5,641 words Machado de Assis, Joaquim Maria The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas Penguin Classics, 2020 “How do you have the nerve to write some of the things you do?” I asked him. “Oh, it’s easy. I just pretend that I’m already dead.” — Michel Houellebecq[1] Some years ago, in that white-collar internment camp known […]
3,139 words Ann Sterzinger LYFE: Elektra’s Revenge, Book One Laughing Gallows Books, 2018 She never felt as good as when she got settled inside this little private world. Which wasn’t saying much.[1] Here’s a new book by Ann Sterzinger, and it’s not what you’d expect. After all, she does have a hard-won reputation as the […]
1,556 words “Spinoza was neither an optimist nor a pessimist. He neither laughed at life nor grieved over it. It is possible that he understood it.” —Edgar Saltus, The Anatomy of Negation After making something of an effort to keep up with the terrific output of Vox Day’s Castalia House imprint, I’m now poking my nose […]
790 words Ann Sterzinger NVSQVAM (nowhere) Charleston, W.V.: Nine-Banded Books, 2011 We live in a time in which all positive ideologies of the past — be they Right- or Left-wing; good, bad, or ugly — are swiftly spiraling towards the chopping block of “the end of history.” It seems impossible, in today’s post-modern climate of […]
5,020 words The conclusion of my interview with Chip Smith of Nine-Banded Books deals with anti-natalism, cosmic pessimism, H. P. Lovecraft, Hollister Kopp’s Gun Fag Manifesto, and other future 9BB publications. Anti-natalism is the theme of two of your titles: Jim Crawford’s Confessions of an Antinatalist and the forthcoming title by Sarah Perry, Every Cradle […]
5,468 words Part 2 of 2 Let us consider Wendy Shalit’s account, culled from anecdotes and women’s magazines, of the sexual situation women face today. The humble corporate drone who has to fear harassment charges and loss of livelihood if he winks at the girl in the next cubicle will feel as if he stepped […]