Forrest > Recent Status Updates

Okay, so I bought another book. Kill me. I mean . . . could you resist this premise? I could not. Call me weak-minded.

This is like J.K. Huysmans for the Pyrenees mountains. Lush. Decadent. And yet, rustic.

Just slowly sailing along, enjoying my reread.

I am enjoying the simple act of reading this time around. No need to analyze, contextualize, etc (though those things happen naturally). Having read the book once for analysis, now I just get to enjoy it. It's a feeling of reading freedom I haven't enjoyed for a while.

Hugo's story reads like an encyclopedia of the heretical. The historical nuances of religion in the mountains will make your head spin. One important lesson is that the history of religion, especially in the montagne regions, is anything but simple. Doctrinal and ritual lines are a complex arrangement formed by historical circumstance, personal and group preferences, and (gasp!) aleatory forces lacking reason(s).

I had forgotten how utterly complex Ishmael is. One of the most thoroughly fleshed out characters - but only by narrative inference - in all of American literature.

Just ordered _Godhusk_. I have high expectations.

I am no coward, but what to make of this head-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.

Spotter and Coffin. I had missed that foreshadowing on first reading. Now it seems so obvious.

What a powerful beginning! Locker has set up a situation balanced on the knife's edge where an end for one is a beginning for many, yet I feel that we might later loop back into this initial end. But will it be to a sense of finality or eternal doors opening? It could go either way as it stands now and being on the lip of that precipice is delicious. And we've only just begun.

The work gains momentum (and elicits more emotion) as ot goes along. "A Stroll" is particularly moving. Maybe the trend will continue?

"The Bordello" is a more coherent prose poem. If the rest of the book continues in the vein of the last two sections, this might be redeemable. Hope (and naivete) springs eternal.

"Gabriele's Opinion of My Hashish Hours" is the first section of this book that lives up to the promise of the surreal as a mechanism for breaking through to a more honest world by crashing through the gates of semi-structured nonsense into the ridiculousness of existence.

We're in the border regions of Surrealism, with Dada on the horizon, but not quite free of the grasp of "traditional" writing. In short, it's getting weird, but not weird enough to be really interesting or compelling. Again, at this point the translator's introduction holds more interest than the material itself.

Out of my sadness I paint garish posters for illuminated dilapidated houses. My train has just steamed off with a spring landscape. It is hateful to be a clown.

Part Eight might just as well have been titled "dirty tricks". Literally dirty, like keeping a pocket full of fine sand to cast into the eyes of an opponent who "has greater advantage" or to use against multiple opponents who justifiably want to kill you because you are a scumbucket. It essentially says this, but in a more refined way. Screw honor, you've got to defend yourself! Best section of the book!

Another great intro by translator W.C. Bamberger. Who is this guy?!?

Second reading. This time a bit more slowly, with intent.

I always wondered why those beefcake sword and sorcery covers had the hero standing and a woman kneeling or sitting at his feet. Turns out this was how people were trained to defend a woman from a crowd (royal bodyguards and such). When surrounded, you have to swing in wide arcs. If she's standing behind or beside you . . . well, it's bad optics to accidentally decapitate the person you're trying to protect.

My little announcement of my forthcoming collection.

I can finally make the announcement that my short fiction collection Censure will be published in 2026 by Zagava Press as a very limited slipcased hardcover followed by a paperback edition. Cover art is by one of my favorite artists, Odilon Redon (and it's frickin' gorgeous)!