Anticipation Station

Reading in the summer what will bloom in the fall

I’ve received some interesting review copies of upcoming books in the past week or so. Due, I suppose, to my history as an editor and occasional writer regarding books and authors, I’m lucky enough to find galleys in my P.O. Box now and then. I’m even luckier when something arrives that I’m immediately excited to check out, which has been the case with some of these. I thought I’d tell you about them. I can’t review them yet, but I can at least say that I hope one or two of them prove interesting to write more about later.

Lazarus Man by Richard Price (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
That Price is one of the greatest living writers on crime and the city would be a given even if he hadn’t published anything else since the seminal gang novel The Wanderers in 1974. But then there was the defining dealers-and-cops saga Clockers in 1992 and the Lower East Side gentrifiers-and-locals epic Lush Life in 2008. Price is also a prolific screenwriter, including his intimate involvement with HBO’s The Wire, The Deuce, The Night Of, and The Outsider.
Lazarus Man is about the collapse of a residential building in East Harlem and the impact it has on the community. The one-sheet that came with the book calls it an “ambitious Big-Canvas novel,” and based on Price’s history I have no cause to doubt that. I’m looking forward to starting it even though White’s previous novel, 2015’s The Whites, which he published under the pen name Harry Brandt even though everyone knew it was Price, which is silly, didn’t click for me. But I am an optimistic and indulgent reader when it comes to favorite authors, and Price is one.
Lazarus Man will be published on 11/12/24.

Annihilation by Michel Houellebecq (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Miserable fuck and inveterate edgelord Houellebecq, of whom I have been an occasional fan, has a new English-language translation of his recent novel coming this fall, and the accompanying press release calls it “unexpectedly tender” and brags about “for the first time in Houellebecq’s career… a sense of hope.” Sales tactic? Or has the man softened a bit now, at 68? Or, more importantly, is tenderness—if there is tenderness here—always a sign of softness? I’ll report back—if the question remains interesting as I read.
The back-cover synopsis from the advance readers’ copy says, “France, 2027: Mysterious cyberattacks, a feverish presidential election, and a government official whose personal life is in freefall.” Color me intrigued. I just hope there’s enough vintage, delicious Houellebecqian misanthropy to keep me nourished.
Annihilation will be published on 10/8/24.

Ripcord by Nate Lippens (Semiotext(e))
Lippens previous novel, 2021’s My Dead Book, was a melancholy, beautiful, chronicle of queer memory and survival. Semiotext(e) is now publishing, along with a reissue of My Dead Book, Lippens’s follow-up, Ripcord. I’d be perfectly content with more of the same, having enjoyed My Dead Book as much as I did. But I sense, based just on the back-cover synopsis here, that Ripcord will be a deftly plotted, ruminative, and darkly funny (the first line: “Some people get the glory. Some people get the glory hole”) read.
Ripcord will be published on 10/22/24.

Myth Lab: Theories of Plastic Love by Jack Skelley (Far West Press)
Jack Skelley is an author of poetry and prose as well as a musician and a friendly acquaintance, full disclosure, of mine. His new book, at first glance, feels seductively indefinable. Skimming through it, I see poetic language in digestible paragraph-chunks, but I can’t quite grasp, yet, what it’s going to be getting at. I like that sense of mystery. The extremely lofty back-cover text reads, in part: “If C.G. Jung, magic-mushroom shaman Terence McKenna and Camille Paglia had a three-way while binging on George Bataille and undergoing Hormone Replacement Therapy, their baby might be the erotic cocktail of Myth Lab.” Okay, then. Sold.
Myth Lab: Theories of Plastic Love will be published on 7/2/24.

Now, in brief, here are some things I’ve been reading since I last ‘stacked…

Who Are You Dorothy Dean (edited by Anaïs Ngbanzo; Editions 1989)
The uncollected work of writer and actress Dorothy Dean, a star in the Warholian Factory firmament, is compiled in this new volume. Musings, letters between Dean and such figures as Edie Sedgwick and Rene Ricard, film reviews (a lovely summation of The Omen: “Happily, no sex. Happily, also, a wonderful, sleek, slick decapitation and a defenestration,” and more… This is a witty, catty gem honoring the sporadic output of a little-known but quite important subcultural figure.

Mediums Rare by Richard Matheson
This nonfiction-ish book by the author of novels such as I Am Legend (excellent; ignore the movie) and Hell House (solid if you like ghost stories; the 1973 schlocky horror movie based on it is fun) is a highly curated, selected history of parapsychological concerns. Matheson covers mediums from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century, keeping the prose appropriately novelistic (at times, it’s even pleasurably purple).

The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Inspired by his time spent in Hollywood fleecing studio executives who were eager to adapt his novel Brideshead Revisited for the screen, Waugh’s short book is a minor cousin to Nathanael West’s Day of the Locust, the uber-text of Tinseltown’s moral bankruptcy, as well as West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, since Waugh’s novel treads, also, on the ground of advice-columns. The Loved One, in typically morbid Waugh fashion, adds the funeral industries for both pets and people to the mix. It’s as witty as you’d guess, and somehow manages to be both breezy and pitch-black. That’s the deal with Waugh, though. Waugh’s wheelhouse, as it were.

Finally, I am pleased to say that the Apology podcast is returning soon. Let’s say… early July? Upcoming guests include Henry Rollins and Dasha Nekrasova, and both episodes are goldmines of book recommendations and heartfelt opinions.

Recommendations for reads? Ripostes to my opines? Comment or message me anytime.