Perpetual Law by Mario Bellatin
Bellatin is in fine form here, with the startling turns of phrase and sentence-to-sentence shifts in registers of reality that distinguished his Beauty Salon.
Lonesome Ballroom by Madeline McDonnell
Is this the best college hijinx novel since the 1980s?
A Miscellany of Metafictional Modes
More metafictional modes and examples thereof. Felipe Alfau. Christian TeBordo. Robert Coover. Second in a three-part series.
A Miscellany of Metafictional Modes
Recent examples thereof. First in a three-part series.
The Source of My Discomfort
This year started in Tokyo. I was seeing someone I had spoken to many times over video, but this would be the first time in person. I suggested we meet out by the canal at the foot of Kagurazaka, actually a remnant moat.
R.I.P. Richard Foreman
Bought this as an undergrad on impulse, looking for something "light." Whoa, no idea what the heck I was reading—what *did* I read?
Maitonaut by Kaisa Saarinen
From Perfect Blue remix to Kunming nighttrain moodboard, these poems/stories seem out of a young woman's cyborg-eroguro vision of literature.
Biking Home
Chilly bike commutes home as darkness falls remind me of racing home in time for dinner from whatever junior-high afterschool shenanigans I was up to (hanging out at the video arcade, mostly): the sun setting, the lights coming on, as if seeing the world for the first time.
Chinatown Movies
Saw Year of the Dragon again for the first time in ages, and whoa, it was just like I remember but more so, that is, a very not good movie.
The Lurking Place by Clarence Major
Maybe it's cause I'm an old not-white guy writer, and in a menopausal mood, but Clarence Major's The Lurking Place tore me to pieces.
Tidal Lock by Lindsay Hill
If Hill's Sea of Hooks (2013) is an updated West Coast Proust, Tidal Lock manages same with Beckett.
There Is Only One Ghost in the World by Klahr and Zeller
New to the coauthors, I was shocked by the prose, a kind of invocation of the lonely memories of cross-country drives.
Glossolalia by Marlon Hacla
From out of "nowhere": Filipino tropical maximalism that speaks as the world burns.
Morning Birthday Hike
Took a short morning birthday hike along Miwok Trail near Mill Valley.
The Naif by Valerie Hsiung
Monologue of Bartleby in the land of grant applications, but also something here of the gonzo Enlightenment writers (Sterne, Jean Paul).
Kruitzner by Harriet Lee
Masterpiece of style, admired by Byron and De Quincey. Gorgeously weird Gothic thriller from 1801.
Suburban Hinterlands
Spring means sojourns for high school track meets in the suburban hinterlands of the Bay.
That Day on the Beach
Caught Edward Yang's That Day on the Beach at BAMPFA, the first time since more than thirty years ago, when I saw it on a deteriorated VHS copy.
Headless World by Ascher/Straus
There is in fact a profusion of heads in Headless World. One might even note that there seems nothing but, although most heads seem about to be, or are in the midst of being, severed from the necks they belonged to, the condition to which the title likely alludes.
The Pallbearer
I was guarding my son one on one when I made the mistake of reaching just as he was about to make his move. The ball bounced hard off the blacktop, and as it accelerated, for a ball deflected travels with greater velocity than one merely tossed through the air, it smashed into my right eye.