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New Books from NER Authors: June 2018

June 18, 2018

From Mark Twain to George Saunders, Bradley Bazzle’s Trash Mountain joins a long tradition of dark humor, wild inventiveness, and social satire in American letters. ―Maceo Montoya, author of The Deportation of Wopper Barraza.

From the publisher: Trash Mountain reflects on life in small southern cities in decline and an adolescent’s search for fundamental values without responsible adults to lead the way.

Bradley Bazzle’s first novel, Trash Mountain, won the 2016 Red Hen Press Fiction Award. His short story “Gift Horse” appeared in NER 31.4. Bradley grew up in Dallas, Texas, and lives in Athens, Georgia, with his wife and daughter.

Trash Mountain can be purchased from your independent booksellers and online.


In a time when we confront daily the frenetic, desensitizing maelstrom of political rhetoric and a ubiquitous flood of mass media, Bruce Bond reminds us in Dear Reader of the quiet but urgent philosophical and spiritual inquiries, sometimes monstrous and animal, that define and affirm our humanity. —Kathleen Graber, author of The Eternal City and Correspondence 

From the publisher: In his single-poem sequence, Dear Reader, Bruce Bond explores the metaphysics of reading as central to the way we negotiate a world—the evasions of our gods and monsters; our Los Angeles in flames; the daily chatter of our small, sweet, and philosophical beasts.

Bruce Bond is the author of sixteen books including For the Lost Cathedral, The Other Sky, and Black Anthem, which won a Tampa Review Prize  in 2016. Presently he is Regents Professor at University of North Texas. His poem “Blood” was published in NER 36.2.

Dear Reader can be purchased directly from the publisher.


Like the birds that populate so many of his poems, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Dulce is a lesson in song, an instructive repetition of the melodies that shape the inner self. The poems here are for a reader willing to mix and remix, to reimagine themselves in a thousand pieces. —Matthew Shenoda, author of Somewhere Else  

From the publisher: Dulce is truly a lyrical force rife with the rich language of longing and regret that disturbs even the most serene quiet. Surreal and deeply imagistic, the poems map a parallel between the landscape of the border and the landscape of sexuality. Castillo invites the reader to confront and challenge the distinctions of borders and categories, and in doing so, he obscures and negates such divisions.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a Canto Mundo fellow and the first undocumented student to graduate from the University of Michigan’s MFA program. He cofounded the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers” award from Poets and Writers magazine. His poems “Pulling the Moon” and “Rituals of Healing” appeared in NER 35.2.

Dulce: Poems can be purchased from the publisher.


Hoagland’s verse is consistently, and crucially, bloodied by a sense of menace and by straight talk. ―The New York Times

From the publisher: Tony Hoagland’s poems interrogate human nature and contemporary culture with an intimate and wild urgency, located somewhere between outrage, stand-up comedy, and grief. His new poems are no less observant of the human and the worldly, no less skeptical, and no less amusing, but they have drifted toward the greater depths of open emotion. Over six collections, Hoagland’s poetry has gotten bigger, more tender, and more encompassing. The poems in Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God turn his clear-eyed vision toward the hidden spaces―and spaciousness―in the human predicament.

Tony Hoagland is the author of five previous poetry collections, including Application for Release from the Dream and What Narcissism Means to Me, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two of his poems appeared recently in NER 38.3.

Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God can be purchased online.


Norman Lock’s fiction, The Wreckage of Eden, shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights. ―NPR

From the Publisher: Powerfully evocative of Emily Dickinson’s life, times, and artistry, this fifth, stand-alone volume in The American Novels series captures a nation riven by conflicts that continue to this day. Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock’s thought-provoking series continues to impress.

Norman Lock is an author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He has honored with The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey. His fiction has appeared frequently in NER, most recently with “A Theory of the Self” in NER 34.2.

The Ensemble can be purchased directly from the publisher,  or from independent booksellers.


Well imagined, intricately plotted, and deeply felt, both humane and human. It unfurls like a peony: you keep thinking it can’t get any more perfect, and it does. A stunning feat. —Rabih Alameddine, author of The Angel of History and Koolaids: The Art of War

From the publisher: A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai.

Rebecca Makkai is the author of The Borrower, The Hundred-Year House, which won the Novel of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association, and Music for Wartime. Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Harper’s, and Tin House, among others. Her story “The Briefcase” was featured in New England Review 29.2.

The Great Believers can be purchased directly from the publisher.

Filed Under: NER Authors' Books, News & Notes Tagged With: Bradley Bazzle, Bruce Bond, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Norman Lock, Rebecca Makkai, Tony Hoagland

A Complaint | By Bradley Bazzle

September 4, 2013

Stacked Cars In City Junkyard Will Be Used For Scrap, August 1973.

Dear Fortress Plus,

I write with not-so-good news. The Car Wall 4.0 I ordered is rusting more quickly than advertized. Your salesman, Herm C—, who’s a very nice fellow so I don’t want to cast aspersion on him, said that the wall would last “ten lifetimes, plus!” More specifically, he referenced the Great Wall of China and said that because Car Wall 4.0 is made of metal it’s twice as strong as that one, which is made of stone. It made sense at the time. But then I saw the rust, and also how the 1963 Chevy Impala was sagging from the weight of the 1963 For Fairlane directly above it, and so I did some online research and learned that metal doesn’t fare well under compression, which is why the pillar things under bridges are made of stone. Other bridges are made of metal but those are suspension bridges, so Herm was kind of wrong when he told me to think about the Golden Gate Bridge and how strong it was. Maybe correct him. Don’t fire him, though. He’s a really nice guy. The anecdote he told me about protecting his own family homestead from marauding meth-crazed looters using Appliance Rampart 3.0 was deeply moving. Which brings me to another point. Several of the cars, e.g. the 1957 Plymouth and 1959 DeSoto Adventurer convertible, are faring extremely well. Barely rusting, barely crushed, and the grills are kind of nice to look at, like faces. Would it be possible to have more recent and flimsier models, such as the aforementioned Impala and also the 1967 Pontiac Catalina and 1965 Chevrolet Corvair Corsa, replaced by models from the fifties? Also—not to be piling it on—but there’s something beneath the 1962 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, in what the owner’s manual calls the Seventh Quadrant, that looks kind of not like a car. Is it the undercarriage of a bus or something? Like, folded over? I ask because, while it’s actually pretty strong, it isn’t very fun to look at. That’s it. Whew! Except, well, it would be kind of neat if I could turn on the headlights from time to time, just for effect. Herm said that that was in the planning stages, possibly to be featured in Car Wall 5.0. Sign me up, if so, because I consider myself a lifelong Fortress Plus customer, despite the circumstances. Yours is a company that looks towards the future, because, I mean, where are all the dead cars going to go otherwise? Junkyards? Pretty soon there’ll be more cars than people, and every grave will have a car on top of it, maybe sideways. At least that’s what Herm said. And I believe him.

Yours Sincerely,

Bradley B—

*

Secret Americas features writing about images from the U.S. National Archives.

Image via Flickr – “Stacked Cars In City Junkyard Will Be Used For Scrap, August 1973,” photograph by Dick Swanson. National Archives and Records Administration College Park. Part of the Documerica project.

Bradley Bazzle’s story “Gift Horse” appears in NER 31.4. Other stories he’s written appear in The Iowa Review, Epoch, Phoebe, Bad Penny Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Athens, Georgia, where he’s working on a novel and a PhD in English.

Filed Under: NER Digital, Secret Americas Tagged With: a complaint, Bradley Bazzle

Touch a button, things happen

June 21, 2012

Flag on the Moon: The Beast of Yucca Flats | By Bradley Bazzle

Bradley Bazzle

When I was a kid and my parents tried to read to me from storybooks, I wrested control of the operation by telling my own story based on the pictures. Many writers do this as children, I think. But then we learn to read and it’s all over, at least until we start writing. What a shame, those wasted years. Lucky for me, I was left alone in front of the television for hours each day and invented a new, related practice: muting the sound and narrating what was happening on screen. My version of The Beverly Hillbillies probably had a lot in common with the actual Beverly Hillbillies, but it didn’t sound nearly as stupid to me. Today, though I’ve moved on artistically (I hope), I still take a special interest in voiceover narration. I can’t think of Days of Heaven without hearing that little girl’s tough voice, or of Goodfellas without hearing Ray Liotta (“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster…”). Sunset Boulevard, The Piano, The Shawshank Redemption—these are the classics of the genre.

Or so I thought.

It turns out one film stands above the rest: The Beast of Yucca Flats. This 1961 creature feature had so little money that the director, Coleman Francis, scrapped sound altogether. He told his crew he’d add dialogue later, maybe do a voiceover. And did he ever do a voiceover. The film’s narration is so dark, so bleak, so transmogrifying with regard to the footage it describes, that I wish it could stand on its own so you could read it as prose. But it can’t. There are too many holes. So what I’ve done, in order to encourage you to see the film as soon as you can, is a summary that incorporates italicized fragments of the narration. I hope it captures this bleak, dazzling slice of wretchedness. For full effect, real aloud in a dour monotone:

Movie Poster for The Beast of Yucca Flats

A young woman in a towel is strangled in a motel room. A small plane touches down in the desert. An obese Russian disembarks. Joseph Javorski, recently escaped from behind the Iron Curtain, wife and children killed in Hungary. His aide carries a briefcase, secret data on the Russian moon-shot. Destination: Yucca Flats. A meeting with top brass at the A-bomb testing grounds. Flag on the Moon. How did it get there? Men in suits drive up and start shooting. Javorski staggers into the desert. Mushroom cloud. Javorski screams. Touch a button, things happen. Joseph Javorski, respected scientist, prowling the wastelands. A prehistoric beast in a nuclear age. Kill. Kill. Just to be killing. Javorski, his face covered in fleshy looking burns, gently strangles a young couple then drags the woman to a cave. Young Joe Dobson, Desert Patrol, caught in the wheels of progress, finds the man’s body and calls his partner, Jim Archer, wounded in Korea, another man caught in the frantic race for the betterment of mankind. Progress. Together they climb some rocks and find the woman barely alive. Vacation time. People travel east. West. North or south. The Radcliffs travel east, with two small boys. Adventurous boys. Not yet caught by the whirlwind of progress. Their car breaks down and the boys go behind a decrepit gas station and feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs. They see a coyote roped to a tree. Coyotes. Once a menace to travelers. Missile bases run them off their hunting grounds. The boys wander off. Their father, Hank, goes looking for them. Hours in the boiling desert sun. Joe and Jim are still searching for the killer. Twenty hours without rest and still no enemy. To put Jim Archer’s paratroop training to good use is the only answer. A trip up into the skies. Shoot first, ask questions later. From the plane, Jim sees Hank. A man runs, somebody shoots him. The pilot dropped his man. Hank rolls down the hillside. An innocent victim, caught in the wheels of justice. In the blistering desert heat, Jim and Joe plan their next attack. Find the Beast and kill him. Kill or be killed. Man’s inhumanity to man. The Beast returns to his cave and, finding his victim gone, unleashes his fury by throwing a rock. He sees the boys and chases them. They outrun him. Jim appears, shoots at the Beast. They wrestle. Jim is getting strangled, slowly and sensuously, when Joe shoots the Beast point-blank. Jim and Joe leave with the boys. The body remains. Joseph Javorski, noted scientist. A rabbit hops around then nibbles at the Beast’s chest and face. The Beast caresses it then dies.

*

NER Digital is a creative writing series for the web. Openflix features The Beast of Yucca Flats on YouTube. Bradley Bazzle’s story “Gift Horse” appeared in NER 31.4. Others appear in The Iowa Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal, Cold Mountain Review, Splash of Red, Phoebe, and Opium. Bradley has an MFA from Indiana University and lives in Athens, Gerogia, where he’s working on a PhD (and a novel). If you enjoy comedy videos, check him out on Trophy Dad’s Youtube channel.

Filed Under: NER Digital Tagged With: Bradley Bazzle, Flag on the Moon, The Beast of Yucca Flats

Santa Direct

June 19, 2012

From Bradley Bazzle’s story “Gift Horse” (NER 31.4, 2010):

Gift certificates. Six years ago Santa Direct gave me a gift certificate to an electronics store. My wife joked that Santa hurt his back and couldn’t carry the new computer I wanted. When I was a kid we got everything we wanted. Every year my sisters and I made little lists on the day after Thanksgiving. It was a good day to get Santa’s attention, my father said, because he was hung over and sitting around his house at the North Pole. We made the lists directly in a memo pad my father kept, one page for each of us. There were twelve lines on each little page, so we could ask for twelve things. We spent most of the morning drafting and redrafting our lists before copying them into the pad. Most of what we wanted was books and games and toys, but even when we wanted something more expensive we got that too—chemistry sets, pogo sticks, a basketball hoop. One year we banded together, and each of us asked for a swimming pool. Under the Christmas tree in a little flat box with all our names on it was a picture from a magazine of a family splashing around inside a pool. I was the youngest and didn’t understand what this meant, but my sisters went wild. I jumped around with them and hugged them, and my parents were smiling. Ground was broken in our backyard for the pool the following April. It was a happy moment for the family, and we all stood in a line watching a fat man wearing a hardhat inside a bulldozer. I remember wondering if the fat man was Santa. Maybe he had shaved his beard.

[read more]

Filed Under: NER Classics Tagged With: Bradley Bazzle, Gift Horse


Vol. 43, No. 4

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Serhiy Zhadan

Literature & Democracy

Serhiy Zhadan

“That’s the appeal of writing: you treat the world like a potential text, using it as material, setting yourself apart, stepping out.”

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