Here is a timely - and occasionally unsettling - volume of short stories. And within is a woman who erases history textbooks, painting over horror after horror with a liquid paper brush . . . a groundskeeper who fishes yet another body out of the lake at a suicide camp . . . a man who scans through radio channels late at night, longing for the fulfillment of apocalyptic fantasy . . . a driver who heads ever westward, highway after highway, motel after motel, the details of each locale eerily similar. Songs of Insurgency gives us a patchwork view of the post-9/11 zeitgeist, presenting a world - ours - in the process of being dismantled. Fear segues to paranoia, and alienation to sadism or suicide or a droning, dial-tone numbness. Yet amidst all this dislocation and unease, just audible above the fake moans of the phone sex line, a vision of an authentic alternative existence tests its wings. Spencer Dew lives in Chicago. His fiction has appeared in numerous journals, where its unique voice - a slowly simmered reduction of prose poetry with pulp gristle and bits of horror - has developed a loyal underground following. He is currently writing a novel as well as a book-length study on the work of Kathy Acker.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
The scapes in Songs of Insurgency are as wild as they come, and Spencer Dew writes with a paranoid verve holding little antecedent. --Todd Dills, editor of THE2NDHAND / author of Sons of Rapture
. . . it's safe to say you won't see Songs of Insurgency popping up on your mother's book club calendar. . . . His book hits like a sock to the gut . . . --Time Out Chicago
Spencer Dew pounds through the apathy and delusions of our post-9/11 world with the force of a jackhammer. --St. Louis Post-Dispatch
. . . it's safe to say you won't see Songs of Insurgency popping up on your mother's book club calendar. . . . His book hits like a sock to the gut . . . --Time Out Chicago
Spencer Dew pounds through the apathy and delusions of our post-9/11 world with the force of a jackhammer. --St. Louis Post-Dispatch
About the Author
Spencer Dew lives in Chicago. His fiction has appeared in numerous journals, where its unique voice - a slowly simmered reduction of prose poetry with pulp gristle and bits of horror - has developed a loyal underground following. He is currently writing a novel as well as a book-length study on the work of Kathy Acker.
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More About the Author
Spencer Dew is the author of two works of fiction -- "Songs of Insurgency" (Vagabond Press, 2008) and the forthcoming "Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres" (Another New Calligraphy, 2010) -- and the forthcoming critical study "Learning for Revolution: the Work of Kathy Acker" (San Diego State University Press, 2010. For updates on reading and appearances as well as links to short stories, essays, and reviews, visit www.spencerdew.com
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2 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By M. DiGangi
Format:Perfect Paperback
Okay, so I think the reason this book works for me is because I moved to Boston (age 23) the week of September 11th. More or less, my adult life has been the Garbage Bush years and trying to disconnect from warfare, paranoia and ignorance.
This book is for anybody who was against the war from the beginning. It's starting to grow out of its tragically hip phase. It's sex after the three basic positions are used. It's city people with country origins. It replaces the bible in cheap hotel rooms. It tastes strange but it costs less. It's drugs you haven't heard of before. It's in the leather pouch that guy who does voodoo wears around his neck. They talk about it on the lower end of the AM spectrum early each morning.
This book is for anybody who was against the war from the beginning. It's starting to grow out of its tragically hip phase. It's sex after the three basic positions are used. It's city people with country origins. It replaces the bible in cheap hotel rooms. It tastes strange but it costs less. It's drugs you haven't heard of before. It's in the leather pouch that guy who does voodoo wears around his neck. They talk about it on the lower end of the AM spectrum early each morning.
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