Sneak Peek: THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM by Nathan Larson

Akashic Books is proud to present

Nathan Larson's debut novel

THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM

*Click here to order a limited-edition

signed hardcover copy*

Chapter one is posted in full below:

(please click each image to enlarge)

Nathan Larson is best known as an award-winning

film music composer, having created the scores

for over thirty movies, such as Boys Don't Cry,

Dirty Pretty Things, and The Messenger. In the 1990s,

he was the lead guitarist for the influential prog-punk

outfit Shudder to Think. This is his first novel.

Larson lives in Harlem, New York City, with his wife and son.

COWS, reviewed by Mark Gluth

Mark Gluth, author of The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis,

is the next Little House on the Bowery writer to review Cows:

Cows comes with a reputation. It's been around, but out of print for a while, and even out of print, it was always a book you had to read, a book that, if the word of mouth about it was correct, destroyed any notions of what language could do, what books could be. Of course its being out of print meant it was difficult to find, and expensive when you did. So it was out there, reputation strong but by-and-large unread. That's why it's so awesome that Akashic (via Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series) is bringing it out for a proper re-release. Having read the book twice through for this review, I'm left in awe of Stokoe's abilities as a writer. His writing demonstrates a power where it acts as a spell (or at least it left me spellbound). It's grotesque without being a caricature, it's both desolate and lyrical, it's pornographic, but it exploits the reader as opposed to the subject. It actually evinces a sense of cruel power to the point that, as a reader, I felt it cruelly rendered me powerless. As a writer and reader who takes great pleasure in the puzzles language can create and the games it can play, I've rarely read a book that I felt instead of thought (it actually made me feel like shit, and I literally tasted shit in a scene where two characters eat shit).

Reading Cows made me think of Stokoe's other books and how different they each are from Cows. High Life and the recently released Empty Mile take complex noir-ish plots and suffuse them with varying degrees of the same nihilism found in Cows. However, Cows is impossible to compare to other literature at all. It reminds me more of a sculpture or a painting. It reminds me of a song by SWANS from early in their career, or of a Bosch painting. It's a nightmarish book, full of language so powerful it transcends language. It's highly recommended.

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Mark Gluth is the author of The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, and is hard at work on his second novel.

Gluth will read with Little House on the Bowery author Lonely Christopher, at Pilot Books in Seattle, on Friday, 1/28, 7pm.

COWS, reviewed by James Greer

Akashic Books asked several of our authors to read
and review one another's work. James Greer,
author of The Failure and Artificial Light,
was the first to respond, with this review of Cows.

Matthew Stokoe’s Cows is a roller-coaster ride through the dark heart of the American dream… A cataract of filth gushes forth from every page of Matthew Stokoe’s brilliant novel, Cows…. Matthew Stokoe's grim atmospherics and affectless narrative call to mind Iain Banks' 1980s Goth classic The Wasp Factory… Stokoe's novel is a militant vegan manifesto… a prescient look into our own future as carnivores…

None of these things are true. Or rather, all of them are true. They're just stupid. I found Stokoe's book (Cows) hilarious, and deftly written, and moving, and yes, from time to time, I guess shocking. But I'd be very surprised to learn that Stokoe's purpose in writing Cows was to shock or provoke. Pry as I might, I could not find under the floorboards of this slender novel a didactic intent, for which I am thankful. I did find an unusually well-tuned ear for language, and a sure-handed sense of the lengths to which language can be pushed in the service of a singular vision. I found, in sum, a writer. A very good one. While any particular detail in Cows may seem offensive or shocking (and I should probably mention that those readers who are easily upset should STAY THE FUCK AWAY from this book because otherwise you will be puking all over your lace doilies), the cumulative effect of these details is neither cathartic nor stunning nor disgusting nor any of many words that I could easily call to mind to describe this novel. The cumulative effect, for me, at least, is recognition. I recognize Matthew Stokoe's writing: as inevitable; as necessary; as vital as blood.

By portraying cruelty in such loving detail that the reader (you, me, and that kid in the tree) cannot help but admire his style, even if you recoil from his content, Matthew Stokoe has performed a magic trick known in the novelist's trade as "writing."

That trick never gets old.

--James Greer