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Mass-market Monday | Arkadi & Boris Strugatski's Hard to Be a God

Hard to Be a God, Arkadi & Boris Strugatski. Translation by Wendayne Ackerman. Daw Books, first edition, first printing (1973). Cover art by Kelly Freas. 205 pages. Like many anglophones, I first sought out the Brothers Strugatsky–which I will continue to spell with a final –y here, in line with the spelling variation I’ve used on this blog for years now, while also above conceding this 1973…

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#Alexei German #Covers #Hard to be a god #Kelly Freas #Mass-Market Monday #Olena Bormashenko #riffs #Sci-Fi #The Strugatsky brothers #Wendayne Ackerman

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On Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, pp. 188-222 (black brows, white silk, silver belt, golden syringe)

Previously on Blue Lard… pp. 1-47 pp. 48-110 pp. 111-61 pp. 162-87 The following discussion of Vladimir Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard (in translation by Max Lawton) is intended for those who have read or are reading the book. It contains significant spoilers; to be very clear, I strongly recommend entering Blue Lard cold. We’d left off with the Earth-Fucker’s successfully sending an enormous frozen…

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#Blue Lard #Joseph Stalin #Max Lawton #Reviews #riffs #Vladimir Sorokin

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Evening Song -- Franz Sedlacek

Evening Song, 1938 by Franz Sedlacek (1891-1945)

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#Franz Sedlacek

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Mass-market Monday | Donald Barthelme's Unspeakable Practices, Unspeakable Acts

Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts, Donald Barthelme. Bantam Books, first edition, first printing (1969). No cover artist credited. 165 pages. While there is no artist credited for the frenetic, Boschian cover of this Bantam edition of Unspeakable Practces, it is likely the work of Steele Savage — compare it in particular with Savage’s cover for Ballantine’s 1969 edition of John Brunner’s…

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#Books #Donald Barthelme #Mass-Market Monday #Steele Savage #The Indian Uprising #Unspeakable Practices Unnatural Acts

[biblioklept]

Temptation of Eve -- Charles Steffen

Temptation of Eve, 1994 by Charles Steffen (1927-1995)

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#Charles Steffen

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A review of June-Alison Gibbons' unsettling novel The Pepsi-Cola Addict

Fourteen-year-old Preston Wildey-King has a lot of problems. He’s on the outs with his girlfriend Peggy. His best friend Ryan always leers at him in a funny way, and Ryan’s older brothers want him to join their gang and do crimes. His older sister Erica accuses him of stealing from her. Preston’s failing at math, and his teacher might be trying to seduce him. His mother doesn’t know what to do…

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#art brut #Blog about #books reviews #Cult Novels #June-Alison Gibbons #outsider literature #Reviews #riffs #The Pepsi-Cola Addict #The Silent Twins

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Illustration for "The Snake King" -- Luděk Maňásek

Luděk Maňásek’s illustration for “The Snake King.” From Jaroslav Tichý’s Persian Fairy Tales, Hamlyn, 1970. (English translations in the collection are by Jane Carruth).

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#Art #Fairy tale #illustration #Luděk Maňásek

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Portrait of Neal Cassady -- Carolyn Cassady

Portrait of Neal Cassady, 1952 by Carolyn Cassady (1923-2013)

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#Carolyn Cassady #men reading #Neal Cassady #Readers

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On Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard, pp. 162-87 (indigo pill, fecal culture, piss blood, ice cone)

Previously on Blue Lard… pp. 1-47 pp. 48-110 pp. 111-61 We left off right before the gross abject center of Vladimir Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard (in gross abject translation by Max Lawton). The midpoint is a strange short story, “The Indigo Pill” (by one Nikolai Buryak, author of The Flood). “The Indigo Pill” is the textual tissue between Blue Lard’s warped lobes, a segue that marries opera and…

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#Blue Lard #Cult Books #dystopia #Literature #literature in tranlastion #riffs #sci fi #Soviet literature #Tunguska Event #Vladimir Sorokin

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In the Cradle of Frederick the Great -- Adolf Wölfli

In the Cradle of Frederick the Great, 1917 by Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930)

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#Adolf Wölfli #art brut

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Mass-market Monday | Philip K. Dick's Solar Lottery

Solar Lottery, Philip K. Dick. Ace Books, first edition, second printing (1959). Cover art by Ed Valigursky. 188 pages. Here is a summary from this edition’s first page: WINNER TAKE THE WORLD! By the summer of 2203, Ted Benteley managed to break away from his old Industrial Hill oath and was free at last to offer himself in new bondage to Quizmaster Verrick. Of course, like everyone else on…

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#Book Design #Covers #Ed Valigursky #Mass-Market Monday #Philip K. Dick

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The William Gaddis Centenary roundtable on "Para-Academic Venues for Discussing Gaddis" I took part in last summer is up now at Electronic Book Review (as well as other Gaddis stuff too)

Last August, I took part in one of Electronic Book Review’s “Gaddis Centenary” roundtables. Our discussion was on “Para-Academic Venues for Discussing Gaddis,” and that conversation is live on EBR now. I really enjoyed talking with the other invitees, although I felt a bit out of my league. The roundtable included Victoria Harding, who managed the Gaddis listserv, as well as WilliamGaddis.org;…

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#William Gaddis

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Illustration from The Green Man -- Gail E. Haley

Illustration from The Green Man, 1979 by Gail E. Haley (b. 1939)

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#Gail E. Haley #The Green Man

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Rhinoceros -- James Ensor

Rhinoceros, James Ensor (1860-1949)

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#James Ensor

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RIP John Barth

RIP John Barth, 1930-2024 John Barth died yesterday at the age of 93. Between 1956 and 2011, he published thirteen novels and four short story collections. He also published a quartet of nonfiction books—his “Friday” books’—that collected the many essays, introductions, lectures, and other pieces he wrote in his life time. The title of the last collection of nonfiction, 2022’s Postscripts (or…

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#John Barth #Postmodernism #RIP #Writers

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I couldn't think of anything worth saying in literature that can't be said in 806 pages | John Barth on The Recognitions

Q: Do you find some such qualities in a neglected novel, William Gaddis’ The Recognitions? Barth: I know that book only by sight. 950 pages: longer than The Sot-Weed Factor. Somebody asked me to review the new reprint of it, but I said I couldn’t think of anything worth saying in literature that can’t be said in 806 pages. From a 1965 interview with John Barth (conducted by John J. Enck),…

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#Interviews #John Barth #William Gaddis

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John Barth's brief description of Donald Barthelme's so-called postmodernist dinners

Photograph from “The Postmodernists Dinner,” 1983 by Jill Krementz (b. 1940) In John Barth’s 1989 New York Times eulogy for Donald Barthelme, Barth gives a brief description of two so-called postmodernist dinners, both of which I’ve written on this blog before. …though [Barthelme] tsked at the critical tendency to group certain writers against certain others ”as if we were football teams” –…

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#Donald Barthelme #John Barth #John Hawkes #Kurt Vonnegut #Postmodenism #Postmodernist Dinner #Robert Coover #Stanley Elkin #Thomas Pynchon #William Gaddis #William Gass