SURFACE STUDIES

Literary Criticism. Action Books, 2024. Paperback, 46 pages. 7"x7"x0.25"

From the press: “The text is not a passive object. And the reader is not a passive observer. In reading a text, we mutate it with our gaze, however briefly, in however isolated a setting. In less conventional works, the reader is often asked to search / investigate, map out the potentially chaotic or uncharted interiors of the work.”

In Surface Studies, Mike Corrao takes “close reading” to a new level of radical intensity. His writing about the sprawling literature of the US underground is driven by profound fascination; his experience of the texts is somatic and dynamic. If Sontag asked for an erotics to take the place of a hermeneutics, Corrao reveals that the two can exist as one.

— Johannes Göransson

If I had to single out one of the many interesting endeavors taken by 21st century literary authors, the attempt to write “contemporaneously” about contemporary books would probably rank as #1. Among those who have been committed to the task (i.e. Blake Butler, Christopher Higgs, and John Trefry, among others), Mike Corrao is, as far as I know, the only one who has been systematic enough to put together a book like Surface Studies probably the best conceptual roadmap of the expanded field, and a wonderful introduction to the future of writing about the books to come

— Germán Sierra