“Such are the perfections of fiction...Everything it teaches is useless insofar as structuring your life: you can’t prop up anything with fiction. It, in fact, teaches you just that. That in order to attempt to employ its specific wisdom is a sign of madness...There is more profit in an hour’s talk with Billy Graham than in a reading of Joyce. Graham might conceivably make you sick, so that you might move, go somewhere to get well. But Joyce just sends you out into the street, where the world goes on, solid as a bus. If you met Joyce and said 'Help me,' he’d hand you a copy of Finnegans Wake. You could both cry.” – Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things


Saturday, June 5, 2010

Known Unknowns Reviewed at With Extra Pulp


Another very nice review of the book is up at With Extra Pulp: 'To simply sweep over these stories as “Washington circa post-September 11 stories would not be sufficient. Stinston’s stories are filled with dark humour and odd characters, some of whom reappear throughout. And a dead dog. Fourteen short stories make up “Known Unknowns”. The uncertainty of the people of America, and larger global shift that occurred in September 11’s aftermath, provide only a faint backdrop to the stories in here. Stories which stand independently and become almost beacons of the short story genre.'

I really enjoyed this, too: ‘Also, just an aside, I did a very broad sweep of Googledom to gauge other people's reactions and possibly respond to. What I found was Stinson's own blog post, where he read and reviewed Irma Gold's review of his book for Overland's blog. That's confusing right? Authors reviewing reviews of their book? One sec, I'm dizzy.’ Does this now mean I’m now reviewing this review of my review of Irma Gold’s review of my book? If so, that’s awesome.

Read the whole review here.

1 comment:

Elena said...

Ha! Cheers for the linkage.

All we need now is for someone to review your review of my review of your review of Irma's review. Any takers?

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