I had the pleasure of hearing John Madera read from his debut flash fiction collection, Nervosities at the KGB Bar in NYC a few weeks ago. Enjoying “Some Varieties of Being and other Non Sequiturs,” the first story in the collection of innovative, word-bending flash fiction released by Anti-Oedipus Press. The story opens with an exploration of Varanasi:
“…recombinant city entered through a multiplicity of openings: doors, windows, gateways, dreams; recursive city: it mumbles: breath to death; it mumbles: birth to earth; sepulchral city: it rasps: dust in the shadows, dust in the wall cracks, dust in the air, dust on the windows, dust in the whitewashed sky….”
Madera’s rhythmic prose draws the reader into a lyrical surrealscape, a place of memory, the narrator reminds us as the dust gathers on the city. Madera invites the reader to have a conversation with the story, where the mind may go where it must and go as it must in the streaming narrative—a door, a window, a dream, a rickshaw ride, a deepening grief, a bomb left at Varanasi’s Sankat Mochan Temple, some kerosene and a little skiff. The interiorities are unforgiving, critical and yet, tender too, in their stark perspectives delivered with sincere care not only in their meanings but also for how they feel in the mind and on the tongue. “…dust in the shadows, dust in the wall cracks, dust in the air….” Reading Madera aloud is a poetic delight. READ MORE
About Nervosities
In this debut collection of experimental short fiction, John Madera explores the complexities of identity, memory, history, and language, revealing the heterogeneities and instabilities that distinguish the post-industrial world. Born of diaspora and transversalism, the fourteen stories in Nervosities exhibit narrative modes and voices that converge on our ever-evolving culture of violence, mediatization, and fragmentation. Ultimately, these fictions enact a realization of what Deleuze and Guattari (via Antonin Artaud) call “the cancerous body of America, the body of war and money.” Reading Nervosities is at once a journey to an alternate universe and an uncanny chronicle of all-too-familiar terrain. READ MORE
About John Madera
John Madera’s fiction has been published in Conjunctions, Hobart, Salt Hill, Sleepingfish, and The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, while his criticism has appeared in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. A recipient of an M.F.A. from Brown University as well as two grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, Madera lives in New York City, where he serves as editor-in-chief of Big Other and runs the literary publicity company Rhizomatic.
About Openings
Openings is a recommendation column for Eckleburg readers, featuring fantastic books with fantastic openings, where readers first meet intriguing characters, settings and moments in which the mind can explore what is and what might be. Explore more great Openings with us at Eckleburg.
