AFX8CCD

by Nicholas Rall

Space out on western naturalism and quiet harmony, the psychopoetic dawn of the solar-radiated schizo is here and surreal the death of industry brings hope and opportunity, reasons to travel the distance and shoot gaps translate the holiest writ from sawdust ether. Nicholas Rall lives into it, playing against type as a novelist with profound musical instincts and sensibilities. Whimsy for the experience and a prayer for the results, but stay out of the results if you want them to be good. Let fate take a hand and the rope slip on the sword, impaling you on sobering beauty. Munt and Elbo and Vitt and Lyle are a spiritual family of outcasts cast in sepia hues, grainy details and composed of some of the craziest things you’ll ever see. They are headed to the river or already there. They’ve been in contact through letters and videotape. AFx8ccd is a book dizzy with movement, love for carriers and couriers, a tourism of surrender to the potential impossibility of living in states of unskilled manual labor without magic in terrestrial veins. The engine isn’t romance but it could be anything, it’s all the same to a vessel on the starlit highway looking for a clarion call to clear the air when the heart of the city beats under concrete and cement streets, a concrescence of deliquescent elements in their sanctified essence, a reunion of people who’ve never met to remind you of no one you’ve ever known, a release of cosmicomic energy, a motion smoothing of nuclear breath to pass this cup over to a new generation of fleet-footed thinkers trembling with heart and frisson, a sensation in the process of becoming a story bright enough to light up underwater caves. AFx is a novel that can’t wait to be held and read and pocketed at consumer grade for commercial and private use. It is for now nothing but an unrealized gain, a promising soulside prospect just over the estate of your life. A honeymoon oblivion.

138 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2024

Reviews

[A.C. Light · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most pleasant surprise of last year was this quirked up novella.

[Curtis Eggleston · Rating 4 out of 5]

A touching novella. Not a piece of art one could reverse engineer. AFx8ccd has a kindness, a subtle darkness, and my main compliment to it, a strangeness. A synesthete reads this and delights to find a new color.

The plot point, a stranger who mails video cameras to other strangers, requesting that they film their daily lives before sharing their tapes, creates a kind intimacy, a low-stakes intrigue, between the floating characters and the reader. I love when, shortly after one character begins experimenting with his camera, Rall describes how "He was able to capture in the setting sunlight the birth of a baby catfish. The father kept guard while the mother made sure her new baby was healthy, then they all swam away into the night."

There is a wavy surreality to this book, moments of realism blurred into cartoonishness and back again, as if the author were writing in rotoscope: little absurdities, characters kindly pointing directions with their whole fists, before affecting descriptions, "How sick they were of hearing their love's light compressed through a telephone wire..." and "The mountains, I wonder what goes on inside them and behind them..." and "They talked so much by the time their bus had stopped along the river, they had created a new language."

A few typos, a misused word, an awkward adverb here or there, and one glaring mistake involving character names (whether blame should be placed on the writer or his editor is between them) occasionally broke my immersion, but only momentarily.

I finished the novella with a smile at the brilliance of strangeness. Rall writes with an admixture of humor with love and sadness and loss that gives real artists staying power. I look forward to his future works.

[♡†♡†♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

a beautiful story about traveling souls that embark on their journey to eternal life. the feeling of rewatching little monsters (1989) or halloween (2007) for the millionth time as a kid. safe from the world, even as much as it tries to break u down. feeling so bonded to the characters that they feel liek family and friends u have known for a lifetime. evil entities that try to hurt them but cannot break the impenetrable and mystical orb that protects the characters. such a beautiful and important book to me. i love this book even more on every re-read. it's a comfort place. it's home.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
afx8ccd , the kind of story that reminds u that u are never too young to feel alive and reignite the flame in u that sometimes feels gone. the feeling of feeling. reawakening emotions u didnt knw u were capable of expressing again ever. so important to feel love and belonging and sense of family and protection. u will find family and u will always be allowed to love and be loved. a book that reminds me of all of these things and keeps my heart pumping with infinite love and endless curiosity of what other things are out there. chosen family that adopts u without hesitation. tears that come from a place of happiness and love. love. love. love. eternal. love. love. love.
✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

i love u 4ever __ 257 ✮⋆˙ ♡

へ ♡ ╱|、
૮ > <) (˚ˎ 。7
/ ⁻ ៸| |、˜〵
乀(ˍ, ل ل じしˍ,)ノ

[Pilum Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

The courage to lose oneself in America is lately nowhere as present as in Nicholas Rall's first novel. Courage and energy in every line. By turns, he reminds me not so much of early De Lillo (yes), but of Rall's hallucinatory precursors, David Ohle, Greg Mulcahy, and William S. Burroughs. In part a portrait of Pittsburgh with the steel gone out of it. In part what happens when the bus pulls its terminus closer. Where American writing might have gone had the song not dried up. Where writing might go once the rivers get up from their beds.

[brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really don’t know what happened to me as I read this book but I couldn’t stop sobbing. Read it all in a sitting and it was so pretty.

[TheOrthodoxNintendoNerd · Rating 4 out of 5]

we need and want all the money we really need it and we really want it

[Kelby Losack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.