Signs, at its core, is a border-crossing tale. In this sense, I believe literature always entails a political responsibility.” In reading Herrera’s fiction, particularly the Lisa Dillman-translated pairing of The Transmigration of Bodies and Signs Preceding The End of The World, we’re offered the foundation and honesty of contemporary Mexican reality, told by a man who’s lived in, and ruminated on, all manner of the subject.
Late night book club full#
The Transmigration of Bodies &, Signs Preceding The End Of The World, Yuri Herrera: Discussing set and setting within his writing in a thoughtful 2017 interview with Latin American Literature Today, Yuri Herrera said: “Literature cannot take full responsibility for creating good or bad men and women, but what it can do is give you the tools to make yourself into a conscious citizen. Xstabeth remains full of secrets, but once you’ve finished it, you’ll feel as though you’ve beheld some rapturous vision. These short essays don’t clear things up by any means instead, they add another layer, more texture, more mystery. Interspersed throughout the tale, Keenan inserts commentaries on the work of “David Keenan” - the author’s long-dead alter ego. Petersburg to golf courses in Scotland, both characters haunted by ill-fated love affairs and anonymous private press bootleg LPs. The novel follows its Russian narrator and her singer-songwriter father from folk and strip clubs in St. In its own weird way, Xstabeth is a page-turner. But its overall effect is one of pleasing disorientation, a kind of derangement of the senses that you want to prolong. Xstabeth, David Keenan: Equal parts strange, funny, beautiful and disturbing, David Keenan’s Xstabeth doesn’t fit into any particular box. Like the most free-blowing loft session imaginable, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate is enthralling, unwieldly, and utterly transformative. Encompassing the nature of jazz, folklore, African American art and culture, collective thought, and improvisation, Mackey riffs until language becomes an instrument in and of itself-melodically fluid, unhindered by time, breaking the reader’s ear with its own music and nuance. traces the musical, spiritual, and cosmological permutations of his ever-evolving ensemble as they gig around Los Angeles in the late 70s and early 80s.
Through dreamlike missives to the spectral Angel of Dust, a composer/multi-instrumentalist called N. (followed by Bass Cathedral, and The Late Arcade). In its current state, the work comprises five volumes, the first three of which are collected here- Bedouin Hornbook, Djbot Baghostus’s Run, and Atet A.D. Dense with imagery that reveals itself gradually with each reading, Mycelium Wassonii hints at the secrets of the unseen landscape existing at play all around us if we know where to look.įrom A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, Nathaniel Mackey: Dense, surreal, and alive with rhythm, From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate is an ongoing epistolary jazz novel that poet Nathaniel Mackey has been channeling over the last forty years. Though their intentions were genuine, the Wassons opened a Pandora’s box when they published an account of their Mexican travels in a 1957 issue of Life magazine, touching off a widespread explosion of interest in “magic” mushrooms that’s remained in effect for the last 65 years. After years diligently investigating varying cultural traditions involving mushrooms, the Wassons get a break that leads them to the doorstep of María Sabina-a Mazatec curandera who allowed them to document and participate in the sacred mushroom rites of her people. Gordon Wasson-amateur mycologists whose endeavors provided foundational research to the burgeoning field of ethnomycology. Awash in Blomerth’s dayglo prankster fantasias chock full of dog-people and sentient fungi, it’s a gorgeous psychotropic romp into the lives of Valentina and R. Mycelium Wassonii, Brian Blomerth: Mycelium Wassonii is Brian Blomerth’s second graphic novel delving into the history of modern psychedelic research, following 2019’s Bicycle Day. At 235 pages, it’s chock full of photos, original newspaper ads, flyers, and long-lost monthly calendars of the pre-Internet age, along with firsthand accounts of the myriad subcultures orbiting these disparate rooms. Where The Wild Gigs Were, Tim Hinely & Friends: From the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA, to the now defunct Starwood in Los Angeles, Where The Wild Gigs Were lovingly documents a wide swath of the institution that is the American underground music venue. Your librarians this month are Tyler Wilcox, Justin Gage, Kyle Fortinsky, Jarrod Annis and Jason P. It’s Aquarium Drunkard’s Book Club, our monthly gathering of recent (or not so recent) recommended reading.
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