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Recent Reviews
Henry Bean
Positive Bookforum Stories about cruel, corrosive men tend to veer noirish, gratuitous, or at the very worst, didactic. Bean’s intervention is that his excellent bedside manner... offers no delusions that Harold’s way of life could possibly be worth it ... The novel’s finale is as conclusive as a proof.
Alex Ross
Positive The Nation Like his muse’s operas, the work is filigreed, prone to bombast, at times bloated, and, at over 700 pages, formidable. But the remarkable trick about Ross’s undertaking is in how it steers clear of the usual critical constructions that befall bad artists who make good art. Though Wagner’s myriad hatreds are certainly deeply plumbed, judgment is not Ross’s aim in the book ... by following Wagner’s reception rather than laying claim to a decisive reading of his work—instead hunting it, inspecting it, tracking how it moves—Ross has given us a book that does something impressive. Ross, in a rare feat of contemporary criticism, divests himself of his autonomy as a critic, hands it to others, and shows how writing about art is always an intervention between the subject and its beholders ... Ross’s latest book is not only an overview of Wagner’s influence on musicians and nonmusicians alike, though it is certainly and explicitly that; more usefully, it is also a Trojan Horse that delivers a larger exercise in figuring out the limits of criticism ... Flashes of the most Wagnerian figure in this country today came involuntarily to mind as I read Ross’s book, and no mention of his name is necessary to underscore Ross’s success in outlining the enduring relevance of a towering, self-satisfied, endlessly fascinating figure whose myth often eclipses his reality and whose seductive factors seem baffling to many.
Wayne Koestenbaum
Positive The Washington Post Ah, yes: The bark of another Wayne Koestenbaum collection. Our great, roving, leashless dog of modern essay-writing — constantly sniffing at the groin of an idea, taking in its rich musks, savoring them with two wide nostrils — bounds up the slope, yet again, for a book of essays that audit a series of extremely indulgent, largely beautiful, mostly dissociated objects of fascination ... Understandably, your mileage may vary on all of this. It can be, sometimes, terminally and specifically precious — smilingly glib with a distinctive fatty gristle that lives in the meat of a lot of solipsistic writing. There are echoes of his friends and heroes within — Frank O’ Hara’s tendernesses, Dennis Cooper’s erotics — which, in comparison, makes Koestenbaum’s dominant texture feel all the more impish and sybaritic, like watching someone rehearse their laugh in a mirror ... Like all reflective objects though, the act of essaying has a twoness about it.
Jenny Hval, Trans. by Marjam Idriss
Positive National Public Radio As per the title\'s promise, Paradise Rot seeps with goo. There are \'spit bubbles,\' \'pearls of fat,\' \'a pee soaked mattress,\' \'warm white globs\' and \'sticky black crotches\' frothing freely around; apple flesh \'bubbles in between teeth,\' sweat forms \'cold sweet sap,\' and velvety \'honey funguses\' sprout from space. Such freaky finery fills only a petri dish\'s worth of secretions from the sticky bildungsroman of Djåoanna, or Jo – a mousy, twenty-year-old Norwegian on semester abroad in the fictional seaside town of Aybourne, Australia – poised on the cusp of a fantastic sexual awakening. Lonely, curt and unmoored, little Jo tumbles into an oozy erotic fantasia in the same way that one falls asleep and enters a dream: slowly, then suddenly. \'Sometimes I\'m not sure what\'s going on,\' she whispers partway through her psychedelic trip through Aybourne. \'I don\'t know how to explain it.\'
Yiyun Li
Rave NPR She does not attempt to follow the plot of her life – which is as dramatic as any of her invented characters' lives – as much as she allows herself to drift from memory to memory, letting her thoughts extend like far reaching spokes that span both literary references and personal memories ... For all of her logical twists and spiraling narratives, it is hard not to think like Li after reading her book. There is a magical property to her voice, one to absorb and admire in its absolution. I found myself, Li-like, sewing images of my own past to the passages and authors I respected, sustained by the personal language and private history I had created over time. Li had accomplished what she had set out to do: She had reached me.
Solmaz Sharif
Rave NPR ...it is to Sharif's credit that her poetry flicks between lyric and lexicon while still sounding like music; in her hands, language is as pliant as warmed wax ... It is the central miracle of Look that Sharif shows us the real intensity of her conceit without veering into triteness. She is, in turns, icy and searing, but consistently fierce and beautiful. By her new code, we are urged toward vigilance and clarity, urged to always have eyes to see.