For the second time this year, a book I love has been resurrected and is breathing new life. I had to drop all the plates I was spinning on this ridiculously busy day - just stop and sit still and read for a while - because it's just so damn good.Dawn Raffel's In the Year of Long Division
is a collection of vivid, imagistic vignettes that flow like poetry and stun like an Edward Albee micro-act. Originally published by Knopf in the mid '90s, it's been rereleased as an ebook by the visionaries at Dzanc.In 1995, the San Francisco Chronicle called it "dreamlike"; Minneapolis City pages said it was "tremendously innovative". I still agree with both (and all the other kudos Raffel got back then), but as I read these stories again today - in an entirely different skin, different millenium, different world - it struck me how perfectly her style plays in the new medium. This book wears its fresh incarnation particularly well. (I really can't say that for the other resurrected book, as much as I loved it.)
I used to have this book on the "shelf of yesness" in my office; that's where I kept books that challenged me as a reader and inspired me as a writer. I'm a huge fan of fearlessness, and Raffel can always be counted on to jump the turnstiles of literary convention, but somehow, amidst the strangeness, she manages to drive these needles of *yes* directly into your heart like a a ninja poet acupuncturist.
Anyhoo, several years ago, in a fit of heatstroke-driven post-Hurricane altruism, I turned my yellow VW bug into a guerrilla book mobile and gave all my books away. I've been trying to rebuild that *yes* section of my library on Kindle and Nook ever since. So a huge thank you to Dzanc for loving this book as much as I did. I'm thrilled to have it back in my hands.
Buy In the Year of Long Division
on Kindle.
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