Matt Ruff, Lovecraft Country (2016)

Jim Crow meets Lovecraftian horror! It's hard not to be beguiled by such an audacious premise. As, I suppose, everyone knows at this point, Lovecraft was a huge, virulent racist even by the standards of his times, so it's kind of a brilliant idea, unfortunately given an extra bit of piquancy by the fact that we now have a government of unreconstructed white supremacists. Also, Ruff is the author of Sewer, Gas, and Electric, a book that I enjoyed the hell out of.

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Ahmad Faris Shidyaq, Leg Over Leg or The Turtle in the Tree concerning The Fariyaq What Manner of Creature Might He Be otherwise entitled Days, Months, and Years spent in Critical Examination of The Arabs and Their Non-Arab Peers by The Humble Dependent on His Lord the Provider, Faris ibn Yusuf al-Shidyaq (1855)

That title SHOULD include a number of macrons (straight lines over vowels), but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to type them, so just DEAL with it.  This also applies to the bits of the novel I quote.

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Adam Roberts, Anticopernicus (2011) and Bethany (2016)

Let us now speak of Adam Roberts, a man I hold in a certain amount of awe for his sheer intellectual firepower. He's a professor of nineteenth century literature, and writes and edits books in that capacity; but he's also a prolific critic of science fiction, around which most of his blogging centers. And then, he's a prolific science fiction writer himself. All this while also having a family; he's not some kind of hermit. One truly is unable to understand how there are enough hours in the day. I mostly know him through his blogging, which I've always enjoyed. He's always throwing out these great insights willy nilly. It's enough to make one jealous.

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Bruno Schulz, Street of Crocodiles (1934) and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (1937)

Schulz was a Polish author who wrote these two slim short story collections (and possibly a few more stories not included here; all I know is that these were the only ebook editions I could find).  In 1942 he was casually murdered by some fucking piece of shit nazi.

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Robert Coover, Huck Out West (2017)

Hey look, a new novel by the eighty-four-year-old Robert Coover!  And it’s...a sequel to Huckleberry Finn, of all things?  I did NOT see that coming!  But once I did, there was no way in heck I was not going to read that shit.  When you think about it, it’s kind of surprising that more writers haven’t essayed something like this with Twain’s safely-out-of-copyright work.  I mean, a few have, but they’re sure not well-known enough that I’m able to name them.  Will Coover be the one to turn the tide?!?  While no one could have predicted this, it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.  Coover has always been interested in the sort of Americana that Twain himself played a big part in creating.  The Origin of the Brunists is about weird, cultish, religious mania; The Public Burning is about our flavor of political insanity (and BOY do I wish that brilliant novel weren’t seeming more apropos than ever).  He’s also written novels about baseball, noir, and the Western.  This is a natural, really.

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Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

"You hadn't read Catch-22? Really?" Yes, really! I was actually assigned it in a college class, but this was while I was still somewhat half-assed, and I never got past the first friggin' page or two, where Yossarian is censoring mail. In retrospect, it always seemed odd to me, as this does indeed feel like something I would've read at some point. So, I decided to remedy that. Although to be honest...it probably would've been better if I'd been less half-assed and read it back in the day. I feel like if I were younger, the nihilistic fatalism would've seemed more edgy; the black absurdist humor more revolutionary (and, well...funnier).

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Youval Shimoni, A Room (1999, I think)

1999 seems like the most reliable date, but the actual translated book says 2006, so I dunno.  Probably a mistake.

This is the first Hebrew novel I’ve ever read (as far as I can remember).  I was looking forward to the translation since before it was published, in 2016; it promised to be the kind of long, postmodern thing that I enjoy--so much so that when it came out, I got a copy and took it all the way to Jakarta with me.  It may well be the only one of its kind in Indonesia. I’m not sure if it’s actually been compared to Gravity’s Rainbow and The Recognitions, but all the reviews say “it has been compared to Gravity’s Rainbow and The Recognitions,” so probably some guy somewhere did.  Sure; seems plausible. 

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B.S. Johnson, Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (1973)

I do not think it merely an unfortunate coincidence that Bryan Stanley Johnson (1933-1973)--British novelist, playwright, poet, critic, and filmmaker--went by "B.S."  On the evidence of this novel, he was very concerned with whether fiction has truth value or whether it is, indeed, bullshit.

I'd been wanting to read Johnson for some time. He moved in the same literary circles as Ann Quin, the novelist I was somewhat disappointed by last year (horrible to relate, but just months after she drowned herself, he slit his wrists, at the age of forty).  "You didn't like her, so why would you go on to read a similar novelist?" you ask.  Well, I don't actually KNOW they're similar, and more to the point, I just can't resist an experimental novelist. I certainly never had any plans to read ALL his novels if I didn't like this one (he wrote seven, one published posthumously).

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