The Ox-Breadth

by Alan Singer

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[George]

“Colors are the things dreamers cling to because they go beyond shape and in respect are like nothing so much as the impetus for dream itself. […] The dream-tautened tongue is only plucked by a reflex of memory with the open eyes fixed upon some inscrutable point of light. You stare in horror at the rising pools where your two feet have disappeared into the sand. But, from the moment you think of it and forever afterwards, your gaze is one that must suffer to blink, filled with the wash of all burning vision and masked with the delicate animal hairs of the living, growing body.”

Published in 1978 by New Earth Books: A Collective, Alan Singer’s first novel, The Ox-Breadth, is now almost impossible to find. Singer, although wary of his first effort (a feeling shared by most authors when it comes to their debuts), was kind enough to send me a copy. Beginning with the title and the cover, we already encounter the cryptic, as well as a distant Southern Gothic flavor in its mention of cattle. The titular letters are placed somewhat unevenly, suggesting a mimeograph machine or something similar was involved (the text within also has slanting and shifting moments). The red cover’s pale image of a crater is duplicated on the first page in higher detail and in black-and-white. It could be a three-dimensional coffee stain as much as a lunar crater, but then you more readily notice a rigid, horizontal groove through the ground below it—clues to the mystery of a missed story?

Read the full review for free here: https://thecollidescope.com/2021/11/0...

I interviewed Alan here: https://thecollidescope.com/2021/01/2...