“Wherefore was I given life?”
Because it’s Södergran time again.
Category: Poetry & Prose
On Larissa Glasser’s F4
Larissa Glasser’s F4 is filthy, bizarre, ultra-violent, and hyper-(trans-)sexual, and I’m sure it’s meant to be all those things.
The Pseudo-Hysterical Female Man
The Female Man wants very badly to be a hysterical novel, but by design, and not spontaneously, it flails about in its confusion, hurting not just itself but the reader as well.
1001 books
Like my own Shahrazad, I’ve told myself 1,001 stories to keep myself distracted from (doing) bad things.
On Borges’ Collected Fictions
The ugly, The bad, The good, The list™
Shadow of the Future
My translation: Edith Södergran - “Framtidens skugga” (1920)
On The Narrow Land
Although I already had a pretty positive opinion of Vance based on ‘Lyonesse’, ‘The Narrow Land’ surprised me with a couple of really good tales.
On The Eye of the Heron
Ursula K. LeGuin’s ‘The Eye of the Heron’ is an engaging novella about oppression and resistance in a new world.
On Dockskåpet
Tove Jansson’s collection ‘Dockskåpet’ (The Doll’s House) has a number of gems. Most of them are character sketches, between ten and twenty pages. Domestic troubles, strange obsessions. A novel or story collection can itself be a kind of textual doll’s house, with little rooms of drama and tiny furniture.
Type Travels: Leigh Alexander’s Mona
Mona is a short story by Leigh Alexander with gorgeous illustrations by Emily Carroll. The story is part sensual urban horror, part homage to the game Silent Hill 2. The story recently went on sale, and I provided the design for the e-book versions. Have a look at the design below, and don’t forget to buy a copy of the story!