Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Random House, 1993.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars is probably the book that most science fiction aficionados think of when they think of hard Sci-Fi—that branch of science fiction that concerns itself only …
Book Review
Fringe Florida
Fringe Florida: Travels among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles, by Lynn Waddell. University Press of Florida, 2013. $24.95, 255 pages.
When most people think of Florida, they think of retirement, yachting, and college …
Why Read Moby-Dick?
Why Read Moby-Dick?, by Nathaniel Philbrick. Penguin, 2013. $13, 128 pages.
Why Read Moby-Dick? is a plea for the importance of Melville’s tome. Nathaniel Philbrick’s book is only 128 pages long and is broken into 28 chapters, a nod …
The Oblivion Atlas
The Oblivion Atlas, by Michael Allen Zell, with images by Louviere + Vanessa. Lavender Ink, 2013. $25, 116 pages.
The only time a movie moves is when a shutter keeps you from seeing the picture change. What you perceive …
Cunt Norton
Cunt Norton, by Dodie Bellamy. Les Figues Press, 2013. $15, 75 pages.
Cunt Norton is all about the knife. Cunt Norton is about finding the places where the meat runs tender. The knife of Cunt Norton is not always …
One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses
One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses, by Lucy Corin. McSweeney’s, 2013. $22, 183 pages.
There is a scene in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, perhaps the most beloved apocalyptic novel to date, in which a man and his son …
Both Flesh and Not
Both Flesh and Not, by David Foster Wallace. Little Brown, 2012. $26.99, 336 pages.
Some folks’ deaths loom large. These passings linger over everybody else’s lives the way an ex-partners’ old shirt remains in a lump in the corner …
My Lunches with Orson
My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, Edited by Peter Biskind. Metropolitan, 2013. $28, 320 pages.
Five hours before he died in October 1985, Orson Welles appeared on The Merv Griffin Show. On cue, …
Seven Gothic Tales
An experiment with the form of the nineteenth-century-style review: mega-long excerpts connected by impressionistic ligaments.
Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen. Random House, 1934.
Seven Gothic Tales is a set of enchanting stories in late-modernist prose by Isak Dinesen. …
Boxing the Compass
Boxing the Compass, Sandy Florian. Noemi Press, 2013. Paper: $15. 114 pages.
In Sandy Florian’s Boxing the Compass, the reader encounters a novella by an author whose restlessness with English pushes her to reinvent her idiom altogether from work …
