pull quotes

"A guide through the nine rings of Narco-Hell. Jerry Stahl is the Dante of Dope… A work of..."

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:13:05 -0500

“A guide through the nine rings of Narco-Hell. Jerry Stahl is the Dante of Dope… A work of twisted genius by a man who’s been there and back.”

- Mark Mothershaugh of Devo on Permanent Midnight

"Did you read Beryl Markham’s book, West With the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and..."

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:39:00 -0400

““Did you read Beryl Markham’s book, West With the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer’s log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people’s stories, are absolutely true…. I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book.””

- Ernest Hemingway on West With the Night

"Astonishing… part oral history and part midnight diary in a world where midnight goes on..."

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:51:58 -0400

“Astonishing… part oral history and part midnight diary in a world where midnight goes on forever”

- Los Angeles Reader on The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones

"The perfect antidote to lyrical India."

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:08:54 -0400

““The perfect antidote to lyrical India.””

- Publishers Weekly on The White Tiger

"Bernhard writes like a sacred monster… a man who goes to extremes in ways that vivify our..."

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:11:46 -0400

“Bernhard writes like a sacred monster… a man who goes to extremes in ways that vivify our sense of human possibilities, however destructive.”

- Wall Street Journal on The Loser

"Chandler wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered."

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:09:48 -0400

“Chandler wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered.”

- The New Yorker on The Long Goodbye

"In his second collection of stories, as in his first, Carver’s characters are peripheral..."

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:25:28 -0500

“In his second collection of stories, as in his first, Carver’s characters are peripheral people—people without education, insight or prospects, people too unimaginative to even give up. Carver celebrates these men and women.”

- Inside flap of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

"The title refers to the town’s disused chemical plant that lies rotting and leaking toxins on the..."

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:03:04 -0500

“The title refers to the town’s disused chemical plant that lies rotting and leaking toxins on the shore, its fittings bearing the name of its engineer, George Lister; but it’s also an archaic word that means ‘to sparkle.’ Apt, in a thousand ways.”

- Niall Griffiths on The Glister

"Artful and sophisticated…truly unusual. Imagine Lewis’s Babbitt thrown into the backseat..."

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:43:26 -0500

““Artful and sophisticated…truly unusual. Imagine Lewis’s Babbitt thrown into the backseat of a car going cross-country, driven by R. Crumb, Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Harvey Pekar or Spike Jonze. That’d be a story Saunders could tell.””

- The New York Times on The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

"I had to tell someone (and it might as well be you since you’re the author) how much I enjoyed..."

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:20:08 -0500

“I had to tell someone (and it might as well be you since you’re the author) how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm).”

- Groucho Marx on The Dud Avocado

"Desperate Characters, with its bristling, hilarious dialogue and echoey, shadow-splashed silences is..."

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:17:00 -0500

“Desperate Characters, with its bristling, hilarious dialogue and echoey, shadow-splashed silences is a tour de force of ruthless compression. The glimpses of New York life at the peripheries of the Bentwoods’ shrinking zone of safety are drawn unerringly.”

- Jonathan Lethem on Desperate Characters

"O’Neill writes a prose of Banvillean grace and beauty, shimmering with truthfulness, as poised..."

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:11:00 -0500

“O’Neill writes a prose of Banvillean grace and beauty, shimmering with truthfulness, as poised as it is unsettling. He is a master of the long sentence, of the half-missed moment, of the strange archaeology of the troubled marriage.”

- Joseph O’Connor on Netherland

"Annoyingly brilliant"

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:44:45 -0500

“Annoyingly brilliant”

- Will Leitch on Free Darko’s Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac

"An ark bearing all the strange salvage of poetry and youth from catastrophes past and those yet to..."

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:26:55 -0500

“An ark bearing all the strange salvage of poetry and youth from catastrophes past and those yet to come.”

- Nicole Krauss on The Savage Detectives

via Kreizman

"A revealing and indispensable comedy of horrors."

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 14:25:06 -0500

“A revealing and indispensable comedy of horrors.”

- San Francisco Chronicle on Lolita

"The characters are zany like those in comic strips. The book is froth, and like the fiction of..."

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:13:00 -0500

“The characters are zany like those in comic strips. The book is froth, and like the fiction of ladies’ magazines, is to be read in a summer hammock or in bed when you can’t go to sleep, and then be forgotten.”

- Randall Dudley on A Confederate General from Big Sur

"The book is an aria and a wolf-whistle of our half century. It contains multitudes."

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:08:24 -0500

“The book is an aria and a wolf-whistle of our half century. It contains multitudes.”

- Michael Ondaatje on Underworld