Böcker av Brett Biebel

There's a 200-mile long traffic jam on I-94, and people are going to be stuck there for days. Maybe weeks. Told in striking, kinetic flashes, Brett Biebel's Gridlock explores the event, its origins in American political, athletic, and romantic institutions, and its impact on all the individual lives that go on in its shadow. Four roommates order a Japanese sex robot. A man designs a book review algorithm. Sentient pitching machines debate life, death, and violence, and bags of deli ham fly across trashy grocery store parking lots as the cars idle. Day in and day out. Their gears grinding down to nothing, or, well. Maybe it's something after all.

"Noted literary critic Harold Bloom thinks Mason & Dixon is Pynchon's best book, but that's just a start. Not only does it contain all of the writer's typical density and erudition, it's arguably his most humane depiction of relationships. The title pair are rendered caringly and movingly, and with a lot of humor. The book is a buddy movie, and it's warm and full of earnestness and narratively propulsive once you immerse yourself in its use of 18th-century language. And it is this narrative device-a full immersion in 18th-century language, history, and culture-paired with Pynchon's typical breadth of vocabulary and knowledge that demands a companion. In A Mason & Dixon Companion, Brett Biebel offers contextual maps and photographs, episode-by-episode summaries, and page-by-page annotations explaining allusions, defining obscure vocabulary, and illuminating the book's major themes. The goal is to help readers work their way through a difficult yet remarkably rewarding novel from one of American literature's most significant writers. A Mason & Dixon Companion is so full of friendship, humor, and life, and Pynchon's use of history and language is so carefully chosen that, by the end of the novel, the 18th-century feels closer than ever. Or, at least it should. All of the book's archaic vocabulary and obscure references, its unexplained name-drops and sudden scene-shifts, it's all there to constantly remind us of the importance of paying attention. This Companion aims to help readers in their quest to pay attention"--

In the wee hours of a cold winter morning, the plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson crashed in a remote Iowa field, killing all three musicians, and forever marking February 3rd, 1959, as "the Day the Music Died." The 59 linked flash stories in WINTER DANCE PARTY focus on the obsessions and indifferences of the inhabitants who still live near that field, as well as on the development company that bought the property-and what cash-grab designs they might have for a big empty piece of Americana. Amidst flyover-country pranks and bowling-alley shenanigans are the struggles between those who want to stop the commercialization, those desperate for the tourist dollars, and those caught in between. Told in crisp, lyrical prose, this is the fragmented story of tragedy and aftermath, filled with that American determination to profit off them both.