Investigating a difficult time in a difficult place (California: post-millennium), Andrea Lambert’s debut novel Jet Set Desolate is a minor flashback into the unstable, patchy American mode de la vie of a fictional character named Lena Cosentino. Writing from the po-mo perspective of a lone woman in her early thirties, the now alcoholic (although nothing in comparison to Lena’s past bouts with more serious narcotics and other not-so-wise socio-sexual diversions … some worthy of attention, some blown out of proportion) grapples with the remainders of her memories and desires, her failure to assimilate to what America expects of her. Written primarily from Lena’s first-person perspective, the reader is allowed to view Lena’s Bay Area on-the-fringe, bohemian-punk existence firsthand but in retrospect. The reader is reminded of the beginnings of various popular realities that are now well-known to many in their late 20’s or early 30’s—many at-a-loss post-grads from somewhat respectable liberal arts colleges and/or art schools that haven’t exactly panned out like they promised. More »
“This is Art”
| Lucky Thief, Various Sculptures, 2005-2009, various sculptures, painted wood, image: Galleri Jonas Kleerup |
Curated by Valdemar Gerdin, “This Is Art” is a provocative examination of not just art but more specifically street art in Northern Europe and its variegated relationships abroad. Oddly enough, Gerdin’s show is on no street, but rather: in Tegnérgatan’s Galleri Jonas Kleerup, and though this colorful patchwork hints at its graffiti roots, it is sometimes difficult to imagine the presentations of Sweden’s famed, creative undercurrent—namely represented here by Seen, John Fekner, Don Leicht, Faile, and Bast—thriving on any Stockholm street or elsewhere in Sweden. Yet, this is no fault of any artist in question, for Sweden has a history of frowning upon graffiti art, pushing the genre into awkward invisibility. More »
Amina Cain, I Go To Some Hollow
These fifteen brief stories press the modern reader to examine both their direct and indirect relationship with the external world, through a number of subtle and at other times provocative devices. Amina Cain writes in “Black Wings,” “It is hot and humid and we are reading Lolita. After we read for a while we take a bike ride, and when we are tired we get off our bikes and sit against a concrete wall.” At first glance, this appears to be an unassuming reference to just another book of the past, yet for those who have read Nabokov, we know its literary weight and are sure to be stirred, if not strangely aroused by this juxtaposition of Lolita to the bicycle—the one tool every blooming adolescent recognizes as synonymous with liberation, movement and exploration. More »
Harold Abramowitz, Dear Dearly Departed
Beginning and ending with the same phrase “Dear Dearly Departed” to a lengthy yet necessary missive to an unknown listener, much is to be expected in between the point of entrance and exit, though the book’s sheer magnitude is difficult to decipher, yet prevailing. Harold Abramowitz’s second book (following his earlier chapbook Three Column Table) utilizes repetitions, short and brash lines, declarations of feelings and slippery absolutisms, as well as follows through with an examination of numerous dichotomies—such as lover-enemy, absence-presence, life-death, love-hate, progress-regression, man-woman, child-adult, order-chaos, ad infinitum. Abramowitz has the reader on a sophisticated escapade; your ride is sure to be eloquent and well-deliberated. Dear Dearly Departed is one exploded paragraph—though not to be confused with Vanessa Place’s 50,000 word, run-on sentence of a novel Dies: A Sentence. Yet, both works of art can be considered avant-garde, in that they push the interpreter into fresh literary architectures, if even somewhat uncomfortable, as well as breaking through previous notions of what a poetic body of work needs to investigate and via what avenues and methods of dissection. More »
James Shea, Star in the Eye
Star in the Eye is true to itself and to the heavier emotions that stem from awkwardness, transition, rejection, resignation, lost time and memory. Recent winner of The Fence Modern Poets Series, it is easy to understand why this one was chosen among its stealthy competition. James Shea’s thoughts are carefully constructed so that they become valuable to anyone, not just devoted poetry followers or even those who craft words themselves. Certain lines are so effectual and familiar—especially to those who question every iota, including their own flecks in and of the world—that Shea lets them stand alone: “Here, place me wherever.” Perhaps more guarded than their surrounding clusters, perhaps not, lines such as this one press the reader to denounce previous conclusions or reject the roles of others around them. Or: maybe this line refers to the collective sentiment of our spent generation… taking whatever job or role we can. There’s little room to be picky in an era similar to last century’s stifling Depression; there’s little room left after excessive technological spews, media binges, flagrant consumerism. More »
Vanessa Place, La Medusa
La Medusa and the sprawlish, sweltering city of Los Angeles are both shifty terrains for recurring exploration, and the brave minds of both those who inhabit and delve into these parallel universes are not short of a challenge. Much like the mythological horror and fascination of Medusa herself, this novel carries the weight of its fate—to be loved by those who relate to its labyrinthine thread of excess and perhaps despised by those who fail to comprehend and revere the beauty and sheer force of such a charming, deadly siren. The Gorgon Medusa is also commonly associated with female rage and maliciousness, but who is say whether or not Los Angeles possesses the spirit of such a venomous persona, or if this city and its migrant souls are just misunderstood? More »
Maxi Kim, One Break, a Thousand Blows!
One of a series of nine carefully commissioned bodies of work, Stewart Home chose One Break, A Thousand Blows! as part of a historical tribute to a previous tendency to choose more difficult, less obvious texts, highlighting the more non-commercialized, avant garde tendencies of the mid-twentieth century’s Beat Generation or the somewhat tedious constraint-based Oulipian dialectics. This novel—like many bubbling up in this millennium—is tainted in a good way, clouded with previous literary influences, wary of outright acceptance by a quaint populace. One Break can be frustrating, for it could be interpreted that Kim does not care whether or not the reader hears the joke or the punch line. A drum roll doesn’t always lead to humor, and humor is sometimes far from appropriate. More »
Alison Carter, A Fixed, Formal Arrangement
It’s not hard to appreciate A Fixed, Formal Arrangement, for this segmented, creative work doesn’t pretend to be anything that it’s not; it hopes that you aren’t pretending to be anything less than yourself when reading it. It’s best to be frank with one another, you and this text, if you want to get to the meat of it, if you want to be more comfortable with solitudes, strangeness, unfinished dialogues, eye holes into panoramas of the beautiful and unfinished life, found among the confused and questioning, found among what comes natural if even unconventional. More »
Axel Thormählen, A Happy Man and Other Stories
One of many to-be-desired releases in Les Figues’ TrenchArt: Parapet Series (among others such as I Go to Some Hollow by Amina Cain and God’s Livestock Policy by Stan Apps), this special compilation of nine well-crafted short stories by German author Axel Thormählen exceeds any careful reader’s expectations—they are gems to be marveled. Though these stories are similar in tone and in literary design, the subject matter in which they investigate, explode or agitate is such that any receptive soul must harbor the ability to linger appropriately with each one, and a safe haven is needed for the reader to engage in Thormählen’s highly subjective, poetic fiction. Thormählen does not avoid uncomfortable subjects, and because of this, his fiction is—at times—philosophically cumbersome. His stories do not shy away from our mutually shared experiences, and they display internal worlds of his characters with a selective eye—keen in observation, precise in both their secular and otherworldly guises. More »