reassembled photographs livelihoods digressions

books:

28 reviews
Amy Hempel

Scribner, 2007

When she was God
Many people say Raymond Carver is a minimalist. He didn't like this label, and I agree with him. I don't know if Amy Hempel is keen on being labeled - I suspect not so - but, for that matter she is a minimalist writer. Just look at one of her stories, called "Memoir". She needs about 20 words to write a whole text, and in this short truncated paragraph she compresses a whole life. Wow! "The ...

Town of Mirrors: The Reassembled Imagery of Robert Pollard
Robert Pollard

Fantagraphics, 2008

A collection of art & lyrics from the legendary Guided By Voices singer/songwriter. Robert Pollard is the Dayton, Ohio singer-songwriter, who was the leader and creative force behind the legendary indie rock group Guided by Voices, one of the most influential bands of its generation ( SPIN magazine recently named Pollard one of "The Top 50 Rock & Roll Front Men of All-Time"). After the dissolution of Guided by Voices in 2004, Robert Pollard ...

The Magic Kingdom (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

4 reviews
Stanley Elkin

Dalkey Archive Press, 2000

Love, death, and a malevolent Mickey
There's nothing quite like the experience of readiing a Stanley Elkin novel. The bizarre events, the over-the-top characters, and the sentences -- long, winding sentences filled with tangential details and parenthetical clauses, sentences which tumble and turn, drunk on themselves, but which somehow by the end all manage to add up. The Magic Kingdom has all of the virtues of Elkin's other great ...

Purple America: A Novel

39 reviews
Rick Moody

Back Bay Books, 1998

Brilliant. Funny. Heartbreaking.
This is the most complete, nuanced, and beautiful work I've read by Rick Moody. It's jammed with his witty observations, scathing cynicism, and ironic beauty, and it's a great introduction to his memorable character development and unique writing style.

Tin House: Fantastic Women (Tin House)
Aimee Bender, Judy Budnitz, ...

Tin House Magazine, 2007

Tin House has become a forerunner of brilliant and fresh contemporary fiction, and this astonishing collection captures some of the most promising literary voices writing today. The anthology includes tastes of Aimee Bender's surreal aesthetic, Miranda July's charming and quirky prose, and Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum heart-stopping and lyrical style. Edited by virtuoso novelist and memoirist Rick Moody, this is not only a collection of great ...

The Diviners: A Novel

21 reviews
Rick Moody

Little, Brown and Company, 2005

a simple, lay review of a superb book
My one word to describe THE DIVINERS is "kaleidoscope." THE DIVINERS is kaleidoscopic as Moody takes broken, colorful personalities & reflects them to us, like a mirror in a kaleidoscope, to create a beautiful work of art for our amusement. Yes, amusement. This is a funny book, people. The characters are like bits of colored glass that are moved, changed, transformed throughout the novel to ...

Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas

5 reviews
Rick Moody

Little, Brown and Company, 2007

A Trio Of Elegant Technologically-Obsessed Novellas Courtesy of Rick Moody
"Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas" demonstrates that Rick Moody remains at the peak of his literary craft, drawing successfully on post-9/11 paranoia in these three elegant examinations of technologically-obsessed paranoia. Included in this terse volume is the amazing "The Albertine Notes", the last of the three novellas in "Right Livelihoods", which deserves ample recognition and praise of its ...

The Wilco Book (with CD)

9 reviews
Wilco, Dan Nadel, ...

PictureBox, Inc., 2004

Coffee Table Art
The Wilco Book is a great book if you enjoy the creative process. This book is less about the band and more about how they record, why they do it, and what the environment around them looks or feels like while they are doing it. It's an open-minded look at a process most of us don't enjoy on the same scale, but that we can all relate to in our own creative lives. The accusations of ...

Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson

18 reviews
Rick Moody

Harry N. Abrams, 2002

inspired work
While Gregory Crewdson may be the most overhyped, overpaid photography around today, he is also a master of this type of color, creative, fictive scene. This work is deliberate, deep, and strange, and includes a good essay by Rick Moody. It is a modern masterwork, for sure, and while Crewdson's retrospective book "1985-2005" is average at best, this cohesive body of work is well worth the price.

The Ice Storm: A Novel

49 reviews
Rick Moody

Back Bay Books, 2002

A TALE OF A DYSTOPIC SUBURBAN AMERICANA
"Be careful what you wish for. You might get it". Wise words that came to acquire a new meaning as the baby-boomers' children were entering the 70's. Bell-bottoms and mutton-chops were the cutting edge of fashion; Nixon's lies (and not his Kissingerian real-politics and crimes against humanity) were what finally cost him his office; polyester was more expensive and desirable than natural fibers; ...

Powered by Honda: Developing Excellence in the Global Enterprise

9 reviews
R. Dave Nelson, Patricia E Moody, ...

Backinprint.com, 2007

for every leader's desk
Powered by Honda is for every leader's desk. If managers apply what they read in this book, their organizations will be dynamically improved, and their customers along with their associates will be delighted. Robert A. Kemp, PhD, CPM Former President, National Association of Purchasing Management President, Kemp Enterprises Former Professor Emeritus, Management, Duke University

The Best American Short Stories of the Century, Vol. 2

42 reviews

Houghton Mifflin, 1999

Grand American tales of the nineteen hundreds
The quintessential in the American short story is represented in this collection of fiction. I am reading these tales both for the pleasure they bring me and as a means of studying the craft of masters in a field I hope to enter. As part of my fiction class at the University of Iowa, I have read "Janus" and "Where are you going, Where have you been?" (Beattie and Oates). These two tales ...

Garden State: A Novel

21 reviews
Rick Moody

Back Bay Books, 1997

Interesting first novel
Garden State bears many of the hallmarks of a typical first novel - somewhat autobigraphical, straining a little to find that elusive, distinctive voice that sets out the writer's stall as a force in literature, short in length. These aspects can often become flaws in a novel, but they can be forces for fresh, original writing too. Garden State to me seems to contain a little of both. It is a ...

The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions

34 reviews
Rick Moody

Little, Brown, 2002

Good. Period.
Now that time has passed, and the bad reviews are remembered best as, well, examples of bad reviewing, why not revisit The Black Veil, and read it on its own terms? My guess is that you'll find, as I did, a really beautiful narrative, a work of sustained mystery, the kind of book (like the best of John Hawkes, W.G. Sebald, Marilynne Robinson) that will help the reader find a profound quiet, a ...

The Black Veil

9 reviews
Rick Moody

Back Bay Books, 2003

Neglected Literary Classic Destined To Be Remembered Alongside "Angela's Ashes"
With "The Black Veil", Rick Moody has written a brilliantly realized memoir which I suspect will one day be remembered as well as Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes". Indeed there are many passages throughout "The Black Veil" which rank alongside "Angela's Ashes" for their elegant literary quality. If some readers - and I might add, book reviewers such as the infamous Dale Peck - have been ...

Garden State
Rick Moody

Faber and Faber, 2002

Hover : Photographs

1 review
Rick Moody, Darcey Steinke, ...

Artspace Books, 1998

Excellent!!!!
Hover has beautiful, intriguing photographs. The stories are haunting and wonderfully written to match the photographs. I highly recommend this delightful book.

The Mayor of Casterbridge (Oxford World's Classics)

4 reviews
Thomas Hardy

Oxford University Press, USA, 2003

Tragedy? More Like Melodrama!
When it comes to "classics" of Victorian literature, this is certainly much more readable than most, and while it presents some memorable characters, and plenty of themes worthy of high-school English essays, it's hard to take it very seriously in many ways. Like many novels of the era, Hardy's was first published in a serial format in an illustrated magazine (The Graphic), and then collected as ...

Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited

2 reviews

Little Brown & Co (T), 1997

A fresh and wildly spirited collection of essays.
Edited by one of the literary giants of the 20th century, Rick Moody, Joyful Noise is the most profound treatment of the N.T. I have ever come across. Not since Chesterton's Orthodoxy has my system of beliefs been so tested. This book will appeal to, and the shake the ground of agnostics and believers alike.

Demonology

43 reviews
Rick Moody

Little, Brown and Company, 2001

Writing a lot but saying very little
Rick Moody has talent. "The Mansion on the Hill," the first story in Demonology, evidences this talent extremely well. To start off with such a funny, poignant and heartbreaking story sucks you right in and makes you wonder what other treats will follow. Unfortunately for you, however, what comes next is a string of gimmicky, artsy stories wherein Moody writes a lot but says very little. ...

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