I have a new review at TONY:  the adorable and charming Kevin Killian.  I had heard of him only in relation to Dennis Cooper and the New Narrative bunch before but I am so happy I was assigned his latest collection.  He lands solidly in the zone where experimentation and entertainment collide.

“Killian’s specific talent is his ability to create affable protagonists and to make the reader feel welcome, even as his stories boldly confront explicit sexual scenarios. In his latest collection, Impossible Princess, the author continues to approach the audience with an inclusive charm. His narrators directly address the readers, and patiently guide them through a series of fantastically unexpected situations that blur boundaries between fact and fiction, porn and erotica, gay and straight. “In writing, does one set down one’s personal experience and hope that it strikes a universal chord in everyone?” asks a character named (as many here are) Kevin Killian, a writer hopelessly in love and, by way of his quick wit, utterly lovable.”

While researching KK, I came across this brilliant personal essay by Dodie Bellamy, author of Pink Steam.

I reviewed Matt Bell’s awesome novella The Collectors for 360 Main Street.

“Fearless in the face of history, Bell inserts an interloper into the story, the collector.  ‘I came in through the inventory of your home,’ the collector says, ‘through the listing of objects written down as if they meant something.’  And soon Bell has made these lists mean something, has painstakingly constructed lives out of junk, has coaxed new feelings for a story we have heard over and again.  We know what is going to happen, but it is how that is important.  Meticulously crafted, The Collectors is shocking in its orderliness, its clean sentences and careful arrangement.  Like the compulsion that drives Homer and Langley to hoard, not one word is wasted here.”

Read the book online here.

I am reading at Earshot next Friday. Won’t you come?

Full info re-posted below:

*****

Another EARSHOT is coming atcha on Friday, November 6th at 7:30pm, packed with some amazing talent from out of town! Won’t you join us at Rose Live Music in Williamsburg, Bklyn, for all of the fun and festivities?

This time around, our featured readers are poet and translator JOHANNES GORANSSON (author of “Dear Ra* and *Pilot*) and poet and Black Ocean founder JANAKA STUCKY (author of *Your Name Is the Only Freedom*)! They’ll be joined by three MFA wizards: Kimberly King Parsons (Columbia University), Kit Kalnay (New York University) and Helen Rubenstein (Brooklyn College).

The admission fee is a measly five dollars, which includes a free drink! Join us!

EARSHOT!

Friday, November 6th @ 7:30 PM
@ Rose Live Music
Hosted by Nicole Steinberg
$5 + one free drink

Featuring:

Johannes Goransson (*Dear Ra*, *Pilot*)
Janaka Stucky (*Your Name Is the Only Freedom*)
Kimberly King Parsons (Columbia University)
Kit Kalnay (New York University)
Helen Rubenstein (Brooklyn College)

Rose Live Music is located at 345 Grand Street in Brooklyn, between Havemeyer and Marcy. Visit their website for directions: http://roselivemusic.com.

EARSHOT is a bi-monthly reading series, dedicated to featuring new and emerging literary talent in the NYC area. Visit http://www.earshotnyc.com for more information or e-mail Nicole Steinberg at earshotnyc@gmail.com.

Follow the EARSHOT twitter feed at http://twitter.com/earshotnyc

I reviewed Mary Caponegro’s latest short story collection, All Fall Down for TONY.

“Many of the stories here focus on the moment before the fall: A husband and wife attend a couples’ retreat in a halfhearted attempt to save their doomed marriage; a man nurses his dying mother while ignoring his very pregnant wife; an interracial lesbian couple struggles to stay together when one of them is diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. These scenarios, unlike those in most of Caponegro’s prior work, are very much of this world.”

These stories are definitely in a more conventional mode, but even vintage Caponegro fans will be satisfied.

I reviewed Lydia Davis’s collected works for TONY a few weeks ago. It was tough in the space allotted to even begin to touch on the achievements she’s had in the last 30 years.

“This collection does not demonstrate a progression so much as an accretion, as Davis has exhibited a masterful style since the beginning of her career. Instead, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis simply serves as testament to a writer who continually pushes the bounds of short fiction, and who brilliantly defies categorization. Davis is known for her ability to pack big themes into a tight space; many stories here are less than a page, and some consist of only one sentence.”

You know who could have written a better review of Lydia Davis in 280 words? Lydia Davis.

I said nice things about Scorch Atlas, Blake Butler’s new novel in stories, over at Time Out New York and then Blake said nice things back on his blog.

“The 14 linked stories in Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas depict the fragility of the American family through relentless accumulation of apocalyptic detail. Parents disappear or are held captive by their children. Babies are born malformed and enormous. Homes are destroyed by water or fire or accreting dust.”

Look out for lots of new reviews coming up, rapid-fire style.

Someone put a copy of Monofonus Press’s IF06 on my desk and I liked it so much I blogged about it over at The Faster Times. The IF Series features beautiful collaborative projects between Texas-based writers, artists, and musicians. Each issue comes with an illustrated book (fiction, poetry, comics, etc.) and an album (a for-real album, on vinyl).

It’s odd that this TFT post succeeded this one, where I discussed the smart business plan of Electric Literature, a kind of polar opposite of Monofonus. I’m torn between the practicality and cost-effectiveness of digital journals and McSweeney’s-like artifacty books that deserve to be held and displayed.

The Flight Patterns launch party, hosted by Open City Books, is tomorrow night from 6-8 at A60, the rooftop bar at the Thompson Hotel in SoHo.  Come celebrate Dorothy Spears’s achievement and buy a copy of the book for everyone you know. Send me an email if you want to come. If you can’t make it, buy the book online.

Read a reviewish thing I wrote about Flight Patterns over at The Faster Times.

TFT launched yesterday and, though I’ve had my head down in my own little publishing corner for some time now, it’s great to finally see how the whole thing fits together.

I just finished reading about cereal box censorship, the highest highlighter ever, and Phillip Johnson’s Glass House. The “Surprise Me” feature sent me to an article about the five foods I shouldn’t eat raw. There’s advice from Gary Shteyngart, a Love and Lies section by Clancy Martin and more traditional newsy stuff like World, Politics, and Science sections. I’m thrilled to be a part of this and the rest of the Books section (including Fiction by Books Editor Lincoln Michel and Indie Books by Rozalia Jovanovich) is not to be missed.

Check out the mission statement and an article about TFT in the New York Observer.

I reviewed Fugue State, Brian Evenson’s short story collection, in this week’s Time Out New York. I gave it one million stars but they cap you at five.

Evenson is a terrifying genius and this book is gloriously terrifying and I can’t seem to get out from under the brilliant, crushing weight of these terrifying stories. All of this is to say: read this book, and his other books, and be haunted by the best kind of ghost.