"I loved that, no matter where the characters went underground, they came out into the same space..I could see a double-paged spread showing a huge old fashioned attic — full of the different entry points. To me, the story said, whatever you think you know about the rules of life, forget it, ain’t necessarily true."  

It’s that time of year again. The late capitalist clusterfuck some call the holiday season. Or, as literary folks know it, “Best Of” Hell.

My love affair with monsters can be traced to my eccentric childhood, of course.

I began reading Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus: The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkühn, as Told by a Friend (1947), in mid-2016, casually. I’d bought the book by mistake several years prior, thinking it was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s version—that is, the seminal German Faust. I am not the first to have confused the two authors.

There are few if any American writers who can vocalize the crushing despair of late capitalist malaise in a mere five sentences.

Why is the art of storytelling dying out? The collection comprises thirteen pieces of diverse form and audience that nonetheless share a thematic lineage.