Worst Book Reviewed in Eat the State!
January 15th, 2010The Worst Book I Ever Read was reviewed in Eat the State, a political online zine. Here is an excerpt:
Let’s hear it for the small independent presses! While the few remaining giant conglomerates continue to churn out their blockbuster tripe, these honest and near-forgotten publishers are still printing books that may appeal to more discerning tastes. Case in point is Autonomedia, which still valiantly publishes edgy, eccentric works.
As the publisher itself puts it: “Autonomedia is an autonomous zone for arts radicals in both old and new media. We publish books on radical media, politics and the arts that seek to transcend party lines, bottom lines and straight lines.”
One recent example of their work is the provocatively titled The Worst Book I Ever Read by the Unbearables. The Unbearables, a very loosely joined federation, first gained notoriety with a previous book which dared (!) malign the Beats: That’s right, they tore down such lefty icons as Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al. Quel scandal!
Widening their targets this time, they take aim at any and all literature, with different writers attacking such venerable authors as Joyce, Melville, and David Sedaris. In short, pithy chapters, such Unbearables as Arthur Nersesian, Luc Sante, and Seattle’s own Doug Nufer pick apart the classics as well as the deservedly forgotten in an often hilarious style. For instance, I love how Christine Calvo dissects Italo Calvino’s meta-classic If on a winter’s night a traveler in the same second-person parodic wink-wink style that Calvino employed in his novel, talking directly to the reader and mixing the author into the “plot” of the book and review.
Read the entire review here.
