Everyday takes the reader for a dawdle into the moribund heart of London. This extraordinary collection of stories - featuring pigeons, putrefying exotic dancers, lost loves, boredom, cliché, lacklustre dérives, banality, sexual violence, the male gaze, a murderous acquisition of a tortuously blank book, and the sad demise of the number 38 bus - reinvents reality, that is at once sordid, hilarious and tender.

Everyday

Rourke, Lee

Literature & Fiction

Social Disease

Varroa Destructor

3:am Press

"Reading Vantablack I felt I'd found something I needed to read for a very long time. Something at the threshold of experience, beyond it, transcending it. To conceive of being disembodied, one has to first have a body; then one has to be able to conceptualise something beyond our singular subjectivity, which is impossible unless you are a poet, a philosopher, or a physicist. Something I always understood, and this book makes clear - black is not merely a colour, a concept or a substance but a terrifying lure. To be carried away so far by a piece of literature is an extraordinary achievement fully realised by the poet, and in turn, this reader. I experienced a recognition rarely felt - something indescribable - to find a word for that sensation is impossible - read this book."--Melissa Lee-Houghton, author of Sunshine (Penned in the Margins, 2016) Named after a black material developed by Surrey NanoSystems, a material which absorbs up to 99.965% of visible light, Vantablack is a meditation on the physical properties of the colour black, on the black of grief, elegance, seriousness, formality, rebellion, darkness, death and sadness.

Vantablack

Poetry

Independently published

Discussing rising stars of contemporary fiction including Jonathan Lethem in addition to cherished classics including Aesop and Kafka, this groundbreaking work outlines the reemerging significance of fables in modern culture
From the earliest of classical narratives to modern day e-zines, literary works have long been turned to political, didactic, and symbolic ends. Tracing the long history of a form currently enjoying a resurgence online and in the works of some of the most talented young authors in print, author and literary critic Rourke here considers the permutations of the form. From Aesop's tortoise and hare and Plato's socio-political works to Kafka's anthropomorphism and present-day authors such as Blake Butler, Joseph Young, Shane Jones, and Jonathan Lethem, this book explores an emergence from modernism and how, in its aftermath, fables—the briefest of narratives given the most expansive of significations—have gained in popularity. From readers interested in learning more about well-loved fairytales to those considering the hot topic of post-postmodernism, here is a bold take on a new face of literature everyone is sure to enjoy.

A Brief History of Fables: From Aesop to Flash Fiction (Brief Histories)

Reference

Hesperus Press

An electrifying debut novel that becomes a shocking tale about... boredom In a deeply compelling debut novel, Lee Rourke—a British underground sensation for his story collection Everyday—tells the tale of a man who finds his life so boring it frightens him. So he quits his job to spend some time sitting on a bench beside a quiet canal in a placid London neighborhood, watching the swans in the water and the people in the glass-fronted offices across the way while he collects himself. However his solace is soon interupted when a jittery young woman begins to show up and sit beside him every day. Although she won't even tell him her name, she slowly begins to tell him a chilling story about a terrible act she committed, something for which she just can't forgive herself—and which seems to have involved one of the men they can see working in the building across the canal. Torn by fear and pity, the man becomes more immersed in her tale, and finds that boredom has, indeed, brought him to the most terrifying place he's ever been.

The Canal

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Melville House

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Books by Rourke, Lee