Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, WIKIWIKIWIKI!, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom, Tisch, Boom

I've started reading Stephen Dixon's Tisch, which was the first novel he ever wrote (I think sometime in the 70s), but which was only published in 2000 by Red Hen Press. It's immediately apparent that the Stephen Dixon Voice was never something he had to struggle to find, but rather that it was sort of uncovered, or born whole, the moment he started writing. Sure, there's been shifts through his career, I'm sure; longer paragraphs or shorter, sentence length variations, some high-falutin' formal trickery, stuff like that. But the core of it--and one of these days I'm going to get down to the nasty technical work of trying to determine what exactly it is he does so I can try to explain what it is he does and why it works so surprisingly well for those of us it works for--has been there all along. (It seems. I'm not an expert.)

Anyway I started reading Tisch just so I'd have the cheap excuse to mention that I've now got friend Chris reading Stephen Dixon's amazing novel Interstate--friend Chris, I believe, is liking it; we're suckers here in Cleveland for depressing things--and to suggest again that you go read Interstate yourself, as well, because it is, and maybe I've mentioned this before, an amazing novel.