The Front Matter, Dead Souls

Leslie Scalapino is widely regarded as one of the best avant-garde writers in America today.

This extraordinary new book is essay-fiction-poetry, an experiment in form, "a serial novel for publication in the newspaper" that collapses the distinction between documentary and fiction.

Loosely set in Los Angeles, the book scrutinizes our image-making, producing extreme and vivid images-hyena, Muscle Beach in Venice, the Supreme Court, subway rides-in order for them to be real.

Countering contemporary trends toward interiority, Scalapino's work constitutes a unique effort to "be" objectively in the world.

The writing is an action, a dynamic push to make intimacy in the public realm.

She does not distinguish between poetry and "real events": her writing is analogous to Buddhist notions of dreaming one is a butterfly, and becoming aware that actually being the butterfly is as real as dreaming it.