Matt Bell – Page 11 – Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Memory as Flicker, as Fury

June 11, 2013 No Comments

We’re pleased to run an excerpt from Matt Bell’s mythic, visceral novel In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods. Bell will read with Norman Lock on Thursday, June 13th, at Community Bookstore. Here’s his introduction to the excerpt: Consumed by grief in the wake of his wife’s first miscarriage, the husband—a fisherman, a trapper—commits a desperate and compulsive act that secrets away within his body a child-like presence called the fingerling, a jealous and ghostly being that […]

Bites

Afternoon Bites: David Lang, “Green Man” Covers, Unearthing Minimalism, Sarah Polley, and More

May 10, 2013 No Comments

Notes on the minimalist composer Dennis Johnson — no relation to the writer or to Melville House’s publisher — whose November sees release this year. Ad Hoc has more. A selection of covers to past editions of Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man — some evoking terror, some evoking ’80s Cinemax. Alexander Nazaryan on celebrity publishers. New fiction from Gabriel Blackwell. Neil Gaiman wrote the episode of Doctor Who that’s airing this weekend. News on forthcoming books from Matt Bell. Birdsong‘s Tommy Pico: interviewed. Jayson Greene […]

Books, Events

Matt Bell and Norman Lock at Community Bookstore on June 13

May 2, 2013 No Comments

Any year that brings books from Matt Bell and Norman Lock is a good one. That 2013 has brought work from both is even better: Bell’s visceral, evocative novel In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and The Woods and Lock’s mindbending collection Love Among the Particles are both among our favorite books of the year to date. We’ll be hosting Bell and Lock at Community Bookstore on Thursday, June 13. Each will read, followed by a short conversation between […]

Columns, tobyreads

#tobyreads: Variations on Seclusion From Fiona Maazel, Matt Bell, Stefan Zweig, and Harry Mathews

April 12, 2013 No Comments

There can be a literary virtue in seclusion. Whether a long narrative is constrained to a reduced number of characters or settings (what I like to call the “person in a room talking” novel) or making use of themes related to isolation, memorable results are capable in either instance. Loneliness and solitude are essential elements to the human condition; they can be as liberating as the feeling of walking alone through a city that’s not your own, half-buzzed on coffee, […]

Bites

Afternoon Bites: Matt Bell Interviewed, Ladyfest Philly, Collected Noah Cicero, Matthew Specktor, and More

April 10, 2013 No Comments

“Before I was finished, a lot of other influences had been mixed in: there’s a little bit of King James Version, some Greek myth, a little bit of Old Norwegian, a smattering of unusual words lifted from nineteenth-century dictionaries, some Cormac McCarthy and Brian Evenson and Hiromi Itō and Christine Schutt, all these writers who work so well at the sentence level, who write so wonderfully about the body.” Matt Bell chatted with Tin House about his new novel In the […]

Bites

Afternoon Bites: Postal Service Auditions, PEN/Faulkner Nominees, Matt Bell Interviewed, Illuminati Girl Gang, and More

March 6, 2013 No Comments

“We live in a world that for the most part does not value what we do as writers and in response we waste our time complaining about degrees and pedigrees instead of making the big art that might actually silence our critics—or at least bring new readers back into the fold.” Matt Bell says smart things at Nineteen Questions. There is a comprehensive look at the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Observer. Also, both of these make us very excited: […]

Bites

Afternoon Bites: Charles Yu on George Saunders, Matt Bell Excerpted, Tracey Thorn and Samuel Beckett, and More

March 1, 2013 1 Comment

Frank Bill, author of Crimes in Southern Indiana and Donnybrook, is interviewed at The Awl. “Although Bedsit Disco Queen was written in fits and starts and ends for no good reason in 2007, it’s a gem by the wretched standard of the rock memoir, and also by the stiff-necked standard of theses on Beckett’s fiction, another literary genre Thorn has under her belt.” Robert Christgau reviewed Bedsit Disco Queen and Big Day Coming. Guernica has an excerpt up from Matt Bell’s forthcoming novel. Morrissey chatted with Rookie. “…characters, each […]

Bites

Afternoon Bites: Indie Press Economics, The Dorothy Project Interviewed, Samuel Beckett Grading Scales, and More

September 26, 2012 No Comments

Danielle Dutton of The Dorothy Project is interviewed at The Paris Review. (And if you haven’t picked up the Barbara Comyns book pictured above, you really should.) Maria Konnikova looks at the disappearance of Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine, and wonders what the implications are for books as a whole: “Does the publisher publicly—and prominently—acknowledge the error by leaving everything as it was and just removing the ability for new readers to make a purchase until the book is reissued or otherwise amended, leaving […]