Michael A. Staff Picks
Email or call for price
CAN was the coolest band ever, and the fact that all but one of its members are dead now is surely a sign of the dark times we now live in. This book is purported to be the most definitive biography of the band yet produced, with a "scrapbook" exploring their influence through the ages.
Email or call for price
Despite having famously said that he wrote because he hated -- "A lot. Hard." -- Gass's later work is a little more humane. The novella "In Camera" is one of the high points of his career.
This was written by one of the head writers of The Simpsons. Ever heard of it? Very funny.
A slim sci-fi parable that Borges once called a perfect novel. If you ever played MYST as a kid, this book will resonate with you.
Norm Macdonald wasn't just the best comedian of his generation -- he was also the most literate. (In spite of his repeated claim to have only read about six books in his life.)
The best treatment in fiction ("fiction") of what happened in Dallas in 1963
This should be the gold standard for what we know as "true crime" writing. The story itself is like something from an early John Waters movie, but it happened.
A professor of literature on the brink of termination mourns the classics. It's uncompromisingly plotless and experimental, but reading it is a blast.
A freewheeling satire of East Coast 1960s artists and intellectuals and all of their interpersonal foibles. Timelier than ever.
This book will make you glad don't have any 19th century Satanists in your life -- unless you do, in which case it's also worth reading.
There's a whole generation of undersung avant-garde British writers awaiting rediscovery, and Ann Quin is among the best of them. The combination of formal inventiveness and vague, noirish menace is irresistible and feels way ahead of its time.
This is the story of the 20th century told from the perspective of a family of pig farmers in the French countryside, replete with bodily fluids both human and porcine.
Laxness's combination of social realism with a sense of the ancient and mythical is totally mesmerizing. He's also bleakly hilarious.
