Steve Erickson

OK, that's not strictly true. But everything up to 'Arc D'X' certainly. The first four novels, 'Days Between Stations', 'Rubicon Beach', 'Tours of the Black Clock' and 'Arc D'X' add up to the most impressive achievement in US fiction in the last 20 years I think. And it's best to consider them as a quartet because characters reappear, ideas migrate, borders are porous.

Having said that, I often find myself thinking he is best as a memoirist. His great subject is 20th (and 21st?) century memory - and this preoccupation comes to the fore in the two books of supposed reportage - 'Leap Year' (on the 1988 election) and 'American Nomad' (on the 1996? election) benefit hugely from Erickson's cranky humour being allowed to canter; the novels can often seem too earnest.

There has been a genuine falling off in quality in the recent books - as though he has been discouraged by the relative failure of the early ones. But he has a new book out this year - 'Our Ecstatic Days' - and I am genuinely excited at the prospect of it. (He also has a new magazine he is editing for CalArts called 'Black Clock'.)

Trouble begins with Tours of the Black Clock (3rd of these 4 novels) and these troubles come to dominate the 5th (Amnesiascope) and 6th (Sea Came In at Midnight);

Still, one of the best things about Erickson is his willingness to risk total and utter embarrassment, addressing his themes and dilemmas with the straightest of faces - not many jokes, no - but following those themes and dilemmas down VERY roundabout routes and to tortuous extremes.

That he is totally and utterly embarrassing at times isn't that big a deal given how good his novels are when the risks pay off. That he has a new one coming out is really good news.

Perhaps the best way to think of Erickson is: imagine that Phil Dick really had a good try at being a mashed up mix of Faulkner and Marquez.

Or: imagine a Too Many DJs megamix of all the books featured in Leslie Fiedler's gothic 'Love and Death in the American Novel'.

pkd is funny; so is faulkner; so is marquez

i'd wondered about recurring thingies between books when i bought days between stations the other day and it had an eye in a bottle on the cover

Black Clock, the CalArts MFA literary magazine has been compared to Conjunctions, which is one of my favorite lit mags. I'm both hopeful and skeptical that this is true.

About which, in a way, you, not I, are the expert.

Currently reading Leap Year, and it is worrying how little things change in 16 years...

"It is absolutely possible, though I'm afraid we'll have to ask for $25.00
yearly (US dollars) for 2 issues -- the extra $5.00 going towards mailing
costs.

I'm also afraid to say that the only way to subscribe at present is to
mail a check or money order for $25.00 USD to Black Clock, c/o Dwayne
Moser, CalArts, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, CA 91355."

So there you go. Anyone know how I go about obtaining a money order in US dollars?

I'm still not sure I agree with this! I recommended 'The Sea Came In At Midnight' to someone in fairly rapturous terms last week... it does amazing amazing things with blue, and I'm a total sucker for that sort of thing.

I could never quite get into Rubicon Beach, and I did try a bunch of times - there was a sense in which it was so loose that every paragraph became a sort of violence to what you were building in your head?

I used to see people on the tube all the time reading 'Steve Erikson' novels and get really excited and then they'd be terrible fantasy novels :(

I will try to compose a more thoughtful response once my disappointment has subsided.

Yeah explain - !

has he discovered humour yet?

so which one was one of the best things you ever read?

oh... I cannae remember now

I was probably drunk, sorry : /

ha. can you remember which you've read?

reviving this thread bcz i just finished 'black clock' which m. skidmore talks about here:

Steve Erickson: C/D and all that

i liked it better than 'arc d'x' or 'days between stations', because it had a joke in it, possibly more than one

amazingly prompt response btw, well done

I've read leap year, days between stations, and tours of the black clock

4 yrs ago wd probably have been black clock (most probably this) or leap year tho; I only read stations recently

well, black clock is pretty good

huh. has martin skidmore stopped posting? i hadn't realised.

not-very-interesting fact: when my ex gave back box of stuff she'd had for months earlier this year the two books she neglected to give back were rubicon beach and arc d'x

yah that isnt interesting

lol i thought this wld be about the other dude ~~ black clocks is pretty good, yah

haha you would

i actually thought about trying to read one by the other dude, but my friend who i thought had them didn't so i ended up looking at a novel by robin hobb instead. it didn't seem very good

i read sea came in at midnight and i didn't like it at all. i didn't even want to finish it. i know his earlier stuff is supposed to be better, but it's gonna be hard for me to even want to read another one even if its better.

was it funny at all?

not very interesting part 2: it was deeply lol to me that u started the akira thread on ILE like ten years ago or w/e (xxpost)

i have a copy of days btw stations maybe will give it a try

the one i read was funny in a bad way. funny in a you have GOT to be kidding me kinda way.

it was deeply lol to me that u started the akira thread on ILE like ten years ago

huh! that's mainly just o_o to me

scott do you mean this kind of thing:

"Everyone is his own millennium, he says.

Yes.

Everyone is his own age of chaos. Everyone is his own age of apocalypse.

No, she says, there is no age of apocalypse. Everyone, she says, is his own age of meaning."

because he isn't that bad, in the earlier ones

when i read that book i couldn't tell whether i was supposed to be impressed or stunned or surprised or what by the fact that everyone in the book turns out to be connected to each other. it was just ludicrous. it was like really bad sci-fi. but you don't even get spaceships or aliens. as some sort of "statement" or whatever about, um, everything wrong in the world(!!) it was just really childish. or collegiate. or something. i mean, i like nihilism as much as the next guy.

i read 'our ecstatic days' recently, but after slogging through, right towards the end, i just gave up. only had about 100 pages to go. it was just... boring. not absorbing at all. all these weird characters and convoluted relationships and weird narrative, but not in a 'oooh i can't wait to see how this all ties up' kind of way.

Our Ecstatic Days was the worst. I remember thinking the last one, Zeroville, showed some improvement, but I already can't remember a fucking thing about it (even had to find it on the shelf to remember the title). I liked Amnesiascope a lot, but possibly only because I read it shortly after moving back to LA & I very much liked the idea of this city falling into ruin and being swallowed by rings of fire.

still haven't read any of his fiction. but his movie reviews are really really annoying, can't quite put my finger on the reason why.

Does anyone know if there's a hardcover edition of "Zeroville" somewhere out there? And he has a new one coming out, "These Dreams of You."

And where's Stephen Wright?