​Only Son by Kevin Moffett is a novel about a boy and then a man reckoning with his father’s death, raising a son without a template, and the tenuous relationship he has with his aging mother. The first part follows the speaker in the days and years after his father’s death when he is nine. He attends karate lessons by a sensei who teaches kids with dead fathers, he sells things door to door from a magazine catalogue, he takes a trip to his aunt and grandmothers in Kentucky (going from Florida) to visit his father’s old room. The novel then pushes forward as the speaker is a father himself, watching his son grow up, observing and loving him in ways he thinks is right. At the moment, he’s a writing professor at a college in LA where he feels all his students are detached from his teachings. He takes his son, by that time a pre-teen, to skateparks and tries to become the role model he never had. Then, after receiving a gray notebook with his own father’s documentation of a journey from LA to San Francisco, he decides to follow in his father’s footsteps. His wife convinces his son to join him on the journey, acting as a final trip between the two before his son goes off to college. It’s during the trip the father begins to see how his son has pulled away from him. The father’s mother calls at times to talk about her new love affair, or the cactus she walked into at night, though the whole time, the father is somewhat cold to her while his son is the opposite. It’s not until they’re in San Francisco and it’s the last night when his son decides to go to a very fancy sushi restaurant. While there, he calls his grandmother to rate and rag on the food. It’s a moment where the father notes, “…it occurs to me that my experience of this meal is secondary to his, a feeling some parents must have all the time, and one I’ve had before but never this acutely.” It sums up how during the raising of his son, his focus hadn’t always been on his son.
 
Moffett has crafted a story that feels so propulsive in its language, it’s almost closer to a very long prose poem. It approaches its subject matter sometimes lightheartedly, sometimes serious, but always providing gut-punching lines. The novel crystalizes into a father’s realization of the way he loves and treats his son, and how that’s been put on the backseat when the grief of his own father towers above him. A truly powerful read.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner is a novel that follows the Compson family in 1910 and 1928 as problems begin to wreck them from the inside out in the fictional Yoknapatawpha county. The novel opens with the youngest son, Benjy, who is mentally handicapped and is taken care of by one of the Black servants and kids, Luster. In the narrative, we’re inside Benjy’s head as he goes looking for quarters, follows his siblings and servants around. Though the narrative itself is disjointed, jumping from one moment to the next quickly, has partial thoughts in italics, and creates this atmosphere of a family in turmoil. The narrative then shifts back to 1910 and follows Quentin, a man and Benjy’s uncle, on one of his last days before he commits suicide. He goes to get a watch he purposely broke repaired, tries to help a girl who is lost out, but then gets detained for doing so, and has sex with his sister Caddy (who he killed himself over after she gets married to someone else). Afterward, the narrative shifts back to 1928 and follows Jason, the eldest brother and the head of the household (since their father had died). He runs a business betting on cotton stocks, while manning a supply store, though he is nefarious in his other dealings. Not only does he think the traders are conspiring against him, but he is also keeping his sister’s daughter, also named Quentin, from seeing her mom. And throughout this time, he forced Caddy, Quentin’s mother, to pay for Quentin’s life. Though Jason has been storing all that money in a drawer for himself. It’s hinted that he knows that Quentin, the daughter, is a product of Caddy and Quentin, the uncle, and uses that to keep Caddy away. And in fact, one day she tries to see her daughter and Jason cheats her by keeping her daughter in the car as they drive next to her. Finally, the last part of the novel pulls away and is told in 3rd person, mainly narrating Dilsey, the Black servant, as she takes care of the house, the mother, her son Luster, and Benjy. In the morning she gets water ready and then takes Benjy and Luster to church where they listen to a preacher from St. Louis. Later on, the narrative follows Jason as he realizes that Quentin hasn’t shown up to breakfast. So he barges into his locked room where he keeps his money, and realizes it’s all gone. Turns out Quentin stole the cash (most of it truly belonging to her) and ran away with a man from a traveling show. Jason becomes furious and tries to track them down, but ends up getting knocked over and gets a splitting headache, so ends his search. The novel ends with Luster trying to calm Benjy by taking him to the cemetery where Quentin is buried, but Jason finds them out. There’s an additional appendix to the novel which, in part, is a listing of the Compson family from 1699-1945, but really applies an additional narrative to the family. First, it tracks a librarian who sees Caddy’s photo in a magazine and takes it to Jason first, thinking he’d want to talk to her, but knows that he was the one who sent her away. And then to Dilsey who is too old to see the photo. It also provides a broader picture of how the robbery changed the family, or rather, how Jason’s blackmailing bit him back.
 
Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury is astounding in its voice, narrative, and boldness. The first two sections on their own provide impressions of a family. One through the eyes of (what the narrative calls) an “invalid”, while the second follows the uncle who will commit suicide. It’s only when Jason’s narrative comes in where clarity begins to arrive. Though this clarity is sharply nihilistic. He thinks conspiracies are abound by the Jews out east trying to take advantage of his cotton stocks. He basically keeps his niece, Quentin, under lock and key and forces her mother, Caddy, to pay him if she wants to see her. He is deeply racist, though also terrified of Dilsey. All of it prepares the reader for the most narrative heavy section in the last part. In fact, it’s possible that the first 3 sections are there to really paint these characters in detail, while the last section then throws these characters into chaos. It is in how the POV shifts that creates an air of weight that hinges on us being inside the character’s heads first.
 
Though, regardless of being “of its time”, the narrative’s weak points exist in its racism—not of the characters themselves because if you’re inside a character’s heads, racism surely can exist. But it’s in the last section where it describes the preacher from St. Louis who had, “a wizened black face like a small, aged monkey.” It is in this narrative, the 3rd person POV, where the reader is pulled back from what they suppose as “subjective” to “objective”. But this description does indicate a bias of Faulker’s that shouldn’t go unstated. Of course, the other sections may be more overtly racist with their use of the N-word, but those are confined to 1st person, effectively subjective interpretations of reality. It “gives the game away” when what’s supposed to be objective describes a Black man with racial stereotypes. However, that being said, The Sound and The Fury is an intensely innovative novel and one that I thoroughly enjoyed.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

Queer by William S. Burroughs is a novella that follows an expat, Lee, as he lives and parties in Mexico City in the late 1940s. Lee is an old queen who clamors over younger men, drinks to excess and begins to fall in love with a man named Allerton. Allerton however presents his sexuality vaguely, sometimes hanging around a woman named Mary, other times going out to bars with one of the vibrantly flamboyant gays where they attend gay clubs. Lee latches himself onto Allerton, nearly pleading him though thinly veiled stories of queer encounters to monologues about a mind control drug called Yage—supposed later on in the novella to be Ayahuasca. Eventually, Lee invites Allerton to his place after a long night out drinking where, after Allerton pukes, they have sex. After, Lee attaches himself more to Allerton, and in one overtly romantic appeal buys Allerton’s pawned off camera for 600 pesos. Though this action makes Allerton pull away from Lee because he doesn’t like being indebted to anyone. Allerton goes away for a stint and then upon his return, Lee pleads with him to join on his search and selling of Yage in South America. Allerton reluctantly joins him and they first take their time on outings, then eventually hear about a white man deep in the jungle that is doing chemistry on what Lee supposes to be Yage. After an arduous search, they find the man, but he is so skeptical of Lee that nothing comes of their search. Now, six months later as Lee goes around photographing people that don’t want to be photographed, he returns to Mexico City looking for Allerton only to find that five months before, Allerton left back to South America. And he hadn’t been heard since.
 
Burroughs does strikingly well in balancing a sharpness to his prose while also capturing the voicy-ness of Lee. Lee himself seems to be a parallel world version of Burroughs in which both lived in Mexico City, both had queer sexual encounters, and both were obsessed with occult/occult-like medicines. It may even be true to say that Lee’s character (what I read as a washed-out “queen” who desires the limelight but is relegated to the backstreets of Mexico) is Burroughs making digs at himself. When, for instance, Lee begins to make up a story, adding in bravado, and Allerton becomes so disinterested that he leaves, the narrative mocks him, noting how the bar itself was nearly empty. In effect, Lee is playing to an empty crowd—that is except for himself. In this way, Lee’s lust for Allerton may be more a need for a man who listens to him and not so much is in conversation with him. His self-obsession overrides Allerton’s own needs as a man who desires to be indiscrete and non-committal. Lee’s character is also questionable when he sees a group of teenage boys and begins lusting over them, adding to his predatory nature (in both taking advantage of Allerton and desiring to capitalize on a mind controlling drug). It’s hard for me to tell if this narrative of Lee (one I take as subtly mocking him) is Burroughs’s earnestness about his own self. I only need to point to Burroughs’s own obsession with the occult and Yage and his time in Mexico City to think that Queer’s narrative is his way of justifying himself. Whether self-aware or not, the ending lacked a cohesion that this type of narrative needed. It ends on a dream that is about Allerton, but is so separated from everything else that it felt disjointed and dissatisfying. While I may not fully understand why it ends that way, I have wondered why Burroughs doesn’t end it in a more inevitably. That is, after taking photos and asking around Mexico City and learning that Allerton isn’t there anymore, Lee should’ve gone around taking more photos and thinks he sees Allerton, only to realize it isn’t Allerton. But then begins hitting on the man all the same. Another part that was questionable was its semi-antisemitic moments. Though, for all its faults, I can understand why it has stuck around for so long: Lee, who is an arrogant washed-out queen, is entertaining to watch.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​New Ohio Review Issue 35 has a variety of interesting pieces, a part of which is a folio on how dance in poetry is an act of resistance, joy, and the taboo. Other parts of the issue expand on themes of pets, humor, and an essay comparing Darwin’s illness with the writer’s own Long COVID. Pieces I particularly liked were ‘The Smoker’ by Johnny Cate, ‘Carls’ by Craig Bernardini, ‘Spring Cleaning’ by Emma Wynn, ‘Strike a Blow for Liberty’ by Rose Lambert-Sluder, and ‘Thinking About My Father’s Erector Set from 1948’ by Jen Siranganian. For me, the highlight was the story by Craig Bernardini with how intensely humorous it was in referring to the Carls (as neighbors) and then their Carl (their son). The story follows the parents as they try to keep their son away from the neighbors because they know he’ll become indoctrinated by them and turn out badly. And its tone really worked for the narrative. Overall, the issue had very few misses, though not as many hits as I would’ve liked.
 
Final Rating: 3/5

​The Kenyon Review Fall 2023 is comprised of two main folios: a folio on and about food, while the other is about ‘Gender as a Vessel’. These two themes create a delightful issue in which stories about people being eaten in Douglas Silver’s ‘Taste’ are situation alongside discussions about the body being remade and changed. Other pieces I was fond of were ‘Lemon Season’ by Rebecca Ackermann, ‘Thunderhead’ by Gregory Spatz, and ‘Gulp’ by Dare Williams. I think my favorite—for how strange the story was—was ‘Taste’ in which a man’s hollandaise sauce was so good, it caused people to eat each other. A decent issue overall.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Paris Review Issue 135 is a collection of fiction, poetry, interviews, features, and art that is quite jam-packed with heavy-hitters. Though for the first half of the issue, nothing particularly stood out, except the interview with P.D. James—in a bad way. The interviewer, over the course of multiple questions, goads James into discussing feminism, eventually producing a very outdated understanding of the movement. James says, “I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.” James is referring to how in a college she visited, there were posters up informing students about help-lines for harassment and date-rape, which she disliked. Now, over thirty years later, the same line about people being too “PC” is spouted from the mouths of actual fascists—or in the very least neoliberals who deride the left rather than the right. Regardless, the question stands: how does political correctness instill fascism? Is it how, as a society, we’ve agreed upon a set of words to describe people and that other words are deemed inappropriate? In that case, no one was stopping P.D. James from saying what she wanted. Sure, the consequences of James’s words could bite her back, but that would be expected with anything one is to say. This interview was a low point in the issue because the rest I quite enjoyed. There was quite a bit of poetry by Carl Philips that I liked. The interview with Thom Gunn was fascinating when he talked about the classics and his process. There’s a diary of taking a semester with Allen Ginsberg, which was insightful into Ginsberg as a poet and as a person. It was alluded in his talks and in the excerpts of Ginsberg’s past lovers, and the fanboys who lingered at the edge of his class. Though, for me the breakout piece was a story by Rick DeMarinis called ‘Experience’ about a 14-year-old boy who has a Ham radio set-up in his bedroom that’s in the basement, a step-father that wears a green pinstripe suit to every meal, and a friend whose cousin showed him her privates.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Paris Review Issue 235 is a collection of poetry, prose, interviews, art, and stage plays published essentially at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. I found the interview with Edward Hirsch to be quite funny and also enlightening. There were other pieces that enjoyed such as ‘The Loss of Heaven’ by Dantiel W. Moniz, and “1976: A Lyric, A Memory, A Lie, The Absolute Truth” by Mary Crockett Hill. Though the stand out story for me was ‘River Crossing’ by Jack Livings which is about this town that’s centered around trying to cross the river to another encampment that’s far livelier. However, the river is infested with killer hippos and alligators such that it’s almost impossible to cross. There’s lore about the town building billboards on the river to signal to the other side, and the main industry of the town is an idea generation of how to cross the river. There are also people who decide to trek to outposts higher up the river that takes multiple lifetimes to get word back about what’s going on up north. Essentially this town’s strangeness and customs surround the desire to cross the river. So one day when the narrator’s daughter wants to become one of the people trekking northward, the narrator and his wife freak out. They try to convince their daughter to stay, but she’s unwilling to change her mind. Eventually the wife asks to join the trek. But before they can do anything, the narrator decides to go to his brother who was hiding a possible way across the river: a mechanical hippo. The story ends with the narrator starting his crossing. It’s a strange story and reminds me of another story called ‘The Sleep’ by Caitlin Horrocks which involves a whole strange town. Overall, I found this issue quite delightful.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Black Warrior Review Issue 52.1 is a collection of poetry, essays, fiction, and comics. The fiction in particular displayed the monstrous, the strange, and the surreal while the poetry interrogated the political. The pieces I enjoyed were ‘Four Teachers Stapled Together’ by Brett Hymel Jr., ‘Bring us to the Egalitary, Bring us to the End’ by Rishona Michael, ‘Dear Property Owner’ by Renata Golden, and ‘How to Catch and Cook a Mermaid’ by M. Lea Gray. One of my own stories is featured in this issue, but it was a delight to read such brave works of art.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​American Short Fiction Issue 82 is a collection of six short stories all revolving around relationships in turmoil or that fizzle out. ‘When We Go, We Go Downstream’ by Carrie R. Moore is about this brother and sister whose family has said to be cursed and that all relationships end afoul. It’s set in the days before the sister’s wedding where the brother has brought along a new date and problems arise when the sister’s partner goes missing. The brother soon realizes the curse is real and thus cuts off his own relationship. ‘Archer’s Paradox’ by KJ Nakazawa-Kern is about a man who has started dating a woman after a divorce and takes up archery in his house to start coping with it. Though, I think the most interesting story was ‘The Skilled Anatomist’ by Colleen Rosenfeld in which a woman’s friend is attempting to get over the grief of losing her family by getting procedures done by anatomists to be where the grief goes. Eventually none of the procedures work, so the woman is asked to become pregnant with a baby and her friend’s grief.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw is a collection of stories where Black women and daughters contend with religion, specifically the institution of the church, on sex, relationships, and desire. The stories are all interconnected, some loosely, some following a character at different parts of their lives. Though, all of them are interested in how desire can be shamed and used as a weapon in the context of God and worship. In particular, the stand-out story is ‘Peach Cobbler’ in which a daughter watches her mother bake a peach cobbler for their pastor who has a wife and son of his own. The story follows the daughter in her first believing the pastor is God, and then becoming envious of her mother’s cooking, all while she is learning about her own desires as a woman. When the pastor asks the daughter to tutor his son, she goes over but doesn’t want his money. Though, the son is a copy of his dad in that he is cheating on her. The story discusses womanhood/virginity/desire without fully mentioning it, but instead used the cobbler as a surrogate. In which the mother prepares the peach cobbler and the pastor hungrily eats it. In how Olivia, as she grows older, intends to bake her own cobbler. The story also hints at the pastor actually being Olivia’s father, which implies that she started developing feelings for her half-brother. Then, we return to this character in ‘Instructions for Married Christian Husbands’ where the speaker lays out how she wants to have sex. It parallels ‘Peach Cobbler’ so well because now that the character has come into her own, she has embodied what her mother was doing (i.e. letting a married man have sex with her). Other notable stories in the collection were ‘How to Make Love to a Physicist’, and ‘When Eddie Levert Comes’. A succinct, though powerful read.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5