Category: Experimental Fiction

  • “The Other Name”

    As this blog has evolved, one of its tropes has become comparing things to music; music is my other passion, and I’ve spent a lifetime reading and listening to odd things. I have a comparison here, and I’ll get there, but there are a few things to get out of the way: These are the…

  • Falling Behind/What I am Reading/Future Plans/Back on the Horse

    I have fallen behind in my reading, which happens from time to time. My band had a gig opening for surf-punks Daikaiju, which I enjoyed a great deal. The book I am reading “the most”, “Bubblegum” is kind of a weird slog– I’m enjoying it, and the story, but it seems overlong. I like long…

  • David Emory/The band Liturgy/”Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials”

    A number of years ago, when I lived in Mountain View, California, I would listen to a local radio station which carried a show by David Emory. He’s a talkshow host with a calm, soothing voice and his show “For the Record”  is a show which, at least at the time I listened to it,…

  • “Pougemaghone”

    If you’re writing or speaking about Pougemahone, you’re legally obligated to translate the title– which is Irish for “kiss my ass”. You’re also obligated to mention that was the original name of the band “The Pogues”, and also mention that the band appears briefly somewhere in the book. Having fulfilled those obligations, let us begin. …

  • Religion Nerd/50% of “Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials”

    For a long time, I have been a religion nerd– I have traveled through two different denominations of Buddhism, three or four (depending on how you count it) of Christianity, at one point considering becoming a clergyman (that lasted a few months, so don’t get too excited), and a few other random things. I’ve read…

  • “The Doloriad”/Metaphors

    I’m writing this quite literally a few minutes after finishing “The Doloriad” and it’s a puzzling thing. There’s a part of this book that insists it’s about something greater; it’s filled with allusions, and references and dense, sometimes overly dense language. On the other hand, it also perpetually has itself in the gutter. Endless grotesqueries,…

  • Milton Babbit/Gertrude Stein/”The Making of Americans”/”The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”

    Milton Babbitt was a composer who is probably more famous for writing an essay called “Who Cares if you Listen?” than for any of his actual compositions.  It’s not particularly surprising, if you sit and listen to one of them. Babbitt, for quite a bit of his career as a composer, was fond of ‘serialism’.…

  • Physical Books/”Only Revloutions”/”The Unfortunates”

    I meet periodically with a group of people in a bar in the afternoons, before the bar is open to the public. There’s a wide range of discussion, watching of Saints Football, and on occasion some tomfoolery. One of the regular attendees is a fairly staunch advocate of print books; I’m a fairly hardcore Amazon…