Blake Butler
Holes and Bodies and Secrets and Skin and Death
Despite all the complaints about the small press being dead, I think more books have come out this summer than maybe ever before. There are so many new books coming out every month you could build a house out of them and bury yourself in it, reading...
Rachel Glaser’s Hypercolor Multitude of Moods
I can still remember where I was the first time I read Rachel B. Glaser. I’d slept the night on a friend’s futon and was woken up by the sun blasting me in the face. Crumbs from the sofa were pressed into my skin. I groggily picked up the issue of my...
Fatty XXL Meets the Little Mermaid High on X and Texting
For almost a decade now Action Books has been filling a gap in American publishing by translating works that are considered avant-garde masterpieces in other parts of the world into English. They published Tao Lin in the US before you knew who he was...
I Hate Myself and Want to Die: A Review of the New Wendy's Pretzel Burger
My belly seems bulgy and like it wants to be placed on stage with a microphone in a shitty bar somewhere. I don’t want to touch my chest or stomach. My shirt feels different, like I borrowed it from someone. I google the caloric value of the sandwich...
The Beatles Are Dead, Fassbinder Is Alive
My favorite music videos were always the ones that looked like the bands had been locked in a house somewhere, forced to take part in a nightmarish Kenneth Anger or David Lynch movie. James Pate’s novel The Fassbinder Diaries feels like that...
All My Favorite Narrators Are Women
I never liked dude-bro narrators like Bukowski’s or Updike’s. There’s something off-putting about voices that seem too male, or at least that flaunt their dick in a way that seems to scream, "I HAVE A SMALL ONE." There are so many female voices that...
Inside the Mind of a Female Pedophile
Less language-heavy than Lolita, more suburban than American Psycho, Alissa Nutting's new novel, Tampa is for certain a book that forces the reader to sit up and recalibrate the shape of their beliefs, while at the same time...
Conceptual Writing, Gender, Murder, and Bob Seger
The big shithole that is the internet has become the ultimate fodder for manufacturing conceptual art. There has never been more information and more ways to generate, spread, and manipulate it, while the historical aura of the artist-as-presence...
'Happy Rock' by Matthew Simmons, a One-Man Black Metal Band
I’ve been reading the stories of Matthew Simmons for years now. The first thing I remember learning about him was how he used to be in a one-man black metal band called Fire In My Bag. Trying to imagine what would come out of one friendly bearded guy...
What Are These Freaks Reading?
When summertime rolls around, all I want to do is stay inside and try not to sweat. I guess that’s why summer reading lists are a thing. In celebration of the year's most hellish season, I asked some writers I admire what books they’ve got piled up and...
The Miami Heat Reader
Chris Bosh is considerate and thoughtful, interested in discussing the physics of a sentence, the use of dreams in creating plot, and irregular meter. For several years he kept a reading diary on LiveJournal under the username BigUpsBoshMane, which he...
'Fence' Has Been Reconfiguring the Literary Landscape for 15 Years
Since 1998, 'Fence' magazine has been independently publishing a biannual journal of prose, poetry, art, and criticism; in 2001, they bagan publishing several lines of innovative, ambitious books. While most magazines (this one excluded, of course) and...