Milo and the Calf

Category: Books

  • Melo’s Inferno

    A kind of sensationalistic kind of interesting novel of Brazilian street kid who goes on to become a drug lord of his favela before losing it all to betrayal, hubris and paranoia. Not a particularly new take on the story of the drug dealer (i.e. basically Scarface in Sao Paolo) but interesting none the less…

  • Review: Lopez’s Story of Buddhism

    The Story of Buddhism: A Concise Guide to its History and Teachings Donald Lopez I thought I wanted a history of the central tenets of Buddhism, and that’s exactly what I got. It turns out though, that I think I wanted something a bit different. This history of Buddhism is a serious (if at times…

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    Welch’s Winter in the Blood

    Winter in the Blood James Welch Brutal, haunting and beautifully written tale of life over a couple of weeks on a reservation, in Montana, in the 1970s. If you think such a setting would produce a sad tale of heartbreak, death, alcoholism and little hope, you’d be right. Much of this book is brutal in…

  • Review: Labbe’s Loquela

    Loquela Carlos Labbe Bolano-esque, but more formally experimental and less enjoyable (at least to this pleb). Like many such literary affairs, it’s plot, such as it is, centers on a love story. Of course, one of the lovers is a novelists, struggling to write. There is much discussion about the nature of writing, digressions into…

  • Review: Desai’s Marx’s Revenge

    Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism Meghnad Desai I’m genuinely surprised I don’t hear this book talked about more. On a macro level, Marx’s Revenge makes the argument that Marx would have welcomed globalization (the left’s boogie man of the day in 2004 when this came out) as the evitable…

  • Review: Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time

    The Fire Next Time James Baldwin The latest in a long line of classics I should have read years ago. The latest in a series of reviews o books so important, so pivotal, that it’s absurd to try to write a review. Still, I’ll give it a go. This, Baldwin’s combination letter to his nephew…

  • Review Gonzales’s The Spitboy Rule

    The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band Michelle Cruz Gonzales Ok, so I know Michelle, the author of this book, and some of the other members of Spitboy, the band at the center of this story. There was a time, a long long while ago, when we were all close.…

  • There Are Scenes He Describes That Still Haunt Me — Coogan’s On the Blanket

    On the Blanket: The Story of the IRA’s Dirty Protest Tim Pat Coogan If Tim Pat Coogan isn’t the world’s greatest authority on the I.R.A., he’s definitely on the short list. A reporter for years and year with close ties to catholic ghettos of Northern Ireland, he has the sources and knowledge few others can…

  • Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning

    Too Like The Lightning Ada Palmer Too Like the Lightning is a strange book. At times, it is a difficult book. It is also a very, very good book. A work of science fiction, for sure (we’ve got flying cars, people) it’s also much more than that. It’s an attempt to transport enlightenment ideas about…

  • Influences on Delany’s Dhalgren

    The largest influences on the book that I am aware of, at any rate, were Michel Foucault (primarily Madness and Civilization, secondarily The Order of Things), John Ashbery’s poems The Instruction Manual (and the Richard Howard essay on Ashbery in Alone with America) and These Lacustrine Cities, G. Spencer Brown’s Laws f Form (given me…