Rollins's Review, February 10
Neo-Gonzo Highlights
Flattery will get you all kinds of places, including Rollins’s Review.
has written a review of the Tonic Masculinity Project the Neo-Gonzo Axis is building that is both thorough and incredibly kind (to the point of making me a little lost for words). Tereza is full Neo-Gonzo Tonic Femininity.A while back,
asked his readers what we’d like to see him write about, and I asked him to write about traveling as a black American. It’s a fascinating piece (Michael is a fascinating guy, who has lived a fascinating life) but what stuck out the most to me was this:Sometimes I think I ought to tell people that I’m the nephew of Morgan Freeman. It would save me a lot of explaining. Occasionally I will attend some public function and people act as if I ought to be a famous somebody, you know, as if this charming, well-spoken black man must be somebody.
What writing seriously (by which I mean “for publication”) does for a writer is more than earning you money from the sale of books or stories or articles. It requires you to think carefully about your ideas, which requires you to take them, and yourself, seriously. Michael is a data engineer; his writing has not made him rich. But it has made him take himself seriously, which makes others take him seriously.
Short/Serial Fiction and Poetry Highlights
Good poetry suspends sense memory in the aspic of rhythm.
has captured Tonic Intersectionality in a bottle, like lightning. writes creepy, hilarious short fiction. "The Pact Shaming Needs to Stop" is laugh-out-loud funny, and I have a soft spot for stories about deals with the devil anyway.
I’m going to do a longer piece spinning off ideas from
's article (which is itself being boosted by ) next week, but I want to bring it to the attention of my readers now. It's about the mechanics of aggression as expressed through language and censorship, and well worth your time, as is the entire series.Lorenzo is publishing his book serially through Helen's 'stack, which is a model I support and encourage, and I want to bring other Substackers’ attention to that, too; if you write, you can earn twice on your literary output by publishing serially and then publishing the collected chapters as a book.
The Best of The Rest
is a legend already for her heterodox science writing, but this piece puts her in a different box entirely; "Greatest Writers of Creative Non-Fiction."
Her deconstruction of her memory of being mugged is breathtaking; examining the events of a robbery in Quito, Ecuador, through the lens of science, of sense memory, and of the way neural pathways cross and connect. It should be required reading for anyone who has experienced a traumatic event, and for anyone who enjoys the experience of being transported by nonfiction besides.
Speaking of legends,
makes a point that has been on the minds of many with characteristic elegance; a world is ending.But while everything that has a beginning has an end, Dougald does not use the definite article to describe that which is ending. The world will continue turning. What is coming to an end is a point of view. New stories will be required to describe the age we enter now.
Thank you for recommending my poem. I'm looking forward to reading your other recommendations.
You are too kind, Jay! My episode on John Carter will be posted later today, titled Men & Women & the Tonic Tilt. Still having Too Much Fun with this idea of mine that you turned into a party (the kind with grooves, not ballots ;-)