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Periphery
There is an old Victorian house posing as an office in "The Burned-Over District." In that office, a giant, a waif, and a child wait for someone who can be shown the true nature of the world.
John is a man with a talent to see what is not there, or, at least, what was not there until that fateful day when a want-ad caught his eye and sent him into the depths of the woods... into the periphery. -- In a break in the trees above the street, a start to the sky, there is glowing in the aether. The sky is now a fading yellow as he watches the winged shapes perform delicate motions upon the horizon. He sees a singular bird amongst the flock, appearing more mammalian than avian. A bird falls to his right, bouncing slightly upon impact with the street. He looks disturbed as a black shape bounces stiffly on the sidewalk. Startled, he watches as another falls. His nerves run electric as yet another bird drops from the sky, and another, and another. It rains birds...
John is a man with a talent to see what is not there, or, at least, what was not there until that fateful day when a want-ad caught his eye and sent him into the depths of the woods... into the periphery. -- In a break in the trees above the street, a start to the sky, there is glowing in the aether. The sky is now a fading yellow as he watches the winged shapes perform delicate motions upon the horizon. He sees a singular bird amongst the flock, appearing more mammalian than avian. A bird falls to his right, bouncing slightly upon impact with the street. He looks disturbed as a black shape bounces stiffly on the sidewalk. Startled, he watches as another falls. His nerves run electric as yet another bird drops from the sky, and another, and another. It rains birds...
- GenresFiction
298 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
1 person is currently reading
229 people want to read
About the author
Alexx Bollen
7 books9 followersAlexx is a writer out of Portland, OR. Like 90% of Americans, he also hosts a podcast.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 25, 2018
I have read some really weird stories in my life but this one is the weirdest. I didn’t even know how to rate it but I think ‘I liked it’ works. The writing style is unlike anything I’ve read before. It was disjointed and confusing, but beautiful at the same time. This isn’t a book for everyone. In fact, I would say it’s not a good fit for most but some will love it.
John stumbles across an ad for a job. When he goes to the office to apply, that’s when things start getting strange. The office exists here in our perception normally but in the periphery, it is slightly different. This is like a different universe layered on ours but not really. It was complicated, hard to understand and even harder to explain. John ends up being drawn into a battle to fix a kind of rift in the world.
If you think of most writing as art, think of this story as an abstract.
John stumbles across an ad for a job. When he goes to the office to apply, that’s when things start getting strange. The office exists here in our perception normally but in the periphery, it is slightly different. This is like a different universe layered on ours but not really. It was complicated, hard to understand and even harder to explain. John ends up being drawn into a battle to fix a kind of rift in the world.
If you think of most writing as art, think of this story as an abstract.
March 24, 2014
This book will change you. You may question your sanity before the end, and you will certainly question the author's.
Periphery is a complicated book, but therein lays its charm. Alexx Bollen is a masterful wordsmith, and the prose of this story is surpassed only by its, sometimes very subtle, layering. The use of metaphor and the duality of, not only the language, but the very nature of this world, creates a compellingly weird drama with the central theme that all experience is dependent on the perspective of the observer.
Small orange plastic dinosaurs notwithstanding, there is much you can miss if you lack the correct vision.
Periphery is a complicated book, but therein lays its charm. Alexx Bollen is a masterful wordsmith, and the prose of this story is surpassed only by its, sometimes very subtle, layering. The use of metaphor and the duality of, not only the language, but the very nature of this world, creates a compellingly weird drama with the central theme that all experience is dependent on the perspective of the observer.
Small orange plastic dinosaurs notwithstanding, there is much you can miss if you lack the correct vision.
December 20, 2018
Not a favorite, nor what i expected
I would have liked less poetry and metaphore and more story.. It was the phrase "Burned Over District" which attracted me and which appeared to have no connection at all with the mundane historical use of that term.
I'm sure some will like this and appreciate it for what it is, I did not. It was a real struggle to finish and i don't think i'll care to ever re-read it.
I would have liked less poetry and metaphore and more story.. It was the phrase "Burned Over District" which attracted me and which appeared to have no connection at all with the mundane historical use of that term.
I'm sure some will like this and appreciate it for what it is, I did not. It was a real struggle to finish and i don't think i'll care to ever re-read it.
Read
August 11, 2013A top notch first novel. Story is gripping and layered and I look forward to future readings and making new discoveries.
September 21, 2021
2021 Reading Challenge #15: A book with less than 5,000 ratings on Goodreads ☑
Wanted: Someone in 20's. Artistic disposition. Poor work history a plus. Competitive pay, benefits after successful training period. Bring paper bag. No need to knock. - HJ Bonobus Corp.
This is the ad that John spots while browsing a newspaper. After finding nothing online about the company, he looks in a phone book, which provides him with a location (Follow the dirt road until we appear. 23 Mill Way), and goes to the office, which is "located in the middle of a wild forest three streets from pavement" in "The Burned-Over District'' (unfortunately, this reference to the religious revivals in a group of New York state counties in the 19th century never amounts to anything more than the basis for John's girlfriend's early apprehensions about his new job).
After "accepting" (there's no formal interview or offer) the "job," John discovers everything about his new place of employment is stranger than he had expected. There's no real "work" that he, the manager Hephaestus, Kali of the desk, and the Child of the yard/Keeper of The Tree do; instead they mostly talk about the periphery, which is a rift of sorts through which "seers" can perceive past and alternate realities (I guess). Of course, there's also The Tree, which they have to feed balloon-esque dog-creatures so the The Tree can bear fruit, which they eat in order to "take in the purified essence of vision, to see where the path will lead [them]." And at some point they finally introduce the antagonist, a shadowy form of John himself who wants to control the periphery (that is, "He will control the growth and split of the periphery and the focused; of the minds and the bodies of who are to come.").
Needless to say, this is weird fiction, which I can (and did) get into. The book is a really messy mix of fantasy, magical realism, and even horror, romance, and humor. There is some excellent imagery, like the aquarium of periphery animals in the bathroom, and feeding The Tree; and I thought the characters were well-developed and voiced. What made it less enjoyable, though, is how intentionally convoluted, esoteric, and disjointed the writing style is.
Alexx Bollen overuses commas: "She, appearing no more than 25, is thin and attractive, with a pale face framing large, innocent blue eyes."
And fills pages with passages such as: "They exist, for that moment, both as past and present, as realized and unrealized, as Newton and Quantum, simultaneously alive and dead. They exist(ed)."
I get that the periphery is conceptually difficult to grasp (even for the characters in the story), but after the upteenth self-contradicting sentence ("In the way of the periphery, all of this is true, and quite literally a lie") you just start rolling your eyes.
Like, what does this mean?:
"There are no pronouns, as of yet, but he is waiting, bristling in an as yet unknown corner."
Surely he can't be referring to the text itself, because there is a pronoun in that very sentence (and two in the next), so what does "There are no pronouns" mean in terms of either the periphery's or characters' existence?
I think Bollen just needed to stop trying to sound so damn smart."I remember the clay tablets on which we first learned to press awareness into descriptive." ...He could've just said "thoughts" into "text/written word."
"In that theoretical pub, they speak with Latinate roots and Germanic grammars." ...Soooo... English. They speak English in a pub.
It is now evident that the night has ended and it is again day, as the believers in predictive cycles foresaw. Everything after the comma is unnecessary.
Don't get me wrong; at times the convoluted phrasing was actually oddly appealing. I felt like the sentence "Kali, leaning across the hypotenuse of their improvised geometry, touches John's arm, her dress revealing some of the previously hidden," was a really unique, clever, and tastefully sexual way to depict the scene. Another sentence, "The cookie does not know it, but John is changing brain chemicals in response to its sacrifice," was humorous in its personification of the cookie. But most of the time the writing style just sounded grandiose and pretentious.
Lastly, while Bollen spends so much time expounding pseudo-philosophy, he forgets more basic tenets of storytelling, like pace and suspense. The whole arrest/jailbreak was so easily resolved as to be unnecessary, the death of characters lacked any emotional tug, Maggie becoming the new warden of the Place of Doors was rushed and underdeveloped, etc.
As far as the Goodreads rating system goes, I guess I still "liked it" overall, but the writing style did really bother me.
And as per tradition, whenever a book mentions a book that's been buried deep in my to-read list for years, I need to bump it up towards the top, so I guess at some point this year I need to get my hands on a copy of Trout Fishing in America .
Wanted: Someone in 20's. Artistic disposition. Poor work history a plus. Competitive pay, benefits after successful training period. Bring paper bag. No need to knock. - HJ Bonobus Corp.
This is the ad that John spots while browsing a newspaper. After finding nothing online about the company, he looks in a phone book, which provides him with a location (Follow the dirt road until we appear. 23 Mill Way), and goes to the office, which is "located in the middle of a wild forest three streets from pavement" in "The Burned-Over District'' (unfortunately, this reference to the religious revivals in a group of New York state counties in the 19th century never amounts to anything more than the basis for John's girlfriend's early apprehensions about his new job).
After "accepting" (there's no formal interview or offer) the "job," John discovers everything about his new place of employment is stranger than he had expected. There's no real "work" that he, the manager Hephaestus, Kali of the desk, and the Child of the yard/Keeper of The Tree do; instead they mostly talk about the periphery, which is a rift of sorts through which "seers" can perceive past and alternate realities (I guess). Of course, there's also The Tree, which they have to feed balloon-esque dog-creatures so the The Tree can bear fruit, which they eat in order to "take in the purified essence of vision, to see where the path will lead [them]." And at some point they finally introduce the antagonist, a shadowy form of John himself who wants to control the periphery (that is, "He will control the growth and split of the periphery and the focused; of the minds and the bodies of who are to come.").
Needless to say, this is weird fiction, which I can (and did) get into. The book is a really messy mix of fantasy, magical realism, and even horror, romance, and humor. There is some excellent imagery, like the aquarium of periphery animals in the bathroom, and feeding The Tree; and I thought the characters were well-developed and voiced. What made it less enjoyable, though, is how intentionally convoluted, esoteric, and disjointed the writing style is.
Alexx Bollen overuses commas: "She, appearing no more than 25, is thin and attractive, with a pale face framing large, innocent blue eyes."
And fills pages with passages such as: "They exist, for that moment, both as past and present, as realized and unrealized, as Newton and Quantum, simultaneously alive and dead. They exist(ed)."
I get that the periphery is conceptually difficult to grasp (even for the characters in the story), but after the upteenth self-contradicting sentence ("In the way of the periphery, all of this is true, and quite literally a lie") you just start rolling your eyes.
Like, what does this mean?:
"There are no pronouns, as of yet, but he is waiting, bristling in an as yet unknown corner."
Surely he can't be referring to the text itself, because there is a pronoun in that very sentence (and two in the next), so what does "There are no pronouns" mean in terms of either the periphery's or characters' existence?
I think Bollen just needed to stop trying to sound so damn smart."I remember the clay tablets on which we first learned to press awareness into descriptive." ...He could've just said "thoughts" into "text/written word."
"In that theoretical pub, they speak with Latinate roots and Germanic grammars." ...Soooo... English. They speak English in a pub.
It is now evident that the night has ended and it is again day, as the believers in predictive cycles foresaw. Everything after the comma is unnecessary.
Don't get me wrong; at times the convoluted phrasing was actually oddly appealing. I felt like the sentence "Kali, leaning across the hypotenuse of their improvised geometry, touches John's arm, her dress revealing some of the previously hidden," was a really unique, clever, and tastefully sexual way to depict the scene. Another sentence, "The cookie does not know it, but John is changing brain chemicals in response to its sacrifice," was humorous in its personification of the cookie. But most of the time the writing style just sounded grandiose and pretentious.
Lastly, while Bollen spends so much time expounding pseudo-philosophy, he forgets more basic tenets of storytelling, like pace and suspense. The whole arrest/jailbreak was so easily resolved as to be unnecessary, the death of characters lacked any emotional tug, Maggie becoming the new warden of the Place of Doors was rushed and underdeveloped, etc.
As far as the Goodreads rating system goes, I guess I still "liked it" overall, but the writing style did really bother me.
And as per tradition, whenever a book mentions a book that's been buried deep in my to-read list for years, I need to bump it up towards the top, so I guess at some point this year I need to get my hands on a copy of Trout Fishing in America .
June 9, 2017
Endearing debut novel filled with metaphor and symbolism
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews