Interview at Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Tobias Carroll interviewed me for Vol. 1 Brooklyn, asking questions about Babel and CORRECTION. Here's a little of his (very kind) introduction:

Gabriel Blackwell’s fiction rarely treads the same ground twice. He has a particular skill at finding ways to turn the margins of stories and genres into thrilling works on their own, whether that’s cosmic horror or the film Vertigo. [. . .] Babel showcases Blackwell’s writing at its most nimble and at its most structurally innovative, while CORRECTION wrestles with contemporary life in unexpected and jarring ways. Taken together, they’re a welcome return from a talented writer.

 

CORRECTION reviewed at Heavy Feather Review

 Gillian Perry reviewed CORRECTION for Heavy Feather Review, writing

CORRECTION does more than just acknowledge the internet—it displays the multifaceted way in which the internet has changed our thinking. These flash-point stories capture tragic, convoluted, and often hauntingly realistic episodes, where never just one thing is happening. [ . . ] These are stories without absolution, without a singular central move, and like his unfurling prose, roll forward relentlessly, pressing us to accept and build alongside Blackwell and his chorus of speakers.

 

5 New Essays at the Cleveland Review of Books

 The Cleveland Review of Books has published five new (very short) essays: "WISE AND FUNNY," "CLASSIC," "POSTERITY," "VENN," and "GENRE." Here's a sample from "VENN":

I didn't want to be a treasure trove of data, didn't, in other words, want to be someone who was spied upon by advertisers and companies that provided data to advertisers, and still I knew I was spied upon by advertisers and companies that provided data to advertisers. There was, I knew, little I could do to protect myself from being spied upon. Or, no, there were a number of things I could do to protect myself from being spied upon, every newspaper and magazine reported on them, but these were things that, if I did them, my wife would make fun of me, especially if I explained I was doing these things to avoid being spied upon.

CORRECTION reviewed at the Cleveland Review of Books

Kevin Tasker reviewed CORRECTION for The Cleveland Review of Books, writing, in part, 

Gabriel Blackwell’s searing new work, CORRECTION: 101 Readymades, may be the closest anyone’s come to capturing the bleak unsettling strangeness of American consciousness in the age of social media. The book, a rollercoaster ride of recursions, functions like a “Great American Novel” purged of pesky constraints like the delay-of-desire and labored exposition.

The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised-Men is part of StoryBundle's The From Beyond Bundle

The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised-Men is part of StoryBundle's The From Beyond Bundle, alongside books from Nick Mamatas and Brian Keene, Mary SanGiovanni, Kathe Koja, Joseph Pulver, Sr., LC Von Hessen, Jayaprakash Satyamurthy, Nick Blinko, Colin Wilson, and the anthology Tomorrow's Cthulhu, edited by Scott Gable and C. Dombrowski. 

For now, this bundle is the only way to get the ebook version of The Natural Dissolution of Fleeting-Improvised-Men, and it's a good deal: all ten books for as little as $15.

Babel reviewed in Long Story Short

 Babel was reviewed by Daniel Green in the first issue of his new newsletter, Long Story Short. Green writes that "it is as if the stories as a whole have indeed exited, if not language itself, then through a hole in the conventional representation of "reality" in literary language, emerging into "undreamt daydreams" (or nightmares) that Blackwell has obligingly gone ahead and dreamt for us."

Babel is among Greg Gerke's "Best Newer Books I've Read"

Greg Gerke included Babel in this roundup of best new books, writing that the book is "A delightful Davenportian, Lynchian, Borgesian experience. The most impressive book of short fiction I’ve read in some time."

Matt Bell recommends Babel

Matt Bell recommends Babel in the latest issue of his "Writing Exercises from Matt Bell" newsletter, calling "A Field in Winter," in particular, "deeply uncanny," and writing that the book as a whole is "unlike anything else you're reading." Thanks, Matt!

A Playlist for Babel at Largehearted Boy

Largehearted Boy's David John Gutowski kindly asked me to make a playlist for Babel. I obliged with this noisy collection of ten songs from Drive Like Jehu, Pere Ubu, Eno, Essential Logic, and others, for when you're in the mood for some joyous noise.

Six Texts at Splice

Splice has published six new texts—"MIDDLE AGE," "THE FIVE WS," "SUCCESSFUL," "TRY AGAIN," and "CHURCH CAMP"—as part of their publication week celebration of Babel, my new collection of stories. Here's the first sentence of "THE FIVE WS":

A woman from Orlando, they say, forty-two years old, mother to a young son, or so the rumor goes, ex-wife to a man who lived only minutes away from the apartment she shared with her longtime boyfriend, both a complainant and an alleged perpetrator in a 2018 domestic assault — she claimed the boyfriend had pulled her upstairs by her hair and kicked her in the eye; her boyfriend claimed she had strangled him until he almost passed out and he kicked her only to prevent her from killing him; charges in both cases were ultimately dropped — a woman whose Facebook page reveals that her favorite quote is “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well,” which, comma aside, is a paraphrase of something Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield once wrote (a man who was largely responsible for Britain adopting the Gregorian Calendar, less a thing “done well” than a thing done somewhat better than what had come before), a woman who has been charged with second-degree murder.

Three Stories in Juked

 Three stories—"Overnight," "How the Husband and the Wife Parted Ways," and "Fascinating and Disgusting"—have been published at juked. Here's the beginning of "Overnight":

What could possibly have happened to them? the mother said she’d asked the doctor. One minute, they’d been fine, the next, they wouldn’t wake up. Their brains had shut down, the woman said the doctor said. Their hearts were no longer pumping on their own. Even if they woke up, even if the doctor could get their brains working again, their hearts working again, there was likely to be serious brain damage, the woman said the doctor said.

Three Texts in Digital Vestiges

Three texts—"Complete," "Selected Letters (In Which I Give Up)," and "Le voyage dans la lune"—have been published at digital vestiges. Here's an excerpt:

On his final trip to America, while sitting in a car on a hill overlooking Ithaca, New York at night, Wittgenstein is reported to have said, “If I had planned it, I should never have made the sun at all. See! How beautiful! If there were only the moon there would be no reading and writing.”

"Capital," new essay at On the Seawall

A new essay, "Capital," has been published at On the Seawall. An excerpt:

Evansville, Indiana is not, an Evansville, Indiana news station reports (based on a press release from the Evansville, Indiana police department), the meth capital of the world. The Russian-oligarch-backed website named Evansville, Indiana the meth capital of the world, and, yes, certain posts on certain social media sites have been popping up again recently, but Evansville, Indiana is not the meth capital of the world.

Said, new fiction at On the Seawall

A new very short fiction, "Said," has been published at On the Seawall. Here's an excerpt:

He said he’d told his son to pick up his toys, not to leave his Lego cats everywhere. He said they were cats, you know, like cats. He said they were made out of Legos. He said, What do you want me to call them? He said he’d blacked out because he was taking some medicine for his back. 

What Is This Thing?, new fiction in Passages North

New fiction "What Is This Thing?" is up now at Passages North. Here's the first sentence:

I had this thing on my arm, on the back of my arm, so I asked my friend, What is this thing? and she said, I’m not a doctor, not, I mean, a medical doctor, though, really, she is not any kind of doctor; like me, she does have a master’s degree, but, because she has started teaching at the local community college, she has recently introduced this new ambiguity into her title.

New essay, "What Are Children Made Of?" in The Adroit Journal #29

"What Are Children Made Of?," a new essay, appears in the new issue of The Adroit Journal alongside work from Jane Wong, Emma Bolden, Emilia Phillips, Clint Smith, Dana Levin, and many others. Here's the end of the first section, "Snips":

Father and son from UK will make area stop on their cross-country moped trip. Local couple and son killed in drunk-driving crash late Tuesday. Local father-and-son baseball dynasty will face off for the first time on Sunday, when the longtime coach and the star right-fielder battle for the conference championship. Hate crime alleged in case of local teenagers accused of beating man and his teenage son; They just thought they were going to buy a cell phone, family representative says. Son asks mother, Mom, is God going to forgive me? after shooting father twice, local news reports.

Discipline and Authorities, two new essays, up at Big Other

Two very short essays, "DISCIPLINE" and "AUTHORITIES," are up at Big Other. Here's the beginning of "DISCIPLINE":

After a friend’s suicide, Tōson Shimazaki quit his job—teaching—in order to move to the country in order to live more simply in order to have more time to focus on writing his first novel, The Broken Commandment. Between giving up his teaching position and the publication of The Broken Commandment, ten years passed. During those ten years, all three of Shimazaki’s children starved to death.

Big Other has published some wonderful things this year, including fictions from Tobias Carroll, Michael Martone, Debra Di Blasi, Aimee Parkison, Robert Lopez, Peter Markus, and many others.

Scenery and Bedtime, two new fictions, in Issue 1 of New Sinews

Two more of my very short fictions, "Scenery" and "Bedtime," appear online in the first issue of New Sinews. Here's a little of the latter:

I told my son a disappointing story, a story, he said, that was no good. That wasn’t very good, he said, deadly serious and not at all tired. Not that I had so much invested in this story, but I wasn’t sure where to look for a moment. For a moment—and this will be unflattering, I think—I wondered if maybe it wasn’t the story after all, a pretty good one, I thought, exactly like the one he’d liked so much the night before, just with different animals and a little girl instead of a little boy, and I thought, maybe he would have said this after any story I told that night, no matter how good, which is to say that, for a fraction of a second, I wondered about my son’s true motivations, which is also to say that I wondered if it wasn’t so much the story I’d told as that I’d told it and not, I mean, his mother, and so I inhaled and held my breath for just long enough to calm myself but not so long that it would alarm my son, and then I asked him to tell me a story, and he did.

The issue also features new work from Vi Khi Nao and Tongo Eisen-Martin, among others.

Fathers and Sons, new fiction in Vestiges_03: Mimesis

"Fathers and Sons," a longer fiction, was published in Vestiges_03: Mimesis. Here's a paragraph from the first page:

And look, before we go any further, please understand I am a miserable person and I know it. My good fortune has, for instance, never seemed particularly good to me. I have, on an embarrassing number of occasions, only just barely stopped myself from complaining about the problems my wife and I have with our son to someone who, for all I know, can't have kids, or lost one young. There are those who have it worse, I mean, and, in my better moments, I recognize that my way of seeing the world is cowardly and childish and to be regretted. And there is also the convenient deafness I tend to develop when my daughter demands my attention, and the reproach I see in my son's face when I tell him I love him—though of course I know there is no reproach there, not really—and then there is also my tendency to make things about me when, in fact, they aren't.

The issue also features new work from Adam McOmber, Susan Daitch, Greg Mulcahy, Vi Khi Nao, Derick Dupre, and other worthies.

Significant, new fiction in Big Muddy 18.2

One of my very short stories, "Significant," appears in Issue 18.2 of Big Muddy. Here's a preview:

A man—and this is true—woke one night from troubled dreams, leaving his wife, with whom he had disagreed earlier about what to do with the baby's things, tossing and turning in their bed, and went to use the bathroom, which is where, completely unprepared to face such a thing, he turned on the light and found a monstrous vermin on the floor in front of him.

The issue also features new work from Brandon Hobson, Nathan Knapp, and many others.