Get on your good side? I'm one of your RM favorites.

Yeah, I know, but i like to be dramatic.

for outskirts of society, sorta down and out but sorta on an adventure, Neuromancer is good.

I did not recently read Hempel, but that Denis Johnson title might be what I'm after. Second time this week that his name has come up.

Or, I could just give Libra another chance.

At some point you should finish Libra.

Two more things: The World Within the Word by William H. Gass. Gass might be the finest writer of the last 50 years, here is an excerpt from the first essay, "The Doomed in Their Sinking," which is on suicide.

Crane went sudden as a springboard. The Gulf gave nothing back. My mother, I remember, took her time. She held the house around her as she held her bathrobe, safely doorpinned down its floorlength, the metal threads glinting like those gay gold loops which close the coat of a grenadier, though there were gaps of course...unseemly as sometimes a door is on a chain...so that to urinate she had to hoist the whole thing like a skirt, collecting the cloth in fat pleats with her fingers, wads which soon out-oozed her fists and sprang slowly away...one consequence...so that she felt she had to hover above the hole, the seat (clouds don't care about their aim), unsteadily...necessarily...more and more so as the nighttime days drew on, so that the robe grew damp the way the sweater on a long drink grows, soggy from edge to center, until I found I cared with what success she peed when what she swallowed was herself and what streamed out of her in consequence seemed me.

Also, Mick a while ago recommended Joyelle McSweeney. Her most recent poetry collection Percussion Grenade is a little miracle.

For my money, Hannah is the best writer out of that bunch and Airships is a masterpiece. "It was then that I decided to stop fucking around and be a Christian" is the end to one of the stories, or some fucking shit like that. Denis Johnson is great too, haven't read Hempel, but don't overlook Hannah.

It's worth noting that nine times out of ten, I settle for what can be found at Half Price Books based on a group of recommendations. Today, I almost picked up the only Johnson title I saw, which was Tree of Smoke (at $4 for a good looking hardcover, I don't really know what stopped me), but ultimately spent that money on Hempel's Tumble Home. It's exactly what I was looking for.

It's worth noting that nine times out of ten, I settle for what can be found at Half Price Books based on a group of recommendations. Today, I almost picked up the only Johnson title I saw, which was Tree of Smoke (at $4 for a good looking hardcover, I don't really know what stopped me), but ultimately spent that money on Hempel's Tumble Home. It's exactly what I was looking for.

Glad you liked it. I got your PM, I'll get back to you on poetry soon. Reading a lot right now, preparing an essay on Lear and poetics that cites McSweeney. But soon.

Half Price's inventory is in constant flux. I'll keep checking in. What don't you like about the stories in Tumble Home?

I'd love to see it when you finish. Did you have some work come out recently? And essay I think? (Or maybe it was poetry?)

Not too much, a piece up at The Pinch and a few poems picked up that are pending publication, but it's been slow, mostly because I'm limiting myself to larger venues now. I did have a blog up at The Journal a while back, that might be what you mean. I applied to blog for Ploughshares so hopefully that comes through.

7/10 Amy Hempel is still Amy Hempel

I can't help but compare her to Carver, because Carver is the only other "minimalist" writer that I'm really familiar with. His stories are more immediate than hers seem to be. I go through these moments in Tumble that cause me to dread what's coming next, but then she'll reward that thought with something innocent. It's all very paranoid, and I like it.

Tony Peebles--handsome, hearty next-door neighbor--still had not arrived.
"Heart attack," someone said.
"Car wreck," someone else said.
"Heart attack then car wreck," came a chorus,
"Talking to someone at the store," said his wife. "He went there an hour ago. I was telling Judy, he goes to pick up steaks, there could be a stuffed effigy of the butcher behind the counter, Tony'd engage it in conversation."
Only a couple of us knew what was taking so long.
The children's dog had been killed a month before. The children felt it would be unfair to get another dog--unfair to their former dog. The children were in pain, and I felt I knew what to say. I said to their father, quoting a lovely poem, "Tell them this: 'The need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.'"
He said, "That's what I used to tell myself when I cheated on my ex-wife."
But he had agreed, and the men were picking up the children's new dog, a pup from a nearby camp.