Critique of Pure Reason

4.4/5 ( ratings)

"Unique and compelling as the very souls they depict--from the unknown to the famous to the infamous--these stories are wildly inventive, sly, astute. There's a bit of Sir Thomas Browne for the twenty-first century in these wizardly, magical narratives. The notion of 'pure reason' has rarely had a more subtle, comical, yet deeply humane alchemist at work in the great lab of fiction than Gabriel Blackwell."
- Bradford Morrow, author of The Diviner's Tale

"In Critique of Pure Reason, Gabriel Blackwell bends found forms to story, repurposes history, sets mathematics and a programmer's logic to generating emotion and wonder. This is the work of a talented storyteller slyly taking the stance of a documentary filmmaker, or else of a first-rate bureaucrat, perhaps rising quickly through our Ministry of Imagination -- and with each new diagram and footnote and well-made sentence the philosopher in Blackwell provides us another piece of that most illusive of proofs, a verification of our shared humanity, captured here in all its absurdity and horror and glory."
- Matt Bell, author of Cataclysm Baby

"Gabriel Blackwell's Critique of Pure Reason is a transgeneric textual labyrinth. Readers will take great pleasure in wandering these peculiar dark halls, encountering the shadows of Raymond Chandler, Sid Vicious, The Marx Brothers and David Lynch, to name a few."
- Adam McOmber, author of The White Forest

"Critique of Pure Reason is an ark captained by a mad genius who has summoned—from the depths of his wild imagination—a vast and stunning species of fictional forms and set them adrift upon a relentless flood. Cerebral, lyrical, mischievous, and hypnotic, these stories pulse with the focused urgency of creatures who, having survived an event of apocalyptic proportions, are now determined to thrive."
- Matthew Vollmer, author of Inscriptions for Headstones