notanotherbookreview

Called "one of the innovators of the short short story" by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches'  Whistler's Mother's Son and Other Curiosities (3/23, Pelekinesis) is a marvel of wit an ingenuity. In this collection of short works, over 100 pieces of prose, he veers from minimalism to satire, noir to children's tale, abstraction to surrealism. Cherches' imagination takes a variety of forms; parodies, standarized tests, nursery rhymes, conundrums, rescued cliches, misbegotten mysteries, dark Americana, existential misdemeanors, optimistic nihilism and more. Whistler's Mother's Son features material never before published, published in small magazines, and from his early  Condensed Book .   Here are beloved characters; Hamlet, Gertrude Stein, Amelia Earhart, Fred Flintstone, Mr. Mondrian--hard-boiled dicks, a man with two mustaches and even a confused Peter Cherches. Though I have read  Between a Dream and a Cup of Coffee,  Lift Your Right Arm  ...

THE NIGHT SHE SLEPT WITH A BEAR by Holly Anderson (Publication Studio, Portland, OR) is like visiting an alien country, you think you remember--from dreams you might have forgotten.  It’s a novel-like fiction made up of mesostics and flash fiction. I checked Wikipedia:   A   mesostic   is a   poem   or other   typography   such that a vertical phrase intersects lines of horizontal text. It is similar to an   acrostic , but with the vertical phrase intersecting the middle of the line, as opposed to beginning each new line. The practice of using index words to select pieces from a preexisting text was developed by   Jackson Mac Low   as "diastics". It was used extensively by the experimental composer   John Cage   (Walsh 2001). The Night She Slept with a Bear also comes with music by Chris Brokaw on itunes.  And since the fiction resembles a musical composition, with themes repeated and intersected, it’s probab...