Reviews

Bought this a while back because I felt compelled to investigate some of the Classics, but didn’t want to dive right into The Brothers Karamazov. I have no idea if this is reflective of Dostoevsky’s broader writing style, but I found this almost physically painful to read. Our narrator is so repellent that I couldn’t make myself read it on the metro with a dead phone. After 60 pages, I pulled up the audiobook on YouTube and sped it up to 2.65x speed to get it over with. ...

Greenwell’s follow up to What Belongs to You feels more distinctly like a collection of short stories. I picked the book off my shelf before heading to work, unwilling to scrape my brain against Dostoevsky on my 50-minute morning metro ride. Small Rain, my first Greenwell and the follow up to this book, knocked me flat on my back, and I enjoyed What Belongs very much. So much that I’ve been saving Cleanness for just an occasion as this, a need for something I knew would capture me. ...

I love Twin Peaks. While I only discovered it a few years ago, I feel like it has become a part of me in a way difficult to describe. Fix your hearts or die is a thing I think about so often, especially today. “What do you fear most in the world?” “The possibility that love is not enough.” That’s my favorite line in the series, and probably the essence of my greatest fear as well. ...

Preparing for my small press club this past week, I stood around and scanned titles. A person came up and picked this off the turning rack and recommended it. “It’s tiny!” I said, referring not only to the thickness but the form factor, which reminds me a bit of the Archipelago books. The person that handed me the book turned out to be the author. It is probably fair to say I bought the book 33% out of a sense of social obligation interior to myself (the same voice in my head that tells me I can’t walk into a store and then leave without buying something), and 67% out of curiosity. The back flap notes that it is the winner of the 2020 Gold Line Press Fiction Chapbook Competition, and chapbooks are something I’ve been curious about without having ever read. ...

Larson’s report on the experiences and actions of the Dodd family in the years during which Hitler rose to power is a depressing thing to read today. It is frankly impossible not to draw straight lines from rhetorical style, evasions, and populist manipulations from Hitler to Trump. See page 159: “The Chancellor’s assurances were so satisfying and so unexpected that I think they are on the whole too good to be true,” Messersmith wrote. “We must keep in mind, I believe, that when Hitler says anything he for the moment convinces himself that it is true. He is basically sincere; but he is at the same time a fanatic.” Emphasis added. Is this not the behavior that we tend to witness from current American leadership? ...

This will be a short note. Ana Simo’s Heartland was my small press book club’s March pick, and wow! Unfortunately, I did not like it. I found it so grating to read that I couldn’t finish it, despite getting about 90 pages into its 200something pagecount. I felt the use of slurs so over the top that it smelled like an amateur novelist trying to scare the reader, to tell them, Hey, this is Serious Stuff. But it did not work for me, and only made me roll my eyes. ...

Finally, I move to book two of Library of America’s Kurt Vonnegut: The Complete Novels set. I skipped Cat’s Cradle as I read that a few years ago. Rosewater is probably the Vonnegut I’ve seen referenced the most outside of Slaughterhouse Five, and hooks well into the rest of the Vonnegut world. In reading his other books, I can recall Eliot Rosewater being mentioned several times, though it’s hard to remember the exact details now. Kilgore Trout makes an appearance too, and how can one be mad at that? ...

February’s book club pick. I felt excited to vaguely engineer the polls such that we could finally cover a Semiotexte title, not to mention one that I was certain would be weird and gay. The certainty proved well-founded, because I more or less am not sure what happened in the book, but I enjoyed every page, such that some of these very sad paragraphs can be enjoyed. Gary Indiana’s book is at least faintingly autobiographical, though whose to say just how much. Some parts seem so clearly translated from real people that I refuse to believe their synthetics. I did not read the introduction before reading the book so became educated that at least one character seems to be directly inspired by Susan Sontag, which I found just delicious. ...

In my re-read of Stoner recently, several people suggested that I try his other books, especially this one and Augustus. I picked both of them up. Butcher’s Crossing did not start well for me. The opening with the young man coming to the edge of the wilderness, this felt familiar but fine. We have to get the plot going, sure. In the opening chapters when our protagonist Andrews lays eyes on a working woman named Francine, we enter the world of tropes and I felt frustration and quickly. Andrews of course falls for Francine within a few moments, but the frustration comes with Schneider, the skinner, invoking a sense of jealousy and anger. Believe me, I know what jealousy and anger feel like. I don’t necessarily feel interested in reading the thousandth book to feature a young man getting jealous and angry over someone they’ve just lain eyes on. This story mounts in the closing pages of Part I and I nearly put the book down, such was my irritation and boredom. ...

This is a short little novella from George R. R. Martin that is currently airing on HBO. After episode “Seven” I realized I should grab the book, and so on ThriftBooks purchased “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”—a combined edition of The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword, and The Mystery Knight. This first of the three novellas is very good! I did not take notes on it and read it in one sitting. As in the TV show, my favorite line is probably, “One need not intend harm to do it” from Prince Baelor Targaryen. ...