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Alive, Ineffably Alive: A Review of Max Blecher’s Adventures in Immediate...
Max Blecher Adventures in Immediate Irreality is a short, powerful dispatch from the heart of European literary modernism—part idiosyncratic coming-of-age novel, part prose poem to the terrifying...
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A Kind of Freak, a Monster: A Review of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle:...
Knausgaard peels back his more youthful self’s skin to reveal confusion, desire, and ineptitude without once asking for pity. —Jeff Bursey My Struggle: Book Four Karl Ove Knausgaard Translated by...
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Theory and Ardour: A Review of Alice Fulton’s Barely Composed — Patrick O’Reilly
Photo Credit: Hank De Leo The subject matter itself is often grim. And in their way, these lines can take on a bleak dimension of their own, a nihilistic push off the cliff of linguistic certainty. But...
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The Koans of Atticus Lish: Review of Preparation for the Next Life — Tom Faure
A koan- or haiku-like style of description in bursts of short sentences…Lish’s writing is as composed as a soldier: methodical, precise, on mission. —Tom Faure Preparation for the Next Life Atticus...
View ArticleThe Critic as Artist | Review of Renata Adler’s After the Tall Timber:...
...her seemingly effortless grace and courage have already made her a model for future generations. ---Julian Hanna
View ArticleA Half-life at Home: Review of Georgi Gospodinov’s The Physics of Sorrow —...
Gospodinov reminds us that there are other ways to construct a story, and we are devising new blue prints all the time.
View ArticleDioramas of the Mind: A Review of Richard Weiner’s The Game for Real — Frank...
The narrator moves through these phantasmagorical settings, a diorama of his mind, with remarkable savoir faire, as if he knows he is in a dream, and instead of being afraid, he is curious; in fact, he...
View ArticleOnward From Insufficiency: Review of Don McKay’s Angular Unconformity:...
My main intention here, anyhow, is simply to say, Go read the work. --- Sydney Lea
View ArticleThere Is No News Here, Only Darkness: A Review of Haints Stay by Colin...
A brutal book of lost souls trying to survive cannibals and stampedes and marauders, it reminds us no one gets out alive, and that there is always something more evil out there.
View ArticleFever Dreams: Review of R.W. Gray’s Entropic — Richard Farrell
Gray is deconstructing the weight-bearing walls of the Western canon, subverting its appeal, questioning its meaning. Homer and Joyce and Christ himself are fair game...
View ArticleShenanigans: Robert Musil’s Thought Flights | Review — Mark Jay Mirsky
Musil remains for all his frankness, elusive, perhaps because he often found his own existence and mind so.
View ArticleAnd So, Ad Infinitum | Review of David Winters’ Infinite Fictions: Essays on...
...there are aspects to argue against and agree with, which is a sure indicator that Winters sparks interest.
View ArticleHere in Russia: A Review of Jeff Parker’s Where Bears Roam the Streets —...
At its core, Where Bears Roam the Streets aims to strike a balance between Thompson-esque madness and serious journalism
View ArticleThere, Gaping: Review of Liz Howard’s Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent —...
...an extended metaphor for the mind...a fiery, radiant rollick through language...a meditation on Indigenous lineage and muted origins....eerily coalescing at the junction of race, class, and gender
View ArticleSmall-City Chatter: Review of Jeff Bursey’s Mirrors on which dust has fallen...
...an explosively unconventional, deeply disturbing, and relentlessly original work. This is not, in effect, your daddy’s Canadian Literature.
View ArticleToo Many Starbucks: Review of Chris Hedges’ Wages of Rebellion—Tom Faure
"Moral cowardice like Starbuck’s turns us into hostages. Mutiny is the only salvation for the Pequod’s crew. And mutiny is our only salvation.”
View ArticleLet Us Become These Voices Made Visible: A Review of Mia Couto’s...
...he is a constant witness to a country trying to figure out its place in both Africa and the world.
View ArticleAll Writing Is Autobiography: J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing by David...
What is surprising in The Good Story is Coetzee’s near preoccupation with some form of absolute truth. He seeks from Kurtz an understanding of the point of therapy, asking whether truth is the only way...
View ArticleA Brave New World: Review of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission — Frank Richardson
“It’s hard to understand other people, to know what’s hidden in their hearts, and without the assistance of alcohol it might never be done at all”
View ArticleWilliam Gaddis’s Lives & Works: Review of Biographies by Joseph Tabbi and...
Jeff Bursey reviews the latest biographies of the great American eccentric William Gaddis.
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