Tumbleweed at rest.
A little Sunday night punk rock with OFF! (at The Epicentre)
Meet the author. #BNDiscovery Weekend at B&N Trolley Square Santee.
Forest of Fortune at Barnes & Noble
I’ll be participating in Barnes & Noble Discovery Weekend with a Forest of Fortune book signing on Saturday November 22 at 2pm at the Barnes Noble at Trolley Square in Santee. The bookstore is bringing in a ton of great local writers, including Matt Coyle, whose book Yesterday’s Echo won the Best Debut Novel award at Bouchercon 2014 in Long Beach last weekend. Also, immediately before my signing at 2pm, there will be a puppet making workshop and holiday singalong in case your nightmares needed more material to work with this holiday season.
Downloading the Declaration
I had the pleasure of interviewing Damien Ober, author of Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America for The Rumpus. Readers of The Floating Library know that I thought very highly of this groundbreaking book. Here are a few words from my introduction to the interview:
When I first heard the concept for Damien Ober’s novelDoctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America—a series of vignettes about each signer of the Declaration of Independence at the moment of his death—I thought,Great concept, but how the hell is he going to pull that off?And that was before I learned that in Ober’s version of early America the main threat wasn’t the British, the Spanish, the French, or even the Native Americans—it was a deadly plague contracted through the Internet.
Yes, Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America is one of those experimental hybrids: part historical novel, part speculative mind-fuck. But after reading a few chapters I was hooked. Unlike many high concept novels, Dream America isn’t constantly winking at the reader. In fact, it doesn’t wink at all. Nor does it bury the reader in an avalanche of “bet you didn’t know this about our Founding Fathers” ephemera.
No, Dream America is a wildly imaginative, deftly plotted, gorgeously crafted novel with astute things to say about an America that might have been and an America we’re in danger of becoming.
Blake Butler’s 300,000,000
Blake Butler isn’t for everyone. His work is at the front of a particular subset of indie lit marked by dark, masculine, unsentimental, unapologetically experimental prose. His latest book, 300,000,000, is a vertiginous decent into a nightmarish America.
[His] influences read like an encyclopedia of depravity: Dennis Cooper’s teen killers, the cryptic blather of “True Detective’s” Reggie Ledoux, Harmony Korine’s unscripted portraits of freaks and weirdos and the remorseless cruelty of Jim Goad’s serial killer zine, Answer Me!
I read the book during one feverish, unseasonably warm week in San Diego. I didn’t have a fever, I wasn’t sick per se, but this book changed me. While I was reading it I felt like Blake’s dark vision was serving as a kind of conduit for all of America’s many sicknesses. I felt polluted and provoked. One thing that concerns me about the book is that I think that it could prove to be exceptionally troubling for individuals with less than optimal brain health, i.e. I believe that for some troubled readers this book could trigger a psychotic break. I can’t imagine what it cost Butler to write prose like this:
And with each failure, the same reversal of electricity came sucking through me, evacuating, leaving marked back in my blood another hope I’d given away in the name of nothing.
You can read the rest of my review in the Los Angeles Times.
Popping bottles with @tyrusbooks #Bcon2014
Ben LeRoy or Dead Paparazzo? #Bcon2014
Forest of Fortune at CSUN
Citizens of the San Fernando Valley, I’ll be reading on the CSUN campus tonight as part of the professional reading series hosted by the Creative Writing Circle. If you’re near Northridge, come on by or drop me a line. Refreshments will be served.
UPDATED: Had a really great time at CSUN last night with the Creative Writers Circle. Because CSUN is a commuter school, students interested in creative writing have carved out a niche for themselves and built their own community. These things are just as crucial to the life of a writer as reading and, you know, actually writing. Because my path was not a traditional one, it’s inspiring to see young writers who get it. Really grateful to be a part of the Creative Writers Circle community, with a special thank you to Danielle Orozco for handling all the details. I look forward to seeing these writers again as they move beyond the classroom and into the literary community at large.
Deck ape off galley duty circa 1987.