Sometimes you keep coming back to an author because even when their works don't quite click, you can sense the potential, that their ideal work is yetSometimes you keep coming back to an author because even when their works don't quite click, you can sense the potential, that their ideal work is yet out there somewhere. Perhaps, to me, from Volodine, this oneiric post-apocalyptic noir is mine. As usual for the pseudonymous Volodine, this exists in the hinterlands of his invented "post-exotic" literature, a book perhaps written by a character from within its landscapes of collapse, possibly fictionalizing or embellishing or conjecturing events the underlying reality of which we can't quite access. Even so, its story -- of a jaded investigator chasing a doppelganger and possibly undermining the political organs he ostensibly serves -- has plenty of narrative pull of its own, moreso due to the overwhelming sense of loss, personal and global and narrative, suffusing it. Like this more recent, prize-winning Radiant Terminus, this is a literature of futility and exhaustion (of possibilities, personal and global and narrative) but carries more emotional weight to bind it together, and, antithetically, a sense of enduring tenacity in the face of devastation. The conflicting layers of story through which it unfolds adds to the effect rather than becoming the medium into which all meaning dissolves (ultimately, in recollection, my complaint with Terminus, which I liked but wanted to like so much more). If this is any indication of older Volodine I hope more gets translated, more pseudonyms, more stories, more pieces of the strange post-modern mosaic literature he's been constructing alone for decades now. Perhaps as more pieces emerge, the whole body of work will take on more depth and nuance, beyond my piecemeal explorations thus far....more
Nesting dolls of loss at the height of AIDs-crisis NYC. Maso's second novel is ostensibly about a young writer trying to figure out how to write her sNesting dolls of loss at the height of AIDs-crisis NYC. Maso's second novel is ostensibly about a young writer trying to figure out how to write her second novel in the face of unexpected death, and it toys with layers of representation as you might expect. But the moment where the structure breaks apart into cold, clear transparency has nothing to do with the difficulties of writing, no time for games of creative process and authorship, just a stark, heartbreaking portrait of the last days of one of the countless lives cut short by a devastating disease in those years....more
This is one part of Lee Beuer's reconfigured Divine Comedy, inferno as the doomed love between a dog and her owner. Breuer is mostly known as a playwrThis is one part of Lee Beuer's reconfigured Divine Comedy, inferno as the doomed love between a dog and her owner. Breuer is mostly known as a playwright and you can imagine this on stage as a series of monologues (interleaved, as in the novel's typeface-swapping stanzas), backed by a chorus spouting the parodic pop-song fragments that break these up. In typical/dizzying post-modern anything-goes fashion, it's told through appendices full of medical reports, a detailed film script, and multiple other layers of colliding media, while the story continually rams highest and lowest motives together whether through pun-laden spiritual discourse, or a central conflict that leaves interspecies romance as tragic but not at all unrequited. A shaggy dog story for Skinemax with erudition rivaled only by lack of restraint. Obviously, it's hard not to have fun with. Equally obviously, it's a little much. This-is-why-I'm / this-is-what-I-get-for always scooping up weirdo fiction I've never heard of and that no one else on Goodreads has ever tried to read....more
The information jumble of our lives, granted salience -- even against the obviously trite, or recycled[image] Miyoko Ito, Tabi Sox or Foot Fetish, 1974
The information jumble of our lives, granted salience -- even against the obviously trite, or recycled, or ridiculous -- by the human forces beneath: personal identity, and interpersonal connection, and the emotional centers that bind them. A cybernetic shaggy dog for a particular present....more
In her later The Archive of Alternate Endings, Lindsey Drager somehow took Handsel and Gretel, Haley's Comet, and those ostracized by society, and spuIn her later The Archive of Alternate Endings, Lindsey Drager somehow took Handsel and Gretel, Haley's Comet, and those ostracized by society, and spun together something unexpectedly vital and moving. Here, we have another strange assortment of signifiers: ice, shadows, esoteric academic arguments ("does the wrist exist?"), fairy tales, vague dystopia, and loss of family. The melding is in this case less seamless, perhaps a little less assured, the logic less effortless. But as you find yourself asking where, in this story of fathers and daughters, the sons and mothers may be, rest assured that at least one those omissions is a precise and transformative one, and the core here, beneath the faux scholarship and incompletely transmitted stories, seems just as deeply felt. Having now exhausted her first three novels I am very much looking forward to whatever Drager may do next....more
Updates seem absent from the new book pages, so I will briefly react here:
There's a tendency to imagine critical moments as precise and crystalline, bUpdates seem absent from the new book pages, so I will briefly react here:
There's a tendency to imagine critical moments as precise and crystalline, but the crises of "The Pedersen Kid" ring truer: muddled, confused, panicked, left to emotion, reflex, and irrelevant stray thoughts, to the point where memory of the precise order and color of events might forever remain inaccessible after the fact....more
Each documented passage of Haley’s comet, and several to come in future years, become the timepoints of evolving variations and reflections of the HanEach documented passage of Haley’s comet, and several to come in future years, become the timepoints of evolving variations and reflections of the Hansel and Gretel story: the deep bonds of siblings cast out by parents and otherwise finding in each other their only reliable aid. Also: AIDS, queerness, stigma aimed or defied, destruction of self or other or all. It doesn’t matter, really, what Jacob Grimm’s actual sexuality was — or Hansel’s — the ghosts of historical possibility are all true enough (or else, there is Carrington’s “all stories are true”) and allow Drager to deftly weave together her themes and images across time and space. But for all the essayistic clarity or formalist precision at work here, what could have been a bloodless architecture of ideas is instead a passionately living thing that yearns and grieves and bleeds (or in one hinted instance, issues tears of blood). For all the characters flung across the chronology, their stories all somehow matter, at multiple points almost overwhelmingly so. At the center, I sense, Drager herself is not without deep stake in this. I thought I spotted her twice, but in truth I know nothing of her. In truth, a narrative like this could only work because she’s everywhere.
Back into the shelves of a favorite second-hand bookseller again, and my search image for worthwhile oddities remains reliable. I knew nothing of this book or Lindsey Drager, but it’s sublime, and I’m thrilled to know she wrote two others before this....more
Tom LaFarge is an unsung seer of contemporary postmodernism. He spins adventure stories of a high conceptual order that does nothing to blunt the immeTom LaFarge is an unsung seer of contemporary postmodernism. He spins adventure stories of a high conceptual order that does nothing to blunt the immediacy of their pleasures. Here, he tells a deftly interwoven story of systems, human and mechanical. Yalayl, a village girl in an unclear possibly north-African dictatorship whose terms are gradually revealed through context and bits of side plot, has a natural affinity for systems, a kind of perceptiveness to what's around her that also leaves her excessively open, an advantageous but also dangerous position (a key theme, closely knitted). These are machines, typewriters and looms, but also culture, art and song (and here the uniqueness of her mental space is elegantly conveyed in brilliantly unfamiliar description of familiar things, teasing out their inherent qualities in ways that may rewire the reader's understanding as well), and finally social and political systems, the structures of power. Of course, there's another overriding system worked throughout, that of the story. Maznoona has the simple fine-honed inevitability of a fairy tale, without releasing its bitter grasp on reality and however honed through a highwire orchestration of complicated elements. The highest affinity on display is a LaFarge's for narrative structure: with invention, with grace, with empathy, with urgency....more
Killers, lovers, sisters, bandmates. Writing with the messy mythopoetic energy of a kind of punk Angela Carter, or perhaps what Kathy Acker might haveKillers, lovers, sisters, bandmates. Writing with the messy mythopoetic energy of a kind of punk Angela Carter, or perhaps what Kathy Acker might have contributed to the early days of blogging had she had the chance, Lily James' "postfeminist" writing is smart, unpredictable, incisive in ways that dare you to find it frivolous, or else frivolous in ways that provoke you to pull the meaning from it. Perhaps when the writer manipulates archetypes so freely and aggressively, the reader implicitly pastes over the gaps with preconceived notions and the resulting story becomes a dance between the two. This is another from Fiction Collective 2's Black Ice imprint and it's pure hyperkinetic entertainment, engaging even when pushing to the choppy edges of comprehensible narrative.
Meanwhile, I just learned that "Chick Lit" was coined by fellow Black Icer Cris Mazza and this glorious pop-experimental extravaganza was Mazza's "epitome" of the genre. I have a feeling that definitions shifted shortly after this, but wishfully love imagining that this raw, radical, playful work could actually achieve best seller market saturation a few years later in place of all the Bridget Joneses of the world. Sadly, Lily James published only one novel after this and seems to have dropped off the map. Come back, Lily James, we need more of this....more
Postmodern feminist cyberpunk for the ambiguous semi-apocalyptic wartime American Southwest. Another from FC2's Black Ice imprint and its very much thPostmodern feminist cyberpunk for the ambiguous semi-apocalyptic wartime American Southwest. Another from FC2's Black Ice imprint and its very much the smart snappy avant-pop showpiece you might hope for, focusing on the internal politics and conflicts of an all-women semi-utopia isolated by geography and uncertainty somewhere in the desert, balanced against a gang of biker nuns seeking to compute the name of god. Establishes a rhythm of its own drifting out of the narrative for flashes of contemporaneous autobiography and a lot of thinking about the ways in which the characters are variously defined by men or their absence, or not, the semantics of relationship. Initiates too many intriguing plot points to really tie them all up in a completely cogent or compelling way by the end, but its not the sort of story that demands that either. Begs the question of why I'd not heard of Kit Reed earlier....more
A paranoid schizophrenic far-right religious fanatic begins receiving messages from god to kill a popular stage magician whose teachings form a disrupA paranoid schizophrenic far-right religious fanatic begins receiving messages from god to kill a popular stage magician whose teachings form a disruption to various staid conservative American values. He also begins receiving noise signals (sex scenes, occult images, philosophical precepts, bits of memory) all of which appear elsewhere in the book, happening to other characters. Fortunately (?) he's able to sift through the chaos, which he classifies as confusion tactics by the devil, to isolate the real message, from god, that he commit murder. And unfortunately, he does. How does he know which message was the "true" message amidst the mess of information he's receiving? Clearly he doesn't, since everything he sees is part of the book's narrative reality EXCEPT the bit he chooses as the one real message in the mess of inputs (all of which, since he is hearing voices in classic paranoid schizophrenic mode, originate in fact in his own brain). From this, he chooses to believe the one bit of information that conforms to his preexisting biases / world view. This is essentially a parable of how we all comprehend reality, thus it's a crux of the novel. We don't perceive reality, no one can perceive that. We perceive our own perceptions, which exist in our own minds, not in the external world. We all have to sift through the (often contradictory) contents of our thoughts to create our own "reality tunnel", Wilson's representation of the narrow path of comprehension that any one perspective is inherently restricted to. Put simply: each of us constructs all of reality from the information existing in our own brains. This would be solipsism, but I don't think Wilson would say we're actually so isolated. We exist amongst other subjective reality tunnels, all different, amongst other lives, and with an open mind / empathy we can reroute our reality tunnels at will. Maybe it's only when we don't that we end up letting our own reflected thoughts tell us to kill a stranger.
This is one understanding of The Trick Top Hat, one very specific reality tunnel I selected through careful filtering of the perceptions/reflections generated during my reading of it. Perhaps because it conforms to certain inclinations I already possess. Wilson never says all of this, exactly, and he also says a lot of pure nonsense. Sophomoric gags, Pynchonesque conspiracies, postmodern authorial confusion, male gaze erotic fantasies, Valis-like spiritual confusion. Noise noise NOISE pulverized into little bite sized intercuts of received information. It's an invitation to sift one's philosophical reality from the dross. In an interview with Robert Anton Wilson jammed somewhere into the middle, he comments on how his prior Illuminatus Trilogy constructed its world then discredited it, leaving the literal reader to dismiss anything he'd said, and the astute reader to create meaning from selective understanding of what is true and what is false. This, supposedly, is how secret societies function: revealing and debunking themselves so that all the information is there, but none of it looks true. This novel feels like a more complicated and ambivalent version of that process.
Why, for instance, is the whole middle-part essentially porn? Not in any prudish sense of obscene content -- sex is sex, it's fine -- but in the formal sense of the sex scenes (an orgy, a few trysts, an orgasm research lab, various isolated moments of repression coming undone) largely overrun and outweigh the scientific/philosophic/narrative content. There are a few reasons for this. It's the general postmodern deintellectualization trick of inserting sex, the great unifier, to broaden its appeal (but to who -- as I said, it's very male gaze... and even to this particular mostly-male gaze, that sort of thing gets boring, let alone presumably to other reader-gazes). In another self-explanation, we hear about the life experiences of the purported author of the book-within-a-book-within-a-book we're reading, Roberta Wilson, who was eight when WWII began, thirteen when it finished, and lived continuously through other wars and conflicts, including of course the the conflagration of Vietnam, only to find that the popular entertainment media was a mess of "violence and mayhem." That violence, war, and mayhem should be mass culture and sex deemed obscene (my reality tunnel of Wilson believes he would say) is the true obscenity. This is not exactly a radical position, but it remains a fair one. So yes, why not let the erotic replace the aggressive as the filler plot? Again, if only it wasn't so trapped in male fantasy. I don't think Wilson had bad intentions, but he puts forth a world where the sexual revolution continues further past the seventies, and allow me to ask: who was most liberated by the sexual revolution? The freedom of that era went most to those who were already freest, men, and this asymmetry seems to be sadly maintained in Wilson's "utopian" fantasy. The men are scientists, authors, publishing magnates, philosophers, while the women are pop stars, models, "tantric engineers" which is Wilson attempting to bestow honor and respect on the important work being done by the prostitutes who are still, after all, serving the men of the story. This came out of the 70s and it shows. It might completely drive you from the pages. Fortunately the women, whatever their vocations here, are never portrayed as frivolous or unintelligent, and though it may only be the exception that underlines the rule, Wilson also put a black women anarchist in the whitehouse of his utopia.
This is worth noting a little further, because another of the (surprise!) very smart things Wilson has to say here is obliquely embedded in it. The first acts of President Hubbard were to abolish non-voluntary work (advances in automation), poverty (guaranteed basic income), and prison (vast realignment of penal codes, which in turn makes most crime cease to exist, and thus criminals). This is all well and good as far as utopias go (and can we have it please), but the bit that jumped out at me was that it wasn't accomplished by evolutionary processes, but by vast sudden realignment of all of society so that it shakes out in a new form and the problems of transition are worked out as a matter of course. This may be extremely optimistic (utopian) but from the depths of 2019, as slow evolutionary improvement of our country in even the most basic ways (health care, immigration, you name it) is trapped in brutal deadlock or degrading further, it seems that other means are not working out. The Situationists, in 1968 calling for a mass societal change that would then lead to its own solutions, would have agreed. The New Green Deal is fervently opposed on various practicalities that in no way make it less essential for basic human survival. Slow evolutionary change based on having all the solutions and answers ready is at a standstill. What we're doing isn't working. What do we have to lose? So I appreciated this vastly underdeveloped side point tucked away between the erotic acts.
So this is smart, it's stupid, it's intriguing, it's dated and objectionable. Robert Anton Wilson holds a Ph.D in Psychology from a disaccredited Alternative University once operating in California. His understanding that LSD may expand one's choice of reality tunnel is based on close association with Timothy Leary. Take from this what you may. He's a questionable oracle at best, but aren't all oracles? It's up to you then: choose your reality tunnel and toss out the rest. It's your reality....more
An exploding adventure novel of transformation, possibility (narrative and personal), and, ultimately, accepting one's fate in spite of / because of aAn exploding adventure novel of transformation, possibility (narrative and personal), and, ultimately, accepting one's fate in spite of / because of all of those possibilities offered against it. At first mythically captivating (a story of troubled succession and taboo), then flush with formal games that integrate effectively into the story -- a theatrical synopsis & interpretation, a Regency parlor drama teetering towards genteel apocalypse, annotated poetry evolving through multiple eras of verse style -- finally elegiac. Always fascinating, and a timeless development from the classics of storytelling invention. I hoped it would never end, but could simply continue its transformations forever; fortunately I can travel back from here to LaFarge's previous fantasies, The Crimson Bears and One Hundred Doors....more
So sugared with word play, multilingual punning, and narrative games as to throw even Christine Brooke Rose into diabetic shock. I admired the relentlSo sugared with word play, multilingual punning, and narrative games as to throw even Christine Brooke Rose into diabetic shock. I admired the relentless cleverness, sentence to sentence, while initially completely failing to be drawn in throughout the opening quarter of the novel. But this was a section given over to the development of "linguistic leprosy" -- was this prose so absurdly self-reflexive as to be actually decomposing into unreadability by intention? I faired better in central two sections about about gender uncertainty -- initially via the oddities of sex in language, then something odder, if later remaining overly prone to forced dichotomies (the text literally splits in two, not the most-up-to-date metaphor). By the end though, all was in conflagration and collapse that should have generated a cataclysmic urgency but I couldn't feel a thing, semiotics supplanting semantics in a broken universe. So: intellectual interest throughout, engagement fleeting. ...more
Relatively early on (so not really a spoiler) the narrator here observes that her sister and possession-themed reality show subject, if possessed by aRelatively early on (so not really a spoiler) the narrator here observes that her sister and possession-themed reality show subject, if possessed by anything, was possessed by information, pop culture and googleable arcana, by the web of referentiality at everyone's disposal in the present moment. And so this is is an extremely referential novel, externalizing its debts to past fiction, both in the primary narrative, in the frame story 15 years later, and in the commentary via blog that occasionally intercedes. This interwoven structure suggests a light postmodernism, but that's more the old sort utilized in the 19th century novel by which the narrator's authority had to be established in the present before recalling the narrative of interest (the gothic novel, perhaps, as of course referenced here). So if the novel is actually postmodern, it is more because the story is constructed so thoroughly from these references and in continual dialogue with them. About what, for instance, the continuing retread of possession plotlines actually say about us and whose purposes they serve. About what it might mean to be in an America possessed by its own culture and its hardly-inseparable religion. These sorts of concerns are the most interesting angles on A Head Full of Ghosts; the least may be the storyline itself, so often winkingly recycled, a point especially unlikely to win over someone thoroughly disinterested in possession tropes to begin with (something which this novel made me consider and formulate, to its credit: why have I never been able to muster the interest to watch all of the Exorcist? It's all clear now.) Again, it's the apparatus around the text, rather than the often perfunctory text itself. And out of this web of references, one conspicuous absence takes shape, to broadcast the (borrowed) final twist. Once noticed, it was clear it had been pointed to from the first page. There's a kind of meta-pleasure in noting this, fittingly considering the rest of the story, but it's perhaps a lesser pleasure than that of true surprise and originality. On the other hand, as here, if bent on borrowing, borrow from the best....more
Lyrical, brutal, and kaleidoscopic, a maximal life-study through repetition and pressure-fragmentation. Written at the end of the 90s, Maso's death-roLyrical, brutal, and kaleidoscopic, a maximal life-study through repetition and pressure-fragmentation. Written at the end of the 90s, Maso's death-row-told story, of a Harvard professor who seduces and murders two of her students (and for what reason?), could be seen as a response and corrective to a decade of cultural fetishization of (mostly male) serial killers. Whatever most other accounts were up to, this is an entirely different beast,:as harsh and desperate as beautiful, collage-composition approach creating strange echoes and complicities or turning to total fugue-state, and pursuing broad cultural assessments. This my first brush with Maso, but she's an unsung wonder (besides being sung by Coover and many others on the back jacket -- so those in the know have clearly been knowing all along)....more
After whetting the appetite with a rapid selection of very short pieces gradually expanding in formal play, this moves into the collaged survey of conAfter whetting the appetite with a rapid selection of very short pieces gradually expanding in formal play, this moves into the collaged survey of contemporary America that makes up The Jiri Chronicles themselves (all too contemporary, given the culminating sections on race and white power that close this). There's a haphazard energy driving the whole unstable form-breaking maximalist construction along throughout, with digressions and supporting material slashing across the page space and exploding from footnotes, while the characters mutate and reconfigure over a succession of interlinked scenarios. The frenzied amassing of ideas may overrun conceptual clarity at times -- why for instance is handsome bigoted Czech love-interest/antagonist/poet Jiri the central figure here in the first place? -- but throughout this conflagration come too many conceptual resonances, surprises, and instances of beauty to really care too much about that....more
Consider: an attempt to make absolute sense of the world, fitting its endless random details into a coherent overReligion is a form of schizophrenia.
Consider: an attempt to make absolute sense of the world, fitting its endless random details into a coherent overall pattern. Which am I describing? It's no surprise that religious delusion figures so prominently on psychiatric wards -- they're categorically made for eachother. Beside the psychiatric ward in this novel, see also Anne Quin's The Unmapped Country, which I finished immediately before this, or pretty much any other example.
As a novel, this fits reasonably into the fictionalized-personal-account-of-mental-health-struggles tradition, but it's also much more layered than most -- post-modern sci-fi memoir and paranoid theoretical discourse. I especially appreciate how the author/narrator warns us about his own madness, first compartmentalizing it in a sub-character but later getting taken over entirely by its own counter-theories.
Or perhaps this is much better: Schizophrenia is a form of religion....more
A writer seeks a path through a dystopian city: the dark descends earlier, the nightworkers embolden, random acts of brutality sweep the streets for nA writer seeks a path through a dystopian city: the dark descends earlier, the nightworkers embolden, random acts of brutality sweep the streets for new victims, uncanny architectures of cryptic meaning beckon the unwary. An author seeks a means of conveying slippery reality: the warping effects of life under manipulated media, the politics of fear, the utter disorientation of propaganda machines intended only to confuse further. To these, other voices are joined: manipulators and manipulated, and rarely-glimpsed other options, those in search of an exit. Encompassing all of these, the text advances by a rhythm of deception and clarification, narrators blurring and resolving in a fractured mirror, reader always kept uncertain and in shadow, pulled, like the characters, into a nightmarish labyrinth.
This is brilliant work. Stylistically adept, gripping both as horrific fable and personal struggle, even speaking to my personal aesthetic needs for dream logic, meta-fictive play, and irrational architectures. The last Karasu I read, A Long Day's Evening, was smart an well-constructed, but this is a masterpiece.
Early pages I took to be surrealization of life under creeping authoritarianism, possibly that in the lead up to WWII, but Karasu, born in 1930, would not have experienced that so directly. Instead, it seems that Turkish politics have been beset by fascistic violence and unrest at multiple points. As Sean points out in his review, the period of the 70s during which Karasu composed this novel was one such time, which may in turn explain why it went unpublished until 1985. But honestly, in this era when conflicting and improbable information is regularly disseminated through social media to spread discord and instability, this feels all to up to date. The collapse of the information age into media warfare and misinformation (whether through political machination or late capitalism's scurry to provide whatever news the consumer demands, true to not (and what even is truth in this?)) is a dominant narrative of our time.
As critics decried the Death of the Novel, Death of the Story, Death of the Author, Death of et cetera, Barth took it upon himself to revel in the debAs critics decried the Death of the Novel, Death of the Story, Death of the Author, Death of et cetera, Barth took it upon himself to revel in the debris, causing further destruction in the process. Despite being billed as a connected series, this collection covers a lot of relatively unconnected ground, veering between personal narrative, self-reflexive formal pyrotechnics, and re-constructed mythology. It's all very clever, but the content, for me, sometimes fails to keep pace with the cleverness. Earlier in the book, we have more linear narratives that can lag due mainly to their comedic conceits not being funny enough to propel their complete lengths; later, we run into complete deconstruction that may lack any content besides its own form, or Greek mythologies repurposed to obscure meta-purposes. (I'm no classicist, but I would think I'd know enough to navigate these reasonably well, but they seem to get lost in manipulating own ersatz period mechanics. Closer "Anonymiad" is the only one with any kind of story-form equilibrium). Despite this, somehow it's actually the insane metastories in the center that attracted me the most -- the narrative-formal-reflexive sweet spot of the title story, the metaphysical panic of "Life-Story" and "Title" -- each of these is remarkable, but exist as bright points amid a bit of slogging. Still worth it for these, and perhaps for much more if more patient readers excavate this further. Impatient readers will get nowhere -- see apparent complaint of critics who took the opener to be narrated by a fish. No, it's much weirder and better than that, even if the conceit is pushed somewhat beyond patience for any who caught on from the first pages. So, basically, I continue to find Barth interesting but rather trying. At least there were no characterizations that bugged me as much as in Giles, Goat Boy...more
It's an unusual book of which it may be said: "there were several two-or-three-hundred-page stretches that were great, but much of it didn't really woIt's an unusual book of which it may be said: "there were several two-or-three-hundred-page stretches that were great, but much of it didn't really work that well for me." I admire the ambition, the scope, the vision. I enjoyed the form and formatting, the way words and images moved on the page. I loved several stretches: Kansas is astounding, My Robot (Rebuilt) very good, each an effective act of interwoven polyphonic narrative, wherein the meaning that arises is more than the sum of its strands. This, I gather, was the goal of the work as a whole, of this maximal form. But much, sadly, to me, falls aside as mere generative technique: transcript, spurious narrative, pages of film stills or redactions that seem intended to create mood or pacing, and often do, but otherwise seem to point to nothing beyond the spaces they occupy. This ambitious novel of vast scope is intermittently impressive, but lacks, I fear, quite the touch needed to pull it all together into something which would fully earn the shape it strives to fill. But the shape it strives to fill is immeasurable, filling even part of it makes for something worth a look. As one of the naysayers of this one, even if my rating really does denote "I Liked It", I should specify that this is not a difficult or impervious work. Rather it is open, enjoyable, readable, and the pages flip rapidly even where filled with text and not supporting apparatus. If it sounds like it would intrigue you, it probably will. It just leaves open much space still to be filled by other formal/conceptual innovators to follow....more