PHOTO BY CATHERINE BARNETT Ben Lerner again walks the outer edges of prose form and perspective in his third novel, The Topeka School, a book “about family and art and memory and meaning, how it’s made and unmade,” to borrow a line from one of its many extraordinary passages. The obsession humming under the well-wrought, […]
Books
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Fur Not Light Poetry Review: Jeff Alessandrelli’s Latest Work Is Perfectly Balanced and Deeply Funny
COURTESY OF BURNSIDE REVIEW PRESS Fur Not Light, Jeff Alessandrelli’s latest volume of poetry, is a postmodern data dump—a purge of cultural reference points (see if you can spot the nods to the Misfits, Wittgenstein, Allen Ginsburg, and the Notorious B.I.G.), phrases stuck in a loop, names of friends and lovers, and strange yet relatable […]
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Fur Not Light Poetry Review: Jeff Alessandrelli’s Latest Work Is Perfectly Balanced and Deeply Funny
I, too, would like to know how to fold a burrito without losing its contents.
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Shopping for the Book Snob in Your Life
Wallace Books Kathleen Marie / Mercury Staff Portland is chock full of great bookstores where you’ll find a ton of gifts, and of course, Powell’s is an easy choice… that can also be overwhelming, and more often than not, crowded. So why not try some smaller local shops that may surprise you? Note: This is […]
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Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier’s November Is the Promising Start to a Sprawling Noir
Image Comics November, a collaboration between Portland comics writer Matt Fraction and French artist Elsa Charretier, came out earlier this month; tonight, Fraction will be at Books with Pictures to celebrate its release. It’s a release worth celebrating: November is good, and even if it feels like the start of something larger (probably because it […]
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Portland Book Festival 2019 Report: Oh, Hello Tim O’Brien! and a Few *Chef’s Kiss* Panels
Tim O’Brien, interviewed by Dave Miller Blair Stenvick The 2019 Portland Book Festival—Literary Arts’ annual one-day book and author extravaganza—popped off pretty-damn-seamlessly this year. Portland’s rain showed up in traditional damp, mono-cloud fashion, but the locality of the readings and book fair (in and around the Portland Art Museum) meant attendees didn’t have to endure […]
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Who Should I See At the 2019 Portland Book Festival?
Ross Gay NATASHA KOMODA The popular, one-day Portland Book Festival (PBF) returns this Saturday to fill area bookshelves, introduce new voices, and provide authors a spotlight to read and discuss their works. This is the fifth year since local nonprofit Literary Arts took over the floundering Wordstock—they changed the festival’s name last year—and, along the […]
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R&B Legend Booker T. Jones’ New Memoir Time is Tight Is Impassioned, Uneven
Booker T. Jones Booker T. Jones gets a lifetime pass. That’s what you earn when you’ve amassed the discography the musician has during his nearly 75 years on this planet. Drop his name in casual conversation, and his achievements scroll like the tracklist of a Time-Life CD collection being hawked on TV in the mind’s […]
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Shopping for the Book Snob in Your Life
Portland is chock full of great bookstores where you’ll find a ton of gifts, and of course, Powell’s is an easy choice… that can also be overwhelming, and more often than not, crowded. So why not try some smaller local shops that may surprise you? Note: This is by no means an exhaustive list, but […]
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The Crying Book Review: Heather Christle’s Poetic Bites of Prose Investigate the History of Our Tears
AUTHOR PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER DEWEESE Heather Christle turns to poets, historians, psychologists, Medieval mystics, philosophers, scientists, and pseudo-scientists in her search for clues to the mystery of human tears. She considers performance art pieces, silent films, and NASA missions. She interviews researchers and digs through the archives of a turn-of-the-century physician famous for pioneering “bed […]
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Slanted Dishes on Simon Tam’s Love Life, Band Drama, and Supreme Court Fight
AUTHOR PHOTO BY SARAH GIFFROW Slanted is not a book to read before bed. Despite being a memoir that rolls up its sleeves and digs into the finer points of intellectual property law, musician and activist Simon Tam’s prose has a fist-pumping, rock ’n’ roll romanticism that makes you wanna get up and kick things. […]