With the arrival of February, it feels like 2020 is getting into high gear, for better or for worse. A cursory glance at the month’s most anticipated new books could best be described as eclectic: there are experimental and transgressive works here, along with career-spanning tomes and thematically ambitious works of fiction. If this is a harbinger of what the rest of the (literary) year looks like, it’s a good omen.
In our morning reading: thoughts on books by Lynda Barry and John Crowley, Jeff Jackson and David Leo Rice in conversation, and more.
In our weekend reading: thoughts on Rachel Cusk’s new book, stories by Leland Cheuk and David Leo Rice, and more.
In our morning reading: thoughts on a novel by Dag Solstad, a playlist from David Leo Rice, and more.
In our morning reading: thoughts on Bill Callahan’s new album, an excerpt from Sarah Rose Etter’s novel, and more.
In our afternoon reading: thoughts on a newly-translated novel by João Gilberto Noll, Jeff Jackson on the making of his latest, and more.
In our afternoon reading: a review of Craig Laurance Gidney’s new book, interviews with David Leo Rice and Kevin Barry, and more.
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.