Books published by Jef Books

Fiction. "The book's title, 'Return to Circa '96,' caught my attention right off. Themes of memory, time travel, and so forth were evoked. Then the visual appeal was quite marked (my professional and personal interests tilt in favor of scripto-visual works). The 'data-base aesthetics' (Lev Manovich) aspect of the work gave it a very contemporary Web 2.0 kind of technological relevance, which meshed well with the book's meta- fictional construction. These conceptual art-ish and surfictional elements lured me into the book. The library-as-a-framing-device, situating events within a repository of texts, hit a responsive chord given my own autodidactic / academic propensities. I felt at home in the text. The producer's mixtures of modalities of writing, a 'mulligan stew' of different textualities, were attributes of the kinds of works I read and re-read most often. Finally, the book was funny. It not only gave that 'writerly' jouissance touted by literary theorist Roland Barthes, but also the plaisir of a 'readerly' text. In short, in opening Mr. Sawatzki's book, it was as if I'd found a long-lost friend."--James R. Hugunin

Fiction. "Fiction + truth + p(r)o(s)etry, this is rest(less) lit at its finest, the alluring and intelligent story of abandonment & love & loving abandonment in the running text where Jane L. Carman both plays and don't play. Go, girl - watch the girl go: TANGLED IN MOTION masterfully allows its beauty and its beast(s) to take an alternate route in surviving shame, despite absolutely nothing being a breeze in her environment. Violent silence. The magnificent restorying/restoring of a girl who resides in margins of a marginalized. Completely unheard of... until now. Jane L. Carman must have had too much white space on her hands. 'Cause she knows how to really work it, turn that mutha out. This rest(less) thing, where sound is unbound and word is bond and Carman asks you to check it while she wrecks it, has got resounding style. As they say now on the vine, it is on fleek, just/perfect. Skunking anything else out there that I've ever seen in the game of novel ideas, Jane L. Carman puts her own personal stank on this. A funky-fresh narrative jam that's a must-have for anyone's collection. Taking chances unlike everybody else and they mama, unf(l)ailingly risking it all, Jane L. Carman rocks the house with this, TANGLED IN MOTION. En route to ridin' and dyin' for a better day, Carman leaves spit in her tracks. Foundation and shit all falls down while she, with that nonstop motor, just rides/writes away feeling free as a bird. This fly, phenomenal woman's book will absolutely give you the goosies. It's impossible not to idolize Carman for how she pulls this brainchild off with the ultimate swag. Both to the point and often even repeating itself, TANGLED IN MOTION is a real trip. Forging new territory in literature, its rebellion, so powerfully divergent from that of others, finally moves the canon in a forward direction. Carman's got it going on."--Ricardo Co