“The
characters in Chase Burke’s Lecture are aspirants and schemers,
searching our omnipresent corporations and pop culture for whatever cracks
might appear, anywhere one might escape into something more successful,
heartfelt, or ultimately authentic. What a lucky journey to join in on, carried
along in Burke’s smart and witty prose.”
“Burke’s Lecture
expects us to pay attention—whether in museums and libraries or in our own
homes and workplaces—and to be receptive to the gift of human connection
however it may appear. Novel pages turned into airplanes for passersby to find
and feel ‘affected in some way,’ a letter written on a submarine ‘to a good
friend,’ a shared cigarette with a co-worker after a serious disaster, a person
waiting for their ‘brother to come home.’ So read these stories, this Lecture,
and take notes: otherwise, like one tourist pleading desperately with our
president, we are doomed to exist here having ‘never felt so lonely.’”
“The
irrepressible Chase Burke has delivered this irresistible book, Lecture,
a baker’s dozen of nattily disheveled short short fictions. I think of them as
lithesome literary GIFs, frenetic yet graceful, starring a bevy of Buster
Keatonion characters, dolled up in stoic animated deadpan as whole cabinets of
sentient cookware and cutlery as well as showrooms of kitchen sinks swirl
around Escheresque tableaus of pensive rumination—emphatic, empathetic,
bemused, curious circumventions, undeniably understated. Chase chases
heroically the chaotic chaos just under the placid surface of exact and
exacting attention. Each and every static kinetic piece is another delicate pas
de deux with locomotive, ready, set, stop and going all the way, while you,
dear reader, are all the time hanging on, effortlessly and eagerly, to your
slightly too small pork pie hat.”
No comments:
Post a Comment