Month: December 2017

DEAR CYBORGS selected for BOMB Magazine’s year-end roundup

Chris Kraus and Tobias Carroll both mention DEAR CYBORGS in BOMB Magazine’s year-end roundup. Chris Kraus writes:

Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs (FSG Originals) is a novel of the future. It’s surprising, and—while giving despair its full measure—it’s surprisingly inspiring. A Bolano-esque labyrinth of shaggy dog stories flow through the narrator, describing the existential and physical conditions of a present in which it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, but it’s written in calm and succinct, elegant prose. Lim nails the amnesia of sensory overload perfectly. Attending a cultural event, the narrator and friends are enthralled by Jonas Mekas’ chilling meditation on history and mortality but when they repair to a bar and watch a reality TV show on screen, his words evaporate.

see the rest of the selections here.

Interviewed on Lumpen Radio’s “Eye 94”

lumpenradio logo

out of chicago, Lumpen Radio (105.5 FM WLPN) has a books and literature program called Eye 94. this year’s past shows have included interviews with Open Letters publisher chad post and translator charlotte mandell. their full archives are here.

i was happy — though a little nervous — to be interviewed live this past sunday by the trio of gentlemenly hosts: jeremy kitchen, mike sack, and jamie trecker. you can listen to the interview through the widget above or here.

Dear Cyborgs listed on Dennis Cooper’s “Mine for yours” 2017 round-up list

Dennis Cooper’s “Mine for yours” is a most necessary annual starmap of novels, poetry, music and movies. and this year he includes DEAR CYBORGS(!) along with excellent work by Renee Gladman, Gary Lutz, Lidia Yuknavitch, Nathaniel Mackey, Jen George, Eileen Myles, Michael Seidlinger, Jarett Kobek, and many great others.

his blog in general is worth following. the most recent entry, for instance, is an epic collection of “cutaway” illustrations, from which this “kiss” is but one example of things once seen not unseeable.

Year in Reading up at The Millions

“Our current condition of ambient despair gets an excellent portraiture in Evelyn Hampton’s The Aleatory AbyssIt’s an obscure book about being obscure—or at least it is a book about occupying forgotten interstitial spaces and about being of and among technological detritus. In Hampton’s world we live our lives not in streets, schools, libraries, parks, or other public commons but online and in Barnes & Nobles, Starbucks, malls, parking lots, and other privatized spaces; that is, Hampton shows us a familiar world. Personhood and agency here in the Anthropocene are moribund concepts, if not already vestigial, and great creatures called multinationals and state actors roam the terrain while we endure like plankton or parasites below and beside their decisions. This short book also pays homage to and is haunted by Hampton’s friend, the activist and writer Mark Baumer, who died in the middle of a mythic project that found him walking barefoot across America. Both artists are turned helplessly into elegists. Baumer’s work was part durational performance piece, part environmental fundraiser, part quixotic publicity stunt, and part personal protest. He kept record of his walk through a series of videos and blog posts, many of them heartbreakingly prescient, especially his final video, posted the day after the Trump inauguration, the day he died when struck by an SUV. Hampton’s work transmutes Baumer’s extroverted dissent, his syncopated poetic voice, and his manic video edits into its twinned flip: an equally clear-eyed but introverted analysis, a quieter but no less fierce objection. The Aleatory Abyss is a beautiful work, and profits from sales will go to the charity Mark Baumer was walking for: the FANG collective…”

Read the rest at: https://themillions.com/2017/12/year-reading-eugene-lim.html

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