In our morning reading: an interview with Henry Hoke, news of a John Cale reissue, and more.
Afternoon Bites: Helen Phillips on Writing, Michele Mari’s Fiction, Revisiting Boris Vian, and More
In our afternoon reading: an interview with Helen Phillips, thoughts on MJ Lenderman’s new album, and more.
Time Is What Keeps the Light from Reaching Us
Time Is What Keeps the Light from Reaching Us
by Aaron Carico
I fill this room with the echo of many voices. The sun comes and floods this empty room, I call it my room.
I listen to your voice, David. Onscreen, you’re wearing a Ronald Reagan mask made of latex, like the ones from Point Break, and you’re looking at photos of Mark Morrisroe, one of him splayed on a bed, hard cock against his thigh, a twink pinup. “Mortality no longer feels like some abstraction I can push away to the age of eighty or ninety or whatever. There’s no longer a luxury of pushing the idea of mortality away.” You’re walking around Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing. It’s fall 1989. Morrisroe died that July. You unfasten the mask, take it off, and you read the scrim of text that covers your own photos of Peter Hujar’s corpse. Your words shield your lover’s dead body. Peter had died almost exactly two years before. Your voice is propulsive, a juggernaut. It vibrates with fury.
Selections From Manu Larcenet’s Adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”
Today, we’re pleased to present an excerpt from Manu Larcenet’s graphic novel adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Its path to publication was somewhat unorthodox: Larcenet, a winner of multiple awards at the Angoulême International Comics Festival over the years, wrote to McCarthy seeking his approval for the project. (It worked.)
“I loved The Road for the atmosphere it creates. Most likely because I enjoy drawing the snow, the chilling winds, the dark clouds, the sizzling rain, tangles and snags, rust, and the damp and the humidity,” Larcenet wrote. I draw violence and kindness, wild animals, dirty skin, pits, and stagnant water. I enjoy the contrast between the characters and their environment, and as conceited as it may sound, I feel like I’m up to the task.”
Morning Bites: Idra Novey on Poetry, Kamasi Washington on Creativity, Vincent Czyz’s Fiction, and More
In our morning reading: interviews with Idra Novey and Kamasi Washington, Charlie Jane Anders on reading, and more.
Afternoon Bites: Revisiting Philip K. Dick, Science Fiction Evolves, Matthew Specktor Interviewed, and More
In our afternoon reading: looking back on a Philip K. Dick novel, the state of SFF, and more.
Notes On Black Joe Lewis
“He pitches as though he’s double parked.”
-Pitcher Bob Gibson as described by announcer Vin Scully
***
Singer and guitarist Black Joe Lewis opens the show with the briefest of introductions:
“We’ve been playing like this for a while. Hope you like it. We’re not going to stop for a while.”
Moments later, he is torching the joint, soaring through an extended instrumental break, not fast or flashy, but somehow making it feel as if he’s propelled us to the middle of the set, skipping the warm up songs that bands and audiences use to acclimate, suss each other out. Lewis and his band, the Honeybears, get to the flow so quickly I lose track of conventional markers such as time and lyrics and song structures. Are they purposefully steering away from those elements in order to generate a different kind of energy? Or are they simply ready to roll, like Bob Gibson?
Collages, Calvino, and Catchy Pop Songs: Chatting with Smug Brothers
I’m not sure when I first picked up In the Book of Bad Ideas, the 2023 album from Ohio’s Smug Brothers, but the album made a huge impression on me from the outset. It abounds with the sort of off-kilter indie rock that’s both viscerally satisfying and singularly compelling. In advance of a tour that will bring them to Brooklyn (Young Ethel’s on November 9!), I spoke with singer-guitarist Kyle Melton about the band’s new EP, Another Bar Behind the Night, their penchant for collage, and the works of Italo Calvino.