From “Dr. Deluxe” by J. Gaccione (signed as Chicken Delight), published in Yellow Dog #17, March, 1970, The Print Mint.
Author: Biblioklept
Ishmael Reed on John A. Williams’ !Click Song
The following essay is from Rediscoveries II, a 1988 “gathering of essays by novelists…asked to rediscover their favorite neglected work of fiction.” Ishmael Reed’s overview of John Williams’ 1982 novel !Click Song motivated me to track down a copy of the book. And while elements of Reed’s typically prickly essay are dated in their contemporaneous references, the essay’s thrust — that the Invisible Empire persists — is as timely as ever. Read more on Rediscoveries II at Neglected Books.
Ishmael Reed
on
John A. Williams’ !Click Song
The Ku Klux Klan may appear to be clownish, and inept to some, but they have one thing right. They do represent an “Invisible Empire,” of which, the kind of monkeyshines that go on in places like Forsyth County belong to those of a small ignorant outpost. On the day that some joker held a sign warning of welfare disaster if blacks moved into the county, a New York Times columnist and a book reviewer spread the same lie about welfare being an exclusively black problem, yet, I doubt whether demonstrators will march on the editorial offices of the Times.
Klan thinking goes on in the editorial rooms of our major newspapers, in the film, and television studios; and in the public schools, and universities whose white male supremacist curricula are driving Hispanic, and black children out of education. One hears Ku Kluxer remarks in places that present themselves as the carriers of “Western civilization” like National Public Radio where,recently, a man congratulated a musician for using the saxophone as a “serious” symphonic instrument. “Up to now,” he said,
“the saxophone has merely been used to make ‘jazzy howls.’ ” In “the Invisible Empire,” George Shearing will always receive more recognition than Bud Powell, Paul Cummings more recognition than Cato Douglass, and racist mediocrities will always get more publicity and praise than John A. Williams. Continue reading “Ishmael Reed on John A. Williams’ !Click Song”
Read “Lamb Chops, Cod,” a very short story by Diane Williams
“Lamb Chops, Cod”
by
Diane Williams
She had stopped insisting that they have heart-to-heart conversations, but for stranded people, they had these nice moments together, and he had his professional enjoyment at the newspaper. He approved the issues there with a scientific mind and he made quite a contribution. He was a consultant in the field of efficiency.
She should have appreciated that, I guess. I don’t know—she felt lonely.
After dinner, he would go into his room and sometimes read or do his engraving or follow up on his stamp collection or solve math problems from that year’s baccalaureate examination. Once he told me that once a year he reread Our Man in Havana. It had something to do with Havana. You know—petty things—I guess my mother wanted full attention, not for him to have private time by himself. I don’t know what my mother did when she was in her room. She was working. She was working a lot. She devoted herself to family matters, making trouble. But I am convinced that she did love him extremely and after he died she said that that was the fact.
Then they had golf together and they did trips. There was a French newspaper that would invite him to solve a technical problem. He was amazing that way.
They would playact around the occasion of having dinner. I’m not sure, but I’m afraid that they did it for every dinner. She would put on her best gown and wear the diamond ornament, which she felt free to pin anywhere on her garment if it was necessary for the brooch to cover up a soiled spot.
He wore black lacquer pumps, silk stockings that went up under the knees. His breeches were tied under the knees and he would have tails and white tie on. My mother would provide the basic meal—cod or lamb chops. He would provide—he loved to go to the store that was similar to Fortnum and Mason and buy smoked salmon, cheese, fruit in season, asparagus. They had cocktails at five o’clock. They would listen to the news and then they’d sit down to the table, light the candles. They would have their little feast together. Then after the meal, he’d sit down and do work in his room. His French was very good, so sometimes he translated manuals from French or the other way around. And before bedtime, they’d have a cup of tea together with a cookie.
He loved an existence of this kind and to eat food.
He died while he was still glossy and smooth at the dinner table between the fish with dill—a great favorite—outstanding with butter—and the boiled blue plum dumplings.
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass | Mass-market Monday
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, 1892 (9th ed.), Signet Classics (no print date; 1958 copyright on Gay Wilson Allen’s introduction). No cover artist or designer credited. 430 pages.
Trying to find some hopeful green stuff woven in the New Year; hell, at this point I’m even open to the idea of the Lord dropping a handkerchief so we might ask, Whose? Seems more like the uncut hair of graves lately. My grass is thirsty.
“On the Beach at Night Alone”
by
Walt Whitman
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef
of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in
different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the
brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any
globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
Sunday Comix
From “Real of Karma Comix” by Barbara “Willy” Mendes, published in All Girl Thrills, March, 1971, The Print Mint.
Robert Bingham/Harry Crews (Books acquired, 9 Jan. 2026)
I finally gave in and picked up Robert Bingham’s books, the novel Lightning on the Sun and the collection Pure Slaughter Value.
Bingham was one of the founders of the literary magazine and press Open City. Open City published David Berman’s collection Actual Air in 1999. Bingham was friends with Berman and the Pavement boys. He was also the wealthy scion of an old Louisville family. He o.d.’d in ’99. Both Malkmus and Berman eulogized him in song — SM in “Church on White,” the Silver Jews in “Death of an Heir of Sorrows”:
I wish I had a rhinestone suit
I wish I had a new pair of boots
But mostly I wish
I wish I was with you
I think what really plugged the Bingham back into my brain was going through a July 1999 issue of SPIN magazine. I was looking for something else, but I found an old Pavement profile in which Bingham shows up early with bobo hockey tix. From the profile:
Pavement are standing outside Madison Square Garden, shouldering their way through tens of thousands of burly hockey fans. There’s a sold-out game about to start—the Rangers vs. the Mighty Ducks—and cops, peanut vendors, and entire families in matching red-white-and-blue Rangers jerseys mill about, blocking the sidewalk. “We’ve never gone to a hockey game together,” says bassist Mark Ibold. He is unceremoniously shoved aside by a squall of kids bearing cotton candy. “Usually we go see baseball games.”
Pavement pal Robert “Bingo” Bingham, a New York fiction writer, grows increasingly nervous as they approach the arena. He bought the band scalped tickets, an offense he’s been nailed for once before. “Should we come up with a fall-back strategy?” he says.
“Don’t sweat it, Bingo,” says bandleader Stephen Malkmus, still wearing the track suit and squash shoes he threw on this morning while awaiting clean laundry. The band is determined to get in, as percussionist Bob Nastanovich has already phoned his bookie to bet on the Rangers. “We don’t much care for the Ducks,” Nastanovich says.
“They’re all Steve Garveys,” adds the clean-cut Malkmus. Nastanovich takes a final drag from his Marlboro, then leads the group through the throngs to the ticket line. They cruise right in, home free—until a security squad catches up with them moments later.
“You aren’t going anywhere with those,” a guard says, motioning at the ticket stubs in Bingo’s hand. “They’re fakes.”
“Oh, please,” Bingo says. He knows they’re scalped, but fakes? A bit stunned, the band takes a look. “Well, yeah,” Ibold says. “I can see that.”
The printing is all faded and off-register.
“Mine looks like it was perforated with a cookie cutter,” says Nastanovich. Upon further inspection, they realize they all have the same seat.
Meanwhile, the Garden crowd is going ballistic. Christopher Reeve has just been wheeled onto the ice for the opening ceremony. Security hems and haws for a while, and finally takes pity on Pavement. A bearded fellow rests a cozy hand on Bingo’s arm. “You tell me who you bought these from,” he says, “and if he’s still out there, we’ll bust the fucker.”
Bingo hangs his head. “I don’t remember,” he mutters, and ambles off. Pavement trudge back to the street, reassuring their friend that the night is still young. They end up viewing the game at a nearby sports bar, and work on getting stinking drunk. Nedved is benched. Gretzky is checked. The once formidable Rangers lose handily, 4–1. Nastanovich looks up from his Bass Ale and shakes his head, laughing. He just lost $100.
I also couldn’t resist a signed copy of Harry Crews’ 1998 novel Celebration.
If you can make out the inscription, let me know. I think it’s to Frank, who was on the ultimate quest for…?
“Wedding Night,” a very short story by Henri Michaux
“Wedding Night”
by
Henri Michaux
translated by David Ball
from The Night Moves
When you come home on your wedding day, if you stick your wife in a well to soak all night she is flabbergasted. Even if she had always been vaguely worried about it . . .
“Well, well,” she says to herself, “so that’s what marriage is like. No wonder they kept it all so secret. I’ve been taken in by the whole business.”
But since her feelings are hurt, she doesn’t say a thing. That’s why you can plunge her into it for a long time, over and over, without making any trouble in the neighborhood.
If she didn’t understand the first time, it’s not very likely that she’ll catch on after that, and you have a good chance of being able to continue with no problems at all (except for bronchitis) if you really want to.
As for me, since I suffer even more in other people’s bodies than in my own, I had to give it up right away.
Stickman — George Grosz
Stickman, 1946 by George Grosz (1893-1959)
Mantra
Alasdair Gray, 1934-2019
Bite Your Tongue — Leon Golub
Bite Your Tongue, 2001 by Leon Golub (1922-2004)
We Can Disappear You — Leon Golub
We Can Disappear You #16, 2002 by Leon Golub (1922-2004)
RIP Béla Tarr
RIP Béla Tarr, 1955-2026
Mass-market Monday | Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada
Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed, 1976. Avon Bard Books (1977). Cover art by Andrew Rhodes; no designer credited. 192 pages.
From my 2020 review of the novel:
Flight to Canada features a number of intersecting plots. One of these plots follows the ostensible protagonist of the novel, former slave Raven Quickskill, who escapes the Swille plantation in Virginia. Along with two other former slaves of the Swille plantation, Quickskill makes his way far north to “Emancipation City” where he composes a poem called “Flight to Canada,” which expresses his desire to escape America completely. The aristocratic (and Sadean) Arthur Swille simply cannot let “his property run off with himself,” and sends trackers to find Quickskill and the other escapees, Emancipation Proclamation be damned. On the run from trackers, Quickskill jumps from misadventure to misadventure, eventually reconnecting his old flame, an Indian dancer named Quaw Quaw (as well as her husband, the pirate Yankee Jack). Back at Swille’s plantation Swine’rd, several plots twist around, including a visit by Old Abe Lincoln, a sadistic episode between Lady Swille and her attendant Mammy Barracuda, and the day-to-day rituals of Uncle Robin, a seemingly-compliant “Uncle Tom” figure who turns out to be Reed’s real hero in the end.
ReMass-market Monday | Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
Sunday Comix
From The Portable February by David Berman, 2009, Drag City.
Read “Orpheus the Dentist,” a very short story by Alberto Savinio
“Orpheus the Dentist”
by
Alberto Savinio
translated by Richard Pevear
I had decided to leave on Tuesday. But starting Saturday, when, in the evening, I had the supreme joy of hearing a broadcast of my radio opera Agenzia Fix on the radio, a dull pain began to occupy, at ever more frequent intervals, the upper right side of my jaw, and to spread itself through my head, like a spider its legs.
I thought: “It’s him.” He was one of my last premolars. He had already made himself felt at other times. The pain would wake up, torment me for several days, doze off again; sometimes for whole seasons, like snakes.
Teeth are cunning. His predecessors had done the same. Until, one by one, they left. Without remorse. Yet teeth are part of us. And, in some men, a very important, very “functional” part. In Woodrow Wilson, for example; in Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Yet, despite the extremely important function that teeth have had in the mouths of these two presidents of the United States, many citizens of those States have their teeth pulled, in full youth and perfect conditions of dental health, and replace them with false teeth.
“Why say false? Better to say painless. At the end of this May, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano will produce a work of mine, The Alcestis of Samuel. The one who will bring Alcestis back from Hades this time is not Hercules but Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By no means an arbitrary substitution. Perfectly justified. As I myself explain in the context, and as the audience will certainly understand, Hercules is not a singular figure, confined to the son of Alcmene. Hercules, that “purgator,” is a figure who periodically renews himself. The penultimate Hercules, in order of time, was Giuseppe Garibaldi; the latest was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In my version of Alcestis, the part of Hercules, that is, of Roosevelt, will be played by Camillo Piloto. Piloto, at the present time, is studying the physiognomy of the President in minute particulars on photographic documents in the American Library of Rome: the form of the eyeglasses, which did not hook over the ears like mine or yours, but were pinched to the nose; and meanwhile a brave dental technician is fabricating a row of enormous teeth which, in the actor’s mouth, will imitate the famous laugh.
In 1914, in Paris, I got to know a citizen of the United States, of Mexican origin: Marius de Zayas. He had a pair of Nietzschean mustaches which, starting from under his nostrils, fell in a hairy cascade over his sharp and obstinate chin. Marius de Zayas was a theater impresario. In July 1914, he made an agreement with Apollinaire and me for a tour of lectures and concerts the following autumn to several cities of the United States, during which Apollinaire’s Breasts of Tiresias would be staged, accompanied by music written for the occasion by me. A month later the First World War broke out.
The mustaches of Marius de Zayas had not only an ornamental function but also hid his mouth, empty and black as a cave. Zayas, though he was going on thirty then and was immune to cavities, had spent some time in a clinic in New York, and had all thirty-two of his teeth removed one after the other; but, unable to bear dentures, which he abandoned in the water glasses of hotel rooms during his frequent travels, he chewed every sort of food, down to the toughest steak, with his bare gums.
In contrast to Marius de Zayas, toothless and a most robust chewer, we may cite the god Pushan, an Indian colleague of the Greek Hermes and the Latin Mercury, because Pushan, like the son of Zeus and Maia, was also a god of the roads, and not only guided men on their earthly roads, but continued to guide them on the roads of the beyond. Pushan performed his functions as a guide seated on a little cart drawn by goats, and although, unlike Zayas, his gums were armed with leonine teeth, he ate only foods soaked in water.
Two years ago I visited the convent of Saint Francis in Paola. The saint’s relics are kept in a glass case in the church. While Francis was living and working as a saint in Calabria, Louis XI, in France, was casually killing off, by means of other hands, all those who somehow got in his way, and killed so many that in the end, despite a very tough conscience, he began to feel the sting of remorse. How to heal it? The king was told that an Italian monk by the name of Francis, who lived in far-off Calabria, was a good healer of consciences, and Louis ordered that the healer come to France without delay, as today, for the same reason, they call in some famous psychoanalyst: for example, the father of that young American student who, not long ago, married the sister of the Shah of Persia, in a civil ceremony in Civitavecchia, and is now studying the Koran so as to be able to marry her religiously as well. Francis had a sister. Seeing him on the point of departure, she said to him: “You’re going so far, and you’re not leaving me anything to remember you by?” “Yes, I’m leaving you something,” replied Francis, and, so saying, he pulled out a canine tooth with two fingers and left it to his sister to remember him by. Extremely white, this canine tooth now gleams in the glass case of relics, in the church of Saint Francis in Paola. On the relations between Louis XI and Saint Francis of Paola, Casimir Delavigne wrote, as is known, a ridiculous play.
So I thought: “It’s him.” And I thought: “Until he quiets down, it’s not prudent for me to go traveling.” And that morning, instead of making my way to the station, I made my way to my dentist.
My dentist is not only an excellent odontologist; he is also a man of culture and a first-rate musician. Two years ago, at his invitation, I took myself to his house one afternoon, this time to sit not in the articulated mechanical chair in his dental office, but on a more peaceful one in his drawing room, and hear a short but pithy concert: a sonata for cello and piano by Shostakovich, some lyrics by Mahler, and a very tender Ave Maria from the hand of the master of the house, which a Spanish baritone, brown as a young bull from Triana, the school of bullfighters, sang with a velvet voice.
But my dentist is not only an excellent odontologist, and a man of culture, and a musician; he is also a kindly soul. I’ll say more: he is Orpheus. His sure hand had just finished extracting “Him” from his socket, my right cheek was numb and prickly from the effects of Novocain (the strange condition of hemiplegics, who drag half of themselves behind them, reduced to a phantasm), and he invited me to go to the drawing room with him. Sitting on the bench of his Hammond organ, still in his white coat, he pulled out a few stops, pressed on a pedal, placed his right hand on the upper keyboard, which is that of the melody, and his left on the lower one, which is that of the accompaniment, and played a Lullaby of his own composition and of an infinite tenderness; and the hateful memory of “Him” gradually vanished into the harmonious heaven of Euterpe.
Best Books of 1976?
Previously:
Not-really-the-rules recap:
I will focus primarily on novels here, or books of a novelistic/artistic scope.
I will include books published in English in 1976, including translations published in English for the first time.
The New York Times Best Seller list for fiction in 1976 was dominated by Agatha Christie, Gore Vidal, and Leon Uris. Christie’s 1975 novel Curtain ruled winter and early spring, with her posthumous 1976 novel Sleeping Murder topping the charts in November and December. Vidal’s historical novel 1876 and Uris’s Trinity split the rest of the year. While Alex Haley’s Roots topped the nonfiction Best Seller list for only a few weeks in 1976, it’s the bestseller title of the year with the most cultural staying power. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s The Final Days, their follow up to 1974’s All the President’s Men was a bestseller in the spring and summer (and one of many, many Watergate books of this era). Gail Sheehy’s “road map to adult life” Passages was popular in the fall.
But sales charts ain’t literature.
Better to regard the New York Times Book Review’s end-of-year round up, “1976: A Selection of Noteworthy Titles.” It begins with a heavy dose of literary biographies, memoirs, autobiographies, and collections of letters. These include Christopher Isherwood’s Christopher and His Kind, Lucille Clifton’s memoir Generations, Patrick McCarthy’s bio Celine, Charles Higham’s The Adventures of Conan Doyle, and Lillian Hellman’s third memoir Scoundrel Time.
Also of note in the NYT list are Ron Kovic’s Born on the Fourth of July, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and Britt Britton’s collection of author Self-Portraits (the article is peppered with some of the portraits).
The Book Review piece also notes collections of letters by Sylvia Plath, E.B. White, and Virginia Woolf, as well as more diaries of Anaïs Nin. There are multiple memoirs of Hemingway (one by his son and one by his last wife) and David Heyman’s Ezra Pound biography. The list of literary bios and memoirs conveys the beginnings of a strange autopsy of the Modernist past giving way to something new.
Here are some of the fiction titles the New York Times Book Review includes in its “Selection of Noteworthy Titles” that I thought more noteworthy than other titles included:
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, John Steinbeck
The Autumn of the Patriarch Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Gregory Rabassa)
The Easter Parade, Richard Yates
Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed
The Franchiser, Stanley Elkin
Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood
Lucinella, Lore Segal
Meridian, Alice Walker
Ratner’s Star, Don DeLillo
Orsinian Tales, Ursula K. Le Guin
Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut
Speedboat, Renata Adler
The Takeover, Muriel Spark
Travesty, John Hawkes
Frog and Toad All Year, Arnold Lobel
Children of Dune, Frank Herbert
The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Gene Wolfe
Triton, Samuel R. Delany
I’ll do some more with that list in a second. But for now–
One of the best sections of the NYT Book Review’s year-end recap is “Author’s Authors,” in which they ask various writers to pick their three favorite reads of 1976. John Cheever picks John Updike’s Picked Up Pieces (1975). Bernard Malamud picks García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch. Vladimir Nabokov, always humble selects his own manuscript for The Original of Laura (it remained unpublished until 2009).
William H. Gass selects buddies William Gaddis (J R, 1975) and Stanley Elkin (The Franchiser); I’ll pick up Craig Nova’s 1975 novel The Geek on his recommendation. I’ll also be on the look out for one of Ishmael Reed’s recommendations: Dangerous Music (1975) by Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn. He also recommends one of the many, many Watergate books of the era, Blind Ambition by John Dean and Shouting! by Joyce Carol Thomas. As far as I can tell, Shouting! wasn’t published until 2007.
By far the best entry belongs to John Updike though:
Shitposting in the Times in the late seventies. Gotta love it.
In her “Author’s Authors” write up, the novelist Lois Gold makes the only mention of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire in the NYTBR piece. Rice’s seminal postmodernist vampire romance currently sits at #1 on Goodreads list of most popular books published in 1976, a testament to its populist staying power. Other notable books on the Goodreads list that were absent from the lofty NTYBR’s contemporary coverage include Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead, David Seltzer’s The Omen, Raymond Carver’s Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, Marian Engel’s Bear, Octavia Butler’s Patternmaster, Harry Crews’ A Feast of Snakes, Hubert Selby Jr.’s The Demon, Richard Brautigan’s Sombrero Fallout, Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration, and many, many more. I’ll do more with that list momentarily, but next —
–prizes!
Saul Bellow won both the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature (“for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work”) and the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, specifically for his 1975 novel Humboldt’s Gift.
David Saville’s novel Saville was awarded the 1976 Booker Prize. The shortlist consisted of An Instant in the Wind by André Brink, Rising by R. C. Hutchinson, The Doctor’s Wife by Brian Moore, King Fisher Lives by Julian Rathbone, and The Children of Dynmouth by William Trevor.
The 1977 National Book Award winner for fiction was Wallace Stegner’s The Spectator Bird. Runners-up were Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver, Orsinian Tales by Ursula K. Le Guin, The Balloonist by MacDonald Harris, and A Fine Romance by Cynthia Propper Seton.
The 1976 National Book Critics Circle award for best fiction went to John Gardner’s October Light. Finalists were Renata Adler’s Speedboat, Valdimir Nabokov’s Details of a Sunset and Other Stories, Cynthia Ozick’s Bloodshed and Three Novellas, and The Easter Parade by Richard Yates. Haley’s Roots was runner up to Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior.
The Nebula Awards for fiction published in 1976 gave first place to Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Notable finalists included Marta Randall’s Islands, Delany’s Triton and Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm.
I have read many but hardly all the books mentioned in this post. But this is my blog, so here are my picks for the best books of 1976:
The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Gregory Rabassa)
Bear, Marian Engel
A Feast of Snakes, Harry Crews
Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed
The Franchiser, Stanley Elkin
Orsinian Tales, Ursula K. Le Guin
Ratner’s Star, Don DeLillo
Slapstick, Kurt Vonnegut
Speedboat, Renata Adler
A few sentences on every book I read or reread in 2025
☉ indicates a reread.
☆ indicates an outstanding read.
In some cases, I’ve self-plagiarized some descriptions and evaluations from my social media and blog posts.
I have not included books that I did not finish or abandoned.
Every Man for Himself and God Against All, Werner Herzog☆
I got a paperback copy of Herzog’s memoir for Christmas last year but ended up listening to him read the audiobook on my commute for a week or two. Every Man for Himself was one of four memoirs as-read-by-the-author I listened to this year. The other three: The Friedkin Connection by William Friedkin; The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case; Rumors of My Demise by Evan Dando. I enjoyed all four memoirs and maybe as I go through this post I’ll pull a few common threads. Herzog’s memoir is bonkers, better than fiction. It really is one of those deals where a paragraph starts one way and a few sentences later you’re in a totally different place.
Dispatches from the District Committee, Vladimir Sorokov (translation by Max Lawton; illustrations by Gregory Klassen)
An absolutely vile book. I loved it.
Raised by Ghosts, Briana Loewinsohn
Loewinsohn’s love letter to the latchkey nineties hit me hard. I reviewed it here.
Nazi Literature in the Americas, Roberto Bolaño (translation by Chris Andrews)☉
I think I was trying to get through the beginning of a novel by an “alt” midlist author when I realized I’d rather read something I loved. Or maybe there was something else in the air in late January. The notes on the draft for this post are cryptic.
Feminine Wiles, Jane Bowles
A slim lil guy, a nice reprieve from current events in January, a reminder that sanity is precarious.
Interstate, Stephen Dixon☆
From my review: “It upset me deeply, reading Stephen Dixon’s 1995 novel Interstate. It fucked me up a little bit, and then a little bit more, addicted to reading it as I was over two weeks in a new year.”
Remedios Varo: El hilo invisible, Jose Antonio Gil and Magnolia Rivera
A lot of Varo’s pictures, but also a lot of Spanish. I was trying hard at the time (to read Spanish). I used my iPhone to translate a lot.
Borgia, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Milo Manara
Indian Summer, Milo Manara and Hugo Platt
Caravaggio, Milo Manara
A nice little run there, I seem to recall. Borgia was the best.
Occupancy 250: The Stories of Einstein A Go-Go
The Einstein A Go-Go was an all-ages music club at Jacksonville Beach that was a massive part of my teenage years. I saw so many amazing bands there over four or five years (including Luna, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Man or Astroman, Sebadoh, Polvo, Superchunk, Archers of Loaf, and so many more), met so many cool people, and even played there with my band a time or two or five. And if I was too late (that is, too young) to see acts like Nirvana, The Replacements, 10,000 Maniacs, The Cranberries, and Soundgarden there at the the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties, it feels pretty swell to see my band’s name on the back of Occupancy 250 right there in the mix, as well as flyers and photos. Occupancy 250 is like the yearbook we never got when the club had to shut its doors in ’97 in the name of beachfront development. What a gift it was. A few months ago we went to a reunion event, featuring bands like The Cadets and Emperor X. I’ve never been to a high school reunion, but I know that this was better.
Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel García Márquez (translation by Gregory Rabassa)☆
Loved it. A discussion with a colleague after, a Spanish instructor, led to my reading Cela, Peri Rossi, and Rulfo.
The Hive, Camilo José Cela (translation by Anthony Kerrigan)
Pascual Duarte, Camilo José Cela (translation by Anthony Kerrigan)
I liked them both but liked Pascal Duarte more than La colmena. I would love to read Cela’s 1988 novel Cristo versus Arizona if I could get my pink little hands on an English-language copy.
The Friedkin Connection, William Friedkin☆
I think that Spotfiy suggested that I listen to Friedkin’s memoir after I finished the Herzog memory; in any case, there was a lot of overlap. Like Herzog, Friedkin had no idea how to make a film and never really developed a baseline beyond, Doing the thing for real and filming it, whatever the thing was. Going to make a film where a criminal is going to counterfeit US currency? Better teach Willem Dafoe how to, I don’t know, counterfeit money and just film that instead of, like, getting a props department involved. (Weird overlap: both Friedkin and Herzog laud Michael Shannon as the greatest actor of his generation.)
I loved this memoir. It starts, if I recall correctly, with Friedkin admitting that he threw away a sketch by Basquiat and an offer from Prince. It ends with Friedkin telling his wife, legendary producer Sherry Lansing, to pass on Forrest Gump. Amazing stuff.
The Ship of Fools, Cristina Peri Rossi (translation by Psiche Hughes)☆
Monsieur Teste, Paul Valéry (translation by Charlotte Mandell)
Pedro Páramo, Juan Rulfo (translation by Douglas J. Weatherford
I liked it!
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy☉
I guess I fall into rereading this all the time.
Tongues, Anders Nilsen☆
Amazing stuff.
Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
I probably would’ve read Day of the Triffids a dozen times as a kid instead of, like, Joan D. Vinge’s novelization of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, if there had been a copy in the lending library in Tabubil. Anyway, I’m glad I got to it when I did.
Frog, Stephen Dixon☆
Above, I wrote I have not included books that I did not finish or abandoned; look, I didn’t finish Frog, but in some ways it’s the most important book — or rather, most important, reading experience — for me this year.
An old great friend mailed me his copy back in March. I read and loved a hefty chunk of Frog, a long book, but abandoned it when another great old friend died unexpectedly in early May. I was deep into it but there was no comfort in it, in Frog.
And so then well I just read or reread a bunch of John le Carré novels.
Call for the Dead, John le Carré
A Murder of Quality, John le Carré☆
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, John le Carré
The Looking Glass War, John le Carré
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John le Carré☉☆
Was a blur, thank you to Mr. Le Carré’s ghost. A Murder of Quality was my favorite (I think). (I was a fucking mess and these books really helped me.)
The Woman with Fifty Faces: Maria Lani and the Greatest Art Heist That Never Was, by Jon Lackman and Zack Pinson.☆
I read it all in one sitting. Loved it.
The Bus 3, Paul Kirchner
Portalmania, Debbie Urbanski
In my review, I wrote that, “Debbie Urbanski’s new collection Portalmania is a metatextual tangle of science fiction, fantasy, and horror where portals don’t offer escape so much as expose the fractures beneath family, love, and identity.”
Dreamsnake, Voya McIntrye
I liked it!
The Stone Door, Leonore Carrington
Wrestled with this dude a lot and it beat me. I thought it would twist one way and it did another thing. Ended up reading it twice in the summer and I guess I’ll read it again.
The Great Mortality, John Kelly
Kelly’s Black Death chronicle was a comfort read this summer.
Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group, Rebecca Grandsen
Skip my review of Grandsen’ poetic post-apocalyptic miniature epic and just buy it and read it.
Macunaíma, Mário de Andrade (translation by Katrina Dodson)☆
I am so glad my guy at the bookstore sold me on this one. A synthesis of Brazilian folklore with high and low modernism (eh, Modernism?).
The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes
A corny book a colleague recommended. I’m happy that someone I know IRL wants me to read a book and talk about it with them.
Unkempt Thoughts, translation by Jacek Galazka (translation by Jacek Galazka)
More Unkempt Thoughts Stanislaw J. Lec (translation by Jacek Galazka)
Aphorisms.
The Frog in the Throat, Markus Werner (translation by Michael Hofmann)☆
I gave the guy who gave me the Julian Barnes this novel; he didn’t like it!
I loved it. In my review of The Frog in the Throat. I noted that “you could throw a small dart in this short book and find a nice line” its protagonist. I included a lot of those pithy gems in the review if you want a sample.
Counternarratives, John Keene☆
Amazing stuff. I was halfway through when I realized that Keene wrote the intro to my edition of Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma. My favorite piece in the collection reads like a riff on Melville’s Benito Cereno with strong Gothic undertones.
Mevlido’s Dreams, Antoine Volodine (translation by Gina M. Stamm)☆
A bleak, dystopian noir novel set several centuries in a ruined city-state wherein Mevlido’s fragmented consciousness becomes a vessel for Volodine’s haunting post-exotic vision of history, language, and apocalypse. Loved it! My review.
Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon☆
The highlight of 2025 in reading was a new late Pynchon novel. It might not have been the best novel I read this year, but it was my favorite reading experience. I ended up reading it twice, running a series of posts I called Notes on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Shadow Ticket. At the end of those notes, I wrote:
“I should probably distill my thoughts on Shadow Ticket into a compact, “proper” review, but I’ve sat with the novel now for two months, reading it twice, and really, really enjoying it. I never expected to get another Pynchon novel; it’s a gift. I loved its goofy Gothicism; I loved its noir-as-red-herring-genre-swap conceit; I loved even its worst puns (even “sofa so good”). I loved that Pynchon loves these characters, even the ones he might not have had the time or energy to fully flesh out — this is a book that, breezy as it reads, feels like a denser, thicker affair. And even if he gives us doom on the horizon in the impending horrors of genocide and atomic death, Pynchon ends with the hopeful image of two kids chasing sunsets. Great stuff.”
Black Arms to Hold You Up, Ben Passmore
Sports Is Hell, Ben Passmore
Subtitled A History of Black Resistance, Passmore’s comic is more fun than you would think a book about fighting a racist state should be. I still owe it a proper review. It made me go back and read Passmore’s Sports Is Hell, which is kinda like the NFL x Walter Hill’s The Warriors x George Herriman’s Krazy Kat.
The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, Neko Case
Of the four memoirs I listened to this year, musician Neko Case’s is the most artfully written, packing in bursts of sensory images that pivot cannily to evoke very specific memories that connect the reader to the storyteller. The memoir is heavy on Case’s childhood and adolescence and purposefully avoids a direct accounting of her musical career. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot about music in here — there is (life on the road, songwriting, a nice section on her tenor guitar) — but Case seems to avoid going into too much detail about interpersonal relationships with other musicians. She also seems to want to apologize for some past behaviors, but the apologetic language is indirect and even cagey (Evan Dando’s memoir is a massive contrast here — the dude dishes deep, but is also frank and clear and specific about all the bad mean shit he did to people when he was younger).
Neko Case’s magnificent singing voice translates well to reading her memoir. She’s really good at reading it — expressive without being hammy, subtle, artful. I would love to hear her read other audiobooks, but I’m also happy for her to keep her focus on making music and playing live.
The King in Yellow, Robert Chambers☉
I played this silly fun indie game called The Baby in Yellow which led me to reread The King in the Yellow for the first time since I went nuts over True Detective (the first season). The first two stories were much stronger than I remembered — much weirder.
Acid Temple Ball, Mary Sativa
A Satyr’s Romance, Barry N. Malzberg
Flesh and Blood, Anna Winter
I spent some of the year browsing through a copy of the Maurice Girodias edited volume The Olympia Reader. That edition offers excerpts from Olympia Press’s more “respectable” authors, like William Burroughs, Chester Himes, Henry Miller, Jean Genet etc. I downloaded a bunch of trashier Olympia titles and ended up reading these three. They were all pretty bad but also fun. Acid Temple Ball is like a sex-positive Go Ask Alice; both A Satyr’s Romance and Flesh and Blood are well-beyond “problematic” in their depictions of sexual relationships.
The Pisstown Chaos, David Ohle☆
In my golden-hued review, I called The Pisstown Chaos “a foul, abject, hilarious, zany vaudeville act, a satire of post-apocalyptic literature, an extended riff on American hucksterism. It’s very funny and will make most readers queasy.”
The Changeling, Joy Williams
Joy Williams is one of my favorite writers, but I’ll admit I was disappointed in her second novel, 1978’s The Changeling. I loved how dark and weird and oppressive it was, but soon tired of spending time in the rattled consciousness of its alcoholic hero, Pearl. When Williams explores beyond Pearl, the novel hints at weird Gothic cult island shit that is super-intriguing — but we always have to retreat back to our depressed, insane hero.
The Folded Clock, Gerhard Rühm (translation by Alexander Booth)
A collection of “number poems, comprising typewriter ideograms, typed concrete poetry, collages of everyday paper ephemera and scraps, and a wide variety of literary forms where the visual pattern created on the page underpins the thematic meaning,” as publisher Twisted Spoon puts it. A fascinating and frustrating read that hearkens back to the good ole days of the avant garde.
Rumors of My Demise, Evan Dando
In a review at the Guardian of Evan Dando’s memoir Rumors of My Demise, Alexis Petridis writes that the Lemonheads leader “sounds insufferable, but weirdly, he doesn’t come across that way.” Dando doesn’t try to deny, deflect, or otherwise shade his life. He’s upfront about his privileged background, his good looks, and his love of the rock star lifestyle. He’s also, as he always was, very upfront about the drugs. I was in eighth grade when It’s a Shame about Ray came out. I loved it. I loved the follow up album, Come on Feel the Lemonheads even more. I am, I suppose, the target audience for this book, and I found it very satisfying. I also think listening to Dando read it is really remarkable. He’s charming and affable, but he doesn’t seem comfortable reading out loud (you can hear it, for example, in an awkward pause when he has to change the page during the middle of a sentence). It’s also remarkably honest, and culminates in a series of apologies to many of the people he’d hurt when he was younger (“If I could go back in time and give a bit of advice to myself, I’d say ‘Evan, don’t be such a dick.’”)
My best friend Nick, who died this May, was a bigger Lemonheads fan than I was. I think he would have loved Rumors of My Demise and I thought about him all the time while I was listening to it, wanting to text him, Hey, you’re gonna love this story about Dando drinking Fanta Orange and Absolut with Keith Richards or, Man, Dando really has a score to settle with Courtney Love, or Dando’s some kind of disaster magnet — he lived right by the Twin Towers and was home on 9/11, he was in L.A. during the King riots, in Paris when Diana died, on Martha’s Vineyard when JFK Jr. crashed…or, Man, Dando seems to have finally quit heroin, good for him. I didn’t get to text those things so I’m writing them here.
Happy New Year to you and yours.
Biblioklept 