Chapter 17
It’s that feeling that everything is so good that you try to think back to earlier that day to where you missed something. Because you must have missed something for you to feel this good. I try to explain this stuff to Butler and get no reaction. It’s another thing I can’t articulate well.
In our morning reading: thoughts on fiction by Sofia Samatar and Rita Bullwinkel, the appeal of movie theaters, and more.
Nicole Haroutunian’s new novel, Choose This Now, wrestles with a lot of big themes in the subtlest of ways. This is a book about creative struggles, intimacy, and families both found and biological. Over the course of this book’s timeframe, its characters make decisions that are rewarding and emiently frustrating; they go to bizarre parties and embark on ill-concieved relationships. It’s an immersive work with the ebb and flow of life, and I chatted with its author about the project’s origins and her own experiences while writing it.
Chapter 16
Everhet employed his swooping charisma to charm the director of the contemporary art museum downtown to let him use the main exhibit room for his newest installation.
Immediate upon getting our passes it began to feel like I was leading one of those required timeshare sales meetings during your vacation that you earned by sitting through the same meeting on your last vacation. It’s infinite loop logic.
Crowdfunding is currently underway for The Essentials, a new graphic novel from writers Luke Arnold and Doc Wyatt and a staggeringly good selection of artists. Arnold is best-known for his work as an actor — notably on Black Sails and Glitch — but he’s expanded his purview into writing in recent years, and Wyatt has an extensive list of credits in both comics and television.
As for the art? Well, there’s a preview below featuring some of Jason Howard’s work on the book; you might know him from Big Girls, The Vallars, or Trees. Also contributing to Essentials are DaNi, Glenn Fabry, Vince Locke, Brendan McCarthy, Andrea Mutti, M.K. Perker, and Bill Sienkiewicz.
Today, we’re pleased to present an excerpt from Greg Sarris’s new collection The Forgetters. Writing about the book earlier this month in Literary Hub, Jane Ciabattari had this to say: “These new, intricately spun stories narrated by twin Crow Sisters are parables passed down through generations, re-envisioned for a 21st-century world fraught with unnatural dangers. They offer all of us the possibility of healing, connection, even love.”
Today, we’re pleased to present an excerpt from Nicholas Rombes’s new novel The Rachel Condition, out this month from CLASH Books. We’re longtime readers and viewers of Rombes’s work, especially his previous novel The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing. Elizabeth Hand called The Rachel Condition “an unsettling foray into places and people we glimpse from the corners of our eyes, sometimes to our peril” — read on for a glimpse into this surreal journey into the heart of a city.
Chapter 15
As he slides an espresso tonic to me, Everhet says he wants to show me how the new site works.
He used the money from Marcus to build it. Marcus is overtaking me in so many ways.