Here's an unabashed plug for a book I recently very much enjoyed:
Eugene Ostashevsky
Iterature
Ugly Duckling Press
$12
Right from the start, Ostashevsky’s Iterature declares itself: the cover shows, apropos, the headless horseman rearing up, the wind blasting behind him. And, indeed, we’re in for quite a chase through Romania, Coke ads, Spinoza, safaris, and rhyming, rhyming, rhyming!
Ostashevsky plays with language and narrative as if they were taffy:
Do-ra-me-fa-so-la-ti-do
We did what we had to do
We rhymed pillage with village
The responsibility rests with language.
We had nothing to do with it
We’re just a bunch of fictional characters
We don’t have any other characters
Except for out letters, that is our characters
Iterature is so rad: it moves a whopping pace and, believe me, it’s a pleasant sort of work keeping up with the layered references, entendres, and linguistic gymnastics. Honestly, and strangely enough, despite the suffused wit throughout, Iterature is very nearly mythic.
hoped not further delayed, oberiu.
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