book report 8/25/07

A lot of books have been trickling in for weeks, but i've barely made any progress in any of them. However...

Adventures in Unhistory. Avram Davidson. Nice book. Well-printed, bound well, tastefully illustrated. The essays are connecting tales of the fantastic into history. Davidson is informal and well-read. However, i should have read this book years ago. It's a pleasant, relaxing read, but i've yet to run across any details that i have not run across before. I've been skipping about a lot, accidentally starting with the one on Aleister Crowley (connecting to a current synchronicity experience of a friend.) The Prester John stuff i've run across in many forms, but most recently in Eco's Baudolino. The mandrake root stuff is also too familiar. I want new territory, but it's a damned fine book otherwise. I'll definitely pick up more of his work.

Best American Fantasy. I zipped through the introductions and four stories this morning. This is really what i was hoping Interfictions would be, but it's sinking in that the comparison is unfair. Interfictions is a collection of emerging authors, more or less. Best American Fantasy are relatively experienced, ringers. However, it's still less fantasy and more interstitial (by the Interstitial Fiction Foundation's own stated definition) than the stories i have read so far in Interfictions. This is going to be a good primer to pick up some new authors to follow. I'll post again on it when i've read more.

Spaceman Blues. Brian Francis Slattery. Sweet Jesus! I'm only 45 pages in, but this guy seems to be on fire. He's writing his damned heart out, as if this one book is his chance for his mark in the literary world, and he might very well pull it off. It's not a so-called Great Work, but Slattery has mastered pop art splash. A lot of the blurbs pegs his voice as Pynchonian, but it reads just as much as Beat (which i mean in a positive, as too much Beat-derived stuff comes across as welcome as a prolapsed colon.) The man loves New York City in all its slurry of ethnic glory. He has thrown dozens off perversely unique characters in near-cameo appearances that lesser writers would trot out to the main stage, and pat themselves on the back smugly for the remainder of the book on just how eccentric this character is. Slattery plays fast and loose. This is fun, and i haven't a clue where this is going yet, if it's going anywhere at all.