Showing posts with label this book will change your life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label this book will change your life. Show all posts

Sunday, December 27, 2015

These Books Will Change Your Life - USA-1000 by the Sass Brown, Hustle by the David Tomas Martinez and errata by Lisa Fay Coutley.


"There's nothing in this world
I don't want." 
- Sass Brown, "Wildcat Canyon"

We suppose this applies to us as much as anyone we know. But it also occurs to us that there is nothing more American than all that. We want it all and we think we deserve it. Why this occurs to us at the moment is in relation to the poetry collections we have just consumed, or to paraphrase the poet Mark Strand, and by extension the Greg Santos, the poetry we have been eating and the resulting happiness that has accompanied it.
 

All of which is to say that we were honored, if not outright geeked, to attend the 2015 Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival, and spend time with so many talented authors, including, but not limited to - and yes we are thinking of the Megan Milks - the poets we read, ate and ran with - Sass Brown, David Tomas Martinez and Lisa Fay Coutley.
 

It is in their respective collections - USA-1000, Hustle and errata - that we started thinking about America. Or what America looks like in 2015 anyway. A mash-up of love and family, sex and immigrants, gender, pornography, pop culture, race, parenting, humor and violence. The fight for self-awareness. Grappling with trying to understand our true, and truest, identity. And how the good people of Devil's Kitchen - we're thinking of you Allison Joseph and Jon Tribble - may or may not have consciously sought to present this vision of America, but they have, and it is available, all of it, to all of us and sure to change lives.  

Sunday, December 6, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - Zero Saints by the Gabino Iglesias.

It's true that riffing on a book so saturated with guns and violence during a week so saturated with guns and violence might cause one pause. Maybe should cause one pause. But what does it mean when such a book is so much fun, and are we even allowed to say that? Still, when a book moves between English and Spanish with no sense that author gives a fuck whether you know Spanish or not. Moves so fast, and is so graphic and so visual, that it reads like a graphic novel. Makes us remember that noir and pulp are meant for escape and there was most definitely escape. Maybe we just need to say that we readily admit how much we appreciated such a book during a week so saturated with guns and violence and sadness and bullshit. That even a book full of guns and violence did nothing to glorify any of it. And that the least of our problems this past week is literature that makes us fucking smile in middle of so much stress and sadness. All of which is to say that Zero Saints by the Gabino Iglesias most surely changed our lives this past week, and may certainly change yours as well.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - Belief Is Its Own Kind Of Truth, Maybe by the Lori Jakiela.


"Writing is work and it's what we're made to do. It says, 'I was here.' It says, 'Maybe this life matters a little.'" page 280

Whenever someone talks about writing, why they do it, or asks why we do, when they say they can turn it off, that it's not a compulsion, or when someone says someone's writing is brave or raw or authentic, we think, yes, maybe it's all of that, but there is also a certain kind of fact to the act as well - we don't have a choice, a flip was switched and now we write. It's what we're made to do. It's also what we have to do. And Lori Jakiela well understands that. She also understands something that can be harder for us to admit - whether we have to write or not, the very act of doing so, and seeing that work published, God-willing, means there is a physical reminder that we were here. That even if life itself does, or does not, matter, maybe we did, or that we were special, at least a little anyway. Which brings us to Belief Is Its Own Kind Of Truth, Maybe by Jakiela, a memoir that is an exploration of not just whether we matter, but what it means to be here at all. The question is whether we should now go and attempt to unpack the details of Jakiela's endlessly moving dissection of a life well-lived, and well-loved. Instead though, we'd rather spend a moment considering that life, and the idea that even having written a memoir it doesn't mean that Jakiela's life still isn't missing something. Truth certainly. But also the kind of stability that comes from knowing who you are. And not because you are self-aware - Jakiela is that - but because you know where you come from. Which she does not. Not really. It seems trite then to say that a book that speaks to power and truth and things not found is a page-turner, or a triumph, but it is. So instead let's say this - during a moment where a handful of truly exceptional memoirs have been released which travel in memory and fragment, moments of flash and questions of truth - and yes we are thinking of Excavation by the Wendy C. Ortiz and This Must Be The Place by the Sean H Doyle in particular - Belief Is Its Own Kind Of Truth, Maybe is still something kind of magical. It is also sure to change your life, as it has ours.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

This Podcast - Episode One Hundred and Twenty - Laser Focus, starring the Wendy C. Ortiz - and This Book - Hollywood Notebook - Will Change Your Life.

So podcast we are. And so Ortiz. We are also a little spazzy with excitement at jump, not to mention nose runny, but that's not all, truly, because there is Los Angeles, Twitter, and friendship, Sean H Doyle, seekers, fever dreams, Excavation, Cari Luna, power dynamics, projections, Brad Listi, Bruja, boundaries, memory, truth, both Chelsea Hodson, and Martin, kids, work and if all that is not enough, there is Hollywood Notebook and all of its Jim Carrollesque revelry too, which we so planned to read in time for the podcast, but failed miserably to do, only to be consumed in time for this post, leaving us with the breathless belief that with Ortiz, writing is performance art, and that she is ever-discovering, then illuminating, fragments of herself on the page, only to have the words, and memories, stamp themselves onto our collective brain.

Saturday, October 17, 2015

These Books Will Change Your Life - If I'd Known You Were Coming by the Kate Milliken and Lungs Full of Noise by the Tessa Mellas.

If I'd Known You Were Coming by the Kate Milliken and Lungs Full of Noise by the Tessa Mellas are endlessly connected in the literary loops that run through our brains. They are Iowa Short Fiction Award winning debut short story collections that are electric and pulsing with life. They slowly choke away the reader's breath as they ratchet-up our anticipation of what we think is to come, but hope will not. They are stories by women that speak to the complexities, triumphs and abuses that women face around sex, family, marriage and child birth, as only women can tell them. And we happened to read one night with both Milliken and Mellas and thought these books should somehow be read together, and that they were companion pieces, if nowhere else, in our imagination alone certainly. 
And in all of this they are of a piece, but they are not the same thing, no books are, not really. So while Mellas assaults our senses with abject weirdness and the bizarre - so much of which is spot-on, though hits its artistic peak with Beanstalk, both at once a beautiful tale of a baby born at one with plant life, and a rumination on how the very act of birth leaves any mother at risk of being subsumed by the very life they have created; Milliken's work is in the realm of the realistic - pain and loss, violation, and lacking parents - squirrelling its way into our brain, then shaking us and insisting we pay attention. Which again, much of it is right there, but is especially crushing in the stories A Matter of Time and The Whole World, tales of limitation and weakness, and the endlessly uneasy place that women, girls really, find themselves in a world dominated by men and their deficits. All of which is to say, that these books will change your life, even as they squeeze it out of you, before lingering long after you're done.           

Thursday, October 1, 2015

This Podcast - Episode One Hundred and Eighteen - Not My Dad, starring the Rachel Slotnick - and This Book - In Lieu of Flowers - Will Change Your Life.


So true. Like truly true. We are podcast. But we are also Slotnick and collage and art and Miro and Keats and secrets and dead dads and atomic bombs and Crohn's Disease and fishing and Jewfro's and text and abstraction and In Lieu of Flowers a beautifully rendered collection of poems and art about fathers and brothers and grandfathers that will not only change your life, but knock you on your ass.
 

Sunday, September 20, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - Loss Angeles by the Mathieu Cailler.

We suppose it doesn't say very much about our reading comprehension skills that as we read Loss Angeles by the Mathieu Cailler we thought to ourselves, Los Angeles is a fine title, but it should be titled Loss Angeles. Which may have something to do with how often we've been thinking lately about our great desire to move Los Angeles, but for the moment we choose to ignore that, and instead focus on Cailler's great grasp of what the ripple effects of loss look, and feel, like, whether it's the loss of a parent - with The Bridge, the wrenching kick-off to Loss Angeles, a marriage, with A Day Like Today, heartbreaking, or a new romance, with When Men Wore Hats, crushing. What makes Loss Angeles (extra) special though are the moments of joy punching through the loss - stories such as Do You See The Big Dipper? or Zorbas's - moments that offer something found, that puncture the lovingly crafted sadness all around them, and offer relief, when something worse seemed readily possible. Which is to say, Loss Angeles just may change your life, as it has changed ours.     

Sunday, September 13, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - Sadly Beautiful by the Jason Fisk and Abigail Cashman.

There was this moment as we read Sadly Beautiful by the Jason Fisk and Abigail Cashman when we realized we had something stuck in our eye, some irritant, which seemed to be nothing of much import until we realized that in the most cliche way possible that which was stuck in our eye was sadness, and the act of feeling both terribly moved and full of love. It's an odd to read a book that captures such intense feelings of love - and yes, loss - by someone you know, when you don't quite know them like that, but also when you feel love for that person as well. Because we do feel love for Jason Fisk, as an author certainly, and for his work, and we have always been especially partial to his poetry - and in turn we couldn't be happier to see so much of it here, an oxymoron if there ever was one. We have always thought that there was a sadness that lingered there just below the surface, waiting to burst forth, if, and when prompted. Of course, maybe that is a projection, because we love Jason Fisk the person as well. He is funny and giving and attractive and great to drink with. He is a good friend, so full of love and grace, and yet there too, there's a sadness just below the surface, which may only serve to enhance the rest of it. Along with all of that - if that isn't enough - the subjective, the bias, the love, there is something else happening in this collection that should not be overlooked. So often we write, and read, about the act of grief, ruminations from just slightly afar, and removed from the act of loss, where there is some space, distance and understanding. Sadly Beautiful is something else though. It is the act of grief captured as it is happening, building and finding its way to, and then just beyond, the reason we feel grief at all. We ourselves don't know what it's like to lose a sibling, and we are thankful for that. We are thankful though that Jason, and by extension Abby, were willing to put this on paper. It's what love looks like, and loss, and by any measure sure to change your life.

Friday, August 28, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - Kinda Sorta American Dream by the Steve Karas.

There is the Karas and the Kinda Sorta American Dream from the Tailwinds Press and we have read it and blurbed it and we are happy to report that it changed our lives and we believe it may just change your life as well, so please do hit it when it is available to be hit, well done, thank you.

“What Steve Karas so authoritatively illustrates in this far-reaching debut collection is that the journey to achieving the American Dream may take many paths, but it doesn’t come without pain, fear or loss. Assuming it comes at all. And yet despite this, in Karas’ empathic hands, this journey is still one filled with vivid characters, a sense of hope and the joy of discovering an author at the start of something new and wonderful.” 

Thursday, August 20, 2015

This (chap) Book Will Change Your Life - Bottom Of The Ninth by the Wyl Villacres.

There is the Villacres and the Bottom Of The Ninth from the WhiskeyPaper and we have read it and blurbed it and we are happy to report that it changed our lives and we believe it may just change your life as well, so please do hit it when it is available to be hit, well done, thank you.

“Like any Cubs fan Wyl Villacres knows that there is poetry in foolish hope, we have to love hard if we are to love at all and that without a healthy embrace of the surreal, we can’t hope to make it through another season, much less find a reason to smile.”

Saturday, August 15, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - F250 by the Bud Smith. And Tables Without Chairs #1 too.

Vacation. Beach. Drink. Read. Rinse. Repeat. In consuming F250 by the Bud Smith we are reminded of something we've written about here before - writers will write origin stories that might even feel like debut novels even if they're not. We all have the arc of one within us - our path, and our journey, how we got from some beginning point to some kind of redemption, or at least the next point in our lives - the next story, or journey. The challenge is telling the story anew, with fresh wrinkles, and observations that cause us to experience the origin story from a new perspective. And from this perspective Smith has accomplished both the new and the fresh. Yes, we have a young man both trying escape where he came from and find something new - a future, or an identity, some kind of closure or answers. In this case it's a young man from nowhere, with no true family, and little stability. But he has friends and music and the state of New Jersey - everything from refineries to mountains - and it is here where Smith makes the story his own. These are blue collar characters from a blue collar place. They build things - when they're not destroying them - and they dream, big, before they crash. They are outsiders, steps from New York City, but not there at all. They live in a parallel world where moving to big cities and things like going to college barely exist as options - they are certainly not assumed - until they do. And it is this outsiderness of the characters where Smith comes to life, because we so rarely see these characters on the page - something else we've written about here before, but that makes it no less true - and by extension we much too rarely get to read authors like Smith who exist outside of the world of AWP and MFA programs.


Still, between the drugs and the fights and the trucks, the characters are alive, and in that way Smith is reminiscent of his contemporary Brian Alan Ellis - who we've written about here before as well - and it is no surprise that the two of them have a split book titled Tables Without Chairs #1 dropping this coming week. Tables Without Chairs #1 is a platform for what both authors do so well - revel in characters who are scraping by, and like them, living both inside and outside the established literary world. It's also a reminder that there are a wealth of authors out there, writing, creating and telling stories, who are not waiting around to be found, but are certainly ripe for discovery. 

Sunday, July 26, 2015

These Books Will Change Your Life - Crystal Eaters by the Shane Jones and Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours by the Luke B. Goebel.


"A myth is a myth."

This line comes early in Crystal Eaters the touching, mind-fuck of a novel by Shane Jones. While this is an apt description for what both Jones and Luke B. Goebel in Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, his own touching, mind-fuck of novel, are trying to achieve - the former with a sparse, trippy, sci-fi exploration of family, trauma and how we try to convince ourselves what is necessary to our collective and individual survival, and the latter, a trippy, beat rumination - where the words pile and build on one another - on, well, family, and trauma, and what is necessary for survival as well - it is also an apt description for our fanboy need to find these books, absorb them, and learn something more about the authors and the mythic writer qualities we found ourselves ascribing to them beforehand.
 


So, there are the books, and they tell us something about road trips and death and sex and siblings and parents. And throughout there is craft, and words, and they come at us in a rush, pushing until there is no more, and they, and we, are done, books read, myths expanded, energy absorbed. All of which takes us back to a time before all of this, back when we hoped to one day meet writers and engorge ourselves on whatever made them what they were, spinners of story, and word, the things we loved, and love, so very much.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

These Books - Big Venerable and Twilight of the Idiots - and This Podcast, Episode One Hundred and Eleven - Anarchic Non Sequiturs - by and starring, the Matt Rowan and Joseph G. Peterson respectively - Will Change Your Life.


We are so podcast. We are also old friends in the Matt Rowan and Joseph G. Peterson, who themselves are former podcastees with El Presidente and Timbre. Or Tamber. respectively. Not to mention Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Lindsay Hunter, George Saunders, Sam Irby, David Mamet David Foster Wallace, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and The Simpsons.


Yet, as if all that was not enough, that's not all, not even remotely, because we are Big Venerable by the Rowan and Twilight of the Idiots by the Peterson too. Both are recent releases from Chicago's own Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which had us wondering how these books just might hang together? And we think it has something to do with systems. Rowan seeks to understand the systems that imprison and embrace us - integrating themselves into our lives as they overwhelm with language and rules - even as he rails against them with an absurdity and wit that both mocks and models the absurdities of the institutions themselves. Of further note, is that Rowan's previous work Why God Why was a collection of stories short and fast, death by a thousand little cuts as it were, but in contrast, Big Venerable lets the humor breathe, the stories now expanded, the lives captured within richer for the effort. 



With Twilight of the Idiots, Peterson goes in a new direction as well, but in his case, he goes smaller, providing us with a collection of "yarns" after a career of novels and epic poem. The characters crafted within are certainly Peterson's people though, blue collar and raging, stumbling down streets, being tossed into bogs and frying fish, while all the while lurking outside the systems, and there's that word again, that won't have them, will never welcome them and are all too happy to pretend they don't exist. But they do exist in Peterson's mind, and like Rowan's people, on the page, fresh from CClaP, available now, and more than willing to change your life, if only for a moment. 

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - This Must Be The Place by the Sean H Doyle.

We are pool and bed and elevator and stairs and laundry room and read and on the train on the bus in the kitchen doing dishes sweeping the floor and read and we are walking the children to school and making sure they are showered and read and in the office and on the phone and blogging and Tweeting and making sandwiches and depositing checks and read and watching The Americans and taking a shower and brushing our teeth and read and at one time we sat next to our dying father and we were writing his obituary and we heard his last calm breath after so many not calm ones and we were flying home to visit our mother after she was diagnosed with cancer and assaulted on 125th on beautiful spring day and smoking something laced with something and watching people eat peanut butter off of the rug and having a panic attack on the train platform as we rushed to pick-up our son at school and driving in a snowstorm and cars were swerving off of the road in front of us and disappearing into the night blacking out one last time on our bathroom floor and my son being slid into the MRI machine because his spine might not be descending and Sean H Doyle knows all of this because he is our Williams S. Burroughs and This Must Be The Place is his Junky and our Junky because he is our freaker shaman oracle and he knows and he's been there and our fathers are dead but there is write and read and memory and love and breathe.

Monday, June 8, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - How To Carry Bigfoot Home by the Chris Tarry.

Can somthing be heartbreaking, yet delightful? Why not? But what should we call that? Which is not to say that everything requires a label, but to name it, is to know it, and to know it makes it something. But does Chris Tarry the author of the heartbreaking, yet delightful short story collection How To Carry Bigfoot Home even care about any of that. Why should he? That's our job. His job is to write about stay-at-home fathers who kill dragons, sea monsters who offer the chance at redemption and academic programs that ensure mystical beasts such as Bigfoot can lend university positions. And isn't that enough? It is, when Tarry writes likes this, and pulls off the trick of making us smile, while also writing some of the saddest shit we've read in some time. Tarry does something else quite lovely as well as we spend our time wallowing in monsters and folk lore, he sneaks in some more straight forward, or realistic joints, hence keeping the reader on our toes. And kudos for pulling that off Chris Tarry. He also makes a series of subtle comments about manhood, and what it looks like when there is not work, and our expectations are not met, and we have to ask ourselves if this is enough, whether it's taking care of our kids, or honest work. Especially when in so many ways the world doesn't care. Because if no one cares, does any of it it even matter? We don't know if Tarry answers these questions, but he poses them, delightfully, and heartbreakingly, and how can we ask for more than that?

Thursday, May 28, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - Train Shots by the Vanessa Blakeslee.

 

     "Now remember, even though what 
     you're seeing appears to be standing       still, nothing ever is."

This line is from "Don't Forget the Beignets," but really, couldn't it come from any of the stories in Vanessa Blakeslee's most auspicious debut collection Train Shots? Okay, that's a rhetorical question, because yes it could, though more accurately, couldn't it apply to Blakeslee's writing in general? Which is to say, Blakeslee's work reminds us of that old cliche about the duck. They look so calm floating there above the surface of the water, but underneath there's a lot of busy happening. Which is not to say the stories here are cliche. They're anything but. But on the surface there is a sort of calm, even a kind of normalcy - a woman has her dogs stolen, a single mom rents a carriage house from a fundamentalist preacher, an ex-pat doctor's wife dies, a man survives cancer and finds himself in a new relationship - no ghosts certainly, or weird, bizarro fiction, nothing surreal, just lives lived, domestic and otherwise. Yet, underneath, and on the fringes, there are affairs, and death, and crime. And there is busy. Blakeslee's characters are always moving, struggling, fighting, and searching for answers that seem to almost be in reach, just as long as they remember that nothing is standing still and so they cannot either.

Friday, May 15, 2015

These Books (of Poetry) Will Change Your Life - How We Bury Our Dead by the Jonathan Travelstead, Addicts & Basements by the Robert Vaughan and A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us by the Caleb Curtiss.

There is a passage from Cup & Saucer, a poem in A Taxonomy of the Space Between Us, Caleb Curtiss' terribly affecting map of grief and memory, where he writes:

     "and so we're left with what we're always left with:
     the line that separates then and now,
     the line that threads together our moments,
     passing through us as it goes."

Curtiss is writing of the loss of his sister to a car accident and how we try to make sense of such a thing. We make peace with it, somewhat, and grudgingly. We build new and different connections with those we love. Our memories shift, and warp, based on who we're talking to and the passage time. Sometimes what we feel is real and true, and other times as Curtiss reflects so effectively in the poem Still, it's all scatter shot and crazy. But there is always a line, a before something happened, and an after, and it is  in that before and after that Curtiss' work comes to life.
 

There are lines as well in How We Bury Our Dead by the Jonathan Travelstead and Addicts & Basements by the Robert Vaughan, but for Travelstead it is more than one line, parallel lines even, though not unlike Curtiss they are fraught with loss, grief and memory. There is the war in Iraq and what we lose when we are exposed to death and fear, our sense of stability, and of normalcy. But that isn't the only line Travelstead is bumping into and against. There is also the death of his mother, and the contorted feelings that come with a death of a relationship where the feelings were already contorted. From Paper Lantern:

     "Mother, forgive me.
     It took so long lancing the infection
     I allowed grow inside me, 
     and now a sweet pain rises there
     like the flickering eyes of paper lanterns
     lit and carried away by the night.
     Please forgive me for taking so long to know,
     I loved you even then."



Vaughan is looking back as well in a mix of poetry and flash fiction, both the truth and something else. But it is the past in so many ways that seeps out. Vaughan's line is about a life lived, and lost to history, and what youth looks like when we run from place to place, and person to person, but also find homes, temporary and otherwise, that form who we were, and where we are now. Less than Travelstead or Curtiss though, we don't have as much of a sense of where Vaughan is now, but we also have the sense that there has been so much life lived that we are being introduced to the start of something. The addicts and basements that haunted his youth, are just that, the ghosts of his past, and the now is this, writing and beauty, and more is to come if we can just be patient and wait for the words. From Shades of Gray:

     "The next day, I lie on the living room rug as they       
     carry all the furniture off. It seems random, rather  
     unpredictable. Did I live here?
     The last thing they remove is the first thing I hung.
     It's my empty birdcage.
     I walk around the blank shell like a visitor."

There is loss and there is life. There is also change, and all three of these collections are sure to change your life as they have ours, if only for a moment at that.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

This Book Will Change Your Life - Benchwarmer by the Josh Wilker.

Our father felt that for an artist to be successful they needed to figure out their niche and exploit the fuck out of it. Though to be clear, he probably didn't use the word "exploit" or even "fuck." Still, he felt it was a necessity, which brings us to the case of the Josh Wilker, and by extension his new new joint Benchwarmer, which is also known as "A Sports-Obsessed Memoir of Fatherhood." Wilker knows sports, he is possibly the consummate authority on sports writing in terms of sports memoir, or more specifically memoir as filtered through the lens of sports. Case in point, Wilker's earlier memoir Cardboard Gods, on which we wrote "the real challenge may be how the writer accomplishes this in a way that sounds vibrant and different and brings new perspective and language to the discussion, continuing an ongoing dialogue in fresh and exciting new ways," in trying to articulate Wilker's use of his love, even obsession, with baseball cards to make sense of his painful, and at times out there, childhood, something so many have written about before, but which Wilker had figured out how to make new again. Which brings us back to Benchwarmer, a memoir of fatherhood as almanac, and encyclopedia, and the utilization of everyone from Steve Bartman to Chris Webber, to make sense of how fucking hard parenting is. The lack of sleep. The new found chasms in the relationship with one's spouse. The feeling of anger and moments of near violence. How sucky everything is and how incompetent one feels in every possible way. Now imagine you've already spent your life dodging chasms, feeling sucky, and full of lack, and then you add a child to the mix? Because then you're just fucked. Which is not to say any of this is unique to Wilker, or that many, present company included, haven't written about it, but this is Wilker's gift, taking the known and filtering it through his compulsions, and sport. This is his niche and he owns it like no one else. Which would make my father very happy and might just change your life. And now we've gone full circle.  

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

These Books Will Change Your Life - The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes by the David S. Atkinson and Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty by the Brian Alan Ellis.


Travel. Read. Florida. Read. Alabama. Blizzards. Hotels. Read. Shrimp and Grits. Gin & Tonics. Read. And both The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes by the David S. Atkinson and Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty by the Brian Alan Ellis. Both of which are blurbed by the Bud Smith. Both of which reference the Village Inn. And both of which arrived at the corporate headquarters within days, if not hours of one another, and are hence, and forever, intrinsically linked in our collective lit memory. Which raises the question of whether these books, and authors, have anything to do with one another, and if there is some connective tissue beyond a diner, a Smith, and a common destination? Or whether they are in fact part of some kind of movement. They are indy lit, but so are most books we read. They are male, but that's not saying much, we know a lot of those. They do relationships at once young, and tortured, and the people in those relationships talk a lot. Maybe something Mumblelitcoresque then? Is that even a thing? And if not can we coin it as such, or something just like it? Though regardless, is any of this even necessary? Maybe not in the greater hustle and flow of all things lit and movement, but it is to us.
 


And yet, these are very different productions as well. Ellis is all about grime. His words and pages are caked with it. Not that this grime can cover-up his characters rampant sense of failure, though more than failure it's their existence as those among the never was. They never were going to be anything, but what they are, coke-addled, diner smashing denizens of Ellis world, who endlessly talk shit to compensate for just how much suck there is in said world. Which isn't to say that Ellis doesn't draw a rich world full of colorful characters doing colorful things, because he does, and they are, and that as Ellis completists, we are quite enjoying watching his canon expand, and the rougher edges grow more honed with each outing, the words full of life, and dance. And there is the Atkinson, he of Bones Buried in the Dirt, easily one of out favorite reads in 2013, and now The Garden, which lo and behold, is an epically different reading experience entirely, hipster magic realism, full of satire and sadness. But then not so different either in that these are characters who only know loss, and live in bubbles, both self-made and thrust upon them, while seeing no real way out, something writ much larger and metaphorical certainly in The Garden. Which is to say that Atkinson has stretched here, pushing the sparse language and realism of Bones somewhere funnier and weirder, while still retaining his characters ability to hurt and be hurt by one another. All of which is to say that this may be what Atkinson and Ellis share after all, hurt, inescapable and real, with no real sense how to escape from it. Now does that make for a movement? Why not? We just need a name. Well, that and people reading the books themselves. So do hit it, them, because it, they, just might change your life.      

Sunday, March 15, 2015

This Book - The Dark Will End The Dark - and This Podcast - Episode One Hundred and Three - Like Real Life If It Was Just Slightly Fucked - written by and starring the Darrin Doyle respectively - Will Change Your Life.

Like real life if it was just slightly fucked. We told the Darrin Doyle that we would say this, somewhere, and somehow when describing his work, and more specifically his new joint The Dark Will End The Dark. And so we have. Because that's the thing with Darrin Doyle. He's a college professor in a nice suit, with a neatly trimmed beard. He's lovely to speak with. A husband and dad of two boys. All things not especially gothic, or seemingly all that fucked at all. And yet his characters are swallowed whole, commit mass suicides, and always in a sort of harried motion. But still stuck, and wrapped in darkness and loss, of relationships, body parts, children, and possibly their sanity.
 

All of which can almost feel normal too. Because there are no ghosts, not really, or demons. Instead we have the horror of normalcy, things falling a part as things do, and stories that owe more to Stephen King, Shirley Jackson and Samuel Beckett, than say Alice Munro or Raymond Carver. All of which is to say, that we think you should consider reading the Doyle, and listening to our podcast with him, now, both, and experiencing all the fucked normalcy contained therein for yourself. Because it just might change your life, if even for only a moment at that.