"

A life animated by books is something that everyone may understand, but a life destroyed by books is the more complex, contradictory, mysterious proposition.

I work at a library that, for a very long time, prescribed to a 'core' collection. Each title was listed in a large, heavy directory which had to be regularly inventoried by library assistants. One described to me in detail how tedious and self-defeating it was, as while the collection had to be kept, replacing worn materials was actively avoided, and so these old, grungy, largely white male status quo works slowly but surely ossified into their cramped shelves, up until a decade or so ago when new hires came on and began to do away with it all, a surge that the pandemic catalyzed to completion. When I zeroed in on this book, I was seeking the sort of reconfiguring that had survived under said 'core', albeit equipped with analysis and insight from a far more credible place of anti-kyriarchical authority (in one respect, at least).

Alas, the times being what they are, while I can understand the need for decrying sections of the Anglo canon as flatulent, even undeserving of the title of 'art', so many of the arguments smacked a tad too much of the sort that, in my country, are aimed squarely at Black/queer lit, the kind destined to once again feverishly increase in rate and animosity for the next four years (at least). As such, I don't have the heart to rate this book any higher than I did. For I'm not about to tell someone how to do their weeding or their rehabilitation from the wreck, but when the speaker turns around to then heap praise on the drone commander in arms (otherwise known as Obama), well. If you're going to go so far as to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I expect to see all of it go, not just what doesn't make it into the texts of NPR or Teen Vogue.

[T]he adventure's end is the actualization, and triumph, of the colonial project.

As it stands, Brand brought to my attention some notable pieces that could be easily worked into an academic course flush with the Behns and the Austens and the Defoes, and I hope she has more space to retrofit such up north while my country contents itself with lurching after ghosts. In the meantime, I say to keep those desiccated parts of the canon for nominal study by those up to the task. For if you think people will instinctively understand how not to act/feel/proselytize in the imperial style without analyzing the texts that epitomize the height of the white colonial ideology, you have much more faith in the collective unconsciousness than I ever will."

"Garielle Lutz (formerly Gary Lutz) is my favorite short story writer of all-time. My favorite sentence writer too. A couple hundred pages of this book are home to stories that I was lucky to publish in two of Lutz's previous books. And their first book, Stories in the Worst Way, will always be considered a pivotal moment in my reading life. This collection includes an excellent introduction by Brian Evenson as well as sixty pages of new work (or "Stories Lost and Late" as they're called here)--starting with a 28-page mind-blowing exorcism of malaise called "My Bloodbaths" and concluding with a more personally-revealing tale called "Am I Keeping You?"
The thing about Lutz's weirdness is that it's not sci-fi weirdness or David Lynch weirdness or any kind of weirdness you can truly pigeonhole. It's a weirdness that is rooted in the uneasiness of bodies and loneliness and unprocessed desire. It's no wonder that everyone from Ben Marcus and George Saunders to Dennis Cooper and Ottessa Moshfegh worship inside the grammatical castles of Lutz.
A couple of bits from the newer stories that I read today:
"All of a sudden people are saying all of the sudden, as if there's only one."
"She had no earthly or supernatural use for me."
"She no doubt still keeps at least one of her clocks set fifteen minutes fast to giver her life that extra push."
"Something would always come up, and I could always talk my way across it."
"He was forlorn because there was nothing to look forward to in pornography anymore."
"I was a gala wreckage of decades, I guess."
"I always ate out for the lesser chance of choking alone."
"Never expect more of a greeting than You again.""