The Missing Links
Alternative Ulster. * Robinson in Ruins. * The Brixton riots, 1981. * America’s thriving literary journals. * “The Substitute” — a short story by Lynne Tillman. * Lynne Tillman animated. * Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s Gray. * In search of David Foster Wallace‘s The Pale King. * DFW’s collection of self-help books. * More on The Pale […]
Scarcity of Tanks
“We accept every rejection within the tight slope of ideas,” says Matthew Wascovich, 3:AM editor and frontman of Cleveland-based music group, Scarcity Of Tanks. Wascovich founded SOT during the summer of 2004 after stints in a bunch of unheard-of Cleveland bands. Scarcity Of Tanks have toured throughout the U.S. and released two acclaimed records for […]
One Cancelling Out the Other
As a short story writer, my stance is not so much anti-novel as anti-novelist: the bland assumption that they are somehow the grown-ups of the literary world. But although I was initially conscious in setting out to write Vault of a desire to ‘subvert’ the novel, that soon got forgotten in the mechanics of writing. The description was revived later; David Pearson asked if we wanted to incorporate a strap-line in the cover. This was soon after Tom McCarthy’s Booker-listing and the subsequent bandying around of the anti-novel idea yet again in literary history. So we used it. It was from the start, though, an anti-novel in the sense of matter and anti-matter; one cancelling out the other.
Gavin James Bower interviews David Rose, author of “anti-novel” Vault.
Anatomy of a Disaster
Critics who believe that the internet has killed the epistolary novel should read Sherry and Narco. Communication between individuals is the prime driver of story and character arc; and, for the novelist, one of the hardest things to get right. But Gardner understands how people speak and write. She knows every tic and quaver of an individual voice, and the result is so good it’s unnerving, a soul-signature replicated on the page.
Max Dunbar reviews Nina-Marie Gardner‘s Sherry and Narcotics.