Matthew C. Duersten

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Tour de Force of the Black Clock

Matthew C. Duersten
Black Clock, the new literary journal published by CalArts, launches this month with enough heavyweights to collapse newsstand shelves: David Foster Wallace, Bruce Bauman, Nicholas Royle, Heidi Julavits, Rick Moody, Aimee Bender, Joanna Scott and Jonathan Lethem, in the first issue alone. Edited by Steve Erickson, a CalArts faculty member......
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Flat Out of Skid Row

Matthew C. Duersten
Kimmy McCann has the different phases of her life packed in cardboard boxes labeled “Art Dealer,” “Designer,” “Fashionista,” “Mom,” “Illness,” “Recovery.” It’s one of many inherited traits (her own mother keeps similar boxes marked “Needlepoint” and “Ceramics”), alongside her argumentative activism (from the time she was 5, McCann’s father was......

The Man in the Santa Claus Suit

Matthew C. Duersten
All I want for Christmas is my constitutional right to publicly petition my government for a redress of grievances. —Samuel J. Byck In the evolution of terrorism, the use of American commercial airliners as murder weapons was “pioneered” by a plump, sweaty and quite insane out-of-work tire salesman named Samuel......