Black Clock 17

Black Clock #17

by Steve Erickson (Editor), Ophelia Chong (Design)

Charting the crossroads of obsession and the back alleys of eroticism, Black Clock 17 is a topography of forbidden passions--the terrors that lurk beneath what we desire, the attractions that lure us to what we dread--as mapped by authors including Henry Bean, Cecil Castellucci, Scott Bradfield and many others. The afterglow of an afternoon affair leaves a woman to satisfy a more illicit yearning in Dana Spiotta's "Watch," a group of teen orgiasts converge in Tom McCarthy's "Pyramid Party" to recreate the sexual humiliations of Abu Ghraib, and in Aimee Bender's "Vigilante" a young female police captain intrudes on the psychodramas of strangers to enforce the laws of the heart.

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 2013

About the author

Steve Erickson is a distinguished American novelist known for a visionary, dream-fueled style that blends European modernism with American pulp and postmodernism. Raised in Los Angeles, he studied film and political philosophy at UCLA, influences that permeate celebrated works such as Days Between Stations, Tours of the Black Clock, and Zeroville. Critics, including Greil Marcus, have labeled him "the only authentic American surrealist," placing him in the lineage of Pynchon and DeLillo. His most acclaimed novel, Shadowbahn, was hailed as a masterpiece even prior to its release and was later adapted for BBC Radio. A "writer’s writer," Erickson has published ten novels translated into over a dozen languages, consistently appearing on best-of-the-year lists for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He is the recipient of the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters award. Erickson served for fourteen years as the founding editor of the journal Black Clock and is currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Reviews

[J.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wealth of goodness here, all tinged or saturated (depending on the page) with eroticism. The art and layout are perfectly obsessive and intrusive too. A ballsy new issue.