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Calendar of Regrets
A wildly inventive and visually rich collage of twelve interconnected narratives, one for each month of the year, all pertaining to notions of travel--through time, space, narrative, and death
The poisoning of the painter Hieronymus Bosch; anchorman Dan Rather’s mysterious mugging on Park Avenue as he strolls home alone one October evening; a series of postcard meditations on the idea of travel from a young American journalist visiting Burma; a husband-and-wife team of fundamentalist Christian suicide bombers; the myth of Iphigenia from Agamemnon’s daughter’s point of view—these and other stories form a mosaic, connected through a pattern of musical motifs, transposed scenes, and recurring characters. It is a narrative about narrativity itself, the human obsession with telling ourselves and our worlds over and over again in an attempt to stabilize a truth that, as Nabokov once said, should only exist within quotation marks.
The poisoning of the painter Hieronymus Bosch; anchorman Dan Rather’s mysterious mugging on Park Avenue as he strolls home alone one October evening; a series of postcard meditations on the idea of travel from a young American journalist visiting Burma; a husband-and-wife team of fundamentalist Christian suicide bombers; the myth of Iphigenia from Agamemnon’s daughter’s point of view—these and other stories form a mosaic, connected through a pattern of musical motifs, transposed scenes, and recurring characters. It is a narrative about narrativity itself, the human obsession with telling ourselves and our worlds over and over again in an attempt to stabilize a truth that, as Nabokov once said, should only exist within quotation marks.
456 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2010
2 people are currently reading
315 people want to read
About the author
Lance Olsen
51 books116 followersLance Olsen was born in 1956 and received his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin (1978, honors), his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop (1980), and his M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) from the University of Virginia.
He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.
Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.
He is author of eleven novels, one hypertext, four critical studies, four short-story collections, a poetry chapbook, and a textbook about fiction writing, as well as editor of two collections of essays about innovative contemporary fiction. His short stories, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Iowa Review, Hotel Amerika, Village Voice, Time Out New York, BOMB, Gulf Coast, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
Olsen is an N.E.A. fellowship and Pushcart prize recipient, and former governor-appointed Idaho Writer-in-Residence. His novel Tonguing the Zeitgeist was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. His work has been translated into Italian, Polish, Turkish, Finnish, and Portuguese. He has taught at the University of Idaho, the University of Kentucky, the University of Iowa, the University of Virginia, on summer- and semester-abroad programs in Oxford and London, on a Fulbright in Finland, at various writing conferences, and elsewhere.
Olsen currently teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah. He serves as Chair of the Board of Directors at Fiction Collective Two; founded in 1974, FC2 is one of America's best-known ongoing literary experiments and progressive art communities.
He is Fiction Editor at Western Humanities Review. With his wife, assemblage-artist and filmmaker Andi Olsen, he divides his time between Salt Lake City and the mountains of central Idaho.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 7, 2022
What do we see when we look at the world?
Calendar of Regrets is fantastic, fabulous, innovative, experimental and postmodern…
Hieronymus Bosch is dying and he has visions:
Ship of fools:
Pop culture adepts…
Revolutionary zealots…
Religious fanatics…
Motley crazies…
Brazen charlatans, fashionable scribblers, jumpy neurotics, the fallen angel and the man with borrowed organs…
The world is multifarious… The hell is just around the corner.
Look closely: everything is webbed with everything, existence an illuminated manuscript you walk through.
Calendar of Regrets is fantastic, fabulous, innovative, experimental and postmodern…
Sail nowhere save among the continents of your own soul, and, when your body at long last gives up its war upon you, sloughs away, returning you to infancy, the final hinged panel of the polyptych called yourself having been reached and rushed beyond, leave the useless remainder behind on the wicked midden heap it is.
Hieronymus Bosch is dying and he has visions:
He understood the evidence had always been everywhere: in those speckles constellating Groot’s bald pate, in that plague chewing across northern Europe, in that ship of fools drifting through his consciousness.
Ship of fools:
Pop culture adepts…
Dan understood he wasn’t supposed to enjoy his slow shading into a pop-culture figure, but he did anyway.
Revolutionary zealots…
Welcome to the age of decorous totalitarianism. This is what governments are good at: organizing, manipulating, and exploiting human weakness. Everyone is unhappy.
Religious fanatics…
She understood completely how the reason there aren’t any dinosaurs left on the planet is because they couldn’t fit on Noah’s ark.
Motley crazies…
I don’t know quite what that might be, call it a reaction, an allergic reaction, sure, why not, or maybe food poisoning, maybe age poisoning, it happens every day, everywhere, the world after all isn’t as filthy and mortal as it looks, no, it’s a lot filthier, a lot more mortal, it’s a pigsty…
Brazen charlatans, fashionable scribblers, jumpy neurotics, the fallen angel and the man with borrowed organs…
The world is multifarious… The hell is just around the corner.
July 5, 2011
After reading Olsen's Head in Flames, one of the more remarkable books I've chomped down of late, I was guardedly hopeful about Calendar. One of the most potent features of Flames is its concentrated fury...you feel like you're reading the pages under a magnifying glass in some canyon, midday sun. Calendar is more sprawling, more expansive by far, and takes some of HiF's more visible obsessions--with art, perception, the relation between the aesthetic and the political, the forges and forgeries of identity--and gives them breathing room, each exhalation turning into the next section's inhalation and so forth. If anyone wants to argue that "experimental" writing can't be riveting, historically-grounded, utterly accessible, and story-driven (with all the delightful surprises that that implies) while equally at home with fragmentation and cultural analysis, I'd offer this book as resounding counterevidence. It is the river flowing north, the swan that is at once black and white and also neither, something else entirely. I'll be rereading this one in parts and maybe all the way through. There is much more to glean from/say about it.
June 23, 2025
Lance Olsen never disappoints. This is a novel about narrative itself, and what we tell ourselves. It's honestly a timely read. Stimulating. Inventive. I found myself challenging the way I interpret situations, the messages I tell myself, and more. I can't stress how fantastic this book is. WOW!!
Lance Olsen's books tend to be really popular amongst writers, but I wish I'd see him catch fire and just become "the next gotta have" with the bookstagrammers and the Goodreads gods and goddesses. Seriously. Can we please all make this man into a supahstah overnight? The publishing industry is such a wild place. It's almost a casino of sorts.
An author of 51 publications, he has taught alongside the likes of Percival Everett, and his books are celebrated in the homes of many of the best selling authors that have become bookstagrammer household names. ABSOLUTE AWAY is his most recent publication, and I was lucky enough to join the Lance Olsen party right before ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR was released (one of the best novels written about David Bowie's last years.)
I realize this hasn't told you a thing about the novel I just read, which is why this can't be considered a traditional review. Here's what you need to know: this is experimental fiction at its best. He breaks traditional structures, and writes with poetic lyricism. Readers who enjoyed Samantha Harvey's ORBITAL, they'd absolutely love Lance Olsen. Although he challenges conventional form, he is the kind of writer who pulls the reader in by the shirt collar and doesn't let go. Once a fan, always a fan.
I keep thinking about all the awesome writers I've found right here on Goodreads, because someone else posted a review about an author I hadn't come across before.
I keep thinking about that Murakami quote, "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
If you feel like trying something new, you'll love Lance Olsen's writing. Objectively speaking his writing is just phenomenal. For the deep thinkers out there, for those of you who love to read books because you adore avant-garde writing, this is the next book for you. Come on Goodreads royalty, you know who you are. Grab yourself a helping of Lance Olsen, and let's make him a household name. This kind of badass writing deserves to shine.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐+++
Lance Olsen's books tend to be really popular amongst writers, but I wish I'd see him catch fire and just become "the next gotta have" with the bookstagrammers and the Goodreads gods and goddesses. Seriously. Can we please all make this man into a supahstah overnight? The publishing industry is such a wild place. It's almost a casino of sorts.
An author of 51 publications, he has taught alongside the likes of Percival Everett, and his books are celebrated in the homes of many of the best selling authors that have become bookstagrammer household names. ABSOLUTE AWAY is his most recent publication, and I was lucky enough to join the Lance Olsen party right before ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR was released (one of the best novels written about David Bowie's last years.)
I realize this hasn't told you a thing about the novel I just read, which is why this can't be considered a traditional review. Here's what you need to know: this is experimental fiction at its best. He breaks traditional structures, and writes with poetic lyricism. Readers who enjoyed Samantha Harvey's ORBITAL, they'd absolutely love Lance Olsen. Although he challenges conventional form, he is the kind of writer who pulls the reader in by the shirt collar and doesn't let go. Once a fan, always a fan.
I keep thinking about all the awesome writers I've found right here on Goodreads, because someone else posted a review about an author I hadn't come across before.
I keep thinking about that Murakami quote, "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
If you feel like trying something new, you'll love Lance Olsen's writing. Objectively speaking his writing is just phenomenal. For the deep thinkers out there, for those of you who love to read books because you adore avant-garde writing, this is the next book for you. Come on Goodreads royalty, you know who you are. Grab yourself a helping of Lance Olsen, and let's make him a household name. This kind of badass writing deserves to shine.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐+++
August 11, 2011
Lance Olsen's Calendar of Regrets is, to quote the back of the book, "a wildly inventive and visually rich collage of twelve interconnected narratives , one for each month of the year, all pertaining to notions of travel-through time, space, narrative, and death." Indeed it is that and more.
The first narrative begins in September, followed by an October one, and so on, until 256 pages later when the months begin to go in reverse order. These narratives, which randomly skip centuries and years, are connected by a name, a common event, or a character who spans more than one storyline. Olsen constructs another bridge by using the sentence fragment that concludes one chapter as the starting point of the next one.
Calendar begins and ends with the ruminations of the medieval painter Hieronymous Bosch in the hours after he has seemingly been poisoned. The book then jumps the centuries to depict dan rather in the hours before he was assaulted by Kenneth tager in 1986. The book then proceeds with narratives concerning mythological figures, radical Christian suicide bombers, a pirate radio station host broadcasting from the Salton Sea, a family hijacked by a pretty girl with a bomb,a backpacking journalist in Southeast asia, a teacher who has lost herself amidst teen-age chatter, a time-space traveler, a man born as a notebook, a body made up of borrowed organs, and a fallen angel whose presence folds time into a loop for two small boys. Several of these narratives are augmented by the use of photographs which propel the story forward and also employ artful typograhy.
Calendar of Regrets is much more athan a book about travel. It is also a book about tragedy. Kidnappings, suicide bombings, poisonings and physical attacks all occur within the narratives. By using these events, the author seems to be suggesting that horror and truth often go hand-in-hand and that apprehending the truth often leads to regret.
Calendar of regrets is a truly ambitious book theat should be read by a wide audience. it is, undoubtedly, one the best books to appear in the last several years.
The first narrative begins in September, followed by an October one, and so on, until 256 pages later when the months begin to go in reverse order. These narratives, which randomly skip centuries and years, are connected by a name, a common event, or a character who spans more than one storyline. Olsen constructs another bridge by using the sentence fragment that concludes one chapter as the starting point of the next one.
Calendar begins and ends with the ruminations of the medieval painter Hieronymous Bosch in the hours after he has seemingly been poisoned. The book then jumps the centuries to depict dan rather in the hours before he was assaulted by Kenneth tager in 1986. The book then proceeds with narratives concerning mythological figures, radical Christian suicide bombers, a pirate radio station host broadcasting from the Salton Sea, a family hijacked by a pretty girl with a bomb,a backpacking journalist in Southeast asia, a teacher who has lost herself amidst teen-age chatter, a time-space traveler, a man born as a notebook, a body made up of borrowed organs, and a fallen angel whose presence folds time into a loop for two small boys. Several of these narratives are augmented by the use of photographs which propel the story forward and also employ artful typograhy.
Calendar of Regrets is much more athan a book about travel. It is also a book about tragedy. Kidnappings, suicide bombings, poisonings and physical attacks all occur within the narratives. By using these events, the author seems to be suggesting that horror and truth often go hand-in-hand and that apprehending the truth often leads to regret.
Calendar of regrets is a truly ambitious book theat should be read by a wide audience. it is, undoubtedly, one the best books to appear in the last several years.
November 13, 2024
3,5* Я вже досить стара щоб захоплюватися книгами-мозаїками та й вона не так щоб дуже свіжа, 2010 рочку. Але деякі частини були захопливими. Типу Claud Atlas здорової людини без навʼязливого sci-fi елементу, але і без wow-ефекта. В будь-якому разі книга непогано відволікла від виборів Трампа).
December 23, 2011
There's a wonderful manic intensity to this novel, which is surprising in a few ways. For one, despite being an "experimental" novel, it's actually tensely plotted and generally really easy to read--and even though its composed of 12 parallel narratives the overall tension of the book rises and falls in a complimentary way that's seriously impressive. In this sense, it's a book that would appeal to readers of Evan Dara (both its use of white space and a scene with a pirate radio station directly recall the Lost Scrapbook) and Mark Danielewski (in the unusual typography of the middle section and its flirtation with "genre" tropes), but--for all its experimentation--it's actually closest to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten in form, content and tone. I really enjoyed reading the book, but, for me, a few minor issues kept it from being "great"; the prose is very uneven, for one. Olsen handles the sections with longer, expansive sentences beautifully but other sections don't pan out quite as well. This is partially a given b/c he tries out so many styles, but it's also because Olsen's work is clearly indebted to a certain kind of experimental science fiction prose--which is to say some of the awkwardness is intentional (and to be clear, some of Olsen's prose is absolutely stunning--so this isn't for lack of talent/capability, but rather an intent). For me, though, this kind of prose grates a bit. Lastly, this is an example of "strong" postmodern literature--which is to say the connections between the stories are largely tangential/coincidental and while there are meditations on a few themes (violence, travel, art), there is no larger "meaning," which, again, is clearly the intent. That being said, the kind of cartoony aesthetics of strong postmodern lit has never been my thing, so there's that... All in all though, this book is highly recommended if you like any of the above authors I have mentioned and it was certainly good enough to make me want to read Head in Flames sometime soon,,,
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July 22, 2013Lance Olsen writes:
Slowly, [Hieronymus] Bosch came to admit that he would never be famous. He would never be the talk of this town, or any other. The recognition ached like a body full of bruises. He could hardly wait to take his place before his easel every morning to find out what his imagination had waiting for him, yet he had to make peace with the bristly fact that recognition was a boat built for others. He had to content himself of the rush of daily finding – the way milled minerals mixed precisely with egg whites create astounding carmines, creams, cobalts; how the scabby pot-bellied rats scurrying through his feverscapes were not really pot-bellied rats at all, but the lies flung against the true church day after day.
Slowly, [Hieronymus] Bosch came to admit that he would never be famous. He would never be the talk of this town, or any other. The recognition ached like a body full of bruises. He could hardly wait to take his place before his easel every morning to find out what his imagination had waiting for him, yet he had to make peace with the bristly fact that recognition was a boat built for others. He had to content himself of the rush of daily finding – the way milled minerals mixed precisely with egg whites create astounding carmines, creams, cobalts; how the scabby pot-bellied rats scurrying through his feverscapes were not really pot-bellied rats at all, but the lies flung against the true church day after day.
July 14, 2019
Not sure why this book isn’t talked about more. A perfect balance of experimental and straight forward. How is that possible? Read it and find out.
November 11, 2010
I found this book VERY hard to follow. I am not saying it was written poorly. It was the style in which it was written. For my personal tastes, I prefer books that I can get lost in. With each sentence you had to seriously stop and think about what the author was trying to convey. By the time you analyze the sentence you could have read another 2 paragraphs.
I know some people enjoy this style of writing but I personally don't. I didn't like Shakespeare either so don't base your decision to read this on my opinion. Base it on whether you like stopping to think about everything that is written and what the heck it means. I couldn't finish the book. I had to start the first part over 3 times. Then I decided to just read without trying to analyze and figure out what he was saying and see if it would just come to me. It didn't. I called family and friends and read each of them the first 2 or 3 paragraphs to get their opinions and I guess we are all just a bunch of morons because every single one of them was of the same opinion. Everyone was lost so I had discussions with each of them about what the author was trying to get across. Too much for me to read when I want to snuggle up with my blanket and get lost in a book.
Again, that is my personal taste!
I know some people enjoy this style of writing but I personally don't. I didn't like Shakespeare either so don't base your decision to read this on my opinion. Base it on whether you like stopping to think about everything that is written and what the heck it means. I couldn't finish the book. I had to start the first part over 3 times. Then I decided to just read without trying to analyze and figure out what he was saying and see if it would just come to me. It didn't. I called family and friends and read each of them the first 2 or 3 paragraphs to get their opinions and I guess we are all just a bunch of morons because every single one of them was of the same opinion. Everyone was lost so I had discussions with each of them about what the author was trying to get across. Too much for me to read when I want to snuggle up with my blanket and get lost in a book.
Again, that is my personal taste!
August 21, 2013
This is a book of interconnected short stories. A book that is the both a careful investigation into the details of individual lives while also the summation of its parts. Its a study of time and travel, but not time travel. It's novel tellings combined with creative re-imaginings. And each thematic story sinuously combines with each other to remind us that every travel through time, irrespective of era or epoch, is fraught with intrigue and danger mixed with beauty and wonder. This is not a travelogue, but it kind of is. I'm not sure I have even fully absorbed it yet, but it sticks with you.
July 31, 2025
Любопытная книжка.
Не Большая Литература, конечно, и никогда таковой не будет, но какие-то моменты всё равно зацепили. Да, ход, где конец одной главы перетекает в начало другой без особой связи между ними, не особо нов. И перекрестные отсылки между главами тоже не сказать, что радикально новый ход. Однако интересный. Неплохие сюжеты с не всегда ожидаемым развитием, умело технически сделанные главы.
Посмотрим, когда вторая книга выйдет, что ещё умеет автор.
Не Большая Литература, конечно, и никогда таковой не будет, но какие-то моменты всё равно зацепили. Да, ход, где конец одной главы перетекает в начало другой без особой связи между ними, не особо нов. И перекрестные отсылки между главами тоже не сказать, что радикально новый ход. Однако интересный. Неплохие сюжеты с не всегда ожидаемым развитием, умело технически сделанные главы.
Посмотрим, когда вторая книга выйдет, что ещё умеет автор.
January 17, 2016
This is a fantastic, puzzling, uncompromising tome, as interesting in its composition and construction, as it is in each of its monthly sections, both forward and backward. Olsen has mirrored the modern, or post- modern world with apocalyptic precision. It is fascinating and made me think well beyond my own means, which is the best kind of book. A must read!
February 21, 2014
Cloud Atlas for smart people. Who would have known that postmodernism could be fun, that experimentation could be motivated by articulable narrative/structural necessities? This is one of my new favorite books.
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