The Satyricon was originally a long episodic spoof of the Odyssey: its hero, Encolpius, offends the God Priapus by ransacking his temple and is stricken with impotence. He and his friends and bedmates wander through Italy recounting their adventures. The only fairly intact sequence tells of a dinner by a nouveau-riche merchant named Trimalchio who holds an elegant banquet but whose base-born origins are always showing. The rest of the book is in fragments but still a fun read. Seneca's The Apocolocyntosis is a humorous look at what happens after Claudius died. I gotta say, I really liked this story.

The Harmon Chronicles by Harmon Leon. Leon worked on Might Magazine with Dave Eggers and now gives us an insider's look at the wierdness of America. He does this not by in-depth reporting but by using 'infiltration journalism'. The results are usually hilarious and, not a little, disturbing.



Spitting Off Tall Buildings by Dan Fante. In the final book of Fante's trilogy Bruno Dante has hitch-hiked from L.A. to N.Y. and dives right into a series of dead-end temping jobs. Scattered between drinking binges, affairs ,and attempting to write he works as a staple puller, a window washer, and a cabbie amongst other things. As with his other books—amazing read (I hope the other books he has written will be translated and released here). Not to everyones taste to be sure.

You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers. Currently available through independent book dealers. This, his first work of fiction, is the story of two people's quest around the world to unload unwanted money on strangers—in one week. Published by Eggers' own McSweeney's Books it contains all the thoughtful design and poor copy-editing you've come to expect from independent releases. OK, Mr. Eggers, we believe you, you haven't sold out.

The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith. This was a fun book. I am still a bit confused as to what the interior dust jacket writing was about but since it didn't seem to make it to the paperback copies I've seen, I'll ignore it. I found the characters interesting but not fully developed, the story stalled in places, and the kabalistic references difficult to wade through...but all in all I still love her work.

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. I've mentioned before that I believe this is Chuck's return to brilliance. This story follows reporter, Carl Streator, writing a series of articles about SID while grieving for his own dead wife and child when he makes a disturbing discovery. Great story, I was reminded of his Invisible Monsters and Survivor.


Eunoia by Christain Bök. Bök co-won the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize for Eunoia (shared with Alice Notley for her Disobedience). Anyone one who is a fan of the OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle) writers' (particularly one of my favourite, Georges Perec) constrained experiments in writing will love this book. Eunoia is what I would call an extreme form of lipogram (writing without or with only using [a] particular letter[s]) in which each chapter is based on a particular vowel and tells a story using only words possessing that vowel. Wonderful.

Welcome to the book section. A mixture of reviews, beefs and lists. I considered separating them into topics (non-fiction, fiction, et al) but since that isn't how I read them I listed them as is. This year has been a good year for books. I'd been eagerly awaiting new books by Zadie Smith (Autograph Man), Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby), Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity) and Dan Fante (Spitting Off Tall Buildings) and now that I've got them all and have finished reading them I can say that it was worth the wait (in gold). I was surprised to read that the critics were unsatisfied with Smith's book, I found the book more controlled than White Teeth which in my opinion had a poorly resolved ending. The critics have been a lot more friendly to Palahniuk whose book saw a return to the brilliance of his earlier works. Frankly I was disappointed with his last endeavor, Choke, which seemed to lack the balance between the 'facts' and story needed for his style of 'dangerous writing' to coalesce into a believable story. Suspension of belief is needed to enjoy any book, especially so for Chuck's, but a foundation of reality has to be fabricated for his work to shine and in this Choke failed. The reviews for Eggers is mixed and extreme; personally I'm enjoying the book even with the copy-editing mistakes. He is a good writer, there's no denying it. There are some really strong passages in this book that I happily reread a couple of times but in general it's not a masterpiece (and neither was A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, no matter who told you heard otherwise).

Enjoy,
Paul