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The Revisionist
Fiction. The title character of THE REVISIONIST conducts covert surveillance on a city whose inhabitants are subject to uncanny transformations as a result of catastrophic weather, political corruption, invasive technologies and environmental degradation. Hired to spin, or "revise," the facts, the revisionist's perceptions in turn become detached and distorted--inevitably unreliable yet all the same, revealing. This civil scientist of a narrator sardonically observes a distressed landscape inhabited by mutant children, a seeing-eye dog, a centenarian with iguanas and constellations beneath her dress, brooding frigate birds, insurance love clones, a terrorist curator, a private investigator, and a little girl who's discovered the world's largest conch. "THE REVISIONIST is at once a beautifully simple fable and a wonderfully lyrical apocalyptic tale"--Brian Evenson.
82 pages, Paperback
First published January 30, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 12, 2021
There were family photos, but it was difficult to know who the family had really been. One grandma had jumped out of many windows in her ongoing escapes. She was always running. The question that she ran with was constant. Book learning had been practical for her children, but it drove a wedge between she and they. They listened to her stories and could only imagine these stories as text and/or some form of either marketable or unmarketable object. The grandmother realized that in their minds, trauma was something to sell or forget. One child complained that her grandmother’s stories held something back. Grandmother agreed that stories were not functioning the way they once had. 'What about poetry,' she said. The youngest wrote poems. There she found a way to include the historical reality and necessity of grandma’s escapes entwined with her own sense that (excepting madness) there was no place to escape to. The poem tried to say that the child’s attempt to learn the strategies of assimilation was in conflict with atavistic rules of continuance. The problem was, as one man with a gun to his head said, 'I am made to suffer more than is humanely necessary, and therefore it is difficult to care either way.'
May 8, 2022
Not a big fan of apocalyptic fantasy, but there are some great lines in here and Mellis is an outstanding artist! The book is gorgeous! Here are some quotes:
"He held my arm and talked and talked. His tongue got loose and lunged out of his mouth, becoming an attack dog. Then it became a fish flapping and thrashing around the room. I ducked to avoid his engorged, bucking tongue. His body was a kite being pulled by the tongue. His form was lashed and turned around, as the tongue whipped the curator's helpless body. At one point it thumped him against the wall, knocking him unconscious. The tongue also slumped, the fluttered, and grew still."
Much to LOVE in this!
"He held my arm and talked and talked. His tongue got loose and lunged out of his mouth, becoming an attack dog. Then it became a fish flapping and thrashing around the room. I ducked to avoid his engorged, bucking tongue. His body was a kite being pulled by the tongue. His form was lashed and turned around, as the tongue whipped the curator's helpless body. At one point it thumped him against the wall, knocking him unconscious. The tongue also slumped, the fluttered, and grew still."
Much to LOVE in this!
February 28, 2009
An excerpt in Harpers led me to this book, and I think that vignette made a more powerful impression than the novella itself. Under the burden of narrative, or at least a longer form, it meanders. But there's plenty of vivid imagery I'm still thinking about: detonations and unravelings, perversions of nature, mundane resentments converted to violence. Derek White's ornate collage illustrations help the pacing, but it was ultimately kind of unsatisfying.
October 9, 2018
I'll keep this review relatively short and sweet as I picked up this novella because it was one of my assigned readings for creative writing class. I have to say, I found this to be a really interesting read. It was a joy to go through the experience of reading this novella, and I absolutely loved it. It wasn't perfect, but it was great from a creative writing perspective.
For the most part, I don’t think the “general” populace will enjoy this book. It’s very weird and is full of odd imagery. It is very much trying to get a message across, multiple ones if you ask me, but it is extremely experimental in the way it does this. It is not a straightforward novella in any shape or form.
I would recommend this book to a fellow creative writing student. From that perspective, this is a fascinating novella to read. There’s many different writing “tricks” that it utilizes which one could consider playing around with for one's own creative writing.
On another note, although this novella was lacking in terms of my favorite aspect of reading, which is having well-developed characters, I still very much enjoyed it. Even though the characters felt flat and like you couldn’t quite touch them, their actions and how they reacted to things still felt significant. There was a meaning behind what they did, some sort of message the author was trying to give, and the characters were used as a vehicle for that. Sure, I would have loved this novella even more if I had actually been able to bond with the characters in it, but I still appreciated the strangeness of them.
Finally, this novella explored a lot of themes. If you were to consider all the little things this novella was criticizing or taking a jab at or analyzing, the list would be quite long. The list would also be very varied in subject. Although this novella didn’t, as far as I was able to tell, focus too much on any one theme, I still felt like it addressed the different subjects relatively well. At the very least, it got you to think about the matters being discussed.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this novella and the way in which it was crafted. I would not recommend it to just anyone, but, if you’re looking for something weird and short to pick up, this is certainly something worth trying.
For the most part, I don’t think the “general” populace will enjoy this book. It’s very weird and is full of odd imagery. It is very much trying to get a message across, multiple ones if you ask me, but it is extremely experimental in the way it does this. It is not a straightforward novella in any shape or form.
I would recommend this book to a fellow creative writing student. From that perspective, this is a fascinating novella to read. There’s many different writing “tricks” that it utilizes which one could consider playing around with for one's own creative writing.
On another note, although this novella was lacking in terms of my favorite aspect of reading, which is having well-developed characters, I still very much enjoyed it. Even though the characters felt flat and like you couldn’t quite touch them, their actions and how they reacted to things still felt significant. There was a meaning behind what they did, some sort of message the author was trying to give, and the characters were used as a vehicle for that. Sure, I would have loved this novella even more if I had actually been able to bond with the characters in it, but I still appreciated the strangeness of them.
Finally, this novella explored a lot of themes. If you were to consider all the little things this novella was criticizing or taking a jab at or analyzing, the list would be quite long. The list would also be very varied in subject. Although this novella didn’t, as far as I was able to tell, focus too much on any one theme, I still felt like it addressed the different subjects relatively well. At the very least, it got you to think about the matters being discussed.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this novella and the way in which it was crafted. I would not recommend it to just anyone, but, if you’re looking for something weird and short to pick up, this is certainly something worth trying.
May 2, 2019
Strange, slight, meandering, irreverent, relevant, but by the end of leaves you feeling that it doesn't quite get to where it's trying to get to. The book is stuck in the no-man's land between poetic prose and prosaic poetry, and while learning more toward the latter, it tends to feel somewhat shortchanged in the former. Images, people, thoughts flying in and out like going through TV channels. People turning into conch shells, grandmas rotating and levitating around, recurrent barking dogs, nuclear explosions. If all of those sound enticing, they are, but again they left me wishing she pushed a little further. She tantalises, she dazzles, but she does so in soundbites and tweet-sized snippets only. Also, the illustrations really do not need to be there and only seem to take away from the text rather than adding much to it. Also, not to be too nit-picky, but the format of the thing kind of irked me too. But I'll certainly be on the lookout by more wordy weirdness from Miss Mellis in the future.
October 19, 2021
Pretty interesting modern, surrealist fiction. The uniform, declarative sentence structures made it feel a bit dry at first but that got better as it went on. There are some great lines & it's a very funny book. Also I mostly find the images in art fiction to be worthless but these ones were enjoyable.
December 29, 2020
W. I. E. R. D. I need someone I know to read this to make sure I didn't fever dream the whole thing. I feel like I should start doing drugs to understand this.
The pen and ink artwork in the book (a free .pdf) was absolutely amazing. I may try to extract the images and print some.
I have the .pdf available to share.
Weird. But hard to put down (knocked out in a few hours).
The pen and ink artwork in the book (a free .pdf) was absolutely amazing. I may try to extract the images and print some.
I have the .pdf available to share.
Weird. But hard to put down (knocked out in a few hours).
March 1, 2011
On page five of The Revisionist it says, “Buildings were curdling.”
On page seventeen of The Revisionist it says, “It wasn’t just the radiation that made people flee to Start Over Island.” On the same page it also says, “ It was normal to get to know people and then to be scared or hurt, even killed by them.”
On page twenty-two of The Revisionist it says, “One friend’s dog required diapers.”
On page twenty-three of The Revisionist it says, “The day after I ripped my own mother’s clothes off in a supermarket, I suspected I needed to leave Start Over Island.”
On page twenty-four of The Revisionist it says, “Even lies are just a kind of weather.”
On page thirty-eight of The Revisionist it says, “The PI had wrapped his beard around his neck for warmth.”
On page forty-four of The Revisionist it says, “As a child my own mother told me that the human heart spun on an axis smaller than a dime.” On the same page it also says, “My uncle had beef with the whole concept of insurance.”
On page forty-five of The Revisionist it says, “A man paid her to show him her underwear. She lifted her dress. Under her skirt was outer space.”
On page forty-seven of The Revisionist it says, “Then he wrote on my forehead with a marker, “Un-enjoyable.”
On page fifty-eight of The Revisionist it says, “He vacuumed her eyebrow roots.”
On page sixty-one of The Revisionist it says, “Her father’s head fell out of the sky and attached itself to the top of her head.”
On page sixty-nine of The Revisionist it says, “Some people tore their own heads off and ran around in circles with their heads in their arms.”
On page seventeen of The Revisionist it says, “It wasn’t just the radiation that made people flee to Start Over Island.” On the same page it also says, “ It was normal to get to know people and then to be scared or hurt, even killed by them.”
On page twenty-two of The Revisionist it says, “One friend’s dog required diapers.”
On page twenty-three of The Revisionist it says, “The day after I ripped my own mother’s clothes off in a supermarket, I suspected I needed to leave Start Over Island.”
On page twenty-four of The Revisionist it says, “Even lies are just a kind of weather.”
On page thirty-eight of The Revisionist it says, “The PI had wrapped his beard around his neck for warmth.”
On page forty-four of The Revisionist it says, “As a child my own mother told me that the human heart spun on an axis smaller than a dime.” On the same page it also says, “My uncle had beef with the whole concept of insurance.”
On page forty-five of The Revisionist it says, “A man paid her to show him her underwear. She lifted her dress. Under her skirt was outer space.”
On page forty-seven of The Revisionist it says, “Then he wrote on my forehead with a marker, “Un-enjoyable.”
On page fifty-eight of The Revisionist it says, “He vacuumed her eyebrow roots.”
On page sixty-one of The Revisionist it says, “Her father’s head fell out of the sky and attached itself to the top of her head.”
On page sixty-nine of The Revisionist it says, “Some people tore their own heads off and ran around in circles with their heads in their arms.”
May 14, 2010
This has the feeling of moving through faulkner, but it is obviously very different. Incredibly dense images that make it difficult to decide if you should move-on or stay for a while. I'm a little impatient, and I find faulkner's books too overwhelmingly rich to finish, so I chose to move-on more often than not. However, for those who move-on regularly it would be important to re-read as well. This, especially since the images are as dense as the text, so when you are trying to make all the connections, it is enough to make your head explode....in a good way.
That is to say reading this is like rolling around on a very large velvet covered feather pillow. Convincing yourself to re-read is a simple process.
My question remains:
Is Miranda Mellis a Leonora Carrington fan?
That is to say reading this is like rolling around on a very large velvet covered feather pillow. Convincing yourself to re-read is a simple process.
My question remains:
Is Miranda Mellis a Leonora Carrington fan?
September 30, 2015
This book was required reading for a creative writing class I am currently in. I have to say that I was initially put off by the abstract setting and the nonsensical logic that pervades throughout the story. However, the book really took a hold of me and my imagination. Never before had I read a book where a jogger could cork screw himself into the sand, be dug up and presented as a conch shell, and then exploded and put back together again as a fleshy rag doll.
I think this is the kind of book best read with an uncomfortable amount of caffeine and in one sitting. On my first read, I felt like breaking the rhythm of reading lead me to instantly forget the manically insane plot line. Overall this book was a breath of fresh air for what a novel could be, aside from the arbitrary rules we subconsciously follow as if they are holy scripture.
I think this is the kind of book best read with an uncomfortable amount of caffeine and in one sitting. On my first read, I felt like breaking the rhythm of reading lead me to instantly forget the manically insane plot line. Overall this book was a breath of fresh air for what a novel could be, aside from the arbitrary rules we subconsciously follow as if they are holy scripture.
June 21, 2007
Its some kind of long prose poem. It's like a Dylan song, where nothing quite makes sense but you get the feeling that it means something. Ostensibly, its about someone hired to sit in an abandoned lighthouse to watch the weather changes and the nuclear fallout from some recent explosions and then to falsely report that everything is alright. But then it involves a man being mistaken for a conch shell and later exploding, a seeing eye dog giving a lecture called A Corpse Ate Death , and people turning into frigate birds.
October 26, 2007
I read a small excerpt of the small and wonderful book in Harpers and I immediately sought it out. It is published by the small Calimari Press in NY, and I ordered it from their website since I could not find it at my local booksellers. Miranda Mellis creates a post-apocalyptic landscape that is all too relevant to today. The main character is charged by the government to revised history as it is written. The writing is very visual and engaging. The accompanying illustrations perfectly compliment the nightmare imagery of the prose.
February 24, 2009
I tend to be drawn to books where the idea is better than the execution. I do like the way that the illustrations in this book complement the text, rather than explicitly illustrate it. There were glimmers and flashes of great language and imagery, but they weren't prolonged for the whole novella. I am intrigued by Calamari Press, and I look forward to exploring some of their other titles.
September 22, 2007
This (Miranda Mellis's first book?) is so well crafted that it is an incredibly dense and amazing thing to behold. Not a word out of place. Not a mundane word standing in for a perfect word ever. So good. you should read it. really.
February 16, 2015
A beautiful little book full of strange visions.
January 29, 2008
Miranda, o miraculous Flower. This book's a wonder; I'm teachin' it in the Spring, gonna blow those kiddies minds. Love it.
June 13, 2008
Lovely and evocative. I love Miranda more and more.
January 20, 2009
bizarre. amazing.
Read
July 27, 2011Seriously, wtf with this book? I probably would not hate it nearly so much if I didn't have to write a paper (!) on it. This book really makes no sense at all.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews