What are you currently reading?

[Andy]

I know I'll be dipping into Barthelme's short stories for quite some time to come; a very nice discovery! I already have Sadness on the shelf and will pick up the others by and by.

Now starting Svend Åge Madsen's Days With Diam which is supposed to be full of postmodern trickery. I wasn't all that crazy about the only other book by this Dane I'd previously read, Virtue and Vice in the Middle Time, but this one sounded more to my liking; we'll see...

[Andy]

Fiction writers are continually confronted with choices as to which of any number of alternative plotlines to go with at any given point in a story. In Days With Diam Or: Life at Night Svend Åge Madsen has accepted the challenge of not making definitive plot choices but, rather, allowing several interwoven storylines to proceed whereby, at the end of each chapter, the narrative splits and continues along two alternate paths as illustrated in a flowchart which is the book's table of contents. The idea is to illustrate a conception of life as a multiplicity of potential selves contained in each of us and realized according to what choices we make at every instant of our lives.

The result is quite fascinating and not at all gimmicky as might, at first, be suggested by such a didactic narrative strategy. The different variations of each storyline are further varied into a diversity of stylistic modes from straight realism to pure fantasy to a non-fictional discussion of the theory behind the book. In one variation, the narrator's love interest, Diam, in addition, undergoes a variety of tranformations of character and appearance. The narrator's thoughts, (it's all in 1st person), and the details of the proliferating story variations are continually reflecting, in some very creative and stimulating ways, the theme of the multiplicity of the self.

I'm not quite a third of the way into this book but I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far.

[Andy]

Finished Days With Diam and enjoyed having my expectations thoroughly exceeded. It's a very entertaining post-modern romp!

Now a couple of stories into The Collected Stories of Wolfgang Hildesheimer and the sophisticated, tongue-in-cheek irony on display in those certainly bodes well for the rest.

[Andy]

The Hildesheimer stories are fun, kind of like extended jokes on existential themes; some remind me of Woody Allen mixed with a bit of Kalfka.

Also reading Barthelme's Sadness and loving it. "The Sandman", "The Party" and "The Genius" are each a masterpiece of the short story genre. The sheer inventiveness and wit of these pieces is quite breathtaking.

[Andy]

Now beginning a novel, The King of Sweden, by Norman Lock, an author new to me. It's quite a big change stylistically from the other stuff I've been reading lately with its dreamily poetic, elegic narrative from the point of view of a young woman institutionalized upon being misdiagnosed with mental illness during the middle years of the last century.

[Andy]

The King of Sweden is a very sad and beautiful book. I was totally absorbed from beginning to end by the poignancy of the story and the poetic intensity of the writing. 4.5 stars.

[Andy]

Just finished Making Love: A Novel by Jean-Philippe Toussaint and liked its rather minimalist understatement. Once again, we have the unreliable narrator but in this case he's a particularly alienated and disturbed chap with barely controlled violent impulses. This book forms a diptych with Toussaint's next novel Running Away which I'll be reading soon. 3.5 stars.

Next up, The Grassy Street, a short story cycle by the Russian Jewish writer Asar Eppel.

[Andy]

Finished the Eppel story collection, The Grassy Street, and enjoyed the lightly whimiscal and amusing style and especially enjoyed the glimpse into a very different time and place: a desperately poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Moscow during and just after WWII. There did seem to be some awkwardness in the writing which could reflect the difficulties of translating a highly colloquial and slang inflected Russian.

Also, finishing up Barthelme's Great Days and while there always seem to be a few clunkers scattered through these story collections, the preponderance of wickedly inventive masterpieces more than compensates.

[Andy]

Just finished Cesar Aira's Ghosts. It was interesting, quite intriguing in fact, but that intrigue was almost entirely generated by the sporadic appearances of "ghosts" amidst a story detailing the events of a single day in the lives a construction worker's family living on the site of an unfinished condominium high-rise. The fairly long stretches of narrative between those apppearances of the "ghosts" I found to be rather dull, especially when Aira digresses into the realms of some very abstruse philosophical speculations. But the way he handles the whole "ghost" thing is so wittily entertaining that I did quite enjoy the book. Three stars.

Now starting Mario Bellatin's Chinese Checkers: Three Fictions.

[Andy]

Finished and really liked Ken Sparling's untitled novel. The whole thing is presented as random quotidian bits from the lives of a married couple and their kids along with thoughts and observations all of which bear much similarity to prose poems. A lot of the pages in the book have very little print; sometimes just one sentence.

Read and very much enjoyed Mikhail Levitin's novella A Jewish God in Paris about a man struggling to keep his family together following the revelation of his infidelity. A familiar subject but handled with great artistry.

Also have now read Chinese Checkers and Hero Dogs, two of the three fictions in the Mario Bellatin book. These were both extremely good in an edgy, minimalist vein. Hero Dogs shares kinship with Beckett's stories of severely physically constrained characters.

[Andy]

Finished the Bellatin and Levitin.

These were both very good. Except for the final story in the Bellatin, My Skin Luminous, (and a very strange one that was), all the works in both books are novella length. Igor, the final story in the Levitin was a fascinating character study based on the life of the early 20th Century Futurist theater director and poet Igor Terentiev.

Will stay on the lookout for more by either of these writers.

Now reading Self Portraits, autobiographical fiction by Osamu Dazai whose novel, No Longer Human, I had read (and loved) quite a few years back.

[Andy]

Finished the Dazai and liked the subtlty and delicacy of the writing but found myself increasingly unsympathetic to the narrator's cycles of self-destructive behavior followed by self loathing and resolves to change followed by backsliding to more self-destructive behavior.

Now nearing the end of Barthelme's City Life. It has some of the wierdest and most experimental fiction in any of the collections. Quite mind expanding at times.

[Andy]

Jean-Philippe Toussaint's Running Away, which I'm well into, is, so far, my favorite of the three I've read. The smooth, cool, understated prose is perfect for conveying the enigmas encountered by the narrator throughout the story. The title is particularly apt here with all the images of hurtling and fleeing thrown at the reader. A very fun read!

[Andy]

Reading two stylistically complementary story collections: John Dermot Woods' The Complete Collection of People, Places & Things and Reinhard Lettau's Obstacles.

The Woods stories are full of a whimsical inventiveness not unlike the French writer Eric Chevillard. Apparently he was mentored by Stephen Dixon whose blurb appears on the back cover. Hopefully there's a long and productive literary career ahead for this very talented new (to me at least) voice.

The Lettau stories are much more in the vein of satire and surrealism rather in the manner of Kafka and Calvino. Two of the first eight stories are scathingly hilarious dissections of the absurdities of war and the military. Others poke fun at the aristocracy. Very witty an entertaining stuff!

[Andy]

Finished the Lettau and Woods books and like both quite alot, especially the Woods (will keep on the lookout for more by him).

Now 40 pgs. into Dallas writer Daryl Scroggins' This is Not the Way We Came In: Flash Fictions and a Flash Novel and am enjoying the variety of themes he illuminates and the poignancy and depth achieved in the very short format.

[Andy]

The Scroggins is a delectible little book of beautifully turned phrases revealing insights into the rhythms and passions, joys and pathos of life. I especially liked the way the author often concludes a story with issues resolved unexpectedly and thought-provokingly. 4.5 stars.

[Andy]

Reading a slim novel by Karl Roeseler called The Adventures of Gesso Martin and am once again back in that wacky world of whimsy so many of the books I've most enjoyed lately inhabit. This one too consists of small (1 to 3 pg.) stories, scenes, vignettes, etc. arranged kaleidoscopically and all related, 1st person fashion, by the title character, a chauffeur employed by a rich lady rock star.

Another very fun book.

[Andy]

Just finished two books of short fiction: Jurg Laederach's 69 Ways to Play the Blues and Damion Searls' What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going.

The Laederach was very uneven; there was one truly brilliant story, "Conversation", and two or three very good ones and several clunkers (including the longest story in the book). His stylistic approach is absurdist comedy

The Searls was quite elegant and elevated in tone with some beautiful writing and some real insights, especially regarding the craft of writing and troubled male/female relationships. Gave it 4 stars.

[Andy]

Having finished Ken Sparling's For Those Whom God Has Blessed With Fingers, I posted the following small review:

There is nothing else in my reading experience quite like a Ken Sparling book. Such assemblages of scattered odd bits and disjointed fragments of story, philosophical reflection and just plain weirdness couldn't possibly be made to come together and function as a unified work of literary art but that's exactly what he somehow achieves.

I'm convinced it takes a very rare talent to perform such alchemy and I hope Mr. Sparling continues to perform it long into the future and to find ways of getting the results out to those of us who now require those results as a regular part of our literary diet.

[Andy]

Finished British poet George Granville Barker's The Dead Seagull, a fictionalized account of the beginning of his long on/off love affair with the Canadian poet Elizabeth Smart. The writing is very highly wrought, dense with symbolism and imagery from classical mythology and Barker's Roman Catholic roots. Intense, stormy, romantic and simultaneously elevated and tawdry, I enjoyed it a lot.

Now reading a sequence of prose poems by Daryl Scroggins: The Game of Kings.

[Andy]

Really, really liked Scroggins' The Game of Kings. And the eight page interview with the author at the back of the book is just as absorbing as the fictional content. This writer from Dallas combines tremendous imagination with great subtlty and fascinating word choices and sentence structure. I don't really know what qualifies this as "prose poems" rather than just prose, perhaps it's the compression of so much being said in so few words but I admire it all the same. What a shame there is so little of Scroggins' fiction writing in print.

[Andy]

Now reading Mac Wellman's story collection A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds.

Wellman is far better known for his award winning plays than for his fiction writing though he also has three novels to his credit. The stories is this book display wildly antic and absurdist flights of fancy reminiscent Gombrowicz's Ferdydurke or Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. The settings are various small planetoids in the asteroid belt which are inhabited by some very peculiar human type characters who say and do some very peculiar things. Clever neologisms abound and it's all some pretty far out stuff but Wellman, for the most part, succeeds with his verbal highwire act. It's quite fun.

Also reading Barthelme's Amateurs and am struck by the purely comedic aims of many of these stories as opposed to structural and linguistic experimentalism in so much of the other collections. "Some of Us Had Been Threatening" and "What to Do Next" were, I thought, especially brilliant examples from what I've read so far.

[Andy]

Finished Jamie Iredell's Prose. Poems. A Novel and liked it quite a bit. It's another of these longer fictional works composed of fragments, vignettes, etc. presented more or less randomly but which come together to form a unified whole analogous to a novel. I seem to have been gravitating more to this literary form lately and so far have been most impressed by Ken Sparling's and Daryl Scroggins' examples. The Iredell is very well done in terms of the writing; creative sentence structure, language and imagery, but I still see this much more as distinctively stylized prose than the "prose poems" referred to by most reviewers. The characters and situations in this book are somewhat offputting to me with scenes of drunken mayhem and self destructiveness which is why I rated it 3 rather than 4 stars.

Now starting Jeremy M. Davies' Rose Alley.

[Andy]

Davies' Rose Alley has impressed me with its extravagance, its exuberance, its erudition and the virtuosity of its highly elaborate language. Paul West comes to mind as does Georges Perec's Life: a User's Manual as examples of writers exploring similar stylistic paths. There's a fair amount of work involved in following Davies' oddly twisting sentences and the ideas contained therein, but the effort is amply rewarded.

[Andy]

Just finished Shane Jones' The Failure Six and am all excited about it because it was so much fun. Wonderfully creative writing; very dreamlike and mysterious. Jones excels at surprising the reader with just about every sentence that comes along. Five stars!

[Andy]

I don't read all that much fiction by women from a very female point of view but I really liked Claudia Smith's chapbook sized short story collection Put Your Head in My Lap which is very much that kind of writing. She doesn't in any way try to dazzle with linguistic virtuosity or flights of imagination. Her stories are beautifully simple, subtle and affecting and are frequently about women coping with the after-effects of tragedy or failed relationships. But among my favorites were actually several very upbeat and life affirming narratives. Very good stuff.

[Andy]

The Late Work of Magaret Kroftis by Mark Gluth is a beautiful novella, suffused with deep melancholy. The writing is extremely spare, indeed, some of the most minimalistic I've encountered (the comparison with Agota Kristoff on the back cover--especially the first part of her trilogy, The Notebook-- is apt). There is an accumulating of emotional intensity conveyed by the chains of very short, simple delarative sentences which is quite dreamily incantory, even magical.

Mark Gluth is another tremendously talented young writer on the scene belying the pessimism expressed in so many quarters about the future of American book culture.

Oh, and I respectfully disagree with one of the book's reviewers on this site who suggests this book can easily be read in an afternoon. I found the emotional buildup frequently to be too much all at once and needed to take beaks to relieve the tension and reflect on what I was reading. I think a couple of days reading time is more realistic.

[Andy]

Finished Gary Lutz's Partial List of People to Bleach. Liked it a whole lot for its aggresively creative wordplay and bizarre points of view. It does get to be a little over-stimulating though and so I enjoyed the respite of alternating these with the more normally syntaxed stories in Sean Lovelace's How Some People Like Their Eggs. Both of these are chapbooks and the Lovelace is very good too particularly the highly whimsical "I Love Bocce".

[Andy]

The Sean Lovelace chapbook was very nice; smooth, breezy and lightly whimsical Lovelace's voice convey's the complete assurance of a master craftsman. I agreed with another reviewer about the standout story being "I Love Bocce"

[Andy]

Read another flash fiction chapbook by yet another very talented young writer, Mel Bosworth, called When the Cats Razzed the Chickens. Well crafted and mostly in a whimsical vein but at only 23 pages this book almost just whets the appetite for more from this source.

Now reading a novel by Mac Wellman: Annie Salem, an American Tale.

[Andy]

The Mac Wellman novel (Annie Salem) was very entertaining and fun; wild flights of fantasy laced with wicked satire. I wouldn't call what Wellman does serious literature in the sense of being poetic or deep but it is extremely imaginative and witty light reading, an excellent foil for the more artsy stuff I've focused on lately.

[Andy]

I'm very enthusiastic about Matthew Simmons' novella A Jello Horse. Very beautifully crafted sentences, insightful and sensitive, playfully creative and inventive; this is a terrific little book. Another young writer to watch!

[Andy]

Just read a fun and quirky chapbook by Aaron Burch called How to Take Yourself Apart, How to Make Yourself Anew. Written as a cycle of prose poems in the form of instructions in a "How-to" manual, the whimsical quality of these pieces reminded me of Eric Chevillard in their stretching of reality into some fascinatingly unreal shapes.

[Andy]

Finished Kim Chinquee's Oh Baby, a collection of prose poems and flash fiction. The works here are all very beautifully crafted, lapidarian even. They are also interestingly interrelated with recurring characters and an overarching structure to the whole book. An excellent review can be found here: http://bigother.com/2010/01/28/run-ru...

[Andy]

Ken Sparling's Hush Up and Listen Stinky Poo Butt turns out to be his most purely delightful and accessible book of the three I've now read so far. It's filled with charming vignettes of a father's daily life taking care of two young boys and captures his explosive rages and frustrations along with his love and kindness. One of the most fascinating features of the book is this central charater's frequent conversations with his creator, Ken Sparling, with whom he confides his troubles and asks for advice while at other times author and character bicker and annoy each other.

A very enjoyable book.

[Andy]

Read a neat little (18 pgs.) chapbook by Matt Debenedictis, CONGRATULATIONS! There's No Last Place If Everyone Is Dead, featuring very finely chiseled sentences comprising flash fictions of a decidedly morbid edginess. Some real talent on display here, well worth reading.

[Andy]

Really liked Mary Miller's story collection Big World. The 14-30 yr. old female protagonists of these pieces are generally pretty screwed up from having bad parenting and/or profound tragedies to deal with and there is much escapist behavior in the form of drinking and casual sex going on but the narrative voice, which is consistent throughout, is witty, sarcastic, funny, a bit cynical but also frequently insightful making for a very engaging reading experience. The writing does raise for me the issue of whether characters who show such a lack wisdom in the poor choices they make in their daily lives can believably display the kind of wit, intelligence and insight these women do to the reader of these stories. This didn't significantly detract from my enjoyment of Miller's fiction, however, due to the charm of that very same drollery.

[Andy]

In his novel-in-stories, Burning Babies, Noah Cicero effectively and with a certain raw crudeness befitting the bleak brutality of the lives depicted conveys the psychology of white trash culture. The text is unfortunately undermined, to a certain extent, by the very large number of typos. Frequently whole words are left out leaving the reader to try to decipher what's missing. While annoying, the impact of the author's powerful vision of a world gone mad is not blunted. Fans of Celine would do well to check this guy out.

[Andy]

Read a very good flash fiction collection by Kristina Born, One Hour Of Television, which reminded me somewhat of some of Ken Sparling's more recent writing. Both are Canadian and it could be that Born (the younger writer--she's 22) has absorbed some of Sparling's craft into her own style. There are thematic and character interconnections throughout the tiny pieces comprising the book as, for example, a number of very funny satires on the subject of nuclear warfare. A solid 4 stars.

[Andy]

Wilhelm Genazino's The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt was a thoroughly enjoyable read. The central character who is telling us his story teeters on the edge of insanity for most of the book while continually conveying his own absurdity in charmingly witty and amusing self analyses. There are definite echoes of the comic aspects of Kafka here and the stories of the contemporary Norwegian novelist Dag Solstad also comes to mind with his protagonists who similarly obsess debilitatingly over countless existential life issues.

The writing is quite dense at times with paragraph lengths of over two pages but that shouldn't deter a prospective reader. Many are the literary delights to be had with this book.

[Andy]

Thomas Cooper's Phantasmagoria is another very well done chapbook of flash fiction. His style tends toward the more surreal and magic realist modes and he does those very effectively. Another 4 star rating.

[Andy]

Finished A Nest of Hooks by Lon Otto which consists of stories ranging in length from an average sized paragraph to one of almost novella length. The quality of the writing is very high. Otto shows great sensitivity to the subtlties of male/female relationships and the stories are expertly crafted structurally with a nice arc to the unfolding of events and often a particularly poignant or insightful ending. The 1978 publication date might account for what, for me, felt like a kind of old fashionedness to the realism on offer here but then, my reading has focused heavily on the newest crop of literary talent for quite some time now so that's not too surprising. Anyway, A Nest of Hooks is fine stuff.

[Andy]

Just read Randall Brown's Mad to Live, the 2007-2008 Fiction Chapbook Winner from California State University, Chico's Flume Press and it's very fine writing indeed. Brown's characters are all dealing with their "issues" and several of the stories pack a real emotional wallop but there is a tinge of melodrama, a kind of overloadedness to the writing. Fortunately, this is somewhat leavened with wit and insight, and in the later pieces, with metafictional irony. Recommended.

[Andy]

I really liked Amelia Gray's interconnected flash fiction collection, AM/PM. Wit and whimsy combine with sensitivity and creative use of language to make for a thoroughly engaging and fun book. This is among the best of the many little flash fiction type things I've read recently.

[Andy]

Ever, by Blake Butler is a bit hard to pin a label on to regarding genre; novella?, prose poem sequence?, flash fiction cycle?... But that very elusiveness reflects a pushing outward of the boundaries of what the most innovative writers are currently doing with language in the service of artistic expression. As with Gary Lutz, Butler's fiction absorbs our attention by continually amazing us with the way it beautifully dances close to the edge of incoherence without falling in. There's excitement and wonder in that balancing act when it's managed with the linguistic skill and subtle precision of a writer like Butler. Highly recommended.

[Andy]

My overall reaction to Greg Gerke's story collection, There's Something Wrong With Sven, is mixed. On the one hand, there are quite a few fictions here which are completely engaging and wittily entertaining and on the other hand there are quite of few which left me disappointed or just baffled. There is certainly an eclecticism in his writing which, in itself, is not a bad thing and I don't think the variety of modes he chooses accounts for the hit and miss quality of the pieces in the book. But the best stories here (e.g., "This is Where We Keep Vivaldi's Body" and "Laws of the American Middle West") show a terrific flair for absurdist irony and satire which reminded me at times of Barthelme at his best. Gerke's efforts are not helped by an unusually large number of printing errors such as ommitted words, etc., especially noticable in the first half of the book. So a solid 3 stars.

[Andy]

One Damn Thing After Another by Tim Hall: wickedly funny stories here. Hall engages in some of the best absurdist satire I've read in quite a while. The writing is brash, arrogant, clever and literarily well crafted at the same time. On the edge of being 5 stars. I'll definitely be looking for more by this author.

[Andy]

Talk Poetry by Irish ex-pat Mairead Byrne is full of wry and cracked observations of the quotidian rather in the manner of stand-up comedy but delineated with the eye and ear of the poet. The book is great fun. P.S.--I recommend reading out loud.

Next up: Easter Rabbit, a collection of microfictions by Joseph Young.

[Andy]

With Joseph Young's Easter Rabbit I've learned that when a writer of fiction distills, omits and pares down his subject to the extent and in the manner of the microfictions in this collection, the mind of the reader becomes a much more active participant in the creative process. I found my imagination working to flesh out the wisps of narrative in an effort to understand what I was reading. And furthermore, I found this phenomenon to be very intellectually stimulating. Of course the similarity of what Young is doing to what a poet does is undeniable and he does it extremely well whatever label you put on it. These are highly intriguing and often strikingly beautiful miniatures. Highly recommended

[Andy]

Read another chapbook of finely crafted flash fiction, The Land of the Free, by Geoffrey Forsyth. Fairly mainstream in style but I like the understatement and subtlty. Well worth seeking out from the good folks at Rose Metal Press.