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If you haven’t read Tao Lin, you might not be ready for Tao Lin. As with the induction of microwaves, bowl cuts, online porn share sites and cubist art, things that act as ‘new,’ or seem to reinvent their form by the sheer disregard, slander or reburping of what is known, Tao’s art tends to polarize audiences into those who want to be him, those who want to eat him, and those who acknowledge that what he do is unlike most any other literary art.

What I’m saying is, if you haven’t read his first few books, YOU ARE A LITTLE BIT HAPPIER THAN I AM (poetry), BED (stories), EEEEE EEE EEE (a novel), then you should do yourself the favor.

Tao’s new book, COGNITIVE-BEHAVIORAL THERAPY from Melville House Publishing, takes any expectations and/or residual ideology left behind in Tao’s earlier work, and kind of escalates it to another. The thin hot pink cover with a small green scribbled animal staring up from the page is an excellent gateway into a world of work that somehow melds existentialism, the absurd, the laugh out loud ridiculous, the internet, obsession, vegan food and ideology and a complete will to bend most any moment into what you least expect it. Tao Lin is truly capable of making even the most commonplace or anti-poetic-seeming elements (such as shopping at Whole Foods, poems written by ugly fish, repeating of online-speak-like phrases) not only mesh together into some new hilarious hybrid , but also manages to hit you in moments that you least expect in ways that you least expect. Reading this book makes you feel both connected and disconnected, alone and less alone, scratched and itching, confused and glad to have eyes.

Tao Lin’s work is the kind you might lay beside you on the bed and pat with your hand in the dark and be glad it has not moved.

Some books are so mammoth in concept that it seems ridiculous to try to review them. That ‘Zeroville,’ the 8th novel from cult author Steve Erickson, released by Europa Editions, accomplishes such gait in 352 pages of short, numbered vignettes, is yet another facet of its brilliance. At its most basic, ‘Zeroville,’ is the story of Vikar Jerome, a detached man with violent tendencies who straggles into Hollywood with a portrait of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor tattooed on his head. Soon he finds himself caught up in a strange puzzle of film and women and punk, trying to unravel an image from a recurring dream that haunts his sleep and waking. Like Pynchon’s ‘Vineland’ or David Foster Wallace’s ‘Infinite Jest,’ Erickson has created a puzzle-box fueled by paranoia, though you’ll spend a lot less sweat trying to reach the end, and when you do you’ll wish you had a way to wipe your brain and start again.

A recent release from the aforementioned Ravenna Press is the first collection from a legend in the prose poetry / short-short fiction genre, Kim Chinquee. Kim has been publishing for years in all the best literary magazines including Diane Williams’s NOON, Phoebe, Denver Quarterly, and just about any other you can think of.

OH BABY delivers on the promise of greatness everyone who knows Kim’s work had expected in a full book by her. Consisting mostly of her 1-2 page microfiction, Kim is perhaps most to be respected for the intuitive leaps she makes between sentences, leaving the fat off the bone and letting the reader eat from the mind incurred between passages.

Chinquee is a master, and this is a wonderful book that should be savored.

Also in the line of books from Calamari Press is a very brief and very surreal novella from Miranda Mellis titled THE REVISIONIST. This is an insane little story that meshes the surreal post-1984 imagery of governmental screwballery with strange meta-images like a man that turns into a shell on the beach and all other kinds of mish-mash that does a better job of chronicling our current state than any set of photos or nonfiction could hope for.

Mellis’s strange imagery and the beautifully short sentences make for a read that you’ll want to take in over and over. I really can’t say enough good things about this book.

THE REVISIONIST was also a finalist for The Believer’s book award for 2007.

One of my favorite books by far last year came from the always venerable Calamari Press, who in the last few years have established themselves as an innovator in releasing books that are not only aesthetically challenging but also fun to read.

Robert Lopez’s PART OF THE WORLD is narrated by a man who can’t seem to remember much of anything about his life very well. He masturbates while watching the neighbor, obsesses about a crappy car he bought, has weird out-of-body-seeming modes, all rendered in Lopez’s highly refined and beautiful but also addictive prose. Somewhat like an erasure of Beckett, though uploaded by a somewhat simple-minded, neurotic narrator who doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. Robert’s sentences are so fine-tuned you won’t even realize you are reading. It will simply come across you.

Do yourself a favor and check out this book immediately. You will be glad you did.

While you’ve in the process of checking out the new issue of elimae, you should also have a peek at a novel released by BRANDON HOBSON, who used to be regularly featured on elimae back in the day, and later released this novel on Ravenna Press, who have also released excellent titles by Kim Chinquee, Norman Lock, Cooper Esteban, Jane Unrue, M Sarki, and many others.

THE LEVITATIONIST is a quick read, but immensely haunting. Hobson uses fairy tale imagery laced with heavy, David Lynch-ish noir tactics to create a surreal anti-verse where a child learns to levitate, a woman leaves her body parts around for her cheating husband to uncover, and other maddening, wonderful imagery that will stick with you for a long time.

Fans of Thomas Bernhard’s THE VOICE IMITATOR, Grimm’s fairy tales, Gabriel Garcia Marquez or other magic-enhanced text creators should check this out ASAP.