Vermin on the Mount will celebrate its 11th anniversary next month in Los Angeles and San Diego with
Sean H. Doyle, Shanna Mahin, Joshua Mohr,
Wendy C. Ortiz, Patrick O’Neil, Jennifer Pashley and J Ryan Stradal. Don’t be bitten!
Cat sitting in Hollywood.
I’m thrilled to have an essay in this new, lavishly illustrated anthology of baseball writing put out by Hobart Handbooks. It’s got a ton of great writing by some of my favorite writers like Elizabeth Ellen, Tod Goldberg and Kevin Maloney. My essay is about witnessing the Dodgers’ historic run in 2013 with a friend battling a life-threatening illness. (The excellent illustration by Nick Francis Potter references the homemade Yasiel Puig lunchbox mentioned in the essay, which I really did make!) Get yourself a copy today.
Tobias Carroll at Vol. 1 Brooklyn profiles This Is Not a Camera alongside Tiff Zilla and Anne Carson in his Zinophile column.
Some of the pieces are observational, with notes about the work environment itself or explorations of minutiae that one might encounter in that realm. Others use the setting to examine larger issues: questions of national identity and immigration policy among them. And there are a few others where Ruland recounts bits of relevant history; he’s an excellent storyteller, and there’s a lot to enjoy here.
You can still get a copy of This Is Not a Camera for under a buck (or pay what you want, IDC).
This was a book I could have gone on and on about. I didn’t talk about it in my review, but it’s really interesting how the book’s themes dovetail with Karolina’s previous novel, How to Get into the Twin Palms. And the ending really put me in mind of David Goodis’s pulp masterpiece The Burglar. An excerpt:
The Invaders is a masterful work of literary fiction with the pulse of a thriller and an ending that’s right out of a pulp novel: lyrical yet unstintingly unsentimental and as pitiless as a sunburn on a cloudy day.
Best title for an interview ever? Reminds of a poem by Kenneth Patchen.
This was a nice surprise to come home to. Thank you San Diego Book Awards!
#forestoffortune in the house (at Book Soup, West Hollywood)
