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.
Big Bruiser Dope Boy’s debut poetry collection, Foghorn Leghorn, cannot be sold on Amazon.com. Something about the cover, they said, something about the beloved, Southern-fried Looney Tunes chicken taking a big load on the face, something about that being too problematic for our nation’s youth who are otherwise looking to buy dildos and erotic fanfiction ebooks. So, if you want the brooding, complex poetry that haunts these pages, you gotta find it somewhere else. No two-day shipping on this hot piece of poetry, no algorithmically generated recommendations to clutter shit up. This is poetry in, poetry out. Fuck you.
Collision, the new collection of stories by J.S. Breukelaar, finds an unsettling balance between high-concept plotlines and intensely visceral encounters with the uncanny. While Breukelaar is adept at creating lived-in settings and lives for her characters, she’s also more than willing to dynamite expectations at a moment’s notice, sending her stories down through impossible memories, fragmented timelines, and bizarre afterlives. I talked with her about the collection’s genesis, how real-world events influenced some of the more fantastical stories within, and the role of music in her work.
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.
As a typical monolingual American, I am in awe of book translators. Their task is so monumental—to bring meaning from one entire linguistic context to another—and they accomplish it with so little fanfare or attention. When the book is unusually strange or challenging, presumably the work of translating it is equally so. And when the book plays on the profession and actions of a translator, is it even possible to make the leap from one native tongue to another?
So much literary fiction feels like an attempt to pull us into a world and convince us of certain truths. Raymond Strom’s debut novel Northern Lights is that rare book that simply unfolds, letting the beauty of the language, the tension of the story and the completely realized skin and bones of every character come to life on the page. As a piece of writing deep into a career, it would be a triumph. The fact that this is Strom’s first novel makes it something of a revelation.
The slim, propulsive novels of Scott Adlerberg pack a hell of a punch. He’s equally at home writing characters displaced from the familiar and characters whose daily routine can turn suffocating. His latest novel, 2018’s Jack Waters, follows the story of a gambler who becomes involved in a revolution in the early-20th century Caribbean. What begins as an adventure story with an antihero at its heart slowly changes into something deeper and more unpredictable, yet no less thrilling for it. I spoke with Adlerberg about his use of setting, his literary lineage, and his penchant for splicing genres together.
Brian Alan Ellis is both a prolific writer and champion of other prolific writers, releasing knock-out books by the likes of Noah Cicero, Sam Pink, Bud Smith (through House of Vlad Productions) between publishing his own steady stream of wry, scuzzy poetry and flash fiction.
His most recent book, Sad Laughter, is a cavalcade of witty one-liners, shitposts, and disarmingly funny micro-commentaries on the current state of indie publishing. Between bad band name puns and evocative new manifestations of a writer’s quiet desperation, Ellis breaks down the everyday absurdities behind trends like #AmWriting with the grace and power of Rob Van Dam’s Five Star Frog Splash. But, in line with the master-your-craft ethos behind professional wrestling, Ellis’s piledrives are safely choreographed and, dare I say, delivered with love.