November 3, 2021
About ten years ago, my friend Calvin got assigned to review the latest album by the Haunted Windchimes, an “extremely popular” band from his hometown, Pueblo, Colorado.
The album was “shit,” he told me recently. He’s right. But he feared that if he wrote that, cool people would beat him up, and he said his friends were worried for him, too.
“In Pueblo,” Calvin said, “it’s basically illegal to say anything negative about the Haunted Windchimes.”
I’m left in a similar pickle when it comes to reviewing One More Number,
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April 29, 2021
Looking for a Kiss is a post-punk novel – mapping the emotional framework of the end of punk and youth, and the impact of the adult 80s. It’s an anti-coming of age story.
Set in Camden, Camberwell and New York, the book is an account of breakdown, breakup and breakout with primal scenes, screams and schemes, as well as the eternal quest for sprezzatura and the endless search for redemption.
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December 22, 2020
Whatever I say, let it be known I’m biased. I got to read drafts of Very Fine People by Scott Gannis before it was published and I loved it then and I love it now. I’ve been jealous of his ability for years, and I claimed his work as a personal favorite in our MFA cohort. We’ve gotten drunk together.
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December 18, 2020
The Neighborhood Division by Jeff Vande Zande is a collection of short stories, and it isn’t terribly long, but it has taken me a little while to get through it, and that’s a very good thing. Each story, while concise, is so dense with ideas and/or concepts that they demand a period of cooling down after–an absorption period,
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