WEST OF HERE by Jonathan Evison

West of Here

Jonathan Evison

Algonquin Books

496 pages/$24.95

Whenever I hear the words “Manifest Destiny,” I instinctively picture John Gast’s American Progress, a late nineteenth-century painting whose image is still seared into my mind courtesy of my junior year American history textbook. In the painting, Columbia leads civilization westward across a generic Western landscape, dropping telegraph wire in her wake as terrified Native American savages flee from her visage. In hindsight, the arrogance, racism and sheer mendacity of this justification for American expansion seems obvious, but the question remains: If not Columbia herself, what force drives this nation forward?  In West of Here, Jonathan Evison becomes the latest author to tackle this peculiar facet of the American psyche.

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The Search Party

Sarah’s daughter Sydnee with her grandpa.

(For Sarah 1980-2010)

Just beyond where the paved road ends, in a rut of dead black mud, we find her shoe, the other glass slipper, the one she didn’t lose on her hasty exit from the ball. A few paces further, partially hidden in high grass, we discover her gown, or rather the heap of soot stained rags her gown had been fashioned from. No sign of the Fairy Godmother, that delusional old hag, who vowed to assist Cinderella every step of the way but never once promised the child that anything good would become of the adventure.

Also missing is the pumpkin that had been transformed into a coach, and the mice that served as a team of galloping horses. Beneath the rags is the lifeless body of the brown rat that had acted as coachman. His head is at an awkward angle, obviously broken, and his unmoving eye shines beneath the buttery sun.

One of us picks the thing up by its long tail. The carcass is stiff as stone. After a few sweeping arm swings the rat is catapulting toward the trees that mark the southern border of these hallowed woods where none of us is brave enough to venture. Not for the measly wages the king is paying us. Not for the prince’s puppy-love infatuation for a simple country wench. No. The investigation ends here. Now.

Even the king himself, who has fought a thousand battles and won a dozen wars, dares not enter these woods where witches live and monsters roam, where night wind moves through the branches like the voices of children whispering in frosty undertones, lost children telling secrets so bitterly cold any man’s heart would freeze and shatter in an instant.




–Bob Thurber is the author of Paperboy: A Dysfunctional Novel (Casperian Books, 2011) and the recipient of numerous literary awards, including The Barry Hannah Fiction Prize. He lives in Massachusetts. Visit his website at www.BobThurber.net

We Love Franklin Park

1. Laina Yoswein, who works at a non-profit, & Margarita Korol, who writes and works for Jewcy.com. To read about her take on The Franklin Park Reading Series, and also to hear more about the amazing series curator, Penina Roth, go here. 2. Victoria Comella, a publicist at Penguin, & Mary Barbour, who helps with Freerange, which is a monthly nonfiction reading series.

Last night was the Valentine’s Day installment of the monthly Franklin Park Reading Series. To get in the mood for love, the series featured love stories, and the bar was selling a special Love Potion, which was a serious bitch drink made of vodka, gin, prosecco, and grenadine, along with the usual $4 pints. You could liquor up your date on the cheap! Or, if you preferred, liquor up yourself to drown out the pain of being a loser who is unworthy of anyone’s love.
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A Not-So-Dark and Twisted Valentine’s Day

1. Big crowd at Housing Works. There are never enough chairs! 2. Dale Peck, co-founder of Mischief + Mayhem, reads. 3. Ben Greenman (Celebrity Chekhov) takes a break from the reading to catch up on his favorite picture book about the first lady.


As my boyfriend lives a hundred and seventy-seven miles away and Valentine’s Day dinner over Skype seemed a pretty grim idea, I headed down to Housing Works Bookstore for Mischief + Mayhem’s take on the Day of Love, a reading that promised to be “evil, sarcastic, and mean.” The MC for the evening was Katie Halper – hysterically funny and “recently single” – who was happy to share her red flags for soon-to-fail relationships: writer-types, drinking straight out of the bottle, talking about how much of an asshole you are, aspiring to be a pot head. The good thing, she notes, about dating underachievers is that you don’t have to wish ill on them… they’re already living it.  Jeez, someone hire this girl as a comedy writer.

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Electric Literature presents a CONTEST!

Your story. Performed on stage by a world-renowned actor. And broadcast on public radio.

On Wednesday, March 2, Selected Shorts is hosting an Evening with Electric Literature. Mike Birbiglia, John Lithgow, and others will perform stories by EL contributors Rick Moody, Lydia Millet and Joy Williams.

Ticket holders to the event are invited to submit to the Electric Shorts Contest, co-hosted by Electric Literature and Selected Shorts. The contest will be judged by Rick Moody and the winning story will be read on stage at Symphony Space by one of the evening’s performers, and featured on the Selected Shorts broadcast.

Enticed? Find out how.

Worst Events Coverage Ever?

I was supposed to cover events at AWP for Electric Literature this year. Actually, I’d even secured a camcorder and was attempting to take this piece viral, but instead had to work, and thus got to AWP in DC late this year. I think I may have even lied to Electric Literature and told them I wasn’t even going to be at AWP actually. On the last day of the conference, I took a train out of New York at 5 am, I ran to the National Book Critics Circle booth to sit and answer questions, and then attempted to get a cab back to my hotel. I attempted to do this unseen, as I had told Electric Literature I wasn’t going.

So I’m standing in the middle of Washington DC bumper to bumper traffic with a suitcase, trying to hail a cab, when a cab with a man in it pulls up next to me. I say to the driver, “You have someone already. How do I take the subway to -a hotel name-?” and he says, “No it’s fine get in.” I think it’s weird but whatever I throw my suitcase in the trunk, and am now splitting a cab with another man. The man looks at my goddamn AWP nametag which I forgot I was still wearing and we shake hands and then he says to me, and I joke you not here, “You were supposed to cover events for Electric Literature this week.” The man in the cab is Andy Hunter, Founder and Editor of Electric Literature.

The Novellaist: At the Mountains of Madness, H. P. Lovecraft

THE NOVELLAIST on:

At the Mountains of Madness

By H. P. Lovecraft

Various editions, including several free online

In honor of the continual freezing of the cat’s water, I’m holding off on reviews of a Jean-Christophe Valtat novella in order to return to a hypnotically grim novella from my youth that I read periodically.  Most recently, I’ve enjoyed this text for exactly the pleasures of unraveling the structure of the novella, one which can seem intentionally awkward—the multiple elaboration of a single “what happened?” moment, a moment of sublime WTF-ness—of cosmic vertigo…

Lovecraft’s classic tale of Antarctic science-terror, At the Mountains of Madness, follows geologist Dyer and his team of experts—including Pabodie, the engineer, Lake, the biologist, and Danforth, the neurasthenic youth—as they traipse across our southernmost continent, taking bores of ancient strata of rock.  Sane men going insane in an utterly blank terrain.

Early on, Lake sees a set of inexplicable triangular tracks in the rocks and eventually sets off to lead a small team further inland, arriving at a previously undiscovered and incredibly tall mountain range in the wild land’s heart.  There, Lake finds an aeon-spanning cave, from which he recovers the desiccated bodies of several radially symmetric, many-tentacled, starfish-headed, half-vegetable, man-sized beings—the aliens who left the strange tracks, millennia ago.

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THE RUSSIAN HEART IS DARK AND FULL OF SECRETS

1. David Stromberg, co-translator of A Zoo in Winter who said there was a 55% chance we were in a historical moment. 2. Martin Woodside translates Romanian poetry and says there are a lot of dogs in Romania. 3. Polina Barskova, poet, who also enjoys poetry (pottery) almost as much as poetry.

“I’m going to read really melodramatically like Russians do.  And the Americans say, ‘Oh, God,’” Polina Barskova began as she took the mike.

Barskova has been called one of the most important Russian poets of her generation, and I braved the bitter cold last night to attend a reading and launch party for her latest collection of poetry, The Zoo in Winter, forthcoming from Melville House, at St. Mark’s Books (with the “party” around the corner at Solas).

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donald!

1. Shannon Van Sant, a filmmaker, Jordan Bass, the managing editor of McSweeney’s, & writer and McSweeney’s contributor Gideon Lewis-Kraus. 2. Stephen Elliott, sitting on Eric Martin’s lap.

Donald Rumsfeld’s memoir came out yesterday, and the entire literary world rejoiced! Another book came out yesterday, too: Donald, which is co-authored by Stephen Elliott and Eric Martin. Not coincidentally, it is about Donald Rumsfeld, and what would happen to him if he got lost in his own methods of imprisonment and torture. Break out the lube and vibrators — this sounds sexy.

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The Blur of AWP DC

1. Brandon Tietz. 2. Nik Korpon. 2. Michael Sonbert.

The annual  AWP Conference is a celebration of writers as rockstars. It’s a place to see and be seen, put faces to names best known from online, connect in the flesh with authors, editors, publishers, former classmates and teachers. It’s a place to network for jobs, tune in to publishing trends, fondle freshly minted books from favorite indie presses. It’s a place to be dazzled by cover designs, load up on litmags, horde paraphernalia (Kore pencils, Hobart flasks, Flatmancrooked condoms). It’s a place to read in front of rapt audiences, make new friends and fans, smoke, drink and dance until well past midnight, dream big, get laid. AWP is a blur.

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