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thoughts on two very unsettling books featuring many, many bugs Joe Koch, Invaginies Some years ago, during a point in time when I was listening to a lot of The Soft Boys, I suggested that some ambitious editor should commission a horror anthology based on the band’s music. Mostly, I had their song “Kingdom of Love” in mind; specifically, I was thinking of these lines: You’ve been laying eggs under my skin Now they’re hatching out under my chin Now there’s tiny insects showing through And all them tiny insects look like you Do you like your post-punk with a…
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Trying to write a bit more about older books I read, so: quick thoughts on two SF novels that could be described as cult classics that I finally got around to reading in recent months. John Shirley, City Come A-Walkin’ I’m not sure I’ve read anything by John Shirley since my teenage years, when I picked up the anthology Mirrorshades. I picked up a used copy of City Come A-Walkin’ at Ridgewood’s Topos; it fell into the category of books I’d heard about for years but had never read. Spoiler alert: it kicked my ass. I’ve mostly thought of Shirley…
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In the last two weeks, I saw three films on the big screen that all left me very impressed. I haven’t done a year-end movie list in a while; still, I’m pretty sure these three will be at or near the top of it. So here are some quick thoughts on all three. SINNERS; written and directed by Ryan Coogler There’s a moment in this film’s first half where Coogler shows Jack O’Connell’s primary antagonist Merrick on the run from a group of Choctaw vampire hunters. The latter group only makes a brief appearance in the film; I’ve seen a…
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This one’s going to require some context. Earlier this week I went to a 1994-themed writing event where among the prompts was one by the esteemed Nicole Haroutunian. The prompt involved using lyrics from a beloved song in a longer work. This is not the thing I wrote that night, but I gave it another shot a few days later. So here’s a strange little essay, written after a song I have a lot of feelings about, Frightened Rabbit’s “It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop.” Words in bold are taken from the song itself. *** For most of my life in…
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This probably isn’t the ideal time to bring up the full scope of my occasionally fraught relationship with the New York Red Bulls (aka Red Bull New York, aka Metro), the local soccer team that I have supported since 2008. Suffice to say, this is the team that unlocked the fact that I could have a serious emotional connection to a sports team, for all the good and the bad that that implies. It might help explain how I came to spend around 48 hours in Los Angeles this weekend, though. You see, the Red Bulls had made it to…
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I took a cue from Maris Kreizman and Drew Broussard earlier today and offered one book recommendation per “like” on a Bluesky thread. For posterity, here are the 50 books I ended up suggesting…
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As the subject suggests: (Digression: Caleb is the worst. There’s an Achewood strip from 2003 wherein one character describes himself as follows: “I feel like I should be in some Microsoft Word ad. All smiling and pointing to a diagram which shows the various parts of my brain which a company could use for tasks.” That’s Caleb, but with zero regrets.) The novel itself is highly recommended! The full review will run at Vol. 1 Brooklyn next week.
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I picked up J.G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes to read for a book club run by Archestratus Books that I couldn’t actually attend. (Head, meet desk.) Still: good lord, what a novel. Stating the obvious here: Ballard’s a massive figure in my own personal canon, and I keep finding myself floored by his work in new and different ways. (The Unlimited Dream Company is a relatively recent entry in this category.) Initially, Super-Cannes read like a late-career revisiting of some of Ballard’s older work: I can see traces here of Crash, of High-Rise, of Concrete Island. But in telling the story of…
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Drove down to Bethesda yesterday for an event at the Writer’s Center, with whom I’d done a virtual conversation earlier this year. (One of the enjoyable parts of this trip involved getting to meet Zach Powers, who’d interviewed me at that time, in person.) The subject was jobs in fiction, and I was on the panel along with Ian S. Maloney and Nick Gardner; Andrew Bertaina was the moderator. It got me thinking a lot more about the ways I’ve dealt with jobs in my fiction – both in terms of being inspired by jobs I’ve had and in shifting…
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Notes, thoughts, & miscellany 