The Lifted Brow #7

by Blake Butler, Diane Williams, Arthur S. Halsey Jr.

Blake Butler, Diane Williams, Diane Williams, Rob Shearman, Nick Modrzewski, Michaela McGuire, Phil Estes, Arthur S Halsey Jr, Bryce Wolfgang Joiner, Matt Bell, Bryan Whalen, Kate Cantrell, Tim McGuire, Ryan Call, Shane Jesse Christmass, Blake Kimzey, Jimmy Chen, Kate McIntyre, Dan Moreau, Brian Evenson, Dan Piepenbring, Frank Moorhouse, Johannes Jakob, Chris Somerville, Chris Currie, Dolan Morgan, AS Patric, Kim Chinquee, Leesa Wockner, Mike Meginnis, AE Reiff, Paul Murdock, Thuy Linh Nguyen, Zachary German, Krissy Kneen, Joel Van Noord, Gabe Durham, David Finig, Jensen Beach, Sam Pink, Matt Furie, Howell Golson, Alexi Keywan, Gabrielle Bell, Jeffrey Brown, Lisa Brown, Bernard Caleo, Eirian Chapman, Josh Cotter, Jo Dery, Phil Elverum, Michael P Fikaris, Lisa Hanawalt, John Hankiewicz, Sarah Howell, Lee May, Scot Nobles, Woodley Nye, Ron Rege Jr, Seripop, Mel Stringer, Jo Waite, Kirsten Reed, and C.F.

Paperback

About the author

Blake Butler is the author of EVER, Scorch Atlas, and two books forthcoming in 2011 and 2012 from Harper Perennial. He edits 'the internet literature magazine blog of the future' HTML Giant. His other writing have appeared in The Believer, Unsaid, Fence, Dzanc's Best of the Web 2009. He lives in Atlanta.

Reviews

[OSKR · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I'm in a reviewing mood I thought I might mention The Lifted Brow. I'm specifically talking about the Lifted Brow no7. Some of the other TLB publications I've read were less to my taste. However number seven really packs a punch. It's a remarkable collection of wild unregulated fiction from writers you've almost certainly not heard of (at least I haven't). They seem to be mostly young Australian and American authors.

There's no index, no publisher page, no author bios and only a very short editorial. In fact I don't even know how many stories are in here. At a guess I'd say about thirty (not including a few comic strips) and they're mostly fairly long stories. There's also a lot of extra artists who have apparently contributed by drawing small penises and shoes in the little spaces above and below the stories.

The collection starts out with an untitled, uncredited and truly bizarre story about a guy called Ricky. He seems to be losing his mind on some type of dissociative drug (well that's my interpretation). From there we get two super short stories of only a paragraph each and then a long, surreal piece about a vindictive santa claus who transforms the protagonist's father into a reindeer. After that is a story about a dinner date featuring a Liberian warlord in a house where every object and surface is completely covered in carpet. Following this is a comic but apparently factual account of a Bachelor and Spinster ball in rural Queensland. The collection continues on in this way, and there's a lot of it. I'm inclined to think the first half is of somewhat better quality than the second half, but there's certainly nothing bad here.

Thanks TLB for no7! Can we have some more like this one day?

review first appeared at: http://bench-press.blogspot.com.au/