Books
Always buy your books at independent bookstores. Why?
- More money stays in your neighborhood and goes into supporting other local businesses.
- Publishers make more money from independent stores.
- It’s good exercise.
- Impressing a fellow snob with your impeccable taste is one of the main reasons we buy books.
Mine can often be found stocked at: McNally Jackson in New York, This Ain’t The Rosedale Library , Type , Another Story in Toronto, Skylight Books in Los Angeles, Quimbys and The Bookcellar in Chicago, Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, and People’s Bookstore in Vancouver. Barring residence in these cities, IndieBound and Amazon links are below.
ANTHOLOGIES
Against Expression: An anthology of conceptual writing ( NU Press)
Edited by Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith
Buy at Amazon Buy from NU Press
“Dworkin and Goldsmith, two of the leading spokespersons and practitioners of conceptual writing, chart the trajectory of the conceptual aesthetic from early precursors including Samuel Beckett and Marcel Duchamp to the most prominent of today’s writers.” Includes a unique edit of Voice Over.
NOVELS AND SHORT FICTION
Ronald Reagan, My Father ECW Press/Independent Publishers Group, April 1 2010
“[Davis] fucks with America better than almost any writer I know.” Jeff Parker, author of Ovenman
“Nothing short of ludicrous…An experiment with the unexpected.” Bookslut
“Cockeyed glorious.” Uptown Weekly
“Davis demonstrates real craft, combining humour with narrative development, humane warmth, and a convincing command of vernacular expression … Ronald Reagan, My Father is hyper-satire intended for those who appreciate Davis’s dark humour and share his cultural enthusiasms, which are equal parts populist and arcane. Fans of the edginess of Davis’s previous work will find similar satisfaction…” Quill & Quire
“A stunning sublimity rarely encountered.” Broken Pencil
“[A] smorgasbord of the bizarre…imagine The Onion writes for The Walrus.” The Globe and Mail
“Brian Joseph Davis’s latest is the kind of good that’s so inventive, it’s hard to review without stealing the author’s lines… Ronald Reagan, My Father is not so much Raymond Carver from Mars (as the publicity material would have it) as it is Kurt Vonnegut in 21st-century America…Like with poetry, the brevity of these stories belies their depth. This is a book best enjoyed in multiple sittings, as each piece gives plenty to mull over. But while these stories came back to mind in the weeks after reading—as good a test of writing as any—by the end of most, I still wanted more. Here’s hoping that at this calibre of writing, Davis’s next will reward us with more sustained efforts.” The Varsity
In RONALD REAGAN, MY FATHER the elderly take to the streets at night for illegal and cathartic electric scooter racing. A copy editor suffters brain damage from West Nile virus and is suddenly filled with cannibalistic violence and award-winning minimalist poetry. A Texas doctor transplants the mind of a meth-addicted convict into the body of a suburban web developer, resulting in America’s first “death-penalty case that turned into a custody case that turned into a right-to-die case.”
STORIES ON THE WEB
Ordinary People | Bury My Heart at Tataouine | Johnny |
CELLPHONE OR IPAD ONLY
The Bourguignon Prize | The Lame Shall Enter At Five Miles Per Hour
RADIO PLAY ADAPTATIONS
Listen to them all, with brilliant performances and eerily accurate foley effects.
I, Tania 2007 (ECW Press)
Buy : via Amazon
“If punk rock was a book, this would be it. Brian Joseph Davis’ I, Tania—a (super)fictionalized (auto)biography of Patty Hearst—is fast, hard and totally about screwing over the Man. Davis manages to mock the rich, the pig middle class, revolutionaries, the media, Bad News Bears, Don DeLillo and Katie Couric without breaking his stride, all while serving a heaping plop of Marxism for Dummies. But be warned: I, Tania only really appeals to four groups—Weather Underground fugitives who now watch a lot of VH1, pinko-intellectual college students who did a lot of coke in the bathrooms of their elite high schools, terrorists and super-smart post-hip PW readers who use Pop Rocks as their infallible guide to all that’s truly supergroovy in the increasingly balkanized melange of insanity and inanity that is modern pop culture.”
— Alli Katz, Philadelphia Weekly
SLATE said: “When I first pulled Brian Joseph Davis’ I, Tania from the new arrivals shelf, I narcissistically wondered if it was an elaborate hoax. Its apparent themes coincided so perfectly with my personal obsessions—the Symbionese Liberation Army, 1980s sports stars, Marxist-Leninist linguistics, kidnapped heiresses, suicidal rock stars—it seemed like a custom Build-a-Bear of a novel created just for me. ..Rarely have the rules of narrative been more imaginatively ignored—the book is full of guest lists for parties that never happened, urban guerrilla fashion tips, and a glimpse at what a truly revolutionary sex-toy catalog would look like.I, Tania is for people who like comic books but don’t care for the drawings, for readers who enjoy ’70s television and Donald Barthelme, and for fans of The Bad News Bears. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to argue the merits of punk rock versus Detroit techno with Katie Couric live on daytime TV, it may well be the book of your fever dreams.”
Portable Altamont 2005 (Coach House Books)
Buy via Amazon
“An elegant, wise-ass rush of truth, hiding riotous social commentary in slanderous jokes. In Davis’ lyrical aphorisms, celebrity is a dazzling mirror of our most regal fears and dreams, as well as a dinky death rattle…It almost feels like he’s leading a palace coup. A-“ Spin Magazine on Portable Altamont, Dec 2005
“Very funny.”—Ian Svenonius, of Weird War, The Make-Up
“By turns aggressive and hilarious, it’s a twisted assault on mass culture where nothing is sacred and nothing is safe. Blowing things up has never been so much fun.”—National Post
*I was recently informed that the Latin translation of The Amboy Dukes, “You Talk Sunshine, I Breathe Fire” on page 74, is beyond atrocious. Please replace with: Lustratum narras solis, ego ignem iacio
Thanks to JD Davis for the new translation.
