Coupling: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism
Gean Moreno09.25.11
InfraNet Lab/Lateral Office is building a new architecture out of the carapaces of our dreams and failed cities. In volume 30 of the esteemed publication Pamphlet Architecture from Princeton Architectural Press, INL/LO suggests six "post-national" infrastructures from a proposed bridge across Bering Strait to Vatnsmyri Airport in Reykjavík. Gean Moreno considers the post-dreamtime landscape with a keen eye on the visually stunning and an ear for which playlist is called to muster.
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.
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 Her online posts are now available in print form, packaged as the buddhist, with a previously unpublished chapter that mirrors life’s open-ended complexities.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.
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.
Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X
Gean Moreno04.19.11
A certain type of architectural book has proliferated from the 1990s on – mammoth "doorstops" from heavyweights such as Rem Koolhaas in pubs like S, M , L , XL. But in the 1960s and 70s a different breed of architecture publication was common – smaller, handmade, with the DNA of the maker visible (well almost surely a fingerprint or two). Artist and publisher Gean Moreano has researched these magazines collected in the book Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X to 197X for inspiration.
The Pale King, An Unfinished Novel
James Greer04.12.11
David Foster Wallace died before finishing his third novel, The Pale King. If he imagined while living that he’d be pleased to have it published in this state, after checking out, we can’t know (…um). But I can barely explicate briefly how pleased I am that Jim Greer is Fanzine’s man of the hour writing the review of the manicured "mess" we are left with. He nails it. Death and taxes, and oh boy. Whatever Wallace might have thought of Michael Pietsch’s Herculean task of putting The Pale King together, he, a bit of Yorick’s skull now, would certainly smile back on Greer’s words here.
There is No Year by Blake Butler hits shelves
Casey McKinney04.05.11
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…
The Prison Suit: Incarceration during China’s Cultural Revolution
George Barber02.16.11
As a 20-year-old, Xiaoda Xiao drunkenly ripped a poster of Mao off the wall and used it to mop up his spilled drink. Without a trial he was sent to a prison where he spent the next five years working in a gravel quarry. The Prison Suit describes this time through interconnected essays, each one focused on a different topic or fellow prisoner. Egor Lazebnik reviews the book, both as part of the genre of prison literature and as a part of history.
