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June 26, 2006

Suspect Thoughts

Gleaming and fresh in my mailbox this week (in my new house!--tons to report on that front, which I promise to do in the next blog entry) was the new novel by Peggy Munson, Origami Striptease--the latest in a quickly expanding line of excellent books published by Suspect Thoughts Press. I'm reading the book right now, and it's really great--filled with odd, wandering, wonderfully nasty-minded characters, and written in an exciting prose style. If you're looking for some edgy, thrilling, strange, and/or sexy books to read this summer, I highly recommend heading over to the "adults only" Suspect Thoughts site and checking out some of their other titles. (You can even read excerpts from some of the books to give you an idea what you'll be getting.)

Suspect Thoughts is exciting because they're doing edgy, risky books at a time when (sadly) fewer and fewer people read, at a time when (sadly x2) most mainstream publishers are only publishing their tried-and-true moneymaking standbys. Suspect Thoughts has also published the books pictured above and below: the mindblowing and hilarious Pulling Taffy by Mattilda, ie Matt Bernstein Sycamore; the bizarre "contemporary gods" fantasy The Forgotten Ones by my beloved Canadian pal Douglas Ferguson; the brutally lovely and oddly Shakespearean One of These Things Is Not Like the Other by D. Travers Scott; as well as other excellent titles (novels, poetry collections, essays, and anthologies) by folks like Tom Woolley, Jennifer Natalya Fink, Justin Chin, Dodie Bellamy (one of the world's greatest, most inventive writers), and the late Sam D'Allesandro (about whom I've previously blogged). These are just a few--there's still a bunch of Suspect Thoughts books I want to read but haven't.

Coming up later this summer is the new book by Stephen Beachy. I can't f@#$ing wait for this!!!! Stephen is a good friend of mine, but he's also one of my favorite writers, past present future. I love his books just about as much as I love theme parks, old horror movies, warm friendly dogs, etc etc. Among writers still living, he's right up there with folks like Joy Williams or Robert Glück or Daniel Woodrell or Cormac McCarthy (click this McCarthy site link to see more work by my own great website designer, Michael Borum!) or Alice Munro or Kevin Killian or Dennis Cooper (I know--that's a pretty eclectic list). Stephen is completely brilliant, and his prose is always astonishing. (Some of you might know about him from his scandalous expose' of the J.T. Leroy lie in New York Magazine last year; you should also check out his novels THE WHISTLING SONG and/or DISTORTION). Some Phantom / No Time Flat is two of Stephen's novellas sandwiched into one book, and you can bet I'm going to be writing a lot more about it around August or September when it's published.

Tomorrow or Wednesday: an update on the stresses of moving into our new house.