Fire At the End of the Rainbow, the first book by Shawn Vandor, is a poised and unusual performance, an autobiography made of very brief chapters which eschew the typical surreality of short prose forms in favor of a less experimental, more vernacular directness. It begins with jokey pieces about men confronting men, but [...]
Tag Archives: Adam Novy
Review: The Book of Jokes by Momus
June 21, 2009 – 1:29 am
At the unimagined crossroads of 1,001 Arabian Nights and Truly Tasteless Jokes stands The Book of Jokes, by Scottish songwriter Nick Currie, who goes by the pen-name “Momus.” The speaker of The Book of Jokes, “Sebastian Skeleton,” finds himself in prison, where he’s targeted by a Murderer and a Molester—those are their names—whose dreadful [...]
Review: Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Camera
January 1, 2009 – 8:48 pm
Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s Camera defies so many sacrosanct laws of fiction that the critic hardly knows where to start, but among its most disturbing propositions is the notion that narrative itself is a kind of overstatement, that turning points in life don’t actually exist, that life is nothing more than one bloody thing after another.
Toussaint is [...]
