La Medusa

Each metropolis preselects its suicide like an officer packs a capsule, for if a city lives by remembering, mein Leibnitz Herr, the opposite must also be true, ergo a city dies from forgetting, and such death is by the city’s own hand, it turns it neglected bungalows to gallows and potholes its veins.

Wasn't Leibnitz snowed in somewhere and instead of completing a mathematical treatise, instead developed a system for irrigation? I recall reading that somewhere in the shadowed corridors of my memory. Likewise the dump of snow we experienced in fits and starts last week and into this weekend put all other endeavors on hold. I was left with this hefty tome and an otherworldly silence. Some other reviewer led me to explore Blake Butler's show more conversation with Vanessa Place in html.giant. A resounding thunderclap of affectation was discovered. I did not allow that to dissuade me. There are threads and patches of this novel which remain inscrutable. There are also lush expanses of a poetic argot which only a well-read polyglot could embrace. I may be just pulling out of the station towards Well Read. I struggle enough with English.

La Medusa concerns Los Angeles, the City of Angels, Hollywood(land) and the crack and Glock infested corner of the American imagination. The associations between threads and characters revealed whispers of our cinematic memory, one from Sunset Boulevard to Magnolia, though Crash (2004) appears a lodestar as it is for Danielewski and Ericson.

The snow afforded ponderous solitude and muscle memory conjured the feral. Hibernation is presupposed by mastication and gnawing remains a poetic ritual. Salvaging through the depths of La Medusa, one can certainly be sated if not unhinged by its rich eloquence. show less

I've been planning a review of this for months. It deserves a review. I will. Until then I'll say: read this book.

(also- there's a cool Vanessa Place appreciation post on htmlgiant right now)