I’ve honestly lost count of how many times David and I have sat down to talk about some new book of his, but it’s hard to have too much of a good thing! And we finally did meet in person not too long ago for the first time since that first time we met in 2020, in the hazy days just before the world shut down for COVID. He did a reading at Riffraff Books down in Providence, RI, and I took the train down to see him. Also got to meet his brother and his father. It was a great reading and a great time hanging out there and after all around. I think I’m getting to see him next week at AWP, too, but, you know, TBD.

But anyway, we’ve published a new interview in minor literature[s] about his most recent book, The Squimbop Condition which, in addition to having some super interesting, very classic David Leo Rice writing in there, also has killer illustrations throughout (which, naturally, I forgot to ask about during the interview; or maybe let’s pretend that I did, but that it sadly had to get cut out of the final version? In any case —).

A preview:

This too feels very much a part of the era we’re living through, where discourse has swallowed reality so thoroughly that we don’t notice the disjunct anymore. People who say the right or wrong things are seen as equivalent to people who actually do things—and perhaps not incorrectly, if our world is now as susceptible to what is said about it as it is (or ever was) to what is done to and in it. I tend to think that a culture that has foregrounded fights over language and opinion is either in great shape—all the major, tangible problems have been solved—or in truly awful shape, if it’s tacitly given up on even trying to solve those problems as such. It’s like language becomes a kind of magic with the innate ability to conjure and destroy beings and objects, which, in some conceptions of reality, has always been true.
— David Leo Rice

With any luck we’ll be back to our more regularly scheduled content next week, although I think based on the routine(s) of the new job, posts should be expected on Fridays going forward, not Wednesdays. I’m sure you won’t mind.