Tag Archives: book reviews

The Dirty Version

Books,

My review of The Dirty Version by Buddha Monk and Mickey Hess is up at The Fanzine. An excerpt: 

The release of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in 1992 signaled a shift in the way hip-hop was packaged and produced. While’s Dr. Dre’s blockbuster The Chronic featured clean lines and a performer who never let you forget who you were listening to, the Wu-Tang Clan’s album art featured a group of men in black hoodies and stocking caps, their faces rendered menacingly indistinct. Coupled with their dark, violent lyrics steeped in lore cribbed from Kung Fu flicks and the rhetoric of the Five-Percent Nation, they burst on the scene with the subtlety of a brick through a windshield. Their message was clear: The Wu, whoever they were, were coming for you, and you better protect your neck.

Read the rest of the review here. 

The Killers Inside Us All

Books, , ,

I spent a month with this monster. You should, too. 

Despite the influence of Roberto Bolaño’s “2666,” Sutler calls the protagonist of another open-ended epic to mind: Tyrone Slothrop of Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” a character who disappears from the book but whose presence can be felt on every page. “The Kills” has similar goals as “Gravity’s Rainbow”: to expose the greed and corruption that thrives in the economy of war.

Read the rest of the review in the Los Angeles Times. 

Forest of Fortune in Booklist

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“So here’s an interesting trio of characters: Pemberton, a down-and-out copywriter hired to write radio ads for a casino located on an Indian reservation in Southern California; Alice, an employee of the casino, who wonders if her new epilepsy medication is causing her to have visions; and Lupita, one of the casino’s regular customers, who’s baffled by what appears to be a slot machine that won’t let you stop playing until you’ve lost everything. The author introduces us to his cast in alternating chapters, letting us get to know them (Pemberton was thrown out of his own home by his fiancée; Lupita’s best friend did time for killing her husband) before he begins to join up their stories, pointing them all in the same direction: toward the evil presence that appears to be haunting the casino. The book is not quite a supernatural thriller, more like a stylishly written contemporary noir with some seriously weird overtones. Ruland’s character design is impeccable; these are very real people, each with his or her personal issues to sort out and pretty much the unlikeliest heroes you’ll meet for the next while. This one deserves a look.”

Charged with Wit and Wonder

Books,

I reviewed Edouard Leve’s Works in the Los Angeles Times:

When I was in the Navy, I heard a story about a prankster who’d chalked a profane message on the lawn of the commanding officer’s residence. Knowing the huge white letters would inspire the C.O. to immediately wash away the offensive language, the prankster had added a layer of grass seed to the message so that every spring the insult would return.

It’s the kind of joke that Edouard Levé would have appreciated. In “Works,” translated by Jan Steyn, Levé presents 533 ideas for works of art across a wide range of media. Some are plans for photographs, others include detailed notes for installations, while others lay the groundwork for films and books, including the first in Levé’s series: “A book describes works that the author has conceived but not brought into being.”

Read the rest of the review here.