crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 30/06/2026I have read Heti, bissett, Bök, Ross, and MacLennan in Toronto. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 16/05/2026I have brought a Breton to the Dalí museum. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 01/04/2026Buddies: Tabitha Mammalian and Jim Gregory Sowders Acrylic and paint marker on canvas 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 22/03/2026A review of Melanie Index, the new novel by @ericblix.bsky.social forthcoming from @erratumpress.bsky.social. Would that I could type all this into its own thread but I am far too lazy to reword and reword and whatnot. I dug this book v much and, as evident in review, cannot recommend highly enough. 122
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 19/03/2026Some albums I just cannot get enough of rn. Underrated gems, the lot of em. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 18/03/2026I know that the author’s a character by way of the Master and I like that he’s infecting and conflicting with the characters, but I’m still not super deeply enamored with how the fourth wall self-reference feels sometimes. It gets a giggle every now and again but idk. Feels detached, a bit avoidant. 010
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 18/03/2026Over 650 pages in and it’s still tough to keep a hold of bc of those digressions and parentheticals within parentheticals, but the ease of rhythm has picked up. I’m not that keen on its tacky surface level political jabs but what the narrative is doing re: murder chemicals I think kinda bolsters it. 110
Reposted by crypto martianThe New Monuments @thenewmonuments.bsky.social · 26/02/2026Check out “Dead Star Love,” new work from @barryoblivion.bsky.social in issue 2 of The New Monuments. www.thenewmonuments.com/barryoblivio... 043
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 12/02/2026dead star love now available via @thenewmonuments.bsky.social 001
Reposted by crypto martianYour daily John Waters screenshot @johnwatersbot.bsky.social · 03/02/2026 17718
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/02/2026110 pages in, it seems like the five subjects are not the main characters, but are vessels of the main character: the eponymous demiurge that propels them through logorrhea toward profound personal truth as it manifests within a chapter/time-slice. I would like to see this formatted multicolumnarly. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/02/2026This is not to say it’s not difficult. The first chapter contains an excruciating learning curve akin to To the Lighthouse (maybe that’s a me problem). I only learned of this book because of an article about its difficulty. It’s 120000 words longer than IJ. Often difficulty bears the sweetest fruit. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/02/2026Maybe it’s because of its setting, cast of oddballs, funniness, and overwhelming wordiness but it reminds me so much of reading Infinite Jest for the first time. I caught this one’s rhythm much faster than I did IJ’s, and for that I’m relived, though Invidicum of course remains a real grade-A doozy. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/02/2026After pawing for what’s felt like eons at the Invidicum that lived inside my Goodreads account, I have grasped that over-plump apple at last and have begun the month(s?) of eating it. Despite its erudition and digression, though likely because of them, I can’t seem to put it down. Shandean and lush. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 20/01/2026The idea that a text can be constructed out of individual voxels like limestone cubes and can still coherently constitute a whole image of some sort is wild. He says autofiction is dead but this doesn’t even feel like autofiction as much as it does a crunchy distorted VHS version of selfportraiture. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 20/01/2026Picked up Total Destruction and this dude is on one. “Verisimilitude is a dangerous illusion. Textual representation as a simulacrum of the real is a nonsensical agenda to the poststructuralist” needs to be embedded into my forehead somehow. Maybe as a glyph or QR code. Glad to see he’s still at it. 100
Reposted by crypto martianYour daily John Waters screenshot @johnwatersbot.bsky.social · 16/01/2026 0269104
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 14/01/2026I have read Paz in Mexico. I have read Del Paso in Mexico. I have read Rulfo in Mexico. I have read Bolaño in Mexico. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 07/01/2026I love the form his work takes tho. Its combinatory nature feels like the whole vision’s a multimedia collage, which I can’t get enough of, but I find the actual meat and bones materials of the collage tiring and uninspired. He’s in the same theme>>>execution room in my memory palace as Jia Zhangke. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 07/01/2026Maybe this makes me some form of chud, but I’ve read two Kundera books and plainly do not understand the hype to any degree. I haven’t read his holy Musil yet though so maybe that’ll enlighten me to some murky facet of his work I can’t see thru the smudges of my general distaste for his personality. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 29/11/2025Edited version now available. Fixed (hopefully) all the grammatical disagreements and clarified some sentence structures without (hopefully) compromising their freestyled energy. It’s still November so I guess it still counts toward the nanowrimo stipulations. Whatever lmk if there’s glaring errors. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 28/11/2025Reading back through this thing and I’m disappointed by the number of typos, regardless of how funny some of them are. Might fix ‘em all and link a v2. I just wanted to complete all the requirements of nanowrimo without flirting with their disgusting AI tolerance. But now is the time for refinement. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 10/11/2025Pleased to say that now that Appalachia has begun to shiver and molt mk.gee season has come back around in full force. Time to once again ruin my year-end Apple Music statistics with an album displaced between the old and the new, the warm and the frigid, lost to everything but me and my car stereo. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 10/11/2025Earned through challenge (below) a copy of Erratum’s It’s Tough at the Top and maybe it’s the having worked in retail but I’m enjoying its depiction of middle-manager mediocrity and bureaucratic repetitiveness. It’s drudging up so many memories of empty loafers with its accuracy and it’s very funny. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 08/11/2025Finally finished. Truly devastating book. Wildly, magisterially powerful. Anyone put off by the artifice of MZD’s other work who refuse to do anything but call it pretentious without engaging it or giving it the time of day can be silenced by the heft of this one’s earnestness and unflinching heart. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/11/2025Everything in the book thus far has felt like a McCarthean cosmicality, fates and ghosts humming massive beneath the surface of the unfolding narrative, felt by every character present, aiming toward our setting ourselves free of our lingering imperialist sense, though notably more hopeful than him. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/11/2025I have been loving its use of horses to comment on American expansionism. The contrast between the warring families’ beliefs re: how the horse and, more broadly, the earth should be treated (as a tool to be exploited vs a religious practice of oneness) has been a masterclass in setting up catharsis. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/11/2025Critics thus far, to the extent of my research, have felt put off by its use of huge words in a semibelievable dialect, constant digression, and Greek chorus but I think the contrast between them only underscores its epic scale, leaning heavily on the way oral tradition amplifies stories to godhood. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/11/2025Having only read House of Leaves, I went into Tom’s Crossing expecting it to be good, if a bit slow and predictable due to not only the length but the Western genre’s constraints, but I’m pleased to announce that I have been laden with a great shame for underestimating MZD. I can’t get enough of it. 100
Reposted by crypto martianVivid Divine (Alec) @vividdivine.bsky.social · 26/10/2025Hundred pages into Infinite Jest and no one prepped me for how funny this book is. What do you mean there is wheelchair assassins???? 011
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 14/10/2025Against no odds and to no one’s surprise I thoroughly dug the new T-Pynch. I’m glad he’s still having fun with the whole writing thing and by god it’s fun to read it. It was nice to run into Basnight again as I liked him in AtD, and I was eurekastruck by the timely (new movie) Skeet/Zoyd connection. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 14/10/2025In a similar vein, Collier’s new guitar record was pleasant and inoffensive. It’s nice to hear him switch up from oddball genreclashing experiments—re:which, I commend his ability to construct them in a way that functions technically—and focus on crafting a cohesive sound. It highlighted his talent. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 06/10/2025This fact struck me with a profound disappointment, as the reasoning behind why I would undertake such a process I thought was fascinating, but in the wake of this ice-bath of truth I have made it a mission to go and see this artifact in person to ascertain whether their rationale aligned with mine. 000
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 06/10/2025Schattenfroh was brilliant. Book as author as torus, as tzimtzum, unfolding by infolding until the sky’s light breaks again and the torus has cycled back to its initial state. A requiem for seemingly every death but mostly his father’s, an outpouring of grief shucked from the walls of Nobody’s soul. 021
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 05/10/2025Had this neat computer-breaking idea to alphabetize every single letter of the KJV into one gigantic paragraph and self-publish the tome thru Amazon but after hours of trying and failing to finagle Notepad++ into cooperating with me, I googled it and found that that is already a piece in the SFMOMA. 100
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 17/09/2025The Room is one of my favorite movies and I was in theaters for both Best Friends 1 and 2. I have a hard drive full of bootlegged mp4s of everything he did pre-The Room. I wonder what type of deal he’s on now. I know grifting is profitable and Big Shark’s eternal theater run’s expensive but come on. 110
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 17/09/2025Man I get on Twitter for like five minutes and I’ve got Tommy Wiseau in my feed givin me everything I don’t need from him. While he’s out of virtually nowhere on a disappointing patriotism and “bring GenZ back to God” kick I’m still hung up on my “give me Big Shark on DVD” kick. We are not the same. 120
crypto martian @barryoblivion.bsky.social · 17/09/2025This feels like—being a requiem—the DMT-flooded flashing before the eyes as Nobody gives up the ghost. Every scene is stunning and kaleidoscopic, every facet turning and returning to show a glimpse of some new side. How this was translated is beyond me. Lawton is pushing into John E Woods territory. 100
