[post] with a review of [name of author]'s [title]

August 31, 2022 3:50 PM

[title] is both more and less than a novella; but mostly more. Caustic, biting, brutal, puzzling and punishing. Riddled with lapses, pockmarked with gaps and schisms, though overdetermined with nearly any and every cliché and esoteric allusion imaginable, [title] is too much and too little, a surplus of negativity, an excess of void. [title] refuses to stand still, its pages quivering restlessly between its covers, its scope unbounded despite only 87 pages. from [name of author]’s [title], Reviewed by Anthony Ballas

[title]: an excerpt from Sublunary Editions

posted by chavenet (10 comments total)

[comment]
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:16 PM on August 31, 2022 [8 favorites]

Pynchon had to write this, and Ballas played Pynchon in reviewing it. I know I am wrong. I was just compelled to say something after Northern New Mexico's literary tossed salad was thrown out, from hell to breakfast. Believe me he wants out of Northern New Mexico in the worst way, he is sick of weekend peyote rituals. He wants to sink his teeth into some San Diego, or Santa Barbara.
posted by Oyéah at 4:28 PM on August 31, 2022 [2 favorites]

I was trading cover blurb excerpts (and what they mean) recently with a couple of current/past booksellers:

"Magisterial" -- as thick as a brick, with copious footnotes, index, and 80-page bibliography
"Poignant" -- I didn't get it
"Best-selling" -- I didn't read it, but everyone who did gave it a good review
"A towering achievement" -- 40% too long
"A magnum opus" -- 80% too long
"Evocative" -- reminds me of something else
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:37 PM on August 31, 2022 [11 favorites]

Sounds like a McSweeney's column that got out of hand.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:48 PM on August 31, 2022 [4 favorites]

Barry Lyndon!
posted by clavdivs at 5:00 PM on August 31, 2022 [1 favorite]

pockmarked with gaps and schisms

The sockpuppet harvest will be bountiful this year.
posted by mhoye at 5:17 PM on August 31, 2022 [9 favorites]

Metafilter: generally limps along in a mumblecore-like stupor before stumbling upon some final, pathos-laden and sigh-inducing epiphany.
posted by Umami Dearest at 12:20 AM on September 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

Schisms? Is [author] the Catholic Church? Also, "prestige-industrial-complex" was nice, even if the [noun]-industrial complex formulation tends to be a bit overused; an [noun]-industrial-complex-industrial complex, if you will.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:28 AM on September 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Dibs on "Sigh Inducing Epiphany" as a band name
posted by Billiken at 8:08 AM on September 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

No, no, it must be Epiphany Lite!
posted by Oyéah at 10:01 PM on September 1, 2022 [1 favorite]