Category Archives: Books

There’s been a ton of great writing about True Detective and its influenes in the weeks leading up to it finale on Sunday night. Here’s a closer look at the ur text of True Detective source material, Robert Chambers’s The King in Yellow

An element of the supernatural hangs over the stories like black stars over Carcosa. These elements do a marvelous job of distracting the reader from the fact that none of the narrators can be believed. It matters less that their sanity has been compromised than the fact that their accounting of events is highly suspect. If you’ve been paying attention to True Detective, you know that the detectives’ unreliability is crucial to the how the story-within-the-story unfolds. 

What’s more ridiculous: adorable teenager pop stars singing about chocolate over thrash metal or grown men in clown paint singing as if possessed by demons and re-enacting pagan rituals they have zero chance of ever understanding? Thought so. 

AWP Swag #1: A Secondary Landscape

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I just got back from AWP14 in Seattle, and I brought home a ton of interesting books, journals, chapbooks and things in between: from perfect bound books from emerging presses to hand-made zines. I’m going to try to writer about as many as I can over the next few weeks. Number one on the list is A Secondary Landscpae by Aaron Gilbreath. I’ve been reading a lot of Aaron’s work lately in places like Harper’sVice and River StyxA Secondary Landscape is a quiet mediatation about figuring out one’s place in the world imbued with the recklessness of youth. The format is perfect: Scout Books makes little Books for Big Ideas. This 3.5”x5” literary object is made with recycled paper and vegetable inks and is a collaboration with Kevin Sampsell’s micro-press Future Tense Books. It’s so small I was afraid it would get lost in all the books, fliers and cards I brought home, so I read it on the plane. A Secondary Landscape is a great read for in-between places.