News: New book out now
Stalking America blends an interior/exterior assemblage of a young person on a train riding cross-county where everything is subtext and suspicion. Here, events are presented in a glassy contemplation of travel and transition. Stilted and strange dialogue, description, minor reality stars, historical influences, lists, architecture, movements, and mundane pop culture observations of a misinformed but well-meaning observer montage into an internal and external reverie. MORE
"It splits itself apart, cordoning off various sections of its narrative, slicing viewpoints into pieces, creating boundaries around and gaps between different ways of looking at (following?) events as they unfold. The result is something restless, a little insidious, equal parts frustrating and compelling, and made up of many more fascinating elements than a summary can capture."
“I wish I could wear a permanent wireless earpiece like actors do when they don’t know their lines, and that it was connected to a microphone that Jared Pappas-Kelley hovered perpetually above while simultaneously viewing everything I saw through monitors connected to surveillance cameras littered through my surroundings, and that he could also magically live a rich, full-fledged independent life and keep writing up a storm.”
-Dennis Cooper, author of I Wished
“…Jared Pappas-Kelley understands why every American feels stalked by history, and also needs to stalk our legacy, our detritus, to do whatever we need to do to understand and maybe make peace with our place in the busted world.”
-Rebecca Brown, author of You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe
“…(a) well-oiled construction here invites us to eavesdrop in a passenger compartment that doubles as confessional space, where connections surface, cathexis is sketched and flipped, and the communal share transpires… It sent me."
-Douglas A. Martin, author of Wolf