I know everyone likes endnotes, but if you have ever wanted my list of works cited for None of this is normal all in one place, well this is for you.
PDF here. HTML below the fold.
Continue readingArchive for None of this is normal
My bibliography/works cited for None of this is normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer
Posted in None of this is normal, Writing with tags bibliography, Jeff VanderMeer, New Weird, new weird fiction, None of this is normal, VanderMeer, works cited on 22 July 2020 by BenBook cover!!!!!
Posted in None of this is normal, Uncategorized with tags Book cover, Jeff VanderMeer, None of this is normal on 18 March 2018 by BenThis image will likely be updated slightly before the book is released, but here is the cover for None of this is normal: The Fiction of Jeff VanderMeer, coming this fall from University of Minnesota Press.
I have asked for the name of the designer(s) who produced the cover and will update this post when I know.
Edit: the cover was designed by Michel Vrana, who tweets from @MichelVrana.
In any case, it’s amazing and does exactly what I wanted in terms of capturing what the book is about without in any way being what I anticipated. That’s just the best.
On Dradin, in Love; or, VanderMeer ephemera
Posted in None of this is normal, Writing with tags Ambergris, City of Saints and Madmen, criticism, Dradin in Love, genre, horror, literature, New Weird, None of this is normal, VanderMeer, Weird fiction on 13 July 2017 by BenPart of the reason I wanted to write about Jeff VanderMeer is Dradin, in Love, the 1996 novella that became the first section of “The Book of Ambergris” in City of Saints and Madmen. It is a very strange story insofar as it is set in a secondary world but includes few of the trappings of fantasy. I am currently trying to wrap up my chapter on the Ambergris novels and was committed to shoe-horning my thoughts on Dradin in there somewhere. Overall, the chapter discusses how the Ambergris books take up both postmodernist poetics and the secondary world-building of fantasy. These two things do not exist with one another easily, as the skepticism endemic to postmodernist fiction tends to destroy the naive worlds found in fantasy. However, I argue that Ambergris is a world, a materiality, entirely made up of its textuality. Whereas in fictions such as House of Leaves, textuality becomes an abyss without a bottom into which characters and events might fall, in City of Saints and Madmen this textuality is the bottom, the condition. You will have to read the book to get more about that.
That all said, I am so focused in the chapter on Duncan Shriek that maintaining the discussion of Dradin became untenable. As such, I have cut it and provide it here, for your consideration and amusement. Enjoy. Or not. (BTW, the last line of this refers to the title of this subsection of the chapter, “This is Ambergris,” which is a line from “The Strange Case of X,” the fourth section of City of Saints and Madmen.)
evening redness 