An Update Post, More or Less

I'm a couple stories into A D Jameson's very recently released (i.e. this month) short story collection, "Amazing Adult Fantasy," available from Mutable Sound (a very cool Chicago area indie press). If you know of Jameson's writing from around these internets, either as a blogger on Big Other or just various fictions made available on web-based and print literary magazines' sites, you know he's not short on thoughtful and entertaining commentary and prose.

So far "Amazing Adult Fantasy" has blended references to my own favorite childhood pop culture icons, Oscar the Grouch, Indian(a) Jones, and Big Bird, with surrealist, humorous literary locales reminiscent of the stylings of writers like Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover and Curtis White. Of course where some of the preceding authors' works get a bit too disjointed for my tastes at times, narrative structure, though oft abstract, is retained in Jameson's fiction (which I hope encourages those of you who've been overly daunted by experimental writers in the past to maybe not give up on Jameson without first giving his writing an honest shot). There will no doubt be more to come on this subject as I continue to read "Amazing Adult Fantasy."

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Meanwhile, I continue the challenge of reading "VALIS" by Philip K. Dick. I hope to finish this, his trippiest of trippy novels, before the month is out. I think it's hard to argue "VALIS" isn't also PKD's most ambitious work of fiction, likewise. Its features are much more relatable to the difficult structural turns of works by experimental, umbrella-termed postmodern writers than most science fiction authors I've ever encountered. It's also a visible departure from the more well-known stories that have made him a well-remembered author of the genre. This is all very much to say I encourage you to read "VALIS" (but after you've acquainted yourself with his earlier works). More to come on this once I've finished reading the novel, though.

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I'm also beginning to read two books I've wanted to read for quite some time now, Alissa Nutting's "Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls" and Patrick Somerville's "The Universe in Miniature in Miniature." I'm reading both for bibliographing Nicole's "reading challenge." Wish me luck! There will must needs be more on the subject of this in the coming weeks.

So fear not, readers, while I seem like I'm neglecting this blog , the truth is quite the contrary, I'm striving more than ever before to deliver actual, meaningful content and commentary. Because what would be the point of barfing out whatever comes to my mind (i.e. barfing without clear focus).

(I can't really debate the logorrhea put forth here resembles a kind of word barfing, and for that I apologizes sooo muchs; I blame the Internet and the very nature of blogging, and conveniently not myself.)