We’re not going to lie: we’re pretty excited for what February has in store for us, books-wise. (We’d even think this if one of our editors didn’t have a novel due out in the second month of 2024.) This month has it all: new books by longtime favorites, a terrific example of punk lit, and a thoughtful work on the state of labor to cap it all off. Here’s a glimpse of what we’re excited about circa now.
The guiding principle of Six Ridiculous Questions is that life is filled with ridiculousness. And questions. That only by giving in to these truths may we hope to slip the surly bonds of reality and attain the higher consciousness we all crave. (Eh, not really, but it sounded good there for a minute.) It’s just. Who knows? The ridiculousness and question bits, I guess. Why six? Assonance, baby, assonance.
It’s unlike that you’ve ever read a graphic novel quite like Dave Baker’s Mary Tyler MooreHawk before. This sprawling adventure tale is both a heady pulp adventure and a formally inventive work with more layers than you’d expect. (It would fit comfortably beside the work of James Stokoe and Tom Scioli on your shelves.) We’re pleased to present an excerpt from the book, along with Baker’s thoughts on making prose and comics work in harmony.
Chapter 5
The DMV is a Visual Cult Object to me.
When stepping from outside into the glass antechamber, one feels they are in a limbo space.
The second set of doors swing open to the waiting area, the catechumen.
Today, we’re pleased to present an excerpt from Bradley Sides’s magnificently-titled new collection Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood. Alexander Weinstein called the book “a traveling carnival filled with pond monsters, vampire girls, fire-breathing children, and minor apocalypses” — and that certainly has our interest piqued. Read on for a glimpse inside.
Chapter 4
On my first day at Van Gogh’s Vase he appears.
Either there’s some funky stuff in my gum or this is a dream come true.
I keep looking at the shaved hair around his left ear, his perfectly groomed short beard (likely a Size 1 clipper guard), and try to truly believe, the creator of DPZ, Everhet Byzantine, is my boss now.
There’s a long history of literary works inspired by literary works or works of art. For her new book Songs for Olympia, Tomoé Hill opted to go one layer deeper. Her book opens a dialogue with Michel Leiris’s The Ribbon at Olympia’s Throat, which is itself a response to a Manet painting. That said, a detailed knowledge of Leiris’s book is not necessary for enjoyment of Hill’s’; instead, the earlier work by Leiris and Manet provides Hill with a vantage point from which she can reckon with questions of art, gender, intimacy, and her own history. It’s a mesmerizing work, and I caught up with Hill earlier this year to discuss it in greater detail.
Brad Neely’s debut novel, “You, Me, and Ulysses S. Grant,” is probably one of the funniest books I’ve read in the last decade. I was laughing so hard at one point while reading the book that my wife came from the other room to see what was going on. The book pulls off a remarkable feat—not only is it a hilarious, quick-moving account of Ulysses S. Grant’s life and war-time work, it’s also oddly moving. Beyond the jokes and riffs, the book reminds the reader of a trait that’s accidentally, but not essentially, American, and that also happened to be demonstrated by a host of Union soldiers during the Civil War: the willingness to sacrifice yourself for your belief in what is right and just—an idea of what your country could be—and to prevent the immiseration of oppressed people. The book is a portrait of an imperfect man who was striving, like many others at the time, to create a more perfect country than the one he was born into.