John Langan’s fiction brings together two seemingly disparate strengths: his way of structuring narratives is often revelatory, and his stories and novels themselves are frequently unnerving. Langan writes horror fiction, but his isn’t so much about jump-scares as it is about being in the presence of the inexplicable. There are uncanny hauntings and bizarre fatalities in it, to be sure, but Langan’s horror takes a very different form from many writers in the genre, past or present.
Weekend Bites: Jean de La Ville de Mirmont Revisited, Carmen Maria Machado, Soraya Roberts Nonfiction, Rita Dove, and More
In our weekend reading: why you should be reading Jean de La Ville de Mirmont, new writing from Soraya Roberts and Angela Woodward, and more.
An Excerpt From John Domini’s “The Color Inside a Melon”
We’re pleased to present an excerpt from John Domini‘s new novel The Color Inside a Melon, out now on Dzanc Books. Here’s how the author describes his latest book:
Risto— Aristofano Al’Kair— is a rarity in contemporary Italy, an immigrant success story out of Africa. Born in Mogadishu, he’s earned Italian citizenship and lives in Naples with a wife native to the city, and here he runs a successful art gallery in a good neighborhood. Here near the novel’s start, a couple of disturbing developments have left Risto unsettled, heading on foot up from downtown to a sketchier neighborhood, home to his distant relative Eftah. This older immigrant is gay and has shakier legal standing, in Italy, yet has made a home and remains Risto’s closest thing to family.
The History of Impossible Towns: An Interview With David Leo Rice
Describing David Leo Rice‘s new novel ANGEL HOUSE is the stuff out of which madness arises. There’s a godlike being answering to mysterious, ominous superiors; there’s a town created spontaneously from a blank landscape; there’s a running subplot about filmaking; and the lines between consciousnesses occasionally blur. (I should mention here that I’m not entirely unbiased regarding ANGEL HOUSE, by which I mean that I blurbed this book.) Rice has created something here that conjures up memories of the works of Julio Cortazár and Michael Cisco: it’s primally unsettling and unnervingly compelling. I asked him some questions about it on the eve of its release this week.
An Excerpt From Gregory Spatz’s Collection “What Could Be Saved”
Today, we’re pleased to present an excerpt from Gregory Spatz’s new book What Could Be Saved: Bookmatched Novellas and Stories, a collection in which violins play a significant role. (When he’s not writing, Spatz is also an accomplished musician.) In her review of the book for NPR, Martha Anne Toll writes, “What Could Be Saved is for readers who love being immersed in the minutiae of a world they would not otherwise enter.” And it comes complete with a blurb from Paul Harding, who knows a thing or two about good writing.
“A Novel Should Be As Overwhelming as Life”: An Interview With Cody Goodfellow
Cody Goodfellow’s sprawling novel Unamerica is a heady, indescribable work of fiction. It’s literally a cult novel: Unamerica focuses on the conflict between two warring factions within a massive underground city located on the border between the United States and Mexico. It’s a surreal place abounding with strange subcultures, corporate overlords, and weird drugs. And, despite this novel’s size, it never lags: visions, violence, and a pervasive sense of danger are constants across the narrative. I talked with Goodfellow about the novel’s genesis and its overlap with the current state of American politics.
An Excerpt From David Huddle’s Novel “Hazel”
We’re pleased to present an excerpt from David Huddle’s novel Hazel today. Huddle’s novel follows the story of a man reconstructing the life of his aunt. To quote the novel’s publisher, “What emerges, through found documents, photographs, interviews, and a sequence of narratives, is a moving story of his aunt’s long, paradoxical, Vermont life.”
Six Ridiculous Questions: Amber Sparks
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.