High Horse: The Year in Review…pt.2

The High Horse has been merciful to us this year. But like a dormant volcano or a sleeping dragon, we must keep up with our offerings. This year was full of abundance. In a small ecosystem like ours, we made some waves and under the circumstances of babies and spouses, we got a lot of good work done.

Sleep was not a top priority this year… we figure there will be plenty of time for that once the machine is up and running smoothly according to our exact and precise specifications. We managed to “read” about 400 submissions for our first annual T Paulo Urcanse Prize for Literary Excellence…

T Paulo Urcanse (Photograph taken by T Paulo’s Publicist and Sometimes Lover, Ornita Roche, prior to the fatal and suspected post-coital heart attack which killed T Paulo…)

The entries were unbelievable… from all over the globe… and we are still reaching out to some of the authors, hoping to work with them in the coming year(s)… Here were the ones that rose to the top after much heavy deliberation:

Still Life of an Iris in Spring by Ouristoprous

The Singleton by A. J. Brown

Facial by Henry Luzzatto

Names for Things by Amber Burke

Clarence Go Boom by Roger Ellis

Somehow, we also managed to read a few things for our own leisure. Here are notes on some highlights:

Roberto Bolano was a favorite. By Night in Chile (2000) and The Savage Detectives (1998) were standouts as well as his novellas, French Comedy of Horrors and Fatherland. I’m a little tired of all the Bolano hype and maybe I’m late to the party, BUT this guy is doing something special. For anyone looking for a good place to start, don’t try to read 2666 cold. By Night in Chile is his best work that I’ve read so far. It is allegorical and powerful, tightly written and packs a punch.

J.M. Coetzee’s The Schooldays of Jesus, The Death of Jesus and Disgrace. Reese was reading some Coetzee and it reminded me that I had a copy of Disgrace on my kindle. What a disturbing novel… an incredibly terrifying story. Pure horror- Houellebecq must have loved this one.

Nancy Lemann‘s Lives of the Saints (1985) and The Ritz of the Bayou (1987)… excellent novels about New Orleans. She has such a clear and strong voice, and a singular style. One of my favorite interlibrary loans of the year! I think I read this piece in Harper’s and went to the library that same afternoon looking for her novels. Discovering Lemann led me down a rabbit hole in a search for other writers who were based in New Orleans; leading me to read Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer (1961) and revisit some Ishmael Reed and John Kennedy Toole.

Another discovery was Steve Erickson and his debut novel, Days Between Stations (1985). This novel is dystopic and hallucinogenic in a way that I’ve never really experienced before. He has receieved high praise from writers (a writer’s writer?) but never really broke through to a mainstream audience. Thomas Pynchon even gave him a blurb:

"Steve Erickson has that rare and luminous gift for reporting back from the nocturnal side of reality, along with an engagingly romantic attitude and the fierce imaginative energy of a born storyteller. It is good news when any of these qualities appear in a writer-- to find them all together in a first novelist is reason to break out the champagne and hors-d'oeuvres."

We also discovered William T. Vollmann this year (or possibly the end of last year as it has gotten a bit blurry) and look forward to tackling some more of his catalogue in the near future. This recent piece by the author was devastating on so many levels; and the podcast Vollmannia is very thorough and entertaining.

Will Mountain Cox’s debut novel, Roundabout is our favorite book of 2023. Even though we did not read many of the “it” books of 2023, I think we can safely say that this one was slept on and did not get the credit that it deserved. Even though we didn’t read a lot of the books on the lists of 2023, we can safely say that this one was better!

Roundabout is a book about friends and about people; about space and connections. The friends meet at a bar filled with giraffe figurines that is located on a roundabout that functions as the books crux and metaphor for many things. It is a small book but once you finish it, you’ll realize that it is a big book. The formulation of it is impressive and the prose reads like poetry as Cox is a self-proclaimed poet. It is an extraordinary feat for a young man to have written. Bravo Will! And, like I told him at his reading in Madrid, the dude has a great head of hair. We look forward to hearing more from WMC in the future.

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