Category: Reviews

Vol. 1 Brooklyn: Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown Reviewed by Kurt Baumeister

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REINVENTING POSTMODERNISM: A REVIEW OF CHARLES YU’S “INTERIOR CHINATOWN” JULY 28, 2020by KURT BAUMEISTER Once upon a time, when postmodernism was young—before it became what-the-hell-is-postmodernism-really(?) and post-postmodernism—unique literary conceits were enough to draw oohs and ahs from critics. Think of John Barth with the nested narrative loops and literary equations of Lost in the Funhouse; Nabokov with the fiction inside poetry …

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TNB Book Review: Teddy Wayne’s Apartment Reviewed by Kurt Baumeister

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TNB Book Review: Teddy Wayne’s Apartment , reviewed by Kurt Baumeister By Kurt Baumeister July 09, 2020 Fiction Reviews On its surface, Teddy Wayne’s latest might seem like an obvious rebuttal to today’s literary culture. Set a quarter-century ago, Apartment is a book about young, white men narrated, not surprisingly, by a young, white man. A brief, breezy read, chock …

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The Brooklyn Rail: And I Do Not Forgive You by Amber Sparks

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The Once and Future Queen: Amber Sparks's Weird Realism By Kurt Baumeister Amber SparksAnd I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges(Liveright, 2020) Tension isn’t necessarily fun, but it’s not always bad either. Under the right circumstances, tension can become pressure and pressure can produce the magic of physical transformation. It can turn coal, a …

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The Brooklyn Rail: Trump Sky Alpha by Mark Doten

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Mark Doten's Trump Sky Alpha Doten combines a genius for fictive architecture with dazzling prose By Kurt Baumeister MARK DOTEN Trump Sky AlphaGraywolf, 2019 In Trump Sky Alpha, Mark Doten writes: “On 1/28, the first commercial telephone exchange is established in New Haven, Connecticut…On 1/28, a fifteen-inch snowflake falls on Fort Keogh, Montana. On 1/28 Charlemagne, King of …

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TNB Book Review: Gabino Iglesias’s Coyote Songs, reviewd by Kurt Baumeister

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TNB Book Review: Gabino Iglesias’s Coyote Songs, reviewd by Kurt Baumeister By Kurt Baumeister November 13, 2018 Fiction Reviews America today is more polarized than it’s been at any point in my lifetime. Socially, politically, racially, economically, religiously…in many ways, this division is born of willful ignorance, the result of small minds glorying in hackneyed thoughts and …

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PAX AMERICANA Review/Author Interview at RAIN TAXI

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Published initially by Rain Taxi ROCK STARS, SECRET AGENTS, AND AMERICAN MYTHS: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN CONSTANCE SQUIRES AND KURT BAUMEISTER Pax Americana Kurt Baumeister Stalking Horse Press ($19.99) Live from Medicine Park Constance Squires Univ. of Oklahoma Press ($19.95) Live from Medicine Park is a pure distillation of the dream that is America, one with little …

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Under the Influence #3, Rediscovery

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written by Kurt Baumeister August 8, 2018 I’m changing the format here a bit. I’ll have some words on the month’s contributions at the end. For now, let us celebrate the contributors. Kerry Cohen was just on the Today Show a couple weeks ago. Yeah, that Today Show. Holy Hades! Bud Smith is a one-man literature factory. Every time I turn around, dude …

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Under the Influence #2, Son of Kid of Baby

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UNDER THE INFLUENCE #2, SON OF KID OF BABY written by Kurt Baumeister July 10, 2018 (ran initially at Entropy Magazine) “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet;” – Juliet, Act II, Scene II of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare   In school, we’re taught we can …

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Pax Americana Selected to Best of 2017 List (PANK Magazine)

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Best Books of 2017 POSTED ON DECEMBER 21, 2017 The year is almost over and it’s time to revisit some of my favorite reads of the year. As with any list, this is not as extensive/inclusive/comprehensive as I’d like it to be, but having to do other things besides reading severely cuts into the amount of …

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PAX AMERICANA: Coverage on National Book Critics Circle Blog by Daisy Fried

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Nov. 8 NBCC/Lit Mixer, plus new bios of Vladimir Lenin, James Wright, Alexander Calder and More by daisy fried | Nov-06-2017 NBCC and Lambda are hosting a literary mixer next Wednesday, November 8th at Folksbier in Brooklyn. Details are available here. John Domini interviews Jenny Erpebeck for Bookforum, and praises her novel Go, Went, Gone as “a fresh career benchmark.” In Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Domini reviews …

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