The most memorable fiction I read in 2017

Looking back on all the books I read in 2017, these are the ones that weigh the heaviest, meaning I think about them during class changes, on long runs, in the shower, or while making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They weren't all published in 2017, but a handful were. As always, thanks for reading.  

Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie (1996)

This book is so many things: American satire, urban crime thriller, reservation punchline after reservation punchline, artifact from America’s ongoing culture wars, the collected chromosomes of so many shared literary lineages, from Leslie Marmon Silko to Washington Irving and Ernest Hemingway. The plot moves quickly through Noir alleys and collegiate classrooms, and then Alexie lands an Epilogue from the top rope that makes all the pain and tragedy from the book’s plot shrivel into nothing more than one rotten fruit born of many, and perhaps that’s the saddest truth of all: “The tree grows heavy with owls” (420). 

Where and what I wrote in 2015:

Pretentious image about writing.

@BallerBall

I am always appreciative of the freedom in basketball expression Jason Gallagher allows for at his site. I might even write pieces for The Baller Ball more often than my own blog, and, while most of the stuff is nonsense, I do think having a regular place to contribute without worrying about formalities has made me a better writer or at least helped me to keep up with my writing. I owe Jason something for that, so thanks, man, from the bottom of my basketball heart.

Fries & Ketchup: Rufous City Review, Wadjda, Fury

Recent odds and ends:

At the start of the week, the magazine Rufous City Review released their new issue. My poem "Waimea Canyon" was included in it, along with several other poems I enjoyed over the course of a couple snow days that kept me home from school. Visit the site. Download the PDF. It's free, and it's good for you.

Poetry @HarpoonReview & other places

When I blog, the results are easy. I type something up, click publish, and that's pretty much it. Writing poetry isn't quite like that. With both modes, drafting and revisions occur with great frequency and frustration, although with blogging this process is quite public. Poetry, however, despite its brevity, is a slow process.

Recently Read: Vandermeer, Nusbaum, Robbins, Rushdie

Some science fiction, a short story, some poetry, some fantasy:


Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer (2014)

Part Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" and part creepy music from Lost, the first volume of Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy is an intriguing bit of science fiction along with some strange relationship counseling. I read much of it under a night light, with my wife in the bed next to me already asleep. Perhaps this was the only way to read it, for much of Area X's alluring mystery is that it forces individuals into moments of simultaneous intimacy and suspense; of seeing a particular object as a tunnel or a tower; a time to read the inscriptions of others or to be seen as a guiding light. The juxtapositions within Vandermeer's text are uniquely archetypal and personal. They appear familiar and strange. You keep reading because there is something recognizable in the Crawler, and for anyone who does read, the light of the stuff--these letters--is both profound and indescribable. This is the affect of Vandermeer's strange tale. And the story therefore is both external and internal.