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.
My first encounter with Jaime Fountaine came via her role as one of the two hosts of Philadelphia’s Tire Fire Reading Series. Then we had the good fortune of publishing her essay “19, 16, and 1” here at Vol.1 Brooklyn, showing off another side of her literary works. This summer brings with it the release of her debut novella Manhunt, the story of a teenage girl dealing with her complex relationship with her mother, the mundane horrors of growing up, and the restrictions of suburbia. I talked with Fountaine about her book, suburban landscapes, and the game that gave her book its title.
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.
This summer, I got the chance to correspond with Sarah Lopez, one of the co-owners of Radix Media, a new Brooklyn-based publisher that focuses on beautifully designed, illustrated books with a high attention to detail. So far, they’ve published speculative works by John Dermot Woods, Vera Kurian, Ashley Shelby, and others. All look and feel like collector’s items, objects that truly do justice to the ideas they contain.
The music made by Polish post-punks Trupa Trupa finds a haunting balance between intensity and off-beat melodies, even as the group’s lyrics juxtapose the absurd with the harrowing. Their next album, Of the Sun, is due out next month on Lovitt Records, and they’ll be touring the US in October — including a stop at Union Pool on October 8. I talked with singer-guitarist Grzegorz Kwiatkowski about the group’s music, his poetry, and the place where they all converge.
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.
The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter is a new book by Columbus-based independent press, Two Dollar Radio. If you are actively reading literature online these days, you should be aware of both Etter’s work and the press, and are probably already be excited for this book.
The novel is about Cassie, who grows up with her mother, father, and brother. Her father and brother make their living by harvesting meat in the meat quarry that exists behind their family homestead. Though her father and brother work in the quarry, Cassie has an interest in it, bordering on obsession. But this buries the lede of the novel, or rather it’s central conceit, which is that Cassie, like her mother, and her mother’s mother before her, was born with her stomach twisted into a knot.
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.