The following is a modified version of the first essay in Steve Aylett: A Critical Anthology (Sein und Werden, 2016), in which various authors discuss and analyze the work of Steve Aylett. The anthology is edited by Bill Ectric and D. Harlan Wilson. As more people find out what UK author Steve Aylett is all about, loyal cult following may yet explode into full-fledged … [Read more...]
Book Review – Stranger Days: A Novel by Rachel Kendall
Hemingway praised Paris as “a movable feast.” Henry James, in his preface to the 1903 edition of The Ambassadors, described a cliché that may or may not be true. He said “the moral scheme breaks down in Paris” and that “hundreds of thousands of…persons annually visit the place for the sake of the probable catastrophe.” This cliché presents a challenge. An author who writes … [Read more...]
Book Review – Time Adjusters & Other Stories by Bill Ectric
The modern fables that make up Bill Ectric's new collection of stories, Time Adjusters, are difficult to classify, in the best way possible. They seem a comic-book mishmash of science fiction and magical realism, one turn of the screw toward another world. At first, the author paints a suburban landscape where pet baboons chase children through the streets, and we are not sure … [Read more...]
Legendary Poet, Lyricist Pete Brown
On June 16 ("Bloomsday"), 1964, Pete Brown gave the first ever poetry reading at Morden Tower, now a literary landmark in Newcastle, England. The Morden Tower Readings, conceived and organized by Tom and Connie Pickard, went on to host readings by more poets than can be listed here, especially from the Beat and Black Mountain movements, including Allen Ginsberg's first European … [Read more...]
Tamper by Bill Ectric, reviewed by Eric D. Lehman
Tamper, the new book by Bill Ectric, frames itself as a boy named Whit's effort to comprehend his past. Did he have a prophetic dream about a bag of bones on the side of the road? Did his friend Paul Clemmons really disappear in a pile of leaves, never to emerge? It is not at all clear. What is clear is that Whit and his friend Roger live on the border of what we would call … [Read more...]
