Today I finished reading Days Between Stations, Steve Erickon's first novel.
I found it devastating. Heartbreaking. Brave.
Suffused with a guttural dreaminess that anybody, anywhere might recognize from losing a loved one, or losing love, or losing one's memories, or simply being heartbroken and lost in general.
Life gets weird when those things happen. You don't just sit there, "having emotions".
The whole world changes, the weather inside and out.
This is why we need writers like Erickson. We need "romantic fabulists" and "cynical fantasists." Not just ironic realists.
In a flurry of Vietnamese coffee at a small, dark and very clean cafe well south of Mission down 24th, I wrote this long rant about it, which was more about my feelings about Los Angeles than anything else.
But it's also worth reading my link at the end: Brian Evenson's insightful appreciation of Erikson which is also an astute diagnosis of the problems behind the "postmodern" label.
More about Erickson, J.G. Ballard and sci-fi/spec. fiction soon.
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