CategoryCriticism

Battles of Memory: Pam Jones’s “The Arizona Room”

By Eric Z. Weintraub

In Criticism

5 Min read

B

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen once said, “All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” One half of Pam Jones’s newest novel The Arizona Room (Spaceboy Books, 2023) takes place during the World War II; in the second half, its protagonist reconciles with her experience in old age. While we never find ourselves...

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“Wait, Did I Read What I Thought I Did?”

In Criticism

3 Min read

“

Biblical imagery is a recurring motif, as evidenced by some of the story titles: “I John 3:15,” one of the shortest and darkest stories in the book (it still gives me shudders, just thinking about it), and “Sins of Our Fathers, Who Aren’t in Heaven.” Dealing with distant fathers and other family members is definitely something gay men can relate to, but it’s also a universal theme.

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Home Is Where the Heartbreak Is

In Criticism

16 Min read

H

The system is built to fail a lot of us. It made me feel better about the fact that these women felt connected to somebody else like me when I thought I was completely alone in this scenario. It turns out I’m not.

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On Queer Poetry

by Alexander Graeff

In Criticism, Essay

12 Min read

O

My poetic writing is a carpet. Unfurled, it displays the colorful strands of my linguistic development, regionalisms and academic language alike. The results of this writing are not works of genius, not creations of one singular genius. They are iridescent and ambiguous exposures, spotlights bringing some of the world’s previously invisible facets into focus.

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Passions Pursued: A Review of TOBIAS CARROLL’s “Ex-Members”

In Criticism

4 Min read

P

One might think you’d have to know a band’s music to have much interest in the “behind-the-scenes,” but Carroll manages to draw the reader in with quirky bits of nostalgia. Lines like “They had two songs about farting, and one song about setting lawns on fire. I’m pretty sure their drummer is a cop now. . .” capture the banality and naivety of aspiring musicians—tales of recording sessions, inter...

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“Language Itself Is the Only Limit”

In Criticism, Interview

10 Min read

“

Thomas Dolby once said that he writes songs like a frustrated novelist. I like to say that I write books like a frustrated musician. I first started out writing lyrics to songs I was making in high school. Then I moved to writing poems before migrating towards stories and, eventually, novels. No surprise, my early poems were mostly about music and musicians as well. So, I think it’s always...

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I Am a Rebel Language

In Criticism

8 Min read

I

“I don’t usually define myself by one genre; however, I am a poet, a fiction writer, a hybrid writer, and a non-fiction writer, and so I claim all of those identities. I see myself ultimately as a writer who writes a number of different things, in a number of different genres, who experiments with form sometimes and who writes what she wants when she wants.”

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Nine-Part Harmony

By Chris Elder

In Criticism

5 Min read

N

The beauty of this novel’s style is that it allows themes to appear via juxtaposition—refugeeism, the nature of human consciousness, the end of life. The fragmented storytelling resonates in a way that moves the reader’s emotions in a constant flow of varying chords, the tensions raised in one story carrying over into the next, then back again.

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An Ongoing Confession

By William M. Brandon III

In Criticism

8 Min read

A

Les Chants de Maldoror is a work that seems to permeate each mind it touches, even if briefly. Whether role-playing or reminiscing, the contributors to The Celestial Bandit bleed confessions. Jordan Rothacker sets the stage expertly by giving a framework for the influence the Comte de Lautréamont has had on generations of creative renegades...

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When Food Is Hope

By Jessica Rothacker

In Criticism

5 Min read

W

The perfect friendship of butter & grilled sourdough, the hard-to-place fruity scent of cactus candy, the joy in anticipation of pizza delivery, all gloss over a deep, universal, inevitable melancholy.

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UNNATURAL HISTORY OF CONSTRUCTION

by Ryan Alexander

In Criticism, Essay

23 Min read

U

The Interim by Wolfgang Hilbig

As a reader who has grown increasingly interested in a particular species of postwar fiction from the German-speaking countries—which traffics in introspection, anomie, and melancholy—to hear Wolfgang Hilbig referenced as part of a general literary/philosophical/intellectual cohort which included Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard, and W.G...

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StatORec Welcomes Jordan A. Rothacker as Books Editor

In Criticism, Opinion-Editorial

1 Min read

S

We at StatORec are proud to welcome Jordan A. Rothacker to our editorial team in the position of Books Editor. Rothacker brings with him over twenty years in magazine editorial experience and a deep commitment to honoring the word in all its forms and expressions. Along with a background in journalism, in 2016 Rothacker completed a PhD in Comparative Literature with a dissertation...

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