A Cake Appeared by Shane Jones

I freaking love this book man. I think Shane Jones gets more wildly imaginative in the poems in A Cake Appeared than in his other work, which of course is all pretty wild in its imaginativeness.

I don't know how, but all these absurdities work when Shane writes them. Like facial hair breakdowns and stuff. They are good. There's a village in a dresser drawer.

It's pretty abnormal poetry. I don't think it's supposed to be taken too seriously.

But something serious happens anyway. Like, emotional seriousness happens even though the book isn't based on that.

If you were to ask someone why this book works, that person might say, "It works mostly because whoever wrote this didn't try to make something work." Someone else might say, "It's funny." Someone else might say, "Actually, it doesn't work because it's a little too much of nothing," and then that person might think, "Actually, that's pretty interesting."

If you were to ask someone about why this book works that person might say, "It's pretty good."

Anyway, this book was a lot of fun to read.

Questionstruck by William Walsh

This is an interesting book. I got it about a year ago and haven't really spent too much time with it. It is made up entirely of questions that the "author," William Walsh, culled from essays by Calvin Trillin. That is, like, whoa, what an idea. It was published by Keyhole Books. For some reason when I think of Keyhole I don't think of it as the most experimental press ever, but this book is a big experiment. When Lou Reed put out Metal Machine Music he didn't want it to be in the same bins as his other records. He wanted it to get a separate label so the kids didn't buy it thinking it would be like Coney Island or whatever. Berlin, I mean. Either that or he definitely wanted it to be on the same label, I can never remember.

Anyway, it's cool that Keyhole put this out because I like their books.

Okay, I have some questions. Who's Calvin Trillin? Why Calvin Trillin? Why questions, all? How does Walsh feel about that Padget Powell book, The Interrogative Mood? How does Calvin Trillin think about Questionstruck? Has he read it? All of it? In order? Did Calvin Trillin read it and think, "Why would I ask that question?"

I haven't read it too much because I'd usually rather watch 30 Rock. But from what I did see, I think Walsh ordered the questions in the best possible way to create an engaging thing. Conceptually I am interested in this book and would like to talk to someone who has read it all. I would like to know if they liked it. I really like the cover because it is handsome. Recommended for fans of wild life rifle fire.