The Smaller Part, or, on Invincibility: A Review of Heather Christle’s The Trees The Trees
Laura Carter08.07.11
Laura Carter reads Heather Christle’s fragmented, fraught (and funny) poetry from The Trees The Trees through a Lacanian looking glass replete with languaged Mummys and "presages of the real and its vicissitudes," a curious vantage when you take into accont some of Christle’s characters have "gone to live at Space Camp permanently… while "we have to envy them eating freeze-dried ice cream every minute." Mirrors, mirrors, everywhere…But hey it works! We also get an intimate interview with the author here, bonzai!
An Exclusive Excerpt from “The Making of Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE: An Oral History” (circa 2021)
Scott Bradley07.25.11
Terrence Malick is a director known for his elusiveness to the big screen; he’s like a groundhog who only appears to see his shadow if he has a story beautiful enough to tell. Never mind if the story is about a couple on a killing spree, a soldier in the midst of battle, colonialists killing indigenous peoples––there’s always a silver lining of love, seen through an omnipresent eye that distills the good in any "bad" situation. In his latest film, The Tree of Life, he confronts his own bio, going further with the omnipresent––read God––lens, drawing on themes from The Bible’s Genesis story, yet replete with dinosaurs––creation in real time! And 10 years in the future we shall look back fondly on Malick’s juxtaposition of CGI, geology, and high family drama…yes. We <3 Terrence Malick.
Stories V! by Scott McClanahan
Amy Herschleb07.25.11
Fanzine has seen Scott McClanahan read. He has the charisma of a Flannery O’Connor character, a southern preacher in a dusty black suit bringing to his flock the gospel that James Joyce is dead, even if Scott’s more transparent prose might well from a tributary of the same spring, riverrun from his hometown West Virginia down here to Georgia (where Fanzine now resides). McClanahan is a story teller, and he has a wealth of oral yarns ready for an ear; thankfully they are also on the page. Amy Herschleb reviews his latest collection, Stories V! from Holler Presents.
Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me from Continuum’s 33 1/3 Series
Nick Attfield06.13.11
In this excerpt from the latest in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series, Nick Attfield reaches for the truth of Dinosaur Jr.’s 1987 album You’re Living All Over Me only to learn how lyrical ambiguity can put a live rabbit in a man’s mouth. Attfield is usually found at Oxford specializing in the cultural and political contexts of 19th and 20th century German and Austrian music. You can also read the opening chapter of Attfield’s book on the 33 1/3 blog.
the buddhist by Dodie Bellamy (in review)
Bett Williams05.27.11
In live-blogging her terminal affair with an emotionally abusive “spiritual teacher,” Dodie Bellamy confessed intimacies in a highly public forum. Her online posts are now available in print form, packaged as the buddhist, with a previously unpublished chapter that mirrors life’s open-ended complexities. Bett Williams is personally transformed by Bellamy’s purging, finding strength in the author’s refreshing exhale of love and rage. Williams review puts the fan back in Fanzine.
The Fragments of the Frame: On Alan Gilbert’s Late in the Antenna Fields
Laura Carter05.27.11
Laura Carter reviews Alan Gilbert’s new book of poetry, Late In The Antenna Fields, which she finds to be an "architecture of loss and longing," tinged with "a tension of the cool." But there "are laws to cool, and Gilbert names them, and they reside in signals and machines, but loosely. He takes off the layers of childhood intensity with a laid-back commitment to air and what it has melted from…" Poetry on Poetry…
Music: Let’s Wrestle: Nursing Home
Casey McKinney05.26.11
Now that genius Damon Albarn is (oft) a cartoon Gorilla who just made a (quite good) entire album on an iPad, it’s perhaps time to look back, to…
Book: There Is No Year by Blake Butler
Casey McKinney05.26.11
There Is No Year hits the shelves today, April 5th. Blake Butler, editor of HTMLGiant and author of Scorch Atlas and Ever, has pulsed out one of the…
Lynne Tillman: Someday This Will Be Funny
Amy Herschleb05.25.11
Amy Herschleb finds there are several ways to read American Genius Lynne Tillman’s latest collection of stories, Someday This Will Be Funny. And some ways are more fun than others.
Romancing the Douche: On Peter Moutford’s A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism
Michael Thomsen05.16.11
Writer Tom Bissell has argued that the often poorly regarded genre of the political thriller (think Graham Greene and John le Carré) has something valuable to offer in the—forgive me—post-2001 era, in which international relations have regained their urgency. Peter Mountford’s first novel is in many ways part of that tradition. Here, the intrigue is financial speculation set in Bolivia in the month leading up to Evo Morales’ 2005 election, in which Morales’ campaign promise to nationalize resources presents opportunities for profiteering. Like Graham Greene, who worked as an agent for British intelligence, Mountford was inspired by his experience working for a think tank in Ecuador—which he later discovered was also running a hedge fund. Responding to this book whose primary motivating factor is desire for money, Michael Thomsen finds it wanting.
