Gabino Iglesias

The Academic Novel Turns Surreal: A Review of D. Harlan Wilson’s “Primordial: An Abstraction”

September 2, 2014 No Comments

Primordial by D. Harlan Wilson Anti-Oedipus Press One of the rarest, and by far most enjoyable, literary occurrences is picking up a new book by a writer whose work you like and realizing the narrative is precisely the one you’ve always wanted that author to write. D. Harlan Wilson’s Primordial afforded me that unusual pleasure. I’ve been a fan of Wilson’s writing for a few years. With each new book, he stands at the edge of strange fiction and then […]

Book Review, Books, reviews

Violence, Kitsch and Bizarre Crime in Hawaii: A Review of Cody Goodfellow’s “Repo Shark”

August 5, 2014 No Comments

Repo Shark by Cody Goodfellow Broken River Books; 300 p. Cody Goodfellow’s Repo Shark kicks off with a man making an entire hotel nervous. This bizarre opening is followed by a fight with a Hawaiian prostitute, a healthy dose of Michael Bay-worthy destruction, an episode of autofellatio with an unfortunate teeth-related mishap, accent-slathered conversations with a few strange characters, a briefcase full of weed and coke, and enough cursing to satisfy fans of Martin Scorsese’s F-bomb wiseguy masterpiece Goodfellas. Then […]

Books

Review: “American Smoke,” Iain Sinclair’s History of the Beat Generation

July 21, 2014 No Comments

American Smoke: Journey to the End of the Light by Iain Sinclair Faber & Faber, 320 pages Iain Sinclair is a psychographer, a term he eschews, but reading his work is an experience that goes beyond the implications of that word. In American Smoke: Journeys to the End of the Light, Sinclair follows the footsteps, sometimes real and sometimes imagined, of great counterculture figures of the Beat Generation such as William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Charles Olson, Malcom Lowry, Allen […]