last things first

Hi. You are receiving this either because you signed up for it earlier this week or because I signed you up for it because I thought you’d like it, possibly because you were on my mailing list in 2020 and when I wrote to you about my last book you did not unsubscribe, so I figured you’d take this as continuity rather than presumption. If I was wrong, please accept my apologies and unsubscribe yourself. No hard feelings. 

To everyone else, welcome to The Abridged Abyss. It is free. Its primary function is to share what I’ve been writing and where you can find it. I will also share thoughts about things I’ve been reading, listening to, or otherwise enjoying. Outtakes, deep cuts, and B-sides, maybe. I’ll put out one a month, two if there’s a lot going on. Every few years I will try to sell you a book I wrote. The next time I will do so is right now. My novel, Reboot, is going to be published by Pantheon on April 23, 2024. I’ll have more to say about Reboot in a future post, but for now let it suffice to say that pre-orders are open. Here’s the cover:

Since this is launching in December, here’s my year in review. I published a bunch of book reviews, some essays, and two short stories.

Stories

—“Secret Name” appeared in the inaugural issue of Word West Revue back in January.

—“A Painting for the Temple” appeared in the Sewanee Review #523, the spring ’23 issue. 

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Essays (it means “to try”)

—“Standing in the Doorway -> Craft Talk -> Jam -> Craft Talk -> Not Fade Away”, appeared in Northwest Review 52.02, the winter 2023 issue. (Print only, I’m afraid.)

—My guest contribution to the William Trevor Reader was on his story “The Smoke Trees of San Pietro.”

—An appreciation of Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus for FMR #6 (Fall 2023). (Again, print only, and this thing is not cheap, but it is gorgeous—highly recommended if you can get your hands on one.)

—And last but not least, “Some Ballad Folks” appears in the 25th annual Southern music issue of the Oxford American. This one is on stands now. 

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Reviews 

— “Brood Meridian”, on Cormac McCarthy’s last two novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, for the Dec/Jan/Feb ’22-’23 issue of Bookforum, which at the time appeared to be the last issue of Bookforum period. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

—A round-up of three story collections for the New York Times Book Review.

—“Forget it, Jake, It’s 1 Corinthians 15:51”, on Lorrie Moore’s I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home for the Sewanee Review. 

— “Old Weird America: The Dark Comedies of Charles Portis” for The Point.

—On a new edition of E.T.A. Hoffmann for the Washington Post Book World, where I am now a contributing writer, so going forward I’ll be doing a handful of pieces for them every year.

—And “Rand Illusion: Lexi Freiman’s The Book of Ayn” in—wait for it—Bookforum, which, like Tiny Tim, did not die, but was restored in all its glory. Much rejoicing. 

Now let’s do superlatives. 

The Moore and Freiman novels were two of the best of the year, but since I reviewed them you can see above for the extended takes. It was a good year for story collections as well: Vauhini Vara’s This Is Salvaged, Jessi Jezewska Stevens’ Ghost Pains, Kenan Orhan’s I Am My Country (see NYTBR roundup above), and Kathleen Alcott’s Emergency were among my favorites. Madeline Cash’s Earth Angel is my pick for debut of the year. I described this book in a blurb as “bleak, estranging, and bizarre; slyly profound, pretty sleazy, and funny as fuck.” Still true.

I will eventually be a Jamaica Kincaid completist. Most recently I read The Autobiography of My Mother. I’m also making my way through the novels of Muriel Spark. Her novels are short but can be tough to get your head around, and there are like twenty of them. I bought The Hothouse by the East River at a used bookstore in Eugene near the beginning of the year. Finally read it in November. Like a lot of her stuff, I felt doubtful through the first half and then it snapped into focus.

I’m a longtime fan of Anthony McCann’s so it’s great to see a new collection of poems from him, the impeccably titled I Am the Dead, Who, You Take Care of Me. There are a couple of homages to Ashbery in there, in particular his 1981 collection, Shadow Train, which was serendipitous because I’d just finished rereading Shadow Train a few days before coming across McCann’s book at Powell’s. 

I finally read Flannery O’Connor’s letters and bought a copy of Federico Campagna’s Technic and Magic: The Reconstruction of Reality which I have so far failed to crack. It has been sitting on my desk taunting me, so I covered it with a copy of Jacques Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism, which I bought (and read!) because it was cited so often by O’Connor in her letters. I re-read Herzog, End Zone, and Already Dead—all as good as I remembered them being or better, especially Already Dead. Noir gnostic miracle, galaxy brain in—or of—a brain-damaged galaxy, I miss Denis Johnson every day. Ashbery as mentioned. Extended forays back into the Collected Stories of O’Connor, Leonard Michaels, and Joy Williams, who also put out a new novella this year, The Godmother, as part of Gagosian’s Picture Books series. It’s good. Let’s talk about music.

I saw a bunch of great concerts this year. A stupid number of them were Phish shows. Have no desire to evangelize about this, still less to hear about your dismay, but if you’re curious, of the nine (LOL) that I saw, 9/1 in Denver is the one I’ve returned to most frequently, though they all had their high points. The other eight were 4/21, 4/22, and 4/23 in Los Angeles; 7/11 in Huntsville; 9/3 in Denver; 10/6, 10/7, and 10/8 in Nashville.

I saw the always amazing Charlie Parr and Marisa Anderson at Polaris Hall here in Portland on 3/2. Derecho Rhythm Section burned up the Icehouse in Minneapolis on 3/9. Michael Hurley and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy played solo sets on a double bill at the Aladdin Theater (Portland again) on May 15th. I’ve seen both these guys several times before but never so unadorned and open-hearted as they were this night. It was special. On 7/30 Amanda and I drove down to Bend to see boygenius, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Illuminati Hotties, who I knew next to nothing about but have had in rotation ever since. Bodes well for the kids that pissiness is back in. On August 19th we saw Built to Spill and Japanese Breakfast at the pop-up venue in Pioneer Square. And Margo Cilker at Polaris Hall on November 19, night one of a two-night stand capping her fall tour. Amanda and I first heard Margo last year at Pickathon, I was so impressed I immediately pitched a profile of her to the Oxford American, and we haven’t missed a chance to see her since. Her new record, Valley of Heart’s Delight, is my favorite album of the year. She just announced a big spring tour so go see her if you can. 

Speaking of touring. Amanda and I spent the second half of July driving from Sewanee, TN to Portland via the northern route. Here are two things I learned about North Dakota:

Other standout albums released this year: MJ Lenderman’s And the Wind (Live and Loose), Jess Williamson’s (Plains) solo record Time Ain’t Accidental, Bob Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom, uneven yet intermittently transcendent—which is to say SOP for Bob. He massacres “Tombstone Blues” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, paints by numbers on “Forever Young” and “Queen Jane Approximately”, but turns “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” into a bop and delivers revelatory new readings of “The Wicked Messenger” and “What Was It You Wanted.” Hundred times better than The Complete Budokan.

What else? Sunny War’s Anarchist Gospel, which I discovered because someone wanted to know if the album title was inspired by the title of my first novel (I said I doubted it). Bardo Pond’s rereleases of Bardo Pond Vol. 3 (2002) and No Hashish, No Change Money, No Saki Saki (1993). Olivia Rodrigo, obviously. And Keep on the Shady Side by Taco Tapes, a project of Ben Walden, who wrote the song “Steelhead Trout” which appears on the Cilker record mentioned above. (He plays on it too.) Margo told a long story about Ben and shouted out Taco Tapes at the Polaris show; I hope I’m not the only one who followed up. It’s warm, fun, laidback, but a little off-kilter, like a fourth beer. And a haunted cover of “I Know You Rider” that made me want to call the whole thing “shoegaze folk,” which isn’t exactly true, but true enough that I still wanted to say it.

Researching the piece on ballads for Oxford American, I listened to a lot of traditional music, including long-overdue reunions with Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and Jean Ritchie’s British Traditional Ballads in the Southern Mountains Vols. 1 and 2. Still nothing better than Elizabeth Cotten. I also heard for the first time The Traditional Music of Beech Mountain, North Carolina (two volumes), which features a few of the singers I was writing about, and I discovered Anna & Elizabeth, who seem to have put out three records in the 2010s and then disappeared. All worth a listen.

Moving pictures? Interactive media? idk. Oppenheimer and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour—thumbs up on both. Still playing Tears of the Kingdom. When you beat all 152 shrines they give you a fursona, then you spend another 20 hours harvesting lynel and gleeok parts to level it up. Not a complaint.

Oh, the name of the newsletter. The phrase belongs to David Berman (z”l), from a song called “What Is Not But Could Be If” on the last Silver Jews record, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. I’m pretty sure he adapted it from Nachman of Breslov, and I already pinched it from him once for a short story title a few years ago. It would be a good title for a book.

Thanks for being part of this. Love to hear from you, so drop a line if you’re inclined. And whether your next month includes filing grades, enduring holiday travel, finishing spring syllabi, prayer and reflection, the MSG NYE run, or something else entirely, here’s wishing you a good one,  

Justin

(another thing I learned about North Dakota)