In our afternoon reading: thoughts on Esther Yi’s novel, interviews with Victor LaValle and Catherine Lacey, and more.
Currents, an Interview Series with Brian Alan Ellis (Episode 93: Rick Claypool)
RICK CLAYPOOL is the author of Tentacle Head (Bear Creek Press, 2022), The Mold Farmer (Six Gallery Press, 2020), and Leech Girl Lives (Spaceboy Books). His short fiction appears here and there online, including Expat Press, Heavy Feather Review, and Bear Creek Review. He lives in Rhode Island.
Morning Bites: Lincoln Michel’s Novel, Mary Miller Fiction, Rick Claypool Interviewed, and More
In our morning reading: thoughts on Lincoln Michel’s new book, a story by Mary Miller, and more.
The Horrors of Work: A Review of Rick Claypool’s “The Mold Farmer”
I think the idea of labor has become something of a deadening note for today’s fearful public. We are all of us a chorus of the overworked. Forgotten, underfed, middling labor. Beset by hateful prejudices, uncontrolled viruses, deceitful media and neighbors, we drift, aimlessly, from one calling to the next, a cycle of duress begetting fitful sleep after fitful sleep, guessing how our meager indulgences got us here. Pushed totemically across the game board, no amount of training can prepare the worker for the whipcrack of life, the breaking of spirit.