Monday, April 11, 2022

Five titles that recall the surreal (and sociopathic?) 1990s in America

Candice Wuehle is the author of the novel Monarch as well as three collections of poetry. She is also a co-author of Collected Voices in the Expanded Field.

Wuehle holds an MA in literature from the University of Minnesota as well as an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She earned a doctorate in Creative Writing at The University of Kansas, where she was the recipient of a Chancellor's Fellowship. Her studies focus on the relationship between trauma, memory, and the occult.

Originally from Iowa City, Iowa, Wuehle lives in Roanoke, Virginia.

At Lit Hub she tagged "five books that remember [the 1990s] and offer up their own resistance to its commercial and patriarchal values," including:
Jenny Hval, Girls Against God

“It’s 1992 and I’m the Gloomiest Child Queen.” So begins Jenny Hval’s novel-manifesto-spell-screenplay, Girls Against God. Enraged by the racism and homophobia of her ultra-religious hometown, a teenager seeks haven in the Oslo’s nascent black metal scene. At the Munch Museum, Hval’s unnamed narrator is struck by the notion that all “naked young women in paintings are actually sitting there, hating.” With the help of her coven/band, Hval sets out to “rewrite the girl in [Munch’s] painting, save her, save us” through occultism and art. Queer and feminist theories are both forms of magic in Girls Against God, as are the mysterious depths of the early internet. “I type into the search bar the internet as a spiritual force. I delete it and instead type How the spiritual world is like the internet. I delete this too and write Find God on the internet,” writes Hval. “I don’t press Search, but I am searching… Dear God, who art online.” Hval captures the world-widening of the world wide web in this subversive and spectacular book.
Read about the other entries on the list at Lit Hub.

--Marshal Zeringue