p.s. Realized my second post doesn't make sense without spelling out the full title, which is Box Hill: a Story of Low Self-Esteem.
10.03.2026 16:26
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p.s. Realized my second post doesn't make sense without spelling out the full title, which is Box Hill: a Story of Low Self-Esteem.
Also, I'm just salty because for once it would nice to have a dominant character who isn't some untouchable, emotionally constipated menacing figure or a male sub who has a spine and I dunno, a modicum of self respect.
As well, in my reading, Box Hill draws a parallel bw Colin contorting himself for Ray and his mother contorting herself for his father. Which is to say, D/s isn't the problem; it's the lack of self respect or esteem as noted in the title. Pillion completely drops this critique.
Preferred Box Hill over Pillion (film adaptation) in part because the former doesn't use humour and style to deflect you from how the story stretches the liberal notion of consent past its breaking point. Box Hill asks the reader to confront this challenge; Pillion asks the viewer to bypass it π§΅
Cover of Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones. Pattern of baby pink and white diamonds. In the white diamonds, images of a blurred black and white illustration of a motorbike and a colour botanical illustration of a passion flower.
See quoted post for review
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Hand holding copies of ιι by θ¬η ε貴 and Tanned Love by Timothy
The girl with the most π₯©π°
Excerpt from Burroughs' The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead: ... excitement on his back with the knees up red fumes that burn erogenous holes in writhing flesh naked choking in that phantom bed when I came to the room was abandoned to weeds and vines star dust on a bench silent empty room kid of darkness fading over the florist shop flickering look an old wash stand musty house slow smile you there dim jerky bedroom 18 on the top floor ::: my flesh ::: I could ::: the film breaks ::: jerky silment film ::: look at the fading body ::: I looked about nineteen. "But not that one word?" It is getting dark ::: boy ::: remember so intense it hurts ::: :sadness in his eyes 1920 movie ::: peanuts ::: "Thank you"::: the film breaks ::: naked boy on yellow toilet fingers from a long time ago the boy solid quick and silent coming so intense it hurts teeth bared see solid now I could touch my flesh pants down evening sky ::: naked boy fading erased out ::: "Thank you" ::: the film breaks ::: pose is a long time ago memory noises frayed magazine over there room grainy like an old movie dim silver sky ::: the other leans forward laughing comparing ::: pieces of the blurred 1920 afternoon ::: jerky bed twisted feet buttocks quivering phantom boy nods the other straddles rectum explosed squeezed out musty odor luminous bodies quiver together deserted city dying sun old movie set. I turn the page. Sepia of each phallus a drop of the red color that rose flesh mouth speaking prickles of deslight. I turn he page each picture framed in roses.
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The Northman as "historically accurate" LOL
Black and white photo by Armin Morbach of Gabriel Moginot, a student of Mr. Pearl. Shot from behind, the young Frenchman wears a backward baseball cap, tshirt and white tightlacing corset of his design with a black lace applique.
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Cover of FAT + FLOUR: The Art of a Simple Bake by Nicole Rucker, photograph of stacks of chocolate chip cookies.
Is eating chocolate while reading baking cookbooks because you're too knackered to actually bake anything a recession indicator.
Vlad Mag #8: βToxic Nostalgia,β edited by Tex Gresham & @wwwwkurtcom.bsky.social, is OUT NOW on the site β£οΈ Subs open for issue nine, βSuburban Spunk,β edited by @dtrobbins.bsky.social (@rejectionlit.bsky.social)
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From my publisher, thoughts on art, resistance, community and ethics π
For Montrealers: my former editor, H Felix Chau Bradley, will be reading from Thyme Travelers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction ππΏ Details in π
Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd. Abstracted illustration of passive bodies and arrows violently strewn over the cover.
When the line between human and inhuman is drawn and redrawn by the hands that exercise power over you, there will never be enough proof. Nothing is actually being adjudicated, this paradigm is about control and domination.
I understand how painful and disorienting it is to have a career marked by carrots end with a stick. But if you believed grad degrees or thinky skills or valuable experience somehow exempted you from capitalist violence, you never really understood the reality you're living in...
Cover of Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature edited by GaΓ«tan Brulotte and John Philips.
Inconsistent levels of comprehensiveness depending on region but still useful for building themed reading lists, especially in French.
It seems to me that the loss of metaphorical/artistic skills, the kind of epistemic poverty we collectively accept as being advanced, is actually incredibly harmful to the integrity and meaning of empirical reality. Devaluing metaphor does not elevate the empirical, it degrades the empirical.
The skills necessary to work wisely with metaphor, to handle paradox and multiple shifting meanings, seem to have atrophied on a collective level. The loss of our ability to perceive and parse our reality wisely rests upon these skills. Our material survival rests on these skills.
Really wish that we'd recognize the importance of training ourselves to work w metaphorical/artistic/phenomenological truths instead of writing this off as "soft," frivolous, and subordinate to empirical truths. I fundamentally disagree with characterizing art as impractical π§΅
Cover of Putain by Nelly Arcan. Black and white photograph of a blond woman staring intensely into the camera, the eyeliner of one eye smeared and tracking down her face as though she's been crying.
Not an easy read for someone with shaky French. The sentences are so, so long. As well, the subject matter is heavy, esp given the context of the book's reception and how Arcan was treated by the press.
Installation titled Proof. An image formed by dots printed on strips of calculator paper, arranged almost like vertical blinds, forms the image of two crows among trees, one in flight. The last strip is still connected to a printing calculator on a table. Beside this, a flat screen rests on the floor screen-up, showing the same image.
Ground floor of Cafeteria, magenta neon lighting reflecting from the mirrored domes on the ceiling where rows of red Chinese lanterns hang. Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book is being projected onto the wall.
Mehdi Dandi at Cafeteria
It's lit criticism but imo this article by @emotrophywife.bsky.social also explains Praying (fashion brand) which also cashes in on a nakedly vapid kind of nihilism and perhaps does it better than the authors cited...
Cover of Hot Net Hotel: Comics from China's Alt Comics Scene, a comics anthology. A grid over which a colourful illustration of various sea creatures swim in close formation.
A full page panel by KKCIT's Hunger Breeds Discontent. An abstract figure rendered with melting, organic lines suggesting organs and fluids is seated at a table with plates and cups, holding chopsticks that pull at the skin of a dumpling. In type: I shouldn't eat but you smell good...
I forgot I'd backed the funding campaign for this amazing comics anthology by @paradisesystems.bsky.social - a pleasant surprize in my inbox!!
Hand holding cover of The Vermin issue 3. Red and ball image of a curled up NIN-esque Downward Spiral worm.
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