After hearing some positive murmurs praising its erudite maximalism and general zaniness, I caved and bought a copy of Robert S. Stickley’s 2020 novel A Bended Circuity. My copy arrived with a ballpoint flower and the front page signed with a scrawled “R S S.” I can’t really find anything about Big Box Publishing, the purported publisher of this edition, but I do know that the copies of the European reprint at Corona Samizdat sold out pretty quickly. (They have a second printing under way).
Here is the copy from the back of my edition:
There are screams in the night. Interlopers are afoot, have taken hold. Wildfires are burning the countryside and the gentry are running for cover. Fortunes are at stake. The South will not sleep.
A Bended Circuity opens on a midsummer’s afternoon with preparations being made for a soirée at the glamorous Hobcaw Barony. But not all goes according to plan. We soon find Charleston abruptly aroused from her slumber by the playful first smites of an unknown enemy waging a heinous prank war.
Calling his confederates to arms, one Bradley Pinçnit — heir to Marigold Manor and writer for revived southern mouthpiece, The Mercury — afternoon with preparations being made for a soirée at the glamorous Hobcaw Barony. But not all goes according to plan. We soon find Charleston abruptly aroused from her slumber by the playful first smites of an unknown enemy waging a heinous prank war.
Calling his confederates to arms, one Bradley Pinçnit — heir to Marigold Manor and writer for revived southern mouthpiece, The Mercury – organizes and helms a “Junto of Condign Men” then drives them to action. Offsetting her husband’s violent movement is Gabuirdine Lee, a housewife struggling to find her voice as the din of war encompasses her.
Ciphered into everything — the new roadways, the scars of the people, the tracts torn through ravaged plantations — there emerges one clear symbol: The Red Radical. Following the hints offered up by this cryptic motif, an army is mustered and pointed toward north so as to seek justice for the pernicious acts being committed upon an old way of life. But the army will first have to get out of its own way if it is to stand a chance of making it out of the South.
Read the W.A.S.T.E. Mailing List review of A Bended Circuity if you like.
Biblioklept 