13 Questions for Lars Iyer
I no longer sought the novel as the ‘bright book of life’. I’m tempted to say that my taste darkened, but it was more complex than that. It was a matter of a kind of involution – of a writing concerned with itself, with what called it into existence, however pretentious that may sound. I wanted to see what could be done with writing.
Fiction, History, and the Truth Buried in the Banana Massacre
In this lyrical meditation on One Hundred Years of Solitude and the 1928 Banana Massacre, Nathan explores how Gabriel García Márquez transforms historical silence into mythic resonance. He argues that the power of fiction lies not in recovering lost facts, but in the arrangement of language itself—a structure that resists forgetting when history fails.
13 Questions for Greg Gerke
You will love Raymond Carver and then meet Joseph McElroy and Elizabeth Hardwick later in life and it will be a beautiful maturing experience—you are a tree and literature wraps around you, marking your years.
13 Questions for Derek Maine
I am listening to my Grandfathers and Grandmothers who have walked these trails before to get a clue, a sense, a hint at something true, a message, some critical piece of insight that has passed me by in the neutered, algorithmic modern drudgery of my simple, suburban life.
13 Questions for Mark Haber
I think once you’ve written enough you can’t not write like yourself. So I never worry about influence as much as embrace influence.
13 Questions for Christina Tudor-Sideri
There is a limit to what we can experience on our own, to what we can know, to what our minds and our bodies make sense of, an edge up to where we can go, a door that can never be open. Literature opens that door. It erases that limit.
13 Questions for João Reis
João Reis is a Portuguese writer and literary translator. His books are published in Portugal, the USA, Brazil, Serbia, and Georgia. He writes both in Portuguese and English. He is the author of, among others, the excellent The Devastation of Silence.
Orpheus in LA, the Most Dangerous Man in America, and Thomas Pynchon
He’d been to Hell (but not back), turned his gaze upon the Machinery of a System that would do everything in its power to keep its operation covert, and was dealt with in the only way that System knew how: dispersal and dismemberment. Ahhh America, a failure of Creativity.
13 Questions for Seth from W.A.S.T.E. Mailing List
Seth is a non-authoritative devotee of anything and everything related to Thomas Pynchon. He runs a small Instagram feed, YouTube channel, and SubStack, all focused on difficult and demanding literature. He sits down with B.O.S.S. to answer 13 questions.
Books About Control: Season 2
Through the ages, literature has raised the question of control in many ways. Am I in control of my life? What forces outside of myself are influencing my reality? A surveying government? An imperial army? Invisible forces embedded in my culture or environment? How can I free myself? Is it even possible? In Season 2 of Books of Some Substance, we bring you six novels that raise such questions and explore how these ideas shape our own lives.