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 Her online posts are now available in print form, packaged as the buddhist, with a previously unpublished chapter that mirrors life’s open-ended complexities.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.
Post-Hotdog, Sober, Mr. Lee
Linh Dinh05.12.11
Decorated with fake skulls and Phillies pennants, Linh Dinh’s favorite dive bar Dirty Frank’s is, in truth, not so much a drinking establishment as an elaborate shrine to a pair of twin lost causes—art and picking fights with bouncers. Here, Dinh explains the similarities between the two and, like a series of snapshots of a night when you were blackout drunk, reminds you of mistakes you didn’t know you’d made.
Sponsored in Part: Two Steps Forward, Twelve Steps Back
Malina Saval05.10.11
Malina Saval continues her quest for an Al-Anon sponsor in the second installment of her "Sponsored in Part" column. This time around she’s lost her therapist in addition to being sponsor-less. Looking for some kind of guidance, she finally starts to reach out, with mixed results, but she’s getting there. Drawing by Danny Jock, as always.
“Same Heart They Put You In”
Mike Young04.26.11
Mike Young has range. First saw him reciting poetry with puppets & other props, performing sans script. Was pretty blown away, especially after reading such weirdness sculpted beautifully in the book We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough. But wait, Young writes short fiction too – see Look! Look! Feathers which includes "Same Heart They Put You In". Here’s a wincingly funny bildungsromanesque (it’s a long story) that captures a 90s voice as well as Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times caught the 70s, John Hughes the 80s, or George W. Bush the 00s (who did capture that last decade?…Mike may’ve got that one too). So I’m bad for hyperbole, but in short, expect a blockbuster out of Young’s writing one day. And more puppets! -CM
