john underkoffler

how... how did the entire gamelan get wedged in there like that? what? nonsense. strom thurmond doesn't even have opposable thumbs.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

la medusa is a magnificent, monumental work. tempting to say that @VanessaPlace2 creates a gorgeous one-time (non-barthy) literature of exhaustion by juicing impossible volumes from the words we're all allotted: so nothing's left? not so: she shows language's permanent abundance.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

"how little we have done to deserve these great gifts", you probably think. not so! what's happening here is actually milty friedman and freddy hayek's machinery precision-maximizing shareholder value while the invisible hand rummages furiously in culture's socks & undies drawer.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

the klober muller character in gonçalo m tavares's gobsmackwork joseph walser's machine: one of recent lit's great comic summonings. but what he offers re: personal science (rhett mcneil's überfine rendering, pp.120-4) is astonishing. @Dalkey_Archive please: tavares is essential!

[john underkoffler @john_under]

tilty hope-bolus that even as th' u.s. works diligently to bite its own head into bloody flaps there should exist a publishing florescence to include just e.g. @press_erratum, calamari archive, isolarii, @DorothyProject, and @Dalkey_Archive. for full marvelosity, simulread these.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

@IneluctableQuak @gariellelutz @saintsoftness a pachinko bounce found jack cox (dodge rose up next in 2026) but revealed in turn jeremy m. davies, whose carom connection to cardenas is raw delight and whose 'fancy' is a lovely runaway megaton, metastructure metabolized to muscle & meaning; a scalded-thrilling ontologic yowl.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

2025's optico-typographico-cognito-narrative incursion through the iris onto the retina shambling up the string pressing damply into the lobes near broca's and wernicke's bivouacs and along the hippocampal condo to remain buzzing in the precuneus's splendidly recirculative vicus.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

gratitude for induced firsts: @IneluctableQuak --> ocampo, davila, rivera garza; meades --> (dba) derek raymond. knowably overdue firsts: lobo antunes, @gariellelutz, cooper, del paso, jahnn, belben. erumpent spectacularity: butler, amdahl, @saintsoftness, singer, pawson, turner.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

our permanent orgy of incontinent omnipraise has flattened all superlative to semantic trompe l'oeil, so there's no way left to speak about rosalind belben's "the limit". out the phoneto-syntactic axis a stride past gass. an ecstasy of devastation, words living & of darkest soil.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

cărtărescu's solenoid is connected on topics of mind and physiology by transatlantic & -millennial cables to del paso's palinuro of mexico; the latter meanwhile jostles in jolly contention for reference materials with the work of p. greenaway, esp. the tulse luper suitcase films.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

@TheLuisPanini (& other angeleno architectobibliophiles) -- lautner's mauer house is open today & tomorrow: grandson's preparing to restore the place, selling former bound residents (~10k volumes). heavy on cali. geology, mesoamerican anthropology; much print and spatial delight.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

can someone (@TheUntranslated?) with the original of solenoid tell us what the romanian words are that sean cotter has transmuted into the dirigibly gasstastic "oboes, cobras, and cargo boats" amidst the tattoo fantasy & a bit over halfway down p.165 in the deep vellum edition?

[john underkoffler @john_under]

@TheUntranslated a delight to be name-adjacent to you in the hinterquarters of the beast...

[john underkoffler @john_under]

.. with, as 2024's representedest presses, @CoronaSamizdat, @FumdEstampa, @andothertweets, @Dalkey_Archive primal-always, @NewDirections, @DeepVellum, @WhiteRabbitBks: paragons // ref: @HarschRick424, @IneluctableQuak, @kristinemuslim, @MichaelTCisco, @mjohnharrison.bsky.social

[john underkoffler @john_under]

of three scoreish 2024 reads, finest lobe-grope and sulcus-pummel from m cisco: animal money; m j cardenas: american abductions; k o muslim: the drone outside + all usly available; j craig: wall; r harsch: five, but esp. voices after evelyn; r ducornet: those few unread (cont'd)

[john underkoffler @john_under]

d vardeman: april is the cruelest month; c schutt: a day, a night, another day, summer; i bachmann: malina; j rulfo: pedro páramo; g murnane: landscape with landscape; a schmidt: b/moondocks; e baltasar: mammoth; m j harrison: the centauri device; r loewinsohn: magnetic fields...

[john underkoffler @john_under]

from the great dennis lee's 'civil elegies' aloud into near space: "yet still they take the world full force on their nerve ends, leaving the / bloody impress of their bodies face forward in time and i believe / they will not go under until they have taken the measure of empire."

[john underkoffler @john_under]

serial watch of alk's/green's "the murder of fred hampton" / "the weather underground" resonant & timely; in the latter, several weathermen (as dohrn too refers to herself) express a goading, existential anguish-panic-paralysis in the face of gleeful us-led genocide. then as now.

[john underkoffler @john_under]

@blprnt cartarescu: solenoid; goytisolo: antagony; de palol: garden of seven twilights; cisco: animal money; harsch: manifold destiny of eddie vegas; gauer: novel explosives; mcelroy: women and men; barth: sot-weed factor; gaddis: j.r.; gass: the tunnel; young: miss macintosh, my darling