There is No Antimemetics Division (2025) by QNTM

 Book Review

There is No Antimemetics Division (2025)

 by QNTM

    I happened across this title perusing the shelves at a Burlington, Vermont bookstore, where it had one of those handwritten "employee recommends" cards attached.  I don't know about you, but I always take the time to read these- whether it's a Barnes & Noble or what, because I think you can really tell about a specific Bookstore based on whether the employees can identify books that I a) don't know about and b) want to read.    There is No Antiemetics Division jumped out to me on a couple levels, first, what the employee wrote on the card was interesting. Second, it was clearly a horror-science-fiction genre title that was placed in the wider "new releases" shelf at the front of the store, that shows me the book or author already has escape velocity from the genre shelf.  Last, the cover promised "cosmic horror" AKA Lovecraftian horror without the not-so-subtle racism.  

  You can describe the plot easily enough, a secret government agency labors against the horrors of the unknown, but that doesn't do the material justice.  Specifically, it doesn't describe the role that memory plays in the horror aspect of the plot, thought there is also non-memory based actual horror along Lovecraftian lines. Unlike most first gen cosmic horror, QNTM (a nom de plume for an English author/programmer Sam Hughes), does describe said horror, rectifying a major issue with that genre (how long can an author keep describing a nameless, unknowable horror without actually describing said horror.). 

  I found There is No Antimemetics Division really mind-blowing in the way of most great genre fiction.  The fusion of memory-language sci-fi and cosmic horror was revelatory in a way similar to the initial Matrix movie- genre but transcendent, classic genre.   Worth reading for sure.

Dogfight and Other Stories (1996) by Michael Knight

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dogfight and Other Stories (1996)

by Michael Knight

Mobile, Alabama

Alabama: 14/18

   This was a good one- sadly a book of short stories. The Gulf Coast of Alabama seems pretty interesting- sometimes people go there on the house hunting shows on HGTV and this is the first novel where you get a sense of that white, upper-middle class existence, also white working-class existence, no non-white characters in this book.  The sense I got from Dogfight was lonely white guys, looking out to the Gulf of Mexico-America. 

Mudbound (2008) by Hilary Jordan

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Mudbound (2008)

by Hilary Jordan

Mississippi Delta, Mississippi

Mississippi: 6/18

  Mudbound is a classic Susan Straight 1,001 Novels: A Library of America pick, a book that won some award that Barbara Kingsolver made up for unpublished books- it then got published and sold a bunch of copies.  The version I checked out from the library was the Ebook version of the Netflix cover version of the book from the Netflix version I'd didn't know about.  It's about a well-off but "spinster adjacent" white woman from the upper south who marries a youngish widower- she meets him because he is an engineer travelling around for Government projects during the Great Depression (I think).  Little does she know that it is his lifelong dream to go back home (the Mississippi Delta) and become a farmer.  It's "little does she know" because he does not bother to tell her during their courtship. 

 Nevertheless, Laura McAllan (her married name) is cognizant of her incipient spinsterhood and loves the old lug besides, so she agrees to the thing.  The title of the book is her somewhat whimsical name for the farm that Henry (the husband) takes over.   Henry has a damaged (by service in World War I) younger brother who is a manic pixie dream boy circa the 1940's.  The farm has several sharecropping families, some white and some black, and Jamie (the younger brother) befriends the oldest son of one of the black families, Ronsel, also a veteran, and a tank operator to boot (Jamie being a pilot). 

  If you've been reading this blog, you know how this is going to end up, not well for the African American World War II veteran.  And reader, it does not. 

The Next Step in the Dance (1998) by Tim Gautreaux

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Next Step in the Dance (1998)

by Tim Gautreaux

Morgan City, Louisiana

Louisiana: 7/28

    It is rare that I actually really enjoy reading a book in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  Part of that derives from the fact that I've read, essentially, all of the "classics" that Susan Straight has included in the project- we are talking about canon level titles from 19th, 20th and 21st century American literature here, and let's face it, the list isn't that long.  Part of it comes from the fact that Straight needs to rely heavily on chick-lit and genre fiction to actually populate large swathes of the American literary map.  And I guess the last part of it is the lack of thematic variety within each particular state- I really should be going through and doing one book at a time from each state instead of staying within a single region/chapter of the project to avoid that particular phenomenon. 

  Which is all a preamble for saying that I actually enjoyed reading The Next Step in the Dance on its own merit, and Tim Gautreaux is an author who I would be interested in reading outside of a project-based title.  I know for sure the reason I liked this book is that the main character was blue collar (a Cajun machinist) and part of the book actually deals with his work life and the things he has to do as part of that life.  It's an issue that extends well beyond the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America to all precincts of American literature and most of American fiction- which is that books are written by authors, and most authors- particularly writers of literary fiction- haven't done shit in their lives except write fiction.  This means they can't believably write about work, let alone make a whole novel about it, which means that all fiction is inevitably domestic fiction, family fiction, and that world gets boring as hell year after year.

  I would love to read a work of fiction about a farmer where the author actually knew something about the business and practice of farming, and writes about that,  instead of one of fifty novels in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America where the events take PLACE on a farm but are ABOUT the abuse a young girl suffers at the hands of her father or family trauma generally. 

  

The Houseguest (2018)by Amparo Dávila

Mexican author Amparo Davila

 Book Review

The Houseguest (2018)

by Amparo Dávila

  I'm not sure how I came about reading this 2018 New Directions edition of English translations of Mexican author Amparo Dávila's work.  She was writing between the mid 1950's and the 80's, dying in 2000, and I think this two sentence "Work" description from Wikipedia captures her vibe nicely:

  Davila is known for her use of themes of insanity, danger, and death, typically dealing with a female protagonist. Many of her protagonists appear to have mental disorders and lash out, often violently, against others. Many times the women are still unable to escape from their mental issues and live with the actions they have taken. She also plays with ideas of time by using time as a symbol of that which we cannot change.

  In other words, she is a forerunner of the recent wave of mostly woman authored weird lit coming out of Latin America and Mexico in particular. Reading this collection had some of the same energy as reading I, Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman which is basically, "How have I made it this far with no one ever mentioning her or ever hearing about her independently despite being directly interested in her work and the writers she has directly influenced?"

  It further points to the importance of publishing entities like New Directions and The New York Review of Books, where the goal is often "resurfacing" "lost classics" or raising a lost work to canonical status in part by republishing it.  This is by no means an insignificant phenomenon, and I can confidently say that both Jane Austen and William Faulkner were direct beneficiaries of this same process, going back centuries. 

The Far Edges of the Known World (2025) by Owen Rees

 Book Review

The Far Edges of the Known World:

 Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilization (2025)

by Owen Rees

   If there were more books in this category: general reader level history books about ancient history, I would for sure read them, but the fact is that the underlying research doesn't require more than one new book a decade in most subfields.   Reading everything there is available to a non-specialist about events on the fringes of so-called western "civilization" in English, in the United States, is not hard.  Rees summarizes recent research in areas on the margins of the ancient greco-roman world.   He also includes a section on Europe, and some of the most interesting material is written about modern day Ethiopia. Like all books published in American on this area of interest, the lack of foreign language knowledge condemns the author to reinforce the very historical near-sightedness he seeks to correct.  To take the example of ancient Ethiopia, he doesn't appear to have read anything in Ge'ez.

  Anyway, it is interesting to be sure but nothing mind blowing here, like, I kinda knew what was coming.

The Gone Dead (2019) by Chanelle Benz

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Gone Dead (2019)

by Chanelle Benz

Money Road, Greenwood Mississippi 

Mississippi: 5/18

  It isn't often that the titles on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America raise questions about the role of authenticity in fiction, but such was the case for The Gone Dead, by British American author Chanelle Benz. The plot concerns the interracial daughter of a dead-before-his-time African American poet (her father) and what can only be described as her severely misguided attempt to "get to the bottom" of the "mysterious" circumstances surrounding the death of her father.

  Clearly, the protagonist has not read the same books I have about this part of the country because it is just about 100 percent clear that any "mysterious" death of an African American man in the deep South is caused by white racists who are then protected by the local law enforcement and political establishment. I could have told this lady that in a five-minute conversation over a cup of coffee. Fair to say that I didn't linger on The Gone Dead, because reader I knew where this was headed. It was either the cops, friends of the cops or the cops when they were off duty that killed your daddy and you don't need 283 pages to tell the story.

Where the Line Bleeds (2008) by Jesmyn Ward

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Where the Line Bleeds (2008)

by Jesmyn Ward

DeLisle, Mississippi

Mississippi: 4/18

   Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward would have to be at the very top of any serious list of American authors of literary fiction in the 21st century.  Her presence amidst the detritus of YA and chick-lit titles stands out like a beacon from a proverbial light house of literary fiction.  I checked out the Audiobook because I was wondering if I could seriously tell the difference between an Author with such widely regarded literary merit and the run of the mill titles, I've been suffering through for the past couple years.  Where the Line Bleeds was her first novel, and then she dropped Salvage the Bones four years later- that book won the National Book Award.  She won again in 2017 with Sing, Unburied, Sing, which I read during a period where I was reading all the National Book Award finalists.  It's a good book, obviously, but it didn't spur me to go back and read her other titles.

   I could tell the difference between Ward's prose and the run of the mill stuff on a couple of levels.  First, she was able to turn an otherwise prosaic landscape (the unheralded Mississippi coastline) with real grandeur.  She did this in a couple different ways.  First, she was a close observer of the physical landscape- her descriptions of crack houses and swamp parties sparkle with life.  Second, her ability to depict all five senses marks her out from the pack.   Great writers of literary fiction imbue the reader with a feeling that there is depth beneath the surface of the human activity being depicted, but they also provide a many-splendored surface, pairing stylistic flourishes with economy.   She does all these things in Where the Line Bleeds, which is sure to be my top title from Mississippi and a likely top five for the entire chapter.

Grace (2016) by Natashia Deon

1,001 Novels: A Library of America 

Grace (2016)

by Natashia Deon

Faunsdale, Alabama

Alabama: 13/18

   I probably would have enjoyed Grace more if I had read it outside of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.  I don't consider myself particularly sensitive to depictions of sexual violence, but it is hard to ignore the presence of sexual violence either explicitly or implied in nearly every book in this chapter.  Grace did stand out in terms of the ambition and literary merit- it is peppered with modernist techniques that make the story much more difficult to follow than your normal life during the antebellum south book.  It was also what you would call "unflinching" which made the frequent sexual violence more squirm inducing.  What is clear to me after this chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is that getting real about slavery in the American South is really digging into the very worst of humanity.  

  The books set in this part of America- the cotton belt of the deep south, put on display a kind of worst-of-the-worst environment because essentially all of the slaves in this part of the country were ripped out of their existing families in the upper south and sold "down the river," creating a profound double fracture. The fact that these populations were freed and essentially abandoned is one the great cruelties of American history.

  But the literary merit here is undeniable- making this book a top three title for Alabama simply on the basis of artistic ambition.  It's just that this a rough read.

Rot(2025) by Padraig X.Scanlan

 Audiobook Review

Rot (2025)

by Padraig X. Scanlan

   The reviews this week are running in January, but they actually represent the end of 2024.  I spent the entire year listening to this Audiobook with months in between (the library only had one Audiobook copy for the entire system).  I checked it out after last year's visit to Ireland, where I noted locals referring to the "Irish Potato Genocide" rather than the "Irish Potato Famine" as we were all taught in school.   I thought it would be interesting to review the scholarship in this area, and Rot does a good job of summarizing recent scholarship for a general reading audience.  

  I thought I had a good idea of where Scanlan would be headed based on similar arguments I've read in the area of Native American history and the history of the Southern United States.  Like many of the arguments that surround the post-erradication campaign attempts of the United States Government to "Kill the Indian and Save the Man," many of the Governmental policies described here as genocidal (he doesn't actually use that phrase) were extremely poorly thought out attempts to "help" the Irish.  Specifically, to help them become good capitalist members of the British Empire, by eradicating the potato, which the rural Irish used as a hedge against the vagaries of the market economy.

   As Scanlan well demonstrates, the Irish were anything BUT outliers from contemporary market economics, rather they were only two well acquainted with the most rapacious aspects of modern market capitalism courtesy of the complicated system of land rights, which had all the unpredictably of modern stock trading in terms of its impact on the rural proletariat.  The Irish peasantry was also roundly betrayed by their elites, who were all either actual British colonialists or the product of families who were long-time collaborators.