"BEST NEW CHICAGO BOOK" - CBS Chicago
"Shit-your-pants brilliant." -NewCity
"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this might just be one of the best novels of the year. I compared this book to The Corrections, but this family lives on the other side of the tracks to Jonathan Franzen’s dysfunctional family and would have beaten the shit out of The Corrections kids when they were in school." -The Lit Pub
"By the time I finished the book, my copy was more dog-eared than just about any other book I own, and when it ended, I felt bittersweetly bereft. I thought The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense was a brilliant read, highly recommended for readers who like a little nostalgia in a smart, dark, funny, and engrossing novel." -LitStack
"Most Exciting New Books this Fall" - Flavorpill
"The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense takes moments and characters who could be quirky or grotesque and finds their essential humanity via the minutiae of their lives." -Vol.1 Brooklyn
Interview in The Onion A.V. Club Chicago
"Brilliantly delineated and heartbreaking. One comes away transported by the melancholy mood, put in mind of how homecomings fail to match up with our memories of immortal youth, how easily hopes and dreams tremble and shatter, how irreversible infrastructural decay seems inescapable in some corners of America."- Splice Today
"Much like everything Kinsella has been apart of, there is nothing typical or cliche about this read." - The Byke Rack
"Let’s be clear: this novel is not for the feint of heart or the casual reader."- Curbside Splendor
"Evelyn Waugh on Adderall." -Agit Reader
"Another dense and rewarding read." -Chicagoist
For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read. -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm
For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read. -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm
Reunited for a funeral and leery of one another, a family compares splintered memories. Will bathes his grandmother. Mel gives her wig a haircut. Norman is not prepared to take over his father’s club. Jesse has never known how old he is. They each cope with limited options and murky desires.
An irreducible collage, as intuitive as it is formal, The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense drifts between story lines and perspectives. Long bus rides through a post-industrial Gothic Midwest, Classic Rock, and compulsive brawls hum a requiem for the late night life of Stone Claw Grove.
Tim Kinsella is a creative force. Starting in 1995 with his widely influential and short-lived band Cap’n Jazz, he forged the way for a whole new kind of post-punk, lighting the way for countless bands including many of his own: Joan of Arc, Owls, Make Believe and Friend/Enemy. Kinsella’s tireless creativity is poured into albums, soundtracks, films, and lyrics. His most recent record is the blistering Life Like (Polyvinyl), a stripped-down, road-tested album recorded by Steve Albini. Now he’s turned his hand and relentless energy to another creative endeavor: the novel.br>
Kinsella’s lyrics are abstract, sardonic, wise and twisted. Here his sensibility explodes in a 376-page cliche-obliterating wall of sound. Reverberating syntax builds into a gripping plot, pulling the reader forward even as it drags its characters down. The book was written during a break in Kinsella’s tireless touring schedule while he attended the writing program at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago to hone his distinct prose style.
For all this novel's depth of story, and that story's grip and wealthy undercurrents, Tim Kinsella's rushing, trippily meticulous prose is so exciting to follow that the story seems as much the novel's soundtrack and topography as it is the point. A thorough and wildly distinctive read. -Dennis Cooper, Author of The Marbled Swarm
Reunited for a funeral and leery of one another, a family compares splintered memories. Will bathes his grandmother. Mel gives her wig a haircut. Norman is not prepared to take over his father’s club. Jesse has never known how old he is. They each cope with limited options and murky desires.
An irreducible collage, as intuitive as it is formal, The Karaoke Singer’s Guide to Self-Defense drifts between story lines and perspectives. Long bus rides through a post-industrial Gothic Midwest, Classic Rock, and compulsive brawls hum a requiem for the late night life of Stone Claw Grove.
Chore Boy is a pocket gay, tiny enough to fit in tight corners—on the car floor behind the driver, inside a dryer (for instance, while playing hide-and-go-seek), or stuffed into a suitcase like a contortionist...
Patrick Somerville has perfect pitch across the thirty-odd voices in these stories, gets perfect reception from past and future both. He is funny and sad and scalpel-sharp, at times all in the same sentence. This book contains worlds within worlds. Every single one of them enriches ours. -Roy Kesey, Author of All Over
Out Now! In this genre-busting book from award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville characters, stories, and stray thoughts revolve around the “The Machine of Understanding Other People,” the story of a Chicago man who is bequeathed a supernatural helmet that allows him to experience the inner worlds of those around him. Through his lonely lens we peer into the mind of an art student grappling with ennui, ethics and empathy as she comes to terms with her own beliefs in a godless world. We telescope out to the story of idiot extraterrestrials struggling to pilot a complicated spaceship. We follow a retired mercenary as he tries to save his marriage and questions his life abroad. Mind-bending and cracklingly new, Somerville’s broadly appealing and uniquely imaginative constructions probe the outer reaches of sympathy, death, and love in a world seen from the inside out.
Patrick Somerville's first book of stories, Trouble, and his novel, The Cradle, are awesome. Everyone thinks so. Find out more at patricksomerville.com
“Each tiny, diamond story—precise, comic, poised at the edge of surreal—contains one brutal life force tearing itself off the page. You can hold Daddy’s in your hands and feel it breathing.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation
September 2010. You ever fed yourself something bad? Like a candied rattlesnake, or a couple fingers of antifreeze? Nope? You seen what it done to other people? Like while they’re flopping around on the floor you’re thinking about how they’re fighting to live. Like while they’re dying they never looked so alive? That’s what Daddy’s is like. In this collection of toxic southern gothics, packaged as a bait box of temptation, Lindsay Hunter offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read that’ll push you a little further toward flopping.
Lindsay Hunter lives in Chicago, where she is the co-host of Quickies! This is her first book. Read her blog at lindsayhunter.com
“In “The Machine of Understanding Other People,” the novella that concludes this marvelous set of loosely connected stories, the main character is bequeathed a helmet that enables him entry into the minds of others. Perhaps Somerville (The Cradle) had access to such a device as he crafted his wide-ranging yet wonderfully authentic narrators. These densely layered tales invite multiple readings, but even a glance uncovers profound human connection beneath Somerville’s often whimsical surface.
” —Publishers Weekly
“Patrick Somerville unleashes the full force of his mischievous imagination. In this inventive and robust collection... bold tales deliver psychological realism to the outskirts of speculative and science fiction. Attuned to the apocalyptic, Somerville, like Jim Shepard and Joe Meno, creates ensnaring plots involving characters in stories of melancholy and absurdity, failure and out-of-the-box heroics.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist
“With unflagging humor and an emphasis on how we are all in the same, utterly human situation, Somerville keeps the stories from creeping into despondency. It’s as though he’s both the creator of your pensive mood, and the friend who pulls the improbably silly antics that manage to make you smile in spite of it.
” — Kim Hedges, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
“Look, just read this book. It’s the new year. You’ve got resolutions. I guarantee that, if you’re generous with your definitions and yourself, reading Patrick Somerville’s The Universe in Miniature in Miniature will fulfill at least two of them, maybe more. Read and be amazed. Read and be grateful.
” — Weston Cutter, Corduroy Books
“The Long List
” —STORY PRIZE 2010
“BEST BOOKS of 2010” —Chamber Four
“WELL READ: Best of 2010” —Tobias Carroll at Vol.1 Brooklyn
“Somerville has vast talent for invention and a flair for writing in a variety of voices, whether his character is a young female, a middle-aged male, or an alien.
” —Boston Globe
“2010 Best in Lit: Small Press” —Amber Sparks at Big Other
“Top Ten Small Press Books of 2010” —Kyle Minor at Dzanc Books
“The Universe in Miniature in Miniature gives Sci-Fi such a dose of dark humor, style, and domesticity that it really can’t be classified as geek-lit. Through 15 exquisitely drawn portraits—like the title story, about a lovelorn artist who makes models of boys and their fathers making models of the universe—author Patrick Somerville pairs themes that are delightfully abstract with contemporary dialogue. All this culminates in a mysterious mini-thriller, the front and back covers of which fold out into a miniature model of the solar system.
” —Alice Vincent, NYLON
“The Universe in Miniature in Miniature is that rare thing, a formally inventive and profound book of ideas that also manages to stir the emotions.
” —KGB Bar
“Before reading The Universe in Miniature in Miniature , I had never wondered about the effectiveness of a Machine of Understanding Other People.
” —The Chicagoist
“Somerville’s ability to depict moments that are heartbreakingly familiar, but difficult to pinpoint and express, serves as one of the major strengths of this book. The Universe in Miniature in Miniature The Universe in Miniature in Miniature will appeal to lovers of contemporary fiction as well as readers who have a penchant for speculative fiction.” —ForeWord
“The humor in all of these situations is, of course, balanced with pathos, underscoring the exquisite ambivalence of the human condition in ways reminiscent of both Kurt Vonnegut and Woody Allen. We are flawed, and we are beautiful, and we are funny. Patrick Somerville sees all of it (and then some), and reports lovingly on our shared humanity throughout The Universe in Miniature in Miniature. It is, in short, an amazing collection of stories.” —Small Press Reviews
“The total result is rare: a collection of stories that is considerably more than a simple compilation. It left me with a satisfied sense of completeness usually reserved for the best of novels.
” —Benjamin Kumming
“Wowee wowee wow!
” —Book Covers Anonymous
“The stakes are the fate of the entire world.” —Self Interview at The Nervous Breakdown
TOP 100 BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Kansas City Star
Patrick Somerville tells you why short stories will keep you from "actually going fucking insane." at The Story Prize
“Wowee Wowee Wow!
” —Book Covers Anonymous
“One of the most anticipated local releases of the season, Universe grounds its impressive sci-fi fancy with deft storytelling and memorable characters.
” —flavorpill
“A deeply successful marriage of surreal structure and aching empathy.
” —Vol.1 Brooklyn
Patrick Somerville ♥'s Slartibartfast, and here he tells us why:
Largehearted Boy
“The Universe in Miniature in Miniature as a whole may be its own machine of understanding other people...
” —Blogcritics
“The Universe in Miniature in Miniature is just begging to be made into a dozen or more pseudo-science-fair projects.
” —Literary Chicago
Patrick Somerville on "Remembering Intent," aka "How I built a crazy empathy helmet in my mind."
—TriQuarterly
“Patrick Somerville's collection of loosely intertwined short stories is full of fresh ideas that demand to be spun out at greater length. But he dispatches each of them quickly, in somber prose. Whether his subject is a teenage crush on a high school teacher or a monster made of smoke, Somerville insists that the story is about the people.” —Chicago Reader
“Just beneath the level of comically self-devouring gimmickry is a righteous rage. You won’t wake up after aching from an empathy hangover—as users of the helmet do—but you will likely find yourself consumed by the voices of the characters and realize anew the need to relate to others in this fleeting, lunatic, terrifying, and precious world.” —decomP
“Patrick Sommerville makes the characters real, unique, fragile, sad, and powerful. You will root for these characters. This is not just a great book, it’s an important book. Read this book. I’m going to say it again. Read this book.” —Ghost Ocean Magazine
“Patrick Somerville has perfect pitch across the thirty-odd voices in these stories, gets perfect
reception from past and future both. He is funny and sad and scalpel-sharp, at times all in the
same sentence. This book contains worlds within worlds. Every single one of them enrichens ours.
” —Roy Kesey, author of All Over
“This is a visionary story collection. Somerville inhabits the minds of his characters so beautifully you can almost picture him reclining on a couch in their brains.”
—Jami Attenberg, author of The Melting Season
“"Patrick Somerville is the most devastatingly sensitive badass nerd in contemporary lit--he is as consistently inventive and surprising as anyone writing today. I love this book, with its weird art and crazy machines and secret agents and out-of-control love. It's as if Optimus Prime has folded himself up into a story collection.” —J. Robert Lennon, author of Castle
Patrick Somerville has perfect pitch across the thirty-odd voices in these stories, gets perfect reception from past and future both. He is funny and sad and scalpel-sharp, at times all in the same sentence. This book contains worlds within worlds. Every single one of them enriches ours. -Roy Kesey, Author of All Over
Out Now! In this genre-busting book from award-winning novelist Patrick Somerville characters, stories, and stray thoughts revolve around the “The Machine of Understanding Other People,” the story of a Chicago man who is bequeathed a supernatural helmet that allows him to experience the inner worlds of those around him. Through his lonely lens we peer into the mind of an art student grappling with ennui, ethics and empathy as she comes to terms with her own beliefs in a godless world. We telescope out to the story of idiot extraterrestrials struggling to pilot a complicated spaceship. We follow a retired mercenary as he tries to save his marriage and questions his life abroad. Mind-bending and cracklingly new, Somerville’s broadly appealing and uniquely imaginative constructions probe the outer reaches of sympathy, death, and love in a world seen from the inside out.
Patrick Somerville's first book of stories, Trouble, and his novel, The Cradle, are awesome. Everyone thinks so. Find out more at patricksomerville.com
“TOP TEN MUST-READ BOOKS of 2010” —The Boston Phoenix
“WELL READ: Best of 2010” —Tobias Carroll at Vol.1 Brooklyn
“Lindsay Hunter makes drunk teenagers dry-humping in Cheeto dust compelling literary fare.” —The Boston Phoenix.
“The stories in Daddy’s don’t flash. I think it’s more accurate to say that they poke. These are wicked little works of fiction with sharp edges and unpleasantly squishy middles. This is the kind of fiction I can’t get enough of.” —Bitch Magazine
“2010 Best in Lit: Small Press” —Amber Sparks at Big Other
“Top Ten Small Press Books of 2010” —Kyle Minor at Dzanc Books
“How even to speak of these tiny gothic gems? With adjectives, perhaps: mean, lewd, fierce, unapologetic.” —Kyle Beachy at St.Louis Magazine
“These stories don’t shock for shock’s sake. Hunter weaves a tight world around these marginal characters, a world in which their relationships and behaviors seem inevitable or, even scarier, logical.” —Ryan Rivas at Pilot Books
“Lindsay’s language is somehow both frightening, gut-bunching, weirdo, home, cover your face, open your mouth, transcendent, and of heaving sound. At times like if Gummo turned into words and date-raped Mary Gaitskill’s language then went to the gas station to buy tissues to clean up the messies and bought you a snack of discount heat lamp chicken.” —Interview with Blake Butler at HTMLGiant.com
“A thrill ride from one horrific, pitch-perfect, mad-sick moment to the next.” —Vol.1 Brooklyn
"These are powerful stories, the twists and turns that Lindsay Hunter takes, away from the expected, down roads we usually pass up, preferring to avoid that dusty, bumpy ride, wanting to skip the rotting, musky scent of a decomposing skunk by the roadside, instead, staying on the highway, where everything flies by in a blur, and nothing has to hurt."—Review at The Nervous Breakdown
“Let me be clear: You should buy a copy of Daddy's immediately and spend some time in its world.” —Spencer Dew at decomP
"Lindsay Hunter was fast, funny and cool. She read a piece with vomit, diarrhea, sex (lesbian, I think), neck fat, a half-chub, chicken, testicles (in a man's mouth), more vomit, and blood." —Stories & Beer Reading Review: Smile Politely
Lindsay Hunter's Recommended Reading.
“You like stories about giant jealous babies? Ghost dogs in the desert? Anorexic bullies? Masturbation? Competitive eating? Serial killers? Sex and loneliness? If so this is the book for you.” —Self Interview at The Nervous Breakdown
Lindsay Hunter gets called 'fast'. It won't be the last time. Read the interview! —Newcity Chicago
“If Help is the alpha of Southern Lit, Daddy's is the omega. A brilliant little book of 24 little stories, mostly funny, sexy, and low rent. Kinky enough to impress your weirdest friends and your mother too.” —Paul at Prairie Lights Bookstore
“I didn’t meet Lindsay Hunter; so much as her fiction ran me over. ” —Three Guys One Book
Daddy's in NYLON Magazine. The (October) "IT" Girl issue featuring Lindsay Hunter and Amelia Gray.
“In Daddy’s, babies mean blood and nipples are like “lit match heads.” Lindsay Hunter transgresses where others fear to tread.” —Terese Svoboda, author of Pirate Talk
“Each tiny, diamond story—precise, comic, poised at the edge of surreal—contains one brutal life force tearing itself off the page. You can hold Daddy’s in your hands and feel it breathing.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation
“Lindsay Hunter won’t be caught lie-telling in the name of nice. The miniature stories in Daddy’s are fierce and unapologetic. When the We’s she voices say the axblade was bloody with dirt, what they mean is the neighbor’s swingset creaked and moaned next door and we heard a child’s voice say Never ever. When I’m looking again for my next undoing, I’ll crack open Daddy’s, and get the true news they tell us we’d be better off not hearing.” —Kyle Minor, author of In the Devil’s Territory
“Each tiny, diamond story—precise, comic, poised at the edge of surreal—contains one brutal life force tearing itself off the page. You can hold Daddy’s in your hands and feel it breathing.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation
September 2010. You ever fed yourself something bad? Like a candied rattlesnake, or a couple fingers of antifreeze? Nope? You seen what it done to other people? Like while they’re flopping around on the floor you’re thinking about how they’re fighting to live. Like while they’re dying they never looked so alive? That’s what Daddy’s is like. In this collection of toxic southern gothics, packaged as a bait box of temptation, Lindsay Hunter offers an exploration not of the human heart but of the spine; mixing sex, violence and love into a harrowing, head-spinning read that’ll push you a little further toward flopping.
Lindsay Hunter lives in Chicago, where she is the co-host of Quickies! This is her first book. Read her blog at lindsayhunter.com
You invite your ex-boyfriend to visit. Then he is in your apartment,
hunched over his laptop, which has to be kept very still or else
it will crash, and you are on your couch, eating Easter candy...
Dadgummit! Ever since I was seventy-four and got paid two million dollars for my fried-chicken franchising business folks has been hounding me to write my...
Imagine you’re planning your own school shooting. Imagine you have
good reasons, and it’s none of that I-play-too-many-video-games-and-
listen-to-Marilyn-Manson-because-no-one-likes-me bullshit...
ss Attacks! [mini-book exceprt]
by Christian TeBordo
Rules and Regulations in Lamination Colony.
PERFECTLY BANAL: Postcards (throughout the book!):
A short story from the book:
The Champion of Forgetting
Here is a list of failures.
I was staying in a hotel room with some people. I didn’t know their names. I wasn’t their friend. Not the kind where you say hi my name’s and hi my name’s and then you call each other names.
Before I was staying in the hotel room I was walking down Market and they snatched me into their van so I was kidnapped.
What’s that called after you’re kidnapped. When you’re just staying in the hotel room.
There wasn’t tape on my mouth or chains. On my wrist or anything. You could walk around in it and watch television. You could go for ice so the door wasn’t locked. From the inside.
The first time I went for ice I had to knock to get back in. That was when we made up the idea to put a thing in the door when I went for ice. Or somebody else for something else. A shoe or ashtray.
One of the men slipped the metal chain from the wall between the door and the frame. That was the only chain unless it was a metal bar. The girl had failed the test anyway. It was a good hotel room. My first.
It wasn’t the only hotel room. Sometimes there were others. One at a time. It looked like the other ones we lived in. Two men a woman and me. Four. And yes there was sex.
Sometimes there was sex in the other hotel rooms. On either side of us unless we were on the end.
Sometimes when there was sex in another hotel room a man said a woman’s name or a woman said a man’s.
Sometimes in our hotel room a man said a woman’s name or the woman said a man’s. Sometimes when there was sex. Sometimes when there was not. I don’t know if it was the real names. Sometimes they were different. Sometimes they were the same which was not often. Or I don’t remember because I was the champion of forgetting.
When we got to the hotel room. The first time I got to the hotel room. After I got kidnapped. When I wasn’t kidnapped anymore. When there wasn’t tape on my mouth. When I was in the van there was tape on my mouth but not in the hotel room.
At first there was tape on my mouth and my wrists. That’s when the man who was our leader then said not to say my name. And the woman said better forget your name.
If you don’t say your name you don’t forget your name and you always want to say it. This is how I was for a while. When the tape was on my mouth. Sometimes I said my name because who even knows what you’re talking about with tape on your mouth. But when there wasn’t any more tape I bit my tongue. It hurts to bite your tongue.
When you forget your name you don’t bite your tongue. Why would you. You don’t want to say it and you don’t say it. If you do you don’t know because it’s forgotten. It’s suddenly somebody else’s and you’ve forgotten their’s too.
This is the way that it works.
One time when it was my turn to register for the hotel room. They give you cash from the box of cash and you say you would like a room for your name and give the man or woman at the desk the money they gave you and the man or woman gives you a key. A key is a symbol of a room to them.
I said I would like a room and the man. I don’t remember his name. The man behind the counter said what is your name. I didn’t remember my name because I had forgotten it. I gave him the money but he didn’t give me a key.
When I got back to the van the man who was our leader then. The leader gives you money from the cash box and says what hotel to drive to or what hotel you are driving to if you ask and whose turn it is to drive and who to kidnap and who’s turn it is to register for the hotel room. Also some of the sexual things. That time it was mine.
The leader said that it was a test and I had failed the test.
I almost never knew when I was getting tested. Especially when I was first kidnapped and for the time after that I don’t know what to call. An example of this is the first test. The first test they said was a test.
The first test. What I think of as the first test they did not say was a test. One of them said do you think she’s a screamer and another one said there’s only one way to find out. The one who said the second thing. She was the woman. She dug a little corner of the tape away from the skin of my face. Then she pulled off the whole tape.
I didn’t scream. The girl said see she didn’t scream but not that I had passed a test.
The first test that they said was a test. There was a needle and the needle went in my arm. I didn’t scream but that was not this test. Blood came out of my arm through the needle and filled up the tube of it.
While I was not screaming but there was still blood coming out I said what are you doing. The man who was doing it. The leader. He said it’s a test.
When the tube was full he gave it to the woman and the woman took it to the bathroom. I asked if the test was over but it was not. I got nervous about the test because some of it was happening in the bathroom where I couldn’t do anything about it and I didn’t know how much of it was happening where I was so I let him put a wad of cotton over the spot on my arm that the blood came out of and apply gentle pressure.
It felt good until the woman came out of the bathroom with a look on her face. The pressure became more than gentle for a second.
The woman said her blood is wrong and we can’t do sex to her right now.
The man let go of my arm and walked out of the hotel room. He forgot to leave a shoe in the door, so I went and did it for him. Then I took a nap for loss of blood or to forget about the failure.
There were more tests but they only admitted it sometimes. Only when I failed except once.
"Quentin Tarantino on short story juice. The violence and depravity
ride the surface, where I like them, and the heart is a lyrical heart.
Add to that creepy postcards with cryptic messages and this collection
attacks from all sides." —Jeff Parker, Author of Ovenman
April 2010! A girl masters the art of forgetting among kidney thieves. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic childrearing. You’ve heard these people whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door. In brilliantly strange set pieces that explode the boundaries of short fiction, Christian TeBordo locates the awe in the awful possibilities we could never have imagined.
Christian TeBordo has published three novels. This is his first collection of short fiction. He lives in Philadelphia. Read his blog at awfulpossibilities.com
STARRED REVIEW "Nine caustic stories by TeBordo find screeching ironies in rhetorical absurdities and writerly subversiveness. Bizarre and biting, these tales leave a mark." —Publishers Weekly
"The nine stories of TeBordo’s first collection are ambiguous and creepy. A dire surrealism roils beneath their superficial naturalism. Sheer delight for connoisseurs of nongenre strangeness."—Booklist
"Christian TeBordo shows that it is possible to be, simultaneously, a wise old soul and a crazed young terror." —George Saunders
"The Awful Possibilities of Christian TeBordo put me in mind of Quentin Tarantino on short story juice. The violence and depravity ride the surface, where I like them, and the heart is a lyrical heart. Add to that creepy postcards with cryptic messages and this collection attacks from all sides." —Jeff Parker, Author of Ovenman
"I would say, take a bit of Alan DeNiro’s Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead, mix it with Tarantino and a dash of a scientist with a lab full of words and you might make it close to the stories that inhabit TeBordo’s awe-ful world."—Ryan W. Bradley, The Big Other
"Throughout The Awful Possibilities, TeBordo plays with subtle time and point of view shifts that bring out a surprising depth to what could be, at first glance, sensationalistic or exploitative themes. Where tables are turned, where prisoners become keepers, where memories are real, imagined, or continuously reconditioned into new realities."—Dell Smith, Unreliable Narrator
"TeBordo is clever, and his cleverness, above all, tells him that communication is impossible except as something erratic, scatter-shot." –Spencer Dew, decomP
"We are pushed out of these stories, we are kept at bay, we are thrust into their own miscommunications, we are turned back and on our backs, we are shipped away in fragments. This is a book that you need to read with your own eyes."—J.A. Tyler, elimae
"Readers looking for answers will find this collection lacking. There are no morals here, only possibilities."— TriQuarterly
""To read The Awful Possibilities is to be shaken by the collar and commanded to recognize TeBordo’s bravery, because these stories ardently inhabit the thrilling, hazy space between high art and bullshit."—Stockyard Magazine
"Why, for example, does “The Champion of Forgetting” start where it starts and end where it ends?" (Why indeed?) –Publish Chicago
"…the love child of Samuel Beckett and Dorothy Parker." —Jerome Ludwig, the Chicago Reader
"Quentin Tarantino on short story juice. The violence and depravity ride the surface, where I like them, and the heart is a lyrical heart. Add to that creepy postcards with cryptic messages and this collection attacks from all sides." —Jeff Parker, Author of Ovenman
April 2010! A girl masters the art of forgetting among kidney thieves. A motivational speaker skins his best friend to impress his wife. A man outlines the rules and regulations for sadistic childrearing. You’ve heard these people whispering in hallways, mumbling in diners, shouting in the apartment next door. In brilliantly strange set pieces that explode the boundaries of short fiction, Christian TeBordo locates the awe in the awful possibilities we could never have imagined.
Christian TeBordo has published three novels. This is his first collection of short fiction. He lives in Philadelphia. Read his blog at awfulpossibilities.com
Butler is an original force who is fearless with form... The design is appropriately disarming, an apt part of the overall barrage by this inventive and deeply promising young author.—Time Out New York
A novel of 14 interlocking stories set in ruined American locales where birds speak gibberish, the sky rains gravel, and millions starve, disappear or grow coats of mold. In 'The Disappeared,' a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. In 'The Ruined Child,' a boy swells to fill his parents' ransacked attic. Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler's full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William Gass, yet turned with Butler's own eye for the apocalyptic and bizarre.
You can sample a bit of Scorch Atlas yourself in Blake's mini-book:
A few excepts:
'The Many Forms of Rain ___ Sent Upon Us In
Those Days Before'
@ DIAGRAM
(finalist in DIAGRAM's Innovative
Fiction Contest)
The Passionate Male Prostitute: Blake Butler’s “The Ruined Child,” as Remixed by Blake Butler, @ Barrelhouse
Visit Blake Butler's eye-opening blog, or the collaborative online lit blog of the future he edits HTMLgiant.com, his lit mag Lamination Colony, and print mag No Colony.
At moments screwy, prickly and pleasantly surprising, Gray’s short shorts deliver youthful snapshots about being nuts in love... A delectable debut.—Publishers Weekly
If anything's going to save the characters in Amelia Gray's debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it's a John Mayer concert tee. In AM/PM, Gray's flash-fiction collection, impish humor is on full display. Tour through the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes and volcano love. Follow June, who wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard, who falls in love with a chaise lounge; and Andrew, who talks to his house in times of crisis. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens, Gray mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original piece of fiction.
Amelia Gray is a writer living in Austin, TX. Her writing has appeared in The Onion, American Short Fiction, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, DIAGRAM, and Caketrain, among others. Her work has been chosen as the finalist for McSweeney's Amanda Davis Highwire Contest and the DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Contest. Check out her website: ameliagray.com.
You can sample a bit of AM/PM yourself in Amelia's mini-book:
"Butler is an original force who is fearless with form... The design is appropriately disarming, an apt part of the overall barrage by this inventive and deeply promising young author." —Time Out New York
"Scorch Atlas doesn't make its point with narrative arc or character development or paragraphs or even the lovely, terrible sentences. Instead, it's the heaping of words — mauled bubbled clods knotted clogged rot foam mold growth cragged bugged curdle boils lumps ooze gunk stung and on and on — that press on you, as if you were being buried, drowned, dissolved, as if you were about to swallow your tongue." —The Boston Phoenix
"Scorch Atlas is quite possibly the most visceral book I’ve ever read." —Identity Theory
"Scorch Atlas is a fine example of experiment with purpose, of world building, of decadent, detailed and innovative writing. This is a book that should be read, and widely." —Pank Magazine
"Blake Butler has been doing great work... I've been looking around at people who publish smaller more personal books, things outside the mainstream, and totally original. Blake's one of these people. " —Three Guys One Book
"I can’t love Scorch Atlas. I think I fear it — its relentless and overwhelming vision, and the power Butler has to drill a hole in my chest with language. But Butler’s strange masterpiece doesn’t ask for your love. It demands your attention." —Eugene Weekly
"Whatever you say, Blake. At least until we all snuff it in one of [your] hideous apocalypses." —Dazed & Confused
"Scorch Atlas is a carefully and meticulously distraught world of language, a trembled and shaken line of thought, a vibrant dead trance of phrasing, the measure of words put together all and in the right ways. Blake Butler has made something enormous here."—J.A. Tyler, Tarpaulin Sky.
"Butler’s decaying worlds resemble the vistas of Steve Erickson in their dreamlike logic and those of J.G. Ballard in their sense of the subconscious eroding restraints mental and physical." —Interview with Tobias Carroll, for Flavorwire.
"Butler excels at forcing the familiar through the a sieve of strange until it is stripped clean of its everyday banality, until it is once again made so fresh you can smell the decay it contains, until you can taste the despair that threatens to destroy not just his characters but also the dangerous worlds they inhabit." —Matt Bell
"In the same way that Infinite Jest, written thirteen years ago, presupposed communication being fragmented via technology, in particular, the internet, Scorch Atlas presupposes a bleak, dystopian future (although let's hope it's farther off than thirteen years from now) where people bloat and grime, the world is a cracked shell of its former self and families do what they must to eke out an existence." —Keyhole Magazine
One of 20 relatively imminent things that [Dennis Cooper] is really looking forward to. —from his blog.
"Scorch Atlas is like The Book of Revelations written in first person." —BSC Review
"The stories, told in prose form, flash form, and longer form, hit a nerve with their explorations of a pain familiar to us all—family dysfunction. Performing as an ashen, crumbling work in our hands, the work urges us to push forward before it—and we—turn to dust." —Nicolle Elizabeth, Brooklyn Rail
"Buy Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler. Rip out your favorite story of the collection. Drop it to the ground and watch the pages flutter like ashen butterflies." —Outsider Writers Collective
"Butler’s prose is precise and muscular. The imagery is unrelenting. It’s gorgeous, and heartbreaking."—Dispatches from Utopia
Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas is precisely that —a series of maps, or worlds, “tied so tight they couldn’t crane their necks.” Everything is either destroyed, rotting or festering—and not only the physical objects, but allegiances, hopes, covenants. Yet these worlds are not abstract exercises, he is speaking of life as it is, where there might be or may be, “glass over grave sites in display,” and where we will be forced to make or where we have “made facemasks out of old newspapers.” The sole glimmer of light comes in recollection, as in: “a bear the size of several men... There in the woods behind our house, when I was still a girl like you.”
—Jesse Ball, author of The Way Through Doors and Samedi the Deafness
There’s something so big about Blake Butler’s writing. Big as men’s heads. Each inhale of Blake’s wheeze brings streamers of loose hair, the faces of lakes and oceans, whales washed up half-rotten. You can try putting on a facemask made out of old newspaper. You can breathe in smaller rhythms. But you won’t be able to keep this man out once you’ve opened his book. Open it!
—Ken Sparling, author of Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall
I am always looking for new writers like Blake Butler and rarely finding them, but Scorch Atlas is one of those truly original books that will make you remember where you were when you first read it. Scorch Atlas is relentless in its apocalyptic accumulation, the baroque language stunning in its brutality, and the result is a massive obliteration.
—Michael Kimball, author of Dear Everybody Out Now:
Butler is an original force who is fearless with form... The design is appropriately disarming, an apt part of the overall barrage by this inventive and deeply promising young author.—Time Out New York
A novel of 14 interlocking stories set in ruined American locales where birds speak gibberish, the sky rains gravel, and millions starve, disappear or grow coats of mold. In 'The Disappeared,' a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. In 'The Ruined Child,' a boy swells to fill his parents' ransacked attic. Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler's full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William Gass, yet turned with Butler's own eye for the apocalyptic and bizarre.
Blake Butler is the author of EVER, a novella from Calamari Press. His work has appeared in Fence, Willow Springs, The Believer, Ninth Letter, and many others. He is the editor of Lamination Colony and No Colony, two experimental journals of new prose. He lives in Atlanta and blogs here.
AM/PM By Amelia Gray
"At moments screwy, prickly and pleasantly surprising, Gray’s short shorts deliver youthful snapshots about being nuts in love... A delectable debut."—Publishers Weekly
"...believable characters, imaginative language, and beautifully crafted dialogue..."—Rain Taxi
"Amelia Gray is already operating like a seasoned pro. A deceptively big book wrapped in a small package."—Three Guys One Book
"The stories in AM/PM have ruined me as a reader of shorts. I will no longer be satisfied by the merely beautiful, the singularly clever, or the one big thought purely rendered. I want all those things in a two hundred word package. I want to be highly amused and deeply sad at the exact same time. Amelia Gray packs more power in a paragraph than I thought possible."
—Stacey Swann, Editor of American Short Fiction
"[Amelia Gray's] visions are direct, devastating, funny and vibrant; it’s not everyone who can find such inspiration in a John Mayer concert T-shirt..."—Eugene Weekly
"Amelia Gray's AM/PM is a collection of flash fiction, stories that create tangible worlds and interesting characters in their 50 to 150 words. More importantly (and amazingly), read together these stories form a cohesive and often surprising narrative through their recurring themes and characters."—Largehearted Boy
"Sweetly funny and unpredictable..."—Interview at Powell's Books Blog
"AM/PM by Amanda Gray is a little miracle of a novel — if that's what it is — each chapter an incident or a part of an incident, nothing longer than a page. Chet, Missy, Charles, Carla, Hazel, Tess, and John Mayer Concert Tee. I notice the author calls them stories, but I read them quickly, and I felt I was reading a post-modern novel. A little like Elizabeth Crane broken into tiny pieces. At any rate it gave me huge pleasure and a high opinion of Featherproof."
—Paul Ingram, of Prairie Lights Bookstore
"62. AM/PM is a do-it-yourself kit to protect imagination."—John Madera, Word Riot
"Gray evokes wonder and dread; romanticism and despair. And slowly, as you make your way through AM/PM’s stories, patterns begin to emerge as characters recur and situations evolve — a much more resonant emotional experience than one might expect from flash fiction."—Interview at The Scowl
"This engaging collection abounds with tiny revelations delivered with great wit, a tour of 23 characters whose connections become slowly apparent as you go along."—The Nervous Breakdown
"AM/PM is a refreshing, magical book, equipped with so much lucid linage that its hard not to want to read each page again and again, extending each small punch of threaded pleasure.…"—HTMLgiant
"At last, a book I can read over and over again. No, seriously. I’m not that guy. This is an important book. I wish that I could just somehow telepathically communicate this fact to you. If you’ve ever trusted any of my recommendations, then trust this one."—MADOREABLE
"Refreshingly original…"—Interview at Orange Alert
"Amelia has night terrors that make her do funny things in her sleep like stand on the bed and run down the stairs. Once, she kicked out a window…"—Amelia Gray's Life Story by Michael Kimball
"Perhaps the book I was most looking forward to picking up while driving towards AWP and nearly done reading it, it hasn't disappointed at all. Sadly, I didn't even know there was an Amelia Gray about two months ago and now I've scoured the web to find any publishings she's done. This conveniently puts many of them together and is just a fantastic read. Also caught her reading at The Beat Kitchen and had a bit of a chance to talk to her afterward and she's as nice as she is talented. Rush over to the Featherproof site and you can get this one free if you subscribe to their awesome new subscription series."—Dan Wickett, Emerging Writers Network
"I heard Amelia Gray read from this Friday night and just about died I liked it so much, then proceeded to babble to her about the brilliance of the recurring motif of the John Mayer concert tee. If you are reading this Amelia, thank you for listening to me babble."—Jac Jemc
"Amelia Gray is one of my favorite writers publishing online, and I’ve been looking forward to her book AM/PM. It’s a collection of very short stories or sketches or observations or jokes or all the above, really, that at times reminded me of a play I was in once called Comings and Goings and at other times of the recurring Muppet Show segment in which ballroom dancers tell jokes (these are both good things)."—Tawny Grammar
"In concise and often brutal prose, these brief stories give surprisingly comprehensive glimpses into ongoing lives. Each story’s laser-beam focus on a single instant uncovers what’s really happening in the small moments of life, those moments that fit between two blinks of the eyes."—Literary License
"All the baby birds hang out in this tree and ask me if I’m making the right choices in life."—Amelia Gray's Word Space @ HTMLgiant Out Now:
At moments screwy, prickly and pleasantly surprising, Gray’s short shorts deliver youthful snapshots about being nuts in love... A delectable debut.—Publishers Weekly
If anything's going to save the characters in Amelia Gray's debut from their troubled romances, their social improprieties, or their hands turning into claws, it's a John Mayer concert tee. In AM/PM, Gray's flash-fiction collection, impish humor is on full display. Tour through the lives of 23 characters across 120 stories full of lizard tails, Schrödinger boxes and volcano love. Follow June, who wakes up one morning covered in seeds; Leonard, who falls in love with a chaise lounge; and Andrew, who talks to his house in times of crisis. An intermittent love story as seen through a darkly comic lens, Gray mixes poetry and prose, humor and hubris to create a truly original piece of fiction.
Amelia Gray is a writer living in Austin, TX. Her writing has appeared in The Onion, American Short Fiction, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, DIAGRAM, and Caketrain, among others. Her work has been chosen as the finalist for McSweeney's Amanda Davis Highwire Contest and the DIAGRAM Innovative Fiction Contest. Check out her website: ameliagray.com.
When my beast arrived, it was three in the afternoon and
I was sitting in my underwear, on the phone. I was
reading a poem I had just written about a 21st century cowboy
sitting naked next to a campfire, to my friend Peanuts, who
was somewhat of a cowboy himself and used to edit a literary
journal called Erotic Dust which I have never seen but like all
journals you’ve never seen, you’ve heard good things...
The undeniably fat and predictably astute 9-year-old
Royal Rawrick had taken back roads to avoid
a particularly menacing group of teenagers and was
making his way over a rough patch of sidewalk when a
century-old wire, hidden deep beneath the pavement,
touched conduit through a bit of fray and electrified
a manhole cover at the worst of all possible moments...
There might be a few wood stork left around here, but it’s mostly the
white heron, ibis and other long-legged fowl that stalk around fast food
drive-thrus...
boring boring boring boring boring boring boring: the ebook
by Zach Plague
288 pages, PDF format for ebboks
Release date: August 1st, 2008
This Free ebook contains the entire text of boring boring boring... download it now to read on your computer or portable reading gadget.
When the mysterious gray book that drives their twisted relationship goes missing, Ollister and Adelaide lose their post-modern marbles. He plots revenge against art patriarch The Platypus, while she obsesses over their anti-love affair. Meanwhile, the art school set experiments with bad drugs, bad sex, and bad ideas. But none of these desperate young minds has counted on the intrusion of a punk named Punk and his potent sex drug. This wild slew of characters get caught up in the gravitational pull of The Platypus' giant art ball, where a confused art terrorism cell threatens a ludicrous and hilarious implosion. Zach Plague has written and designed a hybrid typo/graphic novel which skewers the art world, and those boring enough to fall into its traps.
The effect is that of artist's journal meets ransom note: the text held hostage by the design.—Print Magazine
When the mysterious gray book that drives their twisted relationship goes missing, Ollister and Adelaide lose their post-modern marbles. He plots revenge against art patriarch The Platypus, while she obsesses over their anti-love affair. Meanwhile, the art school set experiments with bad drugs, bad sex, and bad ideas. But none of these desperate young minds has counted on the intrusion of a punk named Punk and his potent sex drug. This wild slew of characters get caught up in the gravitational pull of The Platypus' giant art ball, where a confused art terrorism cell threatens a ludicrous and hilarious implosion. Zach Plague has written and designed a hybrid typo/graphic novel which skewers the art world, and those boring enough to fall into its traps.
The effect is that of artist's journal meets ransom note: the text held hostage by the design.—Print Magazine
When the mysterious gray book that drives their twisted relationship goes missing, Ollister and Adelaide lose their post-modern marbles. He plots revenge against art patriarch The Platypus, while she obsesses over their anti-love affair. Meanwhile, the art school set experiments with bad drugs, bad sex, and bad ideas. But none of these desperate young minds has counted on the intrusion of a punk named Punk and his potent sex drug. This wild slew of characters get caught up in the gravitational pull of The Platypus' giant art ball, where a confused art terrorism cell threatens a ludicrous and hilarious implosion. Zach Plague has written and designed a hybrid typo/graphic novel which skewers the art world, and those boring enough to fall into its traps.
boring boring boring boring boring boring boring By Zach Plague P R I N T * P R A I S E
"Designed to death, Plague’s seething contempt for banal art gives this satire an edge" —Publishers Weekly
"The effect is that of artist's journal meets ransom note: the text held hostage by the design."—Jami Attenberg, Print Magazine
"One absurd plot twist after another, a tie-dyed spiral of schemes, porn, and drug-induced insanity. Though boring's style and theme make it easily likened to Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, its made-up slang, depraved characters, and sour ending bring it closer to A Clockwork Orange." —The Austin Chronicle
"Alienation devices(!) Ridiculous(!) Cute(!) Antic(!) Anticlimactic(!) Clever(!) Fairly interesting(!) Mostly well written(!) Occasionally funny(!) Sex(!) Drugs(!) Stale satire(!) Art world nonsense(!) —Chicago Reader (exclamation points added for emphasis)
"A more tangible aesthetic in book production... certainly idiosyncratic."—Publishers Weekly
"A typographic riot, in all senses. Unexpectedly, this doesn't result in chaos, but it does reinforce the book's fictional style, which, with nods to Gibson and Pynchon, is rich in absurdity and abrupt changes in narrative perspective. Boring it is not."—STEP Inside DesignPortland Mercury interview with Zach Plague about booty.
"Part grit, part fantasy, part winking comedy... boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is not boring."—Newcity Chicago
"[Zach] Plague is... a tall, affable young writer[!]"—Austin American-Statesman
"Besides featuring some gorgeous design, boring7 starts out with one couple's endangered anti-love affair and ends with art terrorism" *Suggested* by The Seattle Stranger.
New and Noteworthy Books —Poets & Writers
"With graphic surprises, exotic fonts, and format zaniness on every page, Zach Plague's new "hybrid typo/graphic novel" boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is anything but." —Interview with the East Bay Express
"This is the most negative book I have ever read. It's as if that lemon-headed baby from "The Family Guy" did audio commentary for the DVD of Terry Zwigoff's "Art School Confidential." —Austin American-Statesman
"Anything but…well, boring." —ALARM magazine
"If reading isn't your thing, it'll probably be enticing if you're on drugs."—The Onion (Chicago A.V. Club)
"Dang cool." — *Highly Recommended* by the Willamette Week
"Zach Plague broke every rule in the book. You'll soon find yourself addicted to the mayhem. A dead-on satire of the art-school world, this hilarious and innovative novel is anything but boring."—Zink Magazine
"A sometimes esoteric title." —Eugene Weekly
"Unique is sometimes not strong enough a word to describe a book. A brilliant work of satire, "Boring" is for any fan of fiction seeking something different." —Midwest Book Review
"An art world satire on amphetamines, as described by Todd Dills." —Birmingham Weekly
"Zach Plague's newest novel is anything but 'boring boring'"—Campus Circle
"It’s a hell of a
head-turn to the book in its traditional form, and only
gains more prominence hand-in-hand with its subject
matter. Sure, there’s the irony of the cultural art satire
chaffing against Plague’s insanely designed conceptual
work. But Plague’s book caused a lot of thinking,
turning back pages, and fascination on my end – and
hell, part of the fun was the weird looks I got while
reading it on the train." —Skyscraper Magazine
"Written in a serious tone—sometimes coming off as tounge-in-cheek, other times as pompously sincere—the book is dripping with irony and self-awareness." —UR Chicago
"Author/Designer Zach Plague is known for thinking beyond the binding when it comes to presentation, but his debut novel... defies classification." —The Onion (Austin A.V. Club)P I X E L * P R A I S E
"The multiple forms remind one of Transformer robots that change into vehicles. The project is an ambitious multimedia exercise, but as its boring title suggests, the enterprise is undercut with self-deprecating humor... The indulgent expressive graphics (an aesthetic of punk and neo-Victorian) are justified by the novel’s subject matter and cast of characters" —David Barringer, AIGA Voice
"An intelligent, sometimes witty, and sometimes sad book that offers sharp criticism of the art world, and our society in general. Boredom has brought many an empire to its knees in the past, and Zach Plague has done a fine job of depicting the ennui that sucks the life out of us." —Richard Marcus, BlogCritics Magazine
"The art boldly enhances the storyline in one of the year's most cleverly designed books." —Book Notes, Largehearted Boy
"Sparkling, Sexy, Bizarre." —Three Imaginary Girls
"Zach Plague [has] gone above and beyond and created something just absolutely remarkable. Not only well-written, which you'd hope from any book, Plague created... page after page of constantly busy, captivating artwork that clearly must have cost them Featherproof about $80 per book purely in black ink. And that's before you even get to any of the writing, which reacts surprising well to the chaos the surrounds it. Even if you're illiterate, it's a book that would be well worth your time."—UnBeige
"The book is beautiful. As a physical text-object, boring presents a reading experience unlike most novels or short story collections... Between the covers of the book, the level of detail seems to explode, as if Plague could not stop himself until he had modified each block of text in some way."—The Quarterly Conversation
"Equal parts Dos Passos and maybe Coupland, the book distinguishes itself primarily by its unashamed use of typographical elements to effect meaning in the text, as fonts pile upon fonts and emphasis is occasionally forced on the reader."—Interview with Todd Dills, THE2NDHAND
"As with any auteur, his total control means one thing, he can break all the rules. Because no one is there to stop him. So this is what he does."—Notes on Design
"boring boring is an entertaining romp with a hilarious cast of characters who keep the plot moving along in several different directions. We loved it." —Art MoCo
"Zach Plague caters to those with fleeting ADD. Jump in anywhere for quirky character studies or definitions of words such as beeramid (a pyramid of empty beer cans)." —DailyCandy
"The writing is energetic and arresting. Filled with surprising use of language and deftly constructed sentences. A weird obsessive tone creates an atmosphere that envelopes the reader and draws you into the narrative. The dialogues (and monologues) capture a convincing, naturalistic quality with well-rendered diversity between characters and some are quite hilarious. The plot is clever and unpredictable." —Gently Read Literature
"A hybrid typo/graphic novel that is as artistically stunning as it is well-written. Boring... is a unique and beautiful debut." —Interview at What to Wear During an Orange Alert
"A beautiful hybrid of typography and imagery." —Design Milk
"A dizzying mixture of obsessive typography and design wrapped around a bonkers tale of sex and drugs." —Under the Covers
"Extravagant and strange..."—Interview at Powell's Books Blog
"The book looks more like art than literature, emblazoned as it is with human-monster hybrids and ink that sprawls across the words. It's anything but boring, really."—New York Animal
"boring boring boring boring boring boring boring tries very hard not to live up to its namesake." —Green Lantern PressChicago Artists Resource Interview
"The novel itself is quite unconventional. Handwritten pages merge with typed ones, and fonts expand and decrease and tilt across the page. The novel appears to be compiled by hand, as though bits and scraps of thoughts and writing had been pieced together. That’s not to say it’s difficult to read boring boring boring boring boring boring boring; in fact, the opposite is true. The innovative design added an extra incentive to move further in the book, as I wanted to see what shape it would take next."—Bibliolatry
"Anything but."—The Scowl
"A book which actually deserves the designation 'novel' for once." —feuilleton
"boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is a collection of incidents that never builds any momentum." —PopMatters
"I loved the design concept: Each of the trade paperback's signatures—the large sheets of paper which are trimmed and folded to produce 32 book pages—was printed as a giant double-sided poster, so each page in the book has little bits of artwork poking out at weird angles."—Galley Cat
"What makes this book stand out amongst many others is its beautiful hybrid of typography and imagery. I feel like a kid in a candyshop. *drooling*" —This That These and Those
"If his book were a drink, it would taste like black licorice, feel like syrup, and need to be chased with plenty of water."—Hipster Book Club
"A rollicking good skewer of hipsters, the art scene and most commonly held notions of book layout and typography." —O-Scene
"Boring." —Discovering Goodness
"Alice-In-Wonderland-meets-Bret-Easton-Ellis-College-Novel"—The Trap Door
"I’ve only seen an online version of this book, but I love the graphic concept behind it." —Cheeta Fight
"Maybe Boring Boring is supposed to be boring boring." —New Pages
"When I was in college, I found art students terrifyingly cool." —Literago
"An enchanting, garbage-juice mishmash of art-scene characters, absurdist storylines, Megan Jasper-esque slang, hyperactive typography, and gorgeous imagery aplenty." —FlavorpillR A N D O M * P R A I S E
"Zach Plague stretches far beyond the printed page."—Eight Forty-Eight, Chicago Public RadioGOLD design winner in Creativity 38.
Merit Winner HOW International Design Competition
Nom de Plume, trivialized.
STEP Design 100 Runner Up
boring Tour diary in Proximity Magazine #2
"Hahaha! A really innovative book."—Hello Beautiful, CPR
Excerpt "Best of 2008"—Thieves JargonPerlabra! Holiday Gift Guide!
“This book gleans the generational malaise of its characters, floundering and beautiful. It manages to amble along the surface of their lives falling here and there into pockets of private desires and loneliness. These are the stunning moments, buttressed by deft absurdity, hilarious antics and wordplay. boring boring boring boring boring boring boring is fantastic.”—Ryan Markel, Author of 101 Reasons Not To Have Children.
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The effect is that of artist's journal meets ransom note: the text held hostage by the design.—Print Magazine
When the mysterious gray book that drives their twisted relationship goes missing, Ollister and Adelaide lose their post-modern marbles. He plots revenge against art patriarch The Platypus, while she obsesses over their anti-love affair. Meanwhile, the art school set experiments with bad drugs, bad sex, and bad ideas. But none of these desperate young minds has counted on the intrusion of a punk named Punk and his potent sex drug. This wild slew of characters get caught up in the gravitational pull of The Platypus' giant art ball, where a confused art terrorism cell threatens a ludicrous and hilarious implosion. Zach Plague has written and designed a hybrid typo/graphic novel which skewers the art world, and those boring enough to fall into its traps.
FREE Mini-book!
AND Featuring Sexy Drawings by 
A short story from the book:
The Champion of Forgetting
Here is a list of failures.
Visit Blake Butler's eye-opening 
P R I N T * P R A I S E
"Designed to death, Plague’s seething contempt for banal art gives this satire an edge" —
