LITTORAL: Reading Series with John Reed and Michael Kimball
Michael Kimball’s first two novels are The Way the Family Got Away (2000) and How Much of Us There Was (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated) into many languages. His third novel, Dear Everybody, has just been published in the US, UK, and Canada (http://michael-kimball.com/). Time Out New York calls the writing “stunning” and the Los Angeles Times says the book was “funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking.” He is also responsible for the collaborative art project Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard) and the documentary film, I Will Smash You (2009).
Praise for John Reed:
“A wicked illusionist.” - Graham Reed, Los Angeles Journal
“John Reed excels in the realm of strange.” - San Francisco Examiner
“Is this man who wants to blow up the classic literary canon taught to children in schools a menace, or a messiah?” - David Shankbone, Wikinews
“One of the guiltiest post-modern pleasures is to take familiar stories and update them to fit our genre-crossing, coke-snorting, contemporary selves… passes faster than an episode of The Real World.” - Lisa Nuch Venbrux, Popmatters
“Philip K. Dick, Hunter S. Thompson, William S. Burroughs and T.S. Eliot come crashing together… something you may possibly adore by the end or that may make you want to burn the author in effigy.” - Jason Pettus, CCLAP
“Reed has managed to take a dated masterpiece… and revive it for the odd casino-like social and political world we’re mired in today; in the process he’s created his own masterpiece.” - John Grooms, Creative Loafing
“A pig returns to the farm, thumbing his snout at Orwell… and the estate of George Orwell is not happy about it.” - Dinitia Smith, New York Times
“It will take a great deal more than a fortnight’s work by a smart-aleck anti-corporatist to undermine the most brilliant sature of the 20th century.” - London Telegraph
“John Reed… is getting what he never knew he wanted, hated from the right wing groups…” - Daniel Robert Epstein, Suicidegirls
“Free John Reed! Free the piggies!” - New York Press
“This book has something to upset almost everyone who reads it, just like a good book should.” - Dennis Lot Johnson
“A psychotomimetic tale that sleeps through the pages, into your skin - by the end, you are stunned to find you’ve read a book, not watched a 3-D film!” - J.T. Leroy / Laura Albert
“Likely to offend almost everyone… witless parody.” - David Futrelle, Money Magazine
“A volatile new novel!” - Arthur Salm, San Diego Union Tribune
“The New York author has ignited a fierce literary debate; is it ever right to write a book modeled on a classic, that twists the original message into unrecognizable form?” - David Robinson and Jacqui Goddard, Scotsman
“Snowball’s Chance parodies Orwell’s Animal Farm, dragging it kicking and screaming into the 21st Century.” - Ed Nawotka, Publisher’s Weekly
“Written in lucid, wise, funny, fable-prose, this book brings to mind Spiegelman’s Maus - the use of a playful metaphor to reveal truths we might otherwise refuse to see.” - Jonathan Ames
“Reed’s tale crafted amid ground zero’s dust, is chilling in its clarity and inspired in its skewering of Orwell’s stilted style. Whether you liked or loathed the original, there’s no denying reed has captured the state of the farm today.” - Jay MacDonald, Fort Myers News-Press
