Jottings from a Far Away Place
Ranging on the fringes of imagination and erudition, forming a mosaic of stories, maxims and sketches, at once fragmentary and cumulative, Jottings from a Far Away Place combines the timeless, mannered assurance of the Eastern discursive essay with the experimentation of the Western avant-garde. As the focus shifts between fantastic tales and studies of viciousness, the reader is treated to, among myriad other things, the adventures of a Taoist guitar player, a bloody episode with Countess de Báthory, a recipe for cinnabar sauce, and the story of a man who has been reincarnated as a spoon.
A book that is like a collection of bulletins from the world of dreams.
Contents:
- Observations
- Habitually Dancing
- Showing the World
- Entrusting
- A Ramshackle Village
- Ghost Cave
- Gradual Activity
- Uncommon
- Defilements
- Gesture of Bowing
- Many-Coloured Eyebrows
- Entities
- Maladjustment
- Nothing to Hide
- Slow Amulets
- Irreversibility
- Emerging from a Trance
- Treasures
- Wild Ducks
- Tissues and Banners
- Constant Principle
- Holding Up the Sky
- Red Dalmatics
- Bewilderment
- Sacred Contours
- Giggling Flutes
- Worn-Out Straw Sandals
- Generating Worlds
Brendan Connell
Brendan Connell was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1970. He has had fiction published in numerous places, including McSweeney's, Adbusters, and the World Fantasy Award winning anthologies Leviathan 3 (The Ministry of Whimsy 2002), and Strange Tales (Tartarus Press 2003). His published books are: The Translation of Father Torturo (Prime Books, 2005), Dr. Black and the Guerrillia (Grafitisk Press, 2005), Metrophilias (Better Non Sequitur, 2010), Unpleasant Tales (Eibonvale Press, 2010), The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children (Chômu Press, 2011), The Architect (PS Publishing, 2012), Lives of Notorious Cooks (Chômu Press, 2012), Miss Homicide Plays the Flute (Eibonvale Press, 2013), The Cutest Girl in Class (co-written with Quentin S. Crisp and Justin Isis, Snuggly Books, 2013), The Galaxy Club (Chômu Press, 2014), The Metanatural Adventures of Dr. Black (PS Publishing, 2014), Cannibals of West Papua (Zagava, 2015), Jottings from a Far Away Place (Snuggly Books, 2015), Clark (Snuggly Books, 2016), The Heel (Snuggly Books, 2017) and Pleasant Tales (Eibonvale Press, 2017).