All posts in category writing
new review at heavy feather
Posted by sean on November 20, 2025
https://sd-stewart.com/2025/11/20/new-review-at-heavy-feather/
‘best of the net’ nomination
My erasure texts made using Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man have been nominated for Best of the Net.
Thanks to Genrepunk for the nomination and for publishing the work earlier this year.
Posted by sean on September 1, 2025
https://sd-stewart.com/2025/09/01/best-of-the-net-nomination/
audio recordings of erasures
I’ve been working with erasure again lately, and while doing so, it occurred to me that many of the resulting texts, as with standard poetry, can benefit from a reading of the piece aloud. In the past, I had made audio recordings for one or two erasures, but I plan to experiment with doing it more often in the future. With that in mind, I’ll be adding audio files for some of the texts that are already posted on the site under the Erasures tab.
The first one I’ve added is called ‘Human Dust’, which I made in 2012 using Chapter 28 of a book called Nerves and Common Sense written by Annie Payson Call, originally published in 1909. Call was an early mental health self-help author, and most of the chapters in the book were originally published as articles in Ladies’ Home Journal. I’ve actually made a number of erasures from this book, simply because I found its content and tone so ripe for manipulation. As with any of the books I use for erasure, this one is in the public domain and available through Project Gutenberg.
Posted by sean on March 10, 2025
https://sd-stewart.com/2025/03/10/audio-recordings-of-erasures/
review of the faces of pluto
My review of Ansgar Allen’s novel The Faces of Pluto is up today at Heavy Feather Review.
…Allen organizes the book into a sequence of text blocks of varying lengths that twine together, repeating and reexamining its ideas throughout, offering space for us to ruminate on them and second-guess our credibility.
Posted by sean on January 28, 2025
https://sd-stewart.com/2025/01/28/review-of-the-faces-of-pluto/
erasures published
My erasure texts made from Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man are up at Genrepunk, with audio of my reading.
Posted by sean on January 22, 2025
https://sd-stewart.com/2025/01/22/erasures-published/
2024 in reading
While in general 2024 was hit-or-miss (with the unspeakable horror of November 5th as the most egregious example of a miss), I am pleased to report that it was at least a fine reading year. Looking back on previous end-of-year book posts, it seems that I was past due for a good year, and so I am grateful for this one. Although the jaded reader inside me still finds it less likely each year to discover new writers I’ve not previously read who bowl me over, this year yielded an iota of hope. I came across not just one, but two writers new to me who stimulated and challenged my reading mind, while also reinvigorating my interest in the novel as a form capable of further manipulation, however slight.
These two contemporary British writers, Thomas Kendall and Ansgar Allen, captured my attention in a way that I have sorely missed. As such, during 2024 I read both of Kendall’s novels and much of Allen’s fiction corpus to date. Although I connected on a more emotional level with Kendall’s debut novel The Autodidacts, which was my favorite book of 2024, it is his second novel, How I Killed the Universal Man, that is more exciting in terms of literary achievement, for it envisions a possible very near future for humanity with all the attendant ramifications therein, all laid out in a way that does not cater to reader comprehension. It feels prophetic in the most frightening (and depressing) ways.
Similarly, Ansgar Allen’s fiction does not waste time courting the reader. Over the past five years, Allen has been quietly yet fiercely challenging the status quo of literature with his disruptive approaches to the act of writing. His work is not easy to categorize, which I believe is his intent. I was so intrigued by Allen’s work that I reached out to him for an interview, which will be published in February 2025 at Heavy Feather Review. In the interview, we discuss his work, the acts of writing and reading, the future of ‘the book’, and how sound can affect writing, among other topics. I also reviewed Allen’s latest novel The Faces of Pluto, and that review will be published at HFR in January 2025. I will add a link to it in this post once it has been published.
Since I focused a good amount of my reading energy this year on reading multiple books by individual authors, some of the books in the list are grouped by author. As usual, unless indicated otherwise, the links are to my Goodreads reviews.
Authors new to me
Thomas Kendall
How I Killed the Universal Man
Ansgar Allen
The Faces of Pluto (link to HFR review to be added)
Jesse Ball
Ball is a writer who has been on my radar for a few years, and I am very glad to have finally read some of his work. The two novels that I list here were my favorites of the four that I read. However, I am sufficiently interested that I will likely read more of his work.
The Repeat Room (review written on the day after the 2024 U.S. election)
A Cure for Suicide (no review written)
Maryse Meijer
Meijer was yet another writer who I had heard good things about, but I hadn’t read anything by her before this year. On the basis of my response to her first short story collection (Heartbreaker), I ended up reading her second collection of stories (review) and her novel The Seventh Mansion (no review).
Drain Songs: Stories and a Novella by Grant Maierhofer
Maierhofer is another writer whose name I regularly see mentioned in various literary haunts, but I hadn’t gotten to his work (apparently this was the year for trying to catch up on my to-read list). I had mixed reactions to some of the stories in this collection, but a couple of them and the title novella were excellent. The ‘review’ is just some minimal notes.
The Stories of Breece D’J Pancake by Breece D’J Pancake
This book languished on my to-read list for a decade before I finally got to it this year. It is a fantastic collection, and I think D’J Pancake could probably have eclipsed Raymond Carver if he’d lived longer than his brief 26 years.
Depressive Realism: Interdisciplinary Perspectives by Colin Feltham
This is a nonfiction book published by an academic press, but the ebook can be found at the Internet Archive. Despite its origins in academia, I think it is accessible to general readers, and I found it replete with compelling arguments.
Undercurrents by Marie Darrieussecq
Sometimes vagueness in writing can be hauntingly beautiful.
The Spectacle at the Tower by Gert Hofmann
One of those special books that masterfully maintains a sense of dread throughout, which I’m always seeking and rarely finding. For comparison, Paul Bowles comes to mind.
Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
A very fine dystopian novel from 1980.
Erasure by Percival Everett
This is deeply effective satire and very much on point. I read the book before watching the film adaptation (American Fiction), which is also good but unsurprisingly not quite as nuanced.
A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr
Carr’s atmospheric novel had been on my to-read list for nearly 10 years. It was very good, but I didn’t write a review. It seems at first to be a relatively simple story, but as the pathos builds it grows more complex.
Previously read writers
James Purdy
I read Narrow Rooms as a follow-up to In a Shallow Grave, which was a highlight of last year, and in the review of which I boldly claimed I would now read everything Purdy wrote. However, having since been underwhelmed by two of his other novels—Mourners Below (review) and The Nephew (review)—I am now skeptical of the veracity of that claim.
Philip K. Dick
I feel certain that in my lifetime I will complete my reading of all of PKD’s published work, but I am in no hurry. These three were all very good additions to the list of those I’ve read to date.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Gary J. Shipley
Shipley is an acquired taste and not for the squeamish. But he is one of the few writers in whose use of explicit horror I can discern a purpose apart from purely shock value. For that reason, I will continue to read his work, despite not always having the stomach for it.
Other noteworthy books by previously read writers
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter
The Complete Short Stories: Volume 2 by J.G. Ballard
Alice Knott by Blake Butler
Rusticles by Rebecca Gransden
Dark Property: An Affliction by Brian Evenson (no review)
Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine: I neglected to include this in my original post because I technically read it in 2023, though it wasn’t published until 2024. I would be remiss in not mentioning it, though, as it was among the most unique novels I’ve read in recent years. The arrival of a new book by Stacey Levine is no small thing, and the long wait for this one was worthwhile. A polyphonic novel entwining sisterhood with the uncertain paranoia of the early Cold War, Mice 1961 takes place in small-town Florida, primarily during the course of a rollicking community house party. Certain novels offer the reader with an immersive experience, where one truly feels as if they have entered the book as an observer. This is one of those rare novels.
A few other notes: This year I finally finished reading Infinite Jest, which I had been reading on and off for the past two years or so (I liked Don Gately and the addiction recovery storyline best, but overall I preferred The Pale King, despite its unfinished status); I also finished the Gormenghast trilogy; I read two more of Clarice Lispector’s novels (The Hour of the Star and The Besieged City) and continue to be boggled by the inscrutability of her fiction; and I read Michel Houellebecq for the first time after years of reading reviews of his novels (I chose Serotonin and had mixed feelings).
Posted by sean on December 20, 2024
https://sd-stewart.com/2024/12/20/2024-in-reading/
Adventures in Immediate Irreality by Max Blecher
Reread October 2024. Still fantastic. Still an all-time favorite. Original 2019 review below.
Much how Bruno Schulz’s masterpiece of 20th century literature The Street of Crocodiles defies adequate description, so too does this book by Max Blecher, affirmed by this edition’s two introductions, both of which rely heavily on extended quotations from the book itself to make their points, which in essence are that this is a particularly special book. Perhaps this is also one of those rare cases where the title of the work itself provides the most apropos description of what lies in wait for the reader. Blecher’s protagonist sees the world through the lens of illness, which can always alter reality, but he is also a sensitive and gifted young man struck by the ‘immediate irreality’ of everything around him. As in Schulz’s work, objects here take on monumental significance; the most innocuous things throb and seethe in unexpected ways.
All at once the surfaces of things surrounding me took to shimmering strangely or turning vaguely opaque like curtains, which when lit from behind go from opaque to transparent and give a room a sudden depth. But there was nothing to light these objects from behind, and they remained sealed by their density, which only rarely dissipated enough to let their true meaning shine through.
As Andrei Codrescu writes in his introduction, what thus flows from Blecher’s pen is not so much Surrealism as it is ‘hyperrealism’ (which I find even more interesting, though also much rarer). There are no flights of fancy beyond reality; there is instead total immersion in an over-exposed reality enhanced by the protagonist’s unique point of view. There is the discovery of places in the everyday world imbued with a special significance, offering refuge from the the heavy burden of sickness and the overwhelming weight of mere existence.
Above the room there were two garrets, one of which gave access to the roof via a small window. I often climbed through it and stood on top of of the house. The entire city spread out before me, amorphous and gray, and beyond it the fields, where miniature toylike trains crossed a fragile bridge. What I wanted most of all was to feel free of vertigo, as stable as if my feet were planted on the ground; I wanted to lead my ‘normal life’ on the roof, to move about in the fresh, bracing air of the heights without fear or awareness of the void. I felt that if I succeeded I would make my body lighter and more supple and, thus transformed, I would have turned into a kind of bird-man.
Blecher’s protagonist explores many such hidden places during his ‘adventures’, feeling drawn to them as inevitably as iron filings are pulled to a magnet. Not all of them offer succor; yet even the bleakest ones, those known as a ‘cursed space’, still beckon to him.
One of the spaces was in the town park in a small clearing at the end of a tree-lined path no one used anymore. The only gap in the dogrose and acacia bushes surrounding it opened onto a desolate piece of wasteland. There was no sadder or more forsaken place on earth. Silence lay heavy on the dusty leaves in the stagnant summer heat. From time to time the echoes of the bugles of a regiment filtered through long-drawn-out cries in the wilderness, heartbreakingly sad. Far off the air baked by the sun quivered vaporously like the transparent steam hovering over a boiling liquid.
It was a wild, isolated spot, as lonely as could be. The heat of the day felt more enervating there, the air i breathed more dense. The dusty bushes blazed yellow in the sun in an atmosphere of utter solitude. A bizarre feeling of futility hovered over the clearing, which existed ‘somewhere on earth’, a place where I myself would end up quite by chance on a summer afternoon with no rhyme or reason of its own, an afternoon that had lost its chaotic way in the heat of the sun amidst bushes fixed in space ‘somewhere on earth’. At that time I felt more deeply and painfully that I had nothing to do in this world, nothing to do but saunter through parks, through dusty clearings burnt by the sun, desolate and wild. But the saunter would turn into a heart-rending experience.
I could go on, transcribing more and more evocative passages from this brief yet incredibly dense work that so gracefully traces an ornate border encircling the ineffable. But I have sauntering of my own to do, so I will instead encourage you to read it for yourself if you have not already done so.
Posted by sean on October 20, 2024
https://sd-stewart.com/2024/10/20/adventures-in-immediate-irreality-by-max-blecher/
‘such profound opacities’
I really loathe the idea that all points in a fiction must be clear, followed-up on, and understandable like an instructional guidebook; life is just not like that. Even small moments in our lives contain such profound opacities.
—Stacey Levine, interviewed by Ted Pelton, Rain Taxi (Vol. 29, No. 2, Summer 2024)
Posted by sean on July 4, 2024
https://sd-stewart.com/2024/07/04/such-profound-opacities/
review of disembodied
My review of Christina Tudor-Sideri’s novel Disembodied (Sublunary Editions, 2022) has been published at Heavy Feather Review.
…Tudor-Sideri’s novel queries the nature of being, relentlessly pondering bodies, souls, memory, death, and time—spoken through the voice of a narrator experiencing her own disappearance.
Posted by sean on November 7, 2022
https://sd-stewart.com/2022/11/07/review-of-disembodied/
The Edge of the Object [book review]
A tripartite journey—both geographical and emotional—Daniel Williams’s debut novel The Edge of the Object follows the highs and lows of a young Englishman living in France for a period of six months. The book as an object is striking to behold: three perfect-bound A4-sized volumes smartly dressed in the colors of the French flag and packaged in a screenprinted and letterpressed case—all designed and produced by Tim Hopkins of London’s The Half Pint Press. The prose found within is equally well crafted, with the book’s design complementing it nicely.
Taking cues in part from the work of Georges Perec, this novel is simultaneously a celebration of French culture as seen through the Francophilic eyes of a post-collegiate young man, and a keen look into the headspace of a person far from home, isolated by way of a language barrier he is only partly able to breach and yearning for human connections beyond what he often feels capable of. An erstwhile photographer, the unnamed narrator feels alternately liberated and hamstrung by the absence of his Leica—the camera offering a valid excuse to be present at a remove while also preventing true engagement in any given experience. This tension resulting from being camera-less clings to the narrative, as we watch the narrator struggle to engage with his surroundings—taking as many steps backward as forward in this endeavor—as he moves from place to place.
Williams writes with exacting precision—mapping the interior emotional journey of his narrator as carefully as he describes his geographical progress through France. He has a journalistic eye for detail, snapping word-images in lieu of photos and placing scene after scene in front of the reader with aplomb. Moments of wry humor and painterly passages of the French countryside counter the heaviness of themes of left-behind love and debilitating incidents of migraine headaches. Also tempering the at times somber subject matter, the pages of the first and third sections of the book are graced with striking calligrams—images sculpted from the words on the page and representative of a central theme or object on each page. These calligrams gently encourage the reader to slow down or speed up accordingly, keeping step with the pacing of the story.
The first part of the book is written in second-person point-of-view—unusual but appropriate to the experience of being in a rural area of a foreign country, surrounded by its natives, yet only with a workmanlike grasp of its language. The central character is living in a falling-apart cottage, not much more refined than a cave (and perhaps even less dry). Whenever nature calls, he must journey through a warren of gardens to reach the privy, and—adding to the inconvenience—the only running water for washing up is also located outside. It is hard living, made even harder by his isolation.
In the second part, the point-of-view segues to first person as our man reaches the big city of Paris and makes contact with the first of a series of friends he will spend time with over the coming weeks. Gone are the calligrams in favor of straightforward text blocks, as the focus in narration begins to point outwards in concert with the narrator’s efforts to interact more with the people around him. He soon meets up with a friend’s indie pop group on tour and joins them for a number of club dates around the country, during which he becomes interested in a woman whose feelings toward him are slippery at best.
The final part of the book returns to calligrams and the second-person distance, as the narrator backtracks to his lonely cottage existence. Here he comes to a decision about one last adventure to embark upon before his trip comes to a close. This jaunt provides a suitable denouement to his time in France, as we feel this fellow we’ve traveled so closely with start winding down and perhaps pine a bit harder for home. And indeed, the last page finds him back in England with his camera once again in hand—facing a future unknown but now fertilized with a rich new layer of experience from which to grow, perhaps out beyond the self he became too much of while away.
And yet, while these six months have taken you further from the excesses of the world than ever before, they have plunged you into an excess of time, of memory, and of yearning. If anything, you have become too much yourself.
[Limited print copies of the book may still be available, and the ebook has recently been released. Details at The Edge of the Object site. See also Williams’s essay in The Quietus on Perec’s novella A Man Asleep and its connection to this novel.]
Posted by sean on May 21, 2022
https://sd-stewart.com/2022/05/21/the-edge-of-the-object-book-review/
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