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Seattle, 2023
Currently in Seattle, a trip which not coincidentally coincides with this year’s AWP. It’s my first time out here since 2019, and brings to an end the longest stretch I’ve gone without a trip to Washington or Oregon in ages. All of which is to say, it’s nice to be back out here for a…
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Read Wolfe Read
Ages ago I picked Gene Wolfe’s Free Live Free for a book group I was in at the time and then utterly failed to read the book when it came time for the discussion of it. Head, meet desk. I’m not sure if the book group still exists or if I accidentally killed it with…
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Recent Writing: Early February 2023
I’m very happy to have new writing in the New York Times Book Review – specifically, a look at three books set in New York City. That includes novels by Matthew Salesses and Dan Kois and a memoir by Patrick Bringley. Spoiler: I enjoyed and was impressed by all three. I have a pair of…
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Irish doom-folk? Yes, please.
I’ve known Ned Raggett through music writing circles for many years now, and I’ve found his Patreon to be an invaluable source for new music recommendations. Today was (and still is, for the next few hours) a Bandcamp Friday, and one of Ned’s recommendations was the Irish group Lankum. They have a new album up…
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Taught a course this week.
This week I made my way to Frenchtown, NJ to teach a class at Frenchtown Bookshop. I’m eternally grateful to the store’s owner and the attendees for being understanding when I hit some apocalyptic traffic between Brooklyn and Frenchtown, and I had a fine time once I arrived. Frenchtown Bookshop also has a penchant for…
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New Year, New Interview
Got to chat with the esteemed Jasmine Dreame Wagner for BOMB! I think it’s safe to say that we went down some fairly deep 90s-NYC wormholes over the course of the conversation. Shows I can definitely remember seeing at Coney Island High include Superdrag when they were touring for Regretfully Yours, what I believe was a…
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2022, revisited
As I write this, there’s all of one day left in the year. And, as of a few hours ago, the last year-end piece I contributed to was published. So consider this a kind of omnibus of all four of them… At InsideHook…I wrote about ten books that had especially impressed me over the course…
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Patrick Leigh Fermor, But Occult
“A few days after he had sent the Cuxa postcard, he read her some chapters from the autobiography of Michael Ashman, a minor travel writer who had walked across Europe in the late thirties…” The above passage comes up in the first third of M. John Harrison’s 1992 novel The Course of the Heart. I…
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“Glass Onion,” Round 2
Watched Rian Johnson’s latest film on the big screen solo last month, and watched it at my folks’ place this week while visiting. (I’d also watched Knives Out with them on a Jersey visit, so it seemed fitting.) Definitely a film that (for me, anyway) rewarded multiple viewings. And, good lord, Janelle Monáe’s work in…
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HOLIDAY CUSTOMS OF NEW JERSEY TOWNS, EPISODE 14: Okcidenta
Travel to the end of the interstate highway near the border of Monmouth and Ocean Counties and you’ll find what remains of the town of Okcidenta, founded in 1923 and later abandoned after the mayor and town council were implicated in a horse racing scandal. The town council numbered twenty-six residents in total; the town’s…
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