Lorazepam and the Valley of Skin / 730910-2155
Lorazepam and the Valley of Skin / 730910-2155
valeveil, 2009
This volume debuts valeveil’s poetics duo project. valeveil is a Stockholm-based small publishing press and curatorial node devoted to strengthening connections between America and Scandinavia via ongoing ventures. This duo is available on the valeveil site, at Stories Books & Cafe, at Skylight Books, various libraries and at The Poetic Research Bureau in Los Angeles, CA.
Reviews for the duo:
The first valeveil duo contrasts the everyday desperation and bacchanalia of California on Lorazepam with the distanced, but still close-to-the-bone, auto-critique of Sweden through a lens of bureaucratic-uncanny. The many insights generated by the comparison are sharp and striking, as is the lively writing by both Lambert and a writer who chooses to be known only by the number 730910-2155 (a provocative choice in a literary climate that celebrates the author’s personality above all else). These very different writers are writing for, and against-the-grain, of our contemporary, ever-changing world, creating a literature that both demands and rewards close attention.
– Jacob Wren, writer and maker of eccentric performances, including En francais comme en anglais, it’s easy to criticize, Revolutions in Therapy, HOSPITALITY 3: Individualism Was A Mistake, An Anthology of Optimism, Unrehearsed Beauty, Families Are Formed Through Copulation and Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed.
Every place has its arenas where what is simply nature in another place is the breathtakingly artificial in another. And we love these moments of great artificiality because they serve as false and reassuring desublimation: in other words, California’s burnt (sun-and-out) laconicism is happiest when hysterical, just as Sweden wishes it were not so very Swedish … In the pale and patterned IKEA-land, one wants burnt oranges and marine blues, and Cali bodies that know no boundaries: 730910-2155 and Lambert were made to mirror one another insofar as mirrors both reflect and project whatever light is cast upon them.
– Vanessa Place, LA-based writer, Les Figues co-founder and Constant Critic
Burnt out, skinless, sweet and raw, eternally optimistic and always negative, the first valeveil duo smacks us a fine hello. Stop it with the intertextuality! Is there a certain order and choice of words that will make it all clear?
– Matias Viegener, American curator, co-founder of The Fallen Fruit Collective, author of 2500 Things About Me Too
