Errata

by Michael Allen Zell

A young New Orleans cabbie named Raymond Russell is so shocked by the intensity of a crime that he cannot write about it directly. He can only let out the occasional hint to prime the engine of his mind for what he must reveal. Errata is Raymond's 22 day attempt at correction of his seeming culpability, an ambitious neo-noir meditation on isolation and sociability, wisdom and madness, symbol and text, innocence and guilt.



"I swear, the text, the actual typed text of Errata itself seems swollen with meaning not simply the humid atmospherics of New Orleans. Swelled up, bled and run together into this concoction of pulpy fictive essaying. Michael Allen Zell's text is evocative, efficacious, effortlessly magical. These are words making love to words, wrapped up in sheets of steamy grammar all transitive, diagramed to hell and back. Come for New Orleans, stay for new oracles."
Michael Martone, Author of Michael Martone and Four for a Quarter

Genres: Fiction

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2012

About the author

Michael Allen Zell is a New Orleans-based novelist, essayist, and playwright. Zell's work has been published in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Cerise Press, Disonare, Entrepot, Exquisite Corpse, NOLA Defender, Ploughshares, Room 220, and Sleepingfish. Errata, his first novel, was named a 'Top 10 Book of 2012' by The Times-Picayune. His first play, What Do You Say To A Shadow?, was named a 'Top 10 Play of the Year' in 2013 by The Times-Picayune. He has worked as a bookseller since 2001.

Reviews

[Abigail Provost · Rating 3 out of 5]

No rating yet because I want to sit with it for tonight - review coming tomorrow

[Marjorie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not care for this book. Maybe I am too old as there are too many years between now and the time I had to take the English part of the SATs. The writer uses a large variety of vocabulary as it was his intent to appear other.

Maybe his constant rambling on, off topic, was supposed to mirror the mundane activity that was required of the cabbie wandering through the streets.

I am also a fan of books with a plot, so I guess that right there put this one in the negative category for me.

The one good thing I have to say for this book is that - It is short and a rather quick read if you don't spend all of your day running to the dictionary to figure out what he was really trying to say.

[Ally · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, set during and after the failed 1984 Louisiana World's Fair, the reader is introduced to Raymond Russell by way of his journal that he names ERRATA. In the realm of publishing, errata are corrections to a published text, and therefore the journal functions as a way for Raymond to make "corrections" to his life, and in particular the events that took place just prior to his starting the journal.

Through the winding, frantic, stream-of-consciousness narrative, readers learn about Raymond's childhood in Indiana, his friend Eve, his adventures in California, and his current situation in New Orleans - driving an unsanctioned taxi only at night. While he meets some interesting and dramatic people (all but two are referred to only as the impersonal "fares"), he is essentially a recluse who prefers to spend time alone in his apartment, reading. It is his unwitting involvement in a crime that affects this loner-utopia...the details of which are revealed in the final entries of ERRATA.

As a byproduct of the unconventional narrative, I found that, for most of the book, I had no clear idea of what was going on. For some readers, this might be unpleasant or tedious, but I rather enjoy the adventure of it - putting the pieces together. In one entry, Raymond writes that "New Orleans is a puzzling canvas". So is this book.

[Johnathen De La Vaca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book at Beckham's bookshop on Chartress, in New Orleans, after the owner of the store couldn't tell me anything about it v. a poetry collection by Jimmy Russ (Ross?). Both local authors, I was hoping to pick up local work while on holiday there. After reading a few pages of each I found myself captivated by the precision and rhythm of Errata, the intensity with which is came at me and with which the author, M.A. Zell, used letters. I ended up meeting Michael Allen Zell at the bookstore he owns, just around the corner from where I bought my copy. He was behind a desk at Crescent City books and described this as Essayist Fiction. I ended up reading a quarter of it in between forays into the city and was compelled to finish it on the plane flight home, which I did. I'd say he's a writer's writer, and a reading requires a serious grasp of literature and command of language. It jostles, it jumps, it dances with alliterative rhythm, it soaks itself in mystery and symbol, and it satisfies, wanting for only one thing: more.

[Gerard Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like others, I bought this while visiting New Orleans in a small independent bookstore (Crescent City books, which I thought was great). Zell's book appealed to me in the way it's set up suggested Paul Auster. While I enjoyed the book's regional specificity, the thing that kept me reading was the sense of some concealed system driving the writing (if it's there, I didn't figure it out...). I wish the book had good to it's promised crime element sooner rather than dwelling in reflection for so many chapters, but it was a good work of regional writing - deeply colored by its locale, satisfying in its strangeness...

[Inge Formenti · Rating 5 out of 5]

By chapter 2 I had totally given up about thinking in terms of a plot and simply marveled at the verbiage, paragraph by paragraph. That and the gradual revelation of the inner workings of the narrator's mind put this book into its own category. If you are looking for a nice tidy mystery in a colorful setting, forget it. If you want a good read that stretches you a bit, this is the book for you!

[Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure what to make of this one. I liked the narrator, but I feel like the literary references were packed in too tight to work (plus I just wasn't familiar with some of the references).

It's the type of book that I like generally, but this didn't blow me away.

[Cynthia Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Errata is a rich expression of literary fiction that exudes a mastery of language. I enjoyed the journal style narrative and was intrigued as I followed along the journey inside the mind of a complex character. This is definitely a thinking person's novel.

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good book to read en route to New Orleans, talked about it here:
http://www.5cense.com/13/NOZell.htm