City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon, only with more sword fights: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and river gods retire to comfortably shabby apartments.
While I’m writing a story, I am subject to a set of tensions indistinguishable from those that overtake me when I write poems. The distinction is most of all technical, because I find the idea of “poetic stories” more horrifying than yellow fever, and I am always very careful that what happens in my stories suggests to the reader a definite structure, a given reality, as unreal as it might seem to the eyes of a newspaper reader and those beings with-their-feet-on-the-ground. (What are feet? What is the ground?) If I find in your stories a fraternity that excites me and makes me want to be your friend, it is precisely the supreme nerve with which you plant your word trees.
The book established Whitehead’s intelligence and originality as a novelist, but I wasn’t too excited by the world of elevator inspection, and I was frankly irritated by the author’s choice of Lila Mae as the protagonist. Although it’s technically impressive and theoretically laudable when a male novelist succeeds in inhabiting a female persona, something about the actual practice makes me uneasy. Is the heroine doing double duty as the novelist’s fantasy sex object? Is the writer trying to colonize fictional territory that rightfully belongs to women? Or does the young literato, lacking the perks of power and feeling generally smallened by the culture, perhaps believe himself to be, at some deep level, not male at all?
I think “solidarity” is what Freaky Tales would call it, a movie which, believe it or not, I’m actually going to talk about. But again: I’ve given myself permission to write the longest essay anyone will write about Freaky Tales, as an exercise, experiment, statement, and/or self-indulgence; I like writing, and I am enjoying writing this, so I am. But the more I write, the more that length gives permission to anyone who doesn’t want to read it—even encourages them—to close the browser and move on. You’re not stuck with me, after all, the way you have no choice but to see a mural as you drive past it each day. You can go find something you like better and leave me to my fun.
A sharp eye might’ve noticed some changes to the various outlets listed on the Books page, as other places where: Spectator Books in Oakland has been added, there’s a selection of zines on the shelves there now, so if you find yourself on that side of the Bay, head on over, say hi; and but also, Smashwords has been removed.
The table is long, to stretch the unlit length of that long porch, suspended beneath the enormity of the house above, propped out over the steepening slope below. That table’s long, and scrubbed so meticulously clean it might catch even the faintest hint of what light’s available down here and hold it, a reflection, suspended, so it seems, a fraction of an inch or so above that ruthlessly polished surface. A thick orange cord’s been laid along the top of it in a mostly straight and unkinked line until about halfway down, where it ends in a plug, and the line’s taken up by a thin brown cord, continuing on until it in turn ends in a plug joined by a smooth white cord, this one relaxed, looped in a couple-three lazy coils to fetch up at the base of a small white desk lamp, set here at the very head of the table to thinly shine on a lone white saucer laden with three unbitten slices of pressed meat, rectangularly pink. A figure’s sat in a chair, turned away from table, lamp, and plate, a silhouette wrapped in a blanket, arms and legs presumably tucked away, head tipped forward, chin pressed to sunken chest, sharp shoulders rising slowly and settling, slowly, with sleepingly regular breaths, gently stirring a wild crown of loose thin hair.
Agravante’s stood to one side, a hand on the balustrade, a tiny knife in that hand, the wickedly pointed blade maybe half the length of its handle. The collar of his shirt’s undone, the knot of his tie loosened, the both of the same dull color, uncertain in the darkness. He lifts the knife up to balance on its point, held in place by a fingertip, lets it topple to catch it, quick. Lays it gently, clink, on the railing.
“Trumpets,” croaks the other, and Agravante looks to see that head lifted, woozily a-wobble, but those tiny dark eyes are fixed on something far away, over and past the glower of downtown that rusts the bellies of the clouds hung low above, something away out past the unseen horizon.
“Also there’s some bits that are sexy as hell so like, be prepared for that…”
“It’s like Twin Peaks had a baby with Once Upon a Time.”
“Our reviewers loved the world-building and well-drawn characters.”
