About

Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, forthcoming from Keyhole Press in October 2010. His fiction appears in literary magazines such as Conjunctions, Hayden's Ferry Review, Willow Springs, Unsaid, and American Short Fiction, and has been selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2010 and Best American Fantasy 2. He is also the editor of The Collagist. For more information, click here.

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Tuesday
09Sep2008

Stanley Crawford Interviewed at Bookslut

I just finished reading Stanley Crawford's Log of the S.S. the Mrs Unguentine yesterday, the same day Bookslut posted their interview with him.  I thought Log was great-- I love books where characters must create their own worlds to live in because the one they've been given is insufficient, and that's exactly what happens aboard the barge where the novel is set.  Here's an early section of the book that I think represents the writing style well:

Forty years ago I first linked up Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas, but Unguentine--now dead after a bloody eventless life--turned out to be a ferocious bastard who beat me within an inch of my life everywhere we sighted land, not because of me, not for land, but for drink, he with his bent for alcohol up to the very last moment when his grey lips touched the blue sea for the final time, moment of his death.  Suicide.  So I sailed that ship, I sailed it every nautical inch of our marriage.

Check out the interview at Bookslut, and then pick up a copy of the novel.  It's just been reprinted by Dalkey Archives with an interesting afterword by Ben Marcus.  Also, this is the second book I've read in a row that I originally heard about from Blake Butler's blog, so be sure to stop over there and keep tabs on what he's reading next.

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