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We finally broke down and joined Twitter.

[Long sigh.]

The Shanghai Gesture Now Available as a Serialized Audio Book From BOMB & AIR

An Audio Book of Gary Indiana reading from his first novel since 2003's Do Everything In The Dark, The Shanghai Gesture, is now available as a podcast from BOMB Magazine and Art International Radio.

Shanghai Gesture a Village Voice 'Spring Book Pick'

The Shanghai Gesture, a novel by Gary Indiana (April), was selected by the Village Voice as a "Spring Book Pick."

They say:

"This enormously playful seventh novel from Gary Indiana is a riff on Sax Rohmer's infamously effeminate and evil villain, Fu Manchu, and the two "medicament"-addicted Sherlock Holmes types who attempt to stop him. The sarcastic, unyielding fury that permeated last year's criticism collection Utopia's Debris is here, too, but sublimated: Narcolepsy, an astonishingly degraded Holiday Inn, and a ship called The Ardent Somdomite feature prominently."

Some Things That Meant the World to Me -- Starred Review

Joshua Mohr's first review for his first novel, Some Things That Meant the World to Me (we'll be releasing his second novel June 2010), is a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Here's a snippet:

"Mohr's first novel is biting and heartbreaking, a piercing look at the indelible scars a violent past has left on a young man named Rhonda. The disturbing narrative engine - Rhonda's renaming and reimagining of the world around him to fit into his damaged logic - keeps the story creepily moving as it touches on homebrew prison wine and Rhonda's friendship with his childhood self, little-Rhonda. Mohr uses punchy, tightly wound prose to pull readers into a nightmarish landscape, but he never loses the heart of his story; it's as touching as it is shocking."

Erotomania's Spanish Cover.

Erotomania: A Romance is to be published in Spain by Tusquets Editores.

2 ForeWord Book of the Year Finalists.

1940, by Jay Neugeboren, is a finalist for historical fiction in ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards.

The Drop Edge of Yonder, by Rudolph Wurlitzer, is a finalist for literary fiction in ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards.

Winners will be announced at Book Expo America, late-May. Stay tuned...

James Gibbons Hits Nail on Head in Bookforum review of The Shanghai Gesture

James Gibbons provides a tremendously enthusiastic review of The Shanghai Gesture, by Gary Indiana, in the April / May issue of Bookforum, bestowing the book (and author) with some much-deserved praise:

"An uproarious, confounding, turbocharged fantasia that manages, alongside all its imaginative bravura, to hold up to our globalized epoch the fun-house mirror it deserves.

"This most socially astute writer has fashioned a riotous artifact that is both self-contained and self-consuming; The Shanghai Gesture is at once a wicked riposte to contemporary failings and an aesthete's hallucinatory folktale. That the writing can balance Indiana's thoroughgoing pessimism with a yarn of such imaginative buoyancy is not the least of its achievements."

The book is now available for sale through various booksellers, as well as through our website.

Drop Edge in The Believer's Top 20.

The Drop Edge of Yonder by Rudolph Wurlitzer was praised by readers of The Believer as one of the "strongest works of fiction published in 2008."

Apparently, once all the tabs were tabulated and all the hanging chads were swept under the doormat, they found it to be the 19th highest vote-getter.

Over at The Believer website, they have the top twenty books in the reader survey arranged, before listing what appear to be the next 30 or 40 in no apparent order.

Boom goes the dynamite.

RHONDA.

There are actually three Rhondas (that I know of) wandering the fictive literary galaxy and all three can actually be found in one book: Joshua Mohr's debut novel, Some Things That Meant the World to Me. There is little-boy Rhonda, old-lady Rhonda, and Rhonda (a 30-year old man).

As Donald Ray Pollock mentioned in his blurb for the book, "[Rhonda] is one of the most troubled and heartbreaking people you will ever encounter in literature." Though which Rhonda in particular he refers to is uncertain. Read the book and find out.

The author got the name tattooed on his arm.

New Some Things Cover.

P.S. Some Things That Meant the World to Me, the debut novel from the Joshua Mohr, is due out June 1 but is now available for pre-order through our site.

P.P.S. Check out that quote from Donald Ray Pollock!

Gary Indiana's Blog.

Gary Indiana has started a blog where he has posted a boat-load of his writing, most of which appears to be previously unpublished : stories, essays, musings, interviews, etc.

There even appears to be much/most/all of the manuscript for his forthcoming book, Andy Warhol and the Can That Sold the World available for your perusal.

Indiana's first novel in six years, The Shanghai Gesture, is coming your way soon...

The Rudy Wurlitzer Renaissance.

"There is something of a Rudy Wurlitzer renaissance going down in the pop culture zeitgeist; not only through the Criterion releases [Walker; Two Lane Blacktop] but also through a well-deserved re-examination of Wurlitzer's long-forgotten work as a masterful novelist."

So says Rodger Jacobs in his thoughtful interview with the author for PopMatters. Jacobs approaches some seminal works, such as the film Wurlitzer co-directed with Robert Frank, Candy Mountain, and his classic novel, Quake (which we'll be reissuing Fall '09 in a comp edition with the equally nihilistic Flats). Jacobs continues:

"[The Drop Edge of Yonder is] a rousing adventure tale that is far more compelling than any narrative the reluctant guru from Lowell, MA, could have arrived at."

The Cave Man cover

Please Help Philoctetes

Francis Levy, author of Erotomania: A Romance and our dear friend, is co-director of the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination, a non-profit group housed in the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. You should see their programming, there's everything from film screenings of Guy Maddin to roundtable discussions on topics as varied as 'Modernity and Waste,' from an entire afternoon on Samuel Beckett featuring Edward Albee and John Turturro, to 'The Biology of Romance.' It's wild and vital.

I'm on the Philoctetes programming email list and I regularly forward event listings to friends in the city. And, I should add, it's a great selling point as to why nothing really beats New York City: Where else would you be able to witness something such as this, with such amazing and knowledgeable panelists, first-hand, in such an intimate setting?

In a very sad turn of events:
"...the foundation that funds all activities at the Philoctetes Center held large investments with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, and the Center's capital and income source has literally vanished overnight.

"We at Philoctetes feel very strongly that we need to do all in our power to assure the survival and continued growth of the Center. Our programs not only generate interest here in New York, but our online resources serve those across the country and in other parts of the world as a unique engine for intellectual enrichment.

"In order to continue, even at a reduced level of activity, we urgently need an infusion of funds. For this reason, we are appealing to all of you who have been friends of the Center and have partaken of our activities to contribute as much as you are able. Additionally, if you know of any foundations that might be interested in supporting the activities of the Center, please contact us."

Contributions may be sent to:
The Philoctetes Center247 E. 82nd St.New York, NY 10028

Time Out New York: Drop Edge Best Book of 2008!

Michael Miller, the books editor of Time Out New York, selected The Drop Edge of Yonder by Rudolph Wurlitzer as #1 on his list of the Top 10 Books of 2008.

"Wurlitzer develops a dreamy, carnivalesque portrait of the American West, exploring the territory’s mythology even as he wildly entertains."

Miller has impeccably good taste, so it makes it all the more meaningful to have Drop Edge edge out his list this year.

Also worth noting, is that in addition to reissuing Wurlitzer's countercultural classic first novel, Nog, next summer with a new introduction from noted critic Erik Davis, we will be publishing Wurlitzer's second and third novels as well - Flats and Quake - in a "69ed," compilation edition shortly thereafter.