current reading
I can't finish reading Europe Central, it's just too dark and claustrophobic. It's an amazing book, I just can't chew on it any longer. So, to lighten things up a bit, I've started several other books, collections of short stories. Quick, easy to digest, and fun: that is what I crave.
James Purdy - Moe's Villa and Other Stories
This is the second book I've read by Purdy, the first was Narrow Rooms, a completely haunting and beautiful novel about the tragic lives of men in love in the rural south, in the 1960s. Moe's Villa feels a lot less heavy but is totally absorbing.
Robert Glück - Denny Smith and Other Stories. This is a beautiful little book, literally, it's about 4" x 4". So far the prose is completely experimental and abstract, but at the same time very corporeal, ie, it seems to have a non-narrative form that jumps around in completely unexpected ways, but the contents are about sex and eating and so on.
update: When researching sites about James Purdy, I kept coming upon descriptions of his work as being surreal. I don't think it's surreal unless you take it literally. It's all metaphor and fantastically descriptive, but very very real. Surrealism always seem to have something of a dream-like quality to it, but Purdy seems to be completely lucid and sober.