Audrey Szasz’s prose is as beautiful and stark as her subject matter is provocative and perverse. Her books are an explosive fusion of the sublime, the seductive and the psychopathic. An author of virtuosic violation and subversive brilliance, Szasz is the best writer of her generation. —Steve Finbow
Szasz’s dark imagination – brutal scenes of sadism – is matched by her intimidatingly brilliant writing. Her worlds are cold and haunted, with humour piquing at the most bizarre and depraved moments. Surreal, unique and darkly hypnotic. —Thomas Moore
Audrey Szasz
COUNTERILLUMINATION
“The long-awaited third novel from a truly untamed literary talent.”
402 pages. Released May 2023 via Amphetamine Sulphate.
“Audrey Szasz’s epic third novel is her most ambitious trip yet. A 400-page psychic assault course journeying through the delirious present and harrowed hellscapes of futures past. This truly encyclopaedic outsider vision of ecstasy and, until now, unimaginable horror will surely warp your pretty little mind forever.”
File under: Sex (Deviant). Violence (Frequent). Psychology (Experimental). Literature (Radical). Counter (Illumination).
We can confidently say you will have never read anything remotely like this before.
Audrey Szasz (aka Zutka) is a London-based writer. She is the author of the novels Counterillumination (2023), Zealous Immaculate (2022), and Tears of a Komsomol Girl (2020). Published by Infinity Land Press (2019), Plan for the Abduction of J.G. Ballard (a collaboration with Jeremy Reed) was her debut in print, which was followed by her first novella Invisibility: A Manifesto (2020) released by Amphetamine Sulphate.
p.s. Hey. This weekend the blog has been happily commandeered for the purpose of giving a big, warm worldly welcome to the new novel by literary wiz kid, maestro, and phenom Audrey Szasz. A most noble and exciting cause. Thus, give whatever you consider your all to exploring the available evidence on this wonderful occasion, and, ideally, get the book itself. She’s a fantastic scribe to say the very least. Thanks! ** A, Uh, I have dated guys into the occult, but because my interest in the Crowley-style occult is very small, they quickly learned to save that talk for their other friends. Happy you’re happy, natch. Zac and I are around for the duration editing the film as of Monday, so just let us know the specifics of the King Kong thing and we can work ourselves into the arrangement. Thanks! ** Misanthrope, I think I had a Davy Jones crush too. I think that was pretty common. We have a three-day weekend here too, but I think it’s because of some other thing, maybe a religious thing. Oh, right, you were trying to play the guitar, I remember. Well, stick to those guns this time. Go to open mics and sing folk songs. Max out the extra day. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, yeah, I guess dolls are a thing. If I’d remembered that, I would have nixed that post in the cradle, contrary me. Stand by your team, man. But, yeah, ugh, season of sorrow. ** David Ehrenstein, There’s also the fact that, apart from being an ongoing icon, he hadn’t made anything even remotely great in more than 40 years. And he was 96 years old. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Oh, wow, enjoy Vienna, although I guess I’ll see you again before then. How exciting! Yes, if I have any say in it, love will be at the ready and sitting on your shoulder like a little invisible doll while you’re there. ImBack, you’ve got it. I just have to go re-find him and talk him into it and get him to Paris somehow and drop him off at the FedEX office. No sweat. Oh, god, I’m going to be really obvious and boring and saintly and ask love for a Putin voodoo doll. I think I have to turn that love prospect around and ask you the same thing: voodoo doll who?, G. ** Mark, Hi. I wonder why no one has ever published Darger’s novel. Well, it’s many thousands of pages, so there’s that. But I read parts of it ages ago, and it was pretty exciting. ** tomk, Hi! Oh, yes, she did. A few times. Most recently one of her students told me that she tells her students that the worst thing they possibly could do is write like me. Ha ha. Thanks about ‘MLT’. It’s one of my very favorite novels of mine as you probably know. And, yes, that Sue De Beer is my favorite book cover of mine ever. And its dreary paperback cover is my least favorite ever. You’re sick? Change of seasons thing? Feel infinitely better starting right now please. ** Kettering, Hi. Thank you for saying and thinking that. ** Bernard Welt, Ah ha! Makes sense. Yeah, that Doug Lang collection is such a joy. I’d read poems by him here and there, but seeing a bunch of his work together really makes you realise how good and wild he was. Though very different, there’s something Elmslie-ish about his work in that sense. Ange’s book is beautiful, you should definitely get it. He’s wonderful in the film, or will be and was wonderful in the shooting. UK, so close. Well, December-January is quite possibly the best time to be in Paris, as you probably know. Its beauty is at its beautiest. So come! ** Tea, Ah, you have an anti-Disneyland partner. Dump him! Ha ha, kidding. So, what concert? ** Nick., Hi. No sweat about the multi-comments, I like repetition, especially with slight variations like your pile up had. I concur that that is a positive difference. And telling. And more promising than the alternative. I’m still trying to remember what I was thinking when I wrote ‘Orange’ all these decades later, so that’s something. Sweet and spicy? That’s harder. I can think of sweet, and I can think of spicy, but I can’t combine them and come up with anything. Well, or anything that isn’t embarrassingly X-rated. I’ll need to sleep on that one, sorry. For some reason I’ve been listening to this one song by Guided by Voices (my favorite band) constantly for two weeks, but I don’t think it’ll make you think of a boy necessarily although it might make you forget about a boy because it’s called ‘Face Eraser’. ** Right. Be as fully with Audrey Szasz as you can be until I see you next on Monday.
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James Rosenquist The Serenade for the Doll after Claude Debussy, 1992 – 1993 oil on canvas
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Ionat Zurr & Oron Catts The Slow Death of Worry Doll G, 2018 ‘The Guatemalan Indians teach their children an old story. When you have worries you tell them to your dolls. At bedtime children are told to take one doll from the box for each worry & share their worry with that doll. Overnight, the doll will solve their worries. Remember, since there are only six dolls per box, you are only allowed six worries per day.” The Semi-Living Worry Dolls were the first tissue engineered sculptures to be presented alive in a gallery context. In that piece we constructed seven tissue engineered sculptures based on the Guatemalan Worry Dolls Legend. Back then we gave the dolls alphabetical names from A to H while dropping Semi-Living Doll G from various reasons, mainly as a counter balance to a Genohype ‘suffered’ by our society. Seven years later we decided to resurrect doll G only so we could engage with her slow death. As the Semi-Living Worry Dolls are supposed to solve people’s worries, we want to express our worry and growing concern regarding the persistence of the Genohype; the almost universal perceptions that modern biology (and sometimes life itself) deals only with the molecular level of the genetic code. The popular assumption is that the code is life and life is information. We hope Semi-Living Doll G will sway this misconception away. We are also interested in staging a (semi) living art piece that focuses attention on the most obvious (but discursively neglected) aspect of living art – it is in the process of dying. A larger scale Semi-Living Worry Doll is constructed and placed (or hanged) in our custome designed drip feed perfusion bioreactor.. During the installation as the cells grow and the polymer degrade we expect that the head of the doll to separate from the body which will then lie in a paddle of nutrient solution.’
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Tony Oursler MMPI (Self-Portrait in Yellow), 1996 Video installation with video projector, VCR, video tape, small cloth figure and metal chair.
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Annette Messager La petite ballerine, 2011 Mixed media
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Stacy Leigh Average Americans that Happen to be Sex Dolls, 2014
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Bikas Bhattacharji Doll II, 1998 painting
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Kiki Smith Puppet, 1993-94 Intaglio in 2 colors with collage on Gampi hinged to Kouzi-Kizuki paper
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Betye Saar Black Doll Blues, 2021 Assemblage
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Claire Oswalt Various, 2011 ‘Working on a true to life scale, Brooklyn based artist Claire Oswalt’s massive mixed media sculptures are built from a machined wood then jointed and layered with illustrated paper. In essence she’s created life size paper dolls able to be moved about and interact with each other.’
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Simon Zoric The Thing* Which Makes The Thing That Thing Which It Is, 2009 ‘In this work Simon Zoric unboxes a ventriloquist’s dummy – one that looks just like him. The artist carefully dresses his mini-me in matching clothes and props him on a chair, then puts earbuds around its head. As David Bowie’s Sound and Vision kicks into gear, the doll gently springs to life, as if contemplating what it sees and hears as if for the very first time.’
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Hans-Peter Feldmann Sex Doll, 2018 Thermoplastic plastic, table, chair, typewriter, sex doll, plinth
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Morton Bartlett Painted Plaster Figure of Seated Boy, 1950 ‘Morton Bartlett, who had never married and lived alone, had constructed a family of fifteen anatomically correct dolls, all children: three young boys and twelve girls. The dolls are a third to half life size, modeled first in clay, then cast in plaster. Having had no training in art, Bartlett assiduously studied anatomy texts to perfect his creations, then learned to sew, embroider, and knit to clothe them, and finally took up photography.’
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Paul McCarthy Various, 1992 – 2002
Dirty Nose, 1995
Girl with penis, 1992
Sue Amon, 2002
Ken Doll No Head, 1992
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Sidsel Meineche Hansen Difficult to work with?, 2019 ‘Difficult to work with? included a life-sized ball-jointed figure with orifices that were compatible with oral and vaginal inserts made in silicone, which are sold for current sex robots on the market. The mobile phone, held in the sculpture’s hand featured an app with an animated avatar delivering a monologue entitled An Artist’s Guide to Stop Being an Artist, 2019. The script, which appropriated Allen Carr’s self-help guide Easy Way to Stop Smoking, instead discussed the artist’s dilemma of wanting to make art while wanting to quit it as a profession.’
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Dennis Oppenheim Theme for a Major Hit, 1974 cast resin, fabric, marionette, clothed, motor, record to which puppet moves, spotlight, cassette, documentation, camping case
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André Masson Le bâillon vert à bouche de pensée, 1938 ‘This shop window mannequin decorated by André Masson was among 20 lining a corridor entitled The Most Beautiful Streets of Paris in the 1938 International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris.’
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Laurie Simmons Kigurumi, Dollers and How We See, 2014 ‘After several years of working with lifelike latex dolls, I finally became comfortable working in a human scale environment. As I searched for my next subject I stumbled upon a sub-genre of Japanese cosplay called Kigurumi. Cosplay, short for “costume play,” is a performance art in which participants wear costumes to represent a specific character or idea and often interact in groups to create a subculture based on role-play. I searched the web for Kigurumi mask makers and the faces that appealed to me the most come from a cosplayer in Russia. I’ve created a group of characters based on his masks. I’ve dressed them, posed them, dyed their hair and let them develop personalities, gestures and tics based on the models who inhabit them. I perceive them as making an effort to reveal themselves to me and that is what I’ve been trying to record. Some of my cosplayers are men and some are women but they all portray female characters. I try to explore the psychological subtexts of beauty, identity and persona surrounding the assembled Dollers. At first I dressed them only in fetish latex, which seemed both doll-like and right for their identities, but it soon became clear that they needed to expand their repertoire and play dress up.’
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AA Bronson Voodoo Doll, 2013 ‘These two unique Voodoo dolls are representations of AA Bronson and his husband Mark Jan Krayenhoff van de Leur by Finnish artist Reima Hirvonen. AA Bronson’s doll is constructed from his own Pucci underwear and decorated with ballpoint pen. Hidden inside are human hair, sage, turquoise, and semen. Mark Jan Krayenhoff van de Leur’s doll is also made of his underwear, and includes human hair, a dzi stone with 21 eyes, tobacco, sage, semen, and is decorated with multiple faces in ballpoint pen. Both dolls feature male genitals made of fabric.’
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Robert Moore Doll 1, 2010 Acrylic on canvas
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Destiny Deacon Axed, 1994 – 2003 ‘Axed, in which a decapitated baby doll lies next to a hatchet on a bare and grimy wooden floor, looks like a child’s mock-up of a grisly crime scene. Deacon’s use of what she refers to as ‘bad photography’ is a political strategy rooted in her identification with the urban Aboriginal community of inner Melbourne and pitched against the polished aesthetics associated with white middle-class privilege.’
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Silvia B Hero, 2008 mixed media on synthetic material, glass eyes, synthetic hair, eyelashes, bandage, underwear, 3-piece suit, pocket square, nylon gloves, leather shoes, ‘golden’ jewellery and sunglasses, lollypop stick, on winners podium
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Richard Jackson The Copy Room, 2014 ‘Here, a “fantasy female office worker” rides a photocopier, in what the artist sees an inevitable result of life in a “capitalist work environment”.’
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Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys Flap and Flop, 2019 ‘Flap and Flop are two comedians from Bilzen, a village in Limburg. Flap and Flop’s jokes are so bad that no one wants to hear them. If Flap tells a joke, only Flop laughs, and vice versa. They travel from village to village in their cart. Sometimes Flop stands on the cart, and sometimes Flap. They go to the places where there are fairs and markets, and try to draw people’s attention by singing loudly or shouting jokes. However, they are always chased away and have mud and stones thrown at them. Once Flap and Flop had the idea of making a big trip to Spain. They were going to go by train, but they didn’t get further than the station of L. They spent half their money in a café next to the station celebrating their departure. When they finally went to set off, they were so drunk they couldn’t read the departure board at the station. So they didn’t go.’
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Sawako Goda Doll, 1972 oil on canvas laid on panel
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Jean-Luc Moulène Clearly, 2022 ‘Thinking about the baby doll as a very complex object in terms of psychological, psychoanalytical efficiency, I was thinking, yes, but the material problem is that the doll is made of plastic. So I told myself, since it’s made of plastic, let’s ennoble it! And to ennoble it, I altered it with a bronze element. How many times have we seen works such as skeletons made of glass, a plastic chair made of wood, etc. – the silly standards of contemporary art! Here there are two chosen materials. I did not make the doll exclusively out of bronze. Basically, what I did is upgrade things for the realm of collecting, while maintaining these spaces for projection. One can still dress the doll, one may still style her, etc. And this is why I used a Petitcollin model, which is a French, upper class brand created in the 1950s. It is still produced today. So, when I speak about projection, the doll exists with blue eyes, as well as with brown eyes. But the version with blue eyes is sold out! I can’t find it anywhere… This particular has blue eyes. I’m convinced that in terms of the purchase decision, it changes things significantly.’
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Cécile Plaisance Lens Series, 2014 – 2017 ‘Cécile Plaisance uses a technique of lenticular developing, super imposing images which creates an image of Barbie from a functional role to undress.’
James Bond Girl, 2014
Angelina Gun, 2014
Bubble Bath, 2015
Kiss Ken, 2016
Jimi Hendrix, 2016
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Yayoi Kusama Untitled, 1966 ‘I would cover a canvas with nets then continue painting them on the table, on the floor, on dolls, on mannequins and finally on my own body. As I repeated this process over and over again, the nets began to expand to infinity. I forgot about myself as they enveloped me, clinging to my arms and legs and clothes and filling the entire room.’
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Heather Benning Doll House, 2005 – 2013 ‘In 2005, Canadian artist Heather Benning discovered an abandoned Saskatchewan farmhouse, which she felt resembled the outside of an old dollhouse. Inspired by the building itself, Benning spent the next 18 months transforming the idle farmhouse into a child’s dollhouse reminiscent of the late 1960s. In 2013, when the building’s foundation began to become unsound, Benning took precautionary measures in setting the building ablaze, destroying the living relic.’
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Eleanor Antin The Adventures of a Nurse, 1976 ‘Playing with cliched feminine personae, Eleanor Antin in The Adventures of a Nurse manipulates cut-out paper dolls to tell the story of innocent Nurse Eleanor who meets one gorgeous, intriguing, and available man after another. Nurse Eleanor is the fantasy creation of Antin, who is costumed as a nurse. Staged on a bedspread and acted by a cast of one, The Adventures of a Nurse moves through successive layers of irony to unravel a childlike, self-enclosed fantasy of a young woman’s life.’
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Hans Bellmer The Doll, 1934 ‘Bellmer created his first doll in 1933, which he christened Die Puppe. Several significant events coalesced to be the force behind her creation, including, but not limited to, the aforementioned displacement theory. Bellmer had recently met his flirtatious fifteen-year-old cousin, Ursula, from whom he had to resist the whirlwind of attraction and infatuation that overtook his being. The Nazi’s fascist regime had also swept relentlessly over the country, and Bellmer, who was at the time working as a graphic designer, made a conscious decision not to create anything that could be used by the great propaganda machine. The other, perhaps lesser-known factor, that may have very well influenced the doll’s creation, has been widely surmised to have stemmed from Bellmer viewing a performance of Jacques Offenbach’s opéra fantastique, The Tales of Hoffman, in which the protagonist tells of a young man who has been severely mistreated by his father and falls deeply in love with a mechanical doll named Olympia.’
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p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Good, love did double duty. What do you need him for next? The post production costs are currently being calculated, so love is still at work. But the meeting was good, and we met with the set photographer who showed us the proof sheets, and a lot of her photos are fantastic, yay. Love is more than welcome to my couch, but it’s not very comfy. Love turning anyone you want into a talking doll and FedExing it to you, G. ** Tea, Hi, Tea! Nice to see you. Oh, wow, LA recs. Of course it depends on your fetishes, but Museum of Jurassic Technology (as Mark also recommended to you), eating something at Poquito Mas and/or Mixto, the Graveline Tour, Disneyland, the Magic Castle, … let me think further since you’re not going for a while and LA is huge. Awesome! ** Mark, Thanks for recommending MoJT. Greatest thing in all of LA, if you ask me. And hi! ** David Ehrenstein, In my feed it was about 50/50 Anger and Turner mourning, and in fact it still is as of this morning. ** Misanthrope, Ah, but that sounds like a nice company. Although it might just be the nice name. Wow, best amph. in the USA. Better than the Hollywood Bowl (where I saw my very first live concert: The Monkees)! The blog is chuffed to have assisted you. I read with Mary once, and I met her twice, and she wasn’t unfriendly, but she was pretty distant and cold, but I thought she was probably like that with everyone, ha ha. She was, yes, sucked into that debacle as well, yes. I think she’s a better short fiction writer than a novelist. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi, Cody. I’m … let me think … fine. ‘Inauguration’ is one of my all-time favorite films. Just don’t watch Anger’s later films, from ’99 onwards. They’re shockingly terrible. Day 2 sounds jam packed. How much longer are you there? I think NO is supposed to have some pretty cool graveyards. (The only time I was there I just drove through it without getting out my car, unfortunately). ** Jack Skelley, Dear apparent blog reader. Give my thanks to that helpful gummy. Do they make figurative Haribo-style gummies? Surely. If I was an Influencer, I’d be rich, wouldn’t I? Maybe make a secret arrangement with Benjamin to physically twist her arm? Or, wait, don’t. Yours, Filler-In of this Blank. ** A, So, guess what. I saw Zac, and I now have the ARC. I’ll start reading t as soon as I can, but I’m film-swamped so it may take a little bit. Mission Part 1 accomplished. But please don’t ask me every day if I’ve finished it or when I will, okay, ha ha? I’ll let you know when Mission Part 2 is accomplished. The money you sent to Stefan helped very much, thank you. I’ll take your word for it on ‘The Little Mermaid’. Kabbalah all nighter: what does that mean? I don’t know anything about that stuff. ** _Black_Acrylic, My pleasure, natch. Walking by ponds sounds very nice. I don’t we have ponds here. Oh, wait, there’s one, although I think they try to foist it off as a lake. So French. ** Nick., Hi! There you go! Whoop! Cool, now you just have to act chill around him and make sure you often end up sitting on some comfy couch in an otherwise deserted apartment watching Netflix or something. Fingers very crossed, in other words. Insanity can be a useful ingredient, but yeah, you gotta keep it at least a little locked up. Wild and crazy … hm. Well, one time I took LSD and thought I had figured out the answer to all of my problems and wrote down the answer, and when I sobered up and looked at what I wrote, and I’d written ‘Orange’. See you ASAP. ** scunnard, No doubt I will. ** Minet, The guy who does Altered Innocence used to be a daily commenter on my blog for years. Frank Jaffe: awesome guy. Okay, I have to figure out how to get to Rio. I’ll start thinking that out. Thank you! And my Paris tour guide services are at the ready for you when you need them. I think at least one of my books was translated in Portuguese, but … hm, maybe not. I just checked online and it said ‘The Sluts’ was translated into Portuguese, but I couldn’t find anything about the actual book, so maybe it wasn’t. Obviously I’d love my stuff to be translated into Portuguese, but those decisions are way out my hands, of course. I just went to Paris’s greatest bookstore After8 yesterday, but today I’m going to go around looking at art in galleries and a museum with Zac, so hopefully I’ll have gotten out and about by tomorrow. What did today gift you with? ** T, Cool! A convert. I’m going to write to you today. More than one grumpy Parisian at a time sounds like a very scary proposition. I hope that thing moved. Well, it must have by now, unless you had to be rescued and walk to the daylight through the tunnels, which actually sounds pretty fun is smelly? ** Steve Erickson, Ah, okay, about Staples. All the ones I knew in LA closed down, so I just thought they were one of the goners. Haven’t seen ‘Unrest’, no. It sounds worth seeing from your descript, so I’ll see what I can find. Thanks. I don’t think Ferrara’s films get much of a release here either. ** Telly, Hi. The blog can be weird with comments sometimes. Usually if the problem is too many links in a comment, it puts the comment on hold and asks me privately if I will allow it, but I got no notice re: yours. Send me those missing links if you want, and I’ll dig in. I’ll try to make sure TavernAI is clean before I download it. My virus protection can be pretty spotty. Gosh, don’t feel weird about alerting people to your work. It’s de rigeur. I absolutely loved ‘Afraid Himself to Be’. I love how you draw, and the whole comic, words and imagery, is just finessed and so graceful start to finish. Nice! Thank you! I’m definitely a ‘120 Days’ guy when it comes to Sade. I read that when I was fifteen, and it changed my life, and you will have no problem understanding when you read it, ha ha. Have a day of at 90% pure excellence. ** Bill, Hi, B! So it’s bearish work that’s been keeping you IRL. Glad about the easing. Oh, right, ha ha, that voice over in ‘Downtown ’81’. It’s like an avalanche. ** Okay. Today I picked the thematic ‘doll’ and ran with it for better or worse. See you tomorrow.
FLUNKER, six fictions, 124 pp., coming from Amphetamine Sulphate in July. US, July 4: Preorders open. UK/Europe, July 19: Preorders open. Cover by Michael Salerno.
* POSTPONED: May 27 – 31: Paris @ Théâtre du Châtelet: THIS IS HOW YOU WILL DISAPPEAR * POSTPONED: October (dates TBA): New York @ Brooklyn Academy of Music: CROWD
Now available in North America 
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