X-R-A-Y SPECS: ZARDOZ (1974)
I knew I was going to love it when the head started to vomit guns. The tone felt like a Monty Python film. Is that a common comparison?
OUR MONSTROUSNESS AS A TEMPLATE: An Interview with B.R. Yeager
At my most pessimistic I’ve worried that this collection is akin to charging people to watch me at the gym; when I’m more optimistic, it feels like I’m just flexing in different genres.
I’M JUST LIKE EVERY INSECURE WRITER: An Interview with Drew Buxton
There was this thing near San Antonio when I was in high school called the Elmendorf Beast that killed livestock. It turned out it was just a coyote with mange.
MY IDEA OF SELF IS SELF-INFLICTION: Jared Daniel Fagen in conversation with Vi Khi Nao
I don’t feel free, Vi. Never have. I know you don’t either. I don’t know anyone who does, or has. Maybe nothing is, nor should it be.
CALVIN WESTRA’S “DONALD GOINES” REVIEWED by Conor Hultman
What Westra does is this brilliant magic trick: he takes these simple sentences, with their insouciant humor, and stacks them like bricks.
CENTOVIEW WITH DAVID WOJCIECHOWSKI by Evan Williams
I thought the world would understand. But no.
WRITING BY EAR: Dashiel Carrera interviewed by Kira K. Homsher
Transfixed by the odd turns and cadence of its speech, each day I set a timer and kept writing until the alarm went off. This approach no doubt held its roots in my background recording music: I thought of these writing sessions like performances, called “takes.”
THE WORSER PERSON IN THE WORLD: STEPHANIE LACAVA’S I FEAR MY PAIN INTERESTS YOU by JC Holburn
LaCava’s story straddles a tenuous faith that through constant debasement and submission a breakthrough can occur, undergirded by a mind/body conundrum: if the pain isn’t felt, is an uninvited infliction technically still misconduct? Answer: yes, yes it is.
RAVI MANGLA on film with Rebecca Gransden
Video, broadly speaking, is the medium people interact with most on a daily basis, so I think contemporary fiction has some obligation to engage with it (if aiming to render the world as it exists).
LAUGHING PRUDISHLY; A REVIEW OF MARSTON HEFNER’S “HIGH SCHOOL ROMANCE” by Evan Williams
For Hefner, the awkwardness is the point, and he wields its power well.