Black Clock #1

by Steve Erickson (Editor)

What if you could bring together a group consisting of some of your favorite and most admired writers, and then have each one write whatever he or she wished, without any pressure from the literary marketplace or any editorial gain-saying? Black Clock 1 sets out to accomplish many things, one of them being to envision the myriad ways this scenario might play out.

157 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

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

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will admit I ended up skipping the David Foster Wallace story (I know he's this well-respected author and everything, but I personally think the guy's writing is interminable), but I was riveted by everything else included in this volume. While this is only my second issue (the first being volume 15), I'm pretty much convinced that Black Clock is one of, if not the very best literary journal currently published.