Alex > Recent Status Updates

Antony talks like too many guys I knew in college. Poetry on the walls... Get the hell out of there, Victoria!

Chapter two was incredible. The three photos, with Victoria’s thoughts directed at each woman in parentheses, the full-on flashback to the train car with Lacey as she tells her story of leaving Australia... these levels, layers and modes of consciousness... story within story within story... this shit is why I read.

Still amazing, but I’m beginning to long for a book with a stable set of characters.

The Kalicz section was fantastic.

If you all weren't already aware, bandcamp is waiving their revenue share for today. There's a lot of great new stuff up. Here's my addition to the pile: https://alextedesco.bandcamp.com/albu...

Reading about the Civil War during a pandemic wasn’t exactly giving me the warm-and-fuzzies. Going with something a bit lighter today.

This is blowing me away.

God a Cause

And so of course the communist witch hunts ruined everything.

Not far off from Woolf. Possibly even more beautifully fragmented.

“The man who has to be supplied with the denotations of all the words on the page before he can make a start is making no distinction between a poem and a cross-word puzzle.”

God damnit, now I’m going to have to read the Cantos.

The ongoing nightmare of a pacifist.

Giving this another go, thanks to the Supercontext podcast.

Maybe I don’t like this. Nothing really hangs together. For all of the typographic movement it feels mighty static. And even in my big bizarre po-mo novels, I still prefer to care about the characters. Haven’t connected with anyone here. The fact that a white lady is telling this story is also a wee bit sketchy... and it wouldn’t have to be, but the rapping and dialect stuff doesn’t feel quite right... ?

Be still my heart.

"...for the world, Myles P. reckons, is sufficiently pit-full or peril and riddled with fate, so he applauds the constancy of characters who spend generations ducking change and its dangers."

I think I'm gonna like this one.

Apparently Lycanthropia is common in Livonia. Who knew?

Such a great book to start 2020 with. Will likely finish tomorrow. It pairs well with the positive thoughts I’ve been having about the future. I’m of two minds on this. Maybe to speak your hopes aloud is to jinx them, or maybe, in the words of Kate Bush, “I know that something good is gonna happen, and just saying it could even make it happen.” My prayer for the year.

Proto-Vollmann?