so funny, even eloquently and touchingly so in places, that everyone who appreciates the outer extremes of absurdity in literature must read this!

Reading Log

June 28, 2010 05:20am

Danielle Dutton's flash fiction/prose poetry collection Attempts at a Life I found to be really fascinating. Her work harkens back in interesting ways to 20th Century Modernism and engages referentially, from one piece to the next, with various writers from that era and earlier eras as well as the present, notably Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, William Carlos Williams, et. al.

Some of the writing here I found quite challenging in the same way I'm baffled by a lot of modern poetry but that's OK! Much of Dutton's work here, however, is just flat out brilliant in its creative wordplay and mind wrenching conceptual juxtapositions. Good stuff!

P.S. Dutton has a short novel due out from Siglio Press Aug. 23rd called SPRAWL.


June 28, 2010 05:33am

Coming off the mystification of Mathias Svalina's The Viral Lease I jumped right back up on the horse, read his collection, Destruction Myth: Poems, and totally loved it. These prose poems are top flight expressions of wildly imagined absurdist fantasy full of wit and whimsy. Can't think of anyone (except for some stuffy inlaws) who would not be delighted by this book!