New Pages reviews the Field Guide

Or, more specifically, John Madera reivews the Field Guide in New Pages. "While this field guide certainly flashes, it also illuminates," he says. He has praiseful words for many of the contributors, but of Michael Martone in particular, of whom he writes:

But how could I not fall for an essay that references Victor Shklovsky’s idea of ostranenie, or “defamiliarization?” Michael Martone’s essay may be the one that’s worth the price of admission alone. Beginning as a meditation on titling stories, it ends up a multi-chambered collapsible box of interplaying ideas and crosstalk. Like the stories Martone describes, his essay is “a maze one works one’s way through.” The Oulipian-like exercises are wonderfully insane, and his story, “A Perimenopausal Jacqueline Kennedy, Two Years After the Assassination, Aboard the M/Y Christina, Off Eubeoa, Bound for the Island of Alonnisos, Devastated by a Recent Earthquake, Drinks Her Fourth Bloody Mary with Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr.,” is mind-boggling.

You can read the whole thing here. Thanks, John!