On "DMR" by Daniel Trask (21 pages) ***

Perhaps it's my unfamiliarity with the institution, but this work is oddly entrancing. It's not so much a story in terms of conflict and climax but simply an introduction to a place and a people. Jonathan, fresh from college, is interviewing in house at a home for the mentally challenged. I don't think I'd be very comfortable at such a place, and Jonathan's own discomfort registers subtly as he attempts to figure out what is proper and what is not in this new situation. But then, it becomes fairly obvious, the longer we hang around, that the other workers aren't that comfortable either--in fact, Jonathan may be a natural. Read the story here at Publishing Genius.

On "We Will Take What We Can Get" by Matthew Salleses (38 pages) ***

While having to move my curser around so much to read is a pain, one of the things I do like about Publishing Genius's online chapbooks is the feel of reading a real text. There's something rather pleasant about it, something that makes me feel like I'm not reading some e-mailed manuscript that's been transcribed into HTML. Design does make a difference.

Salleses's story itself, though, is a foray into experiment the way that blogs can sometimes be--a recounting of an injury, and the overcoming of an injury, that the narrator perpetrates on another. The events of the story aren't too out of this world. They're, in fact, rather mundane. But we see love in this, and life. And we learn that astrologers aren't always accurate--or are only half accurate. Read the story here at Publishing Genius.

On "Pretend I Am There" by Blake Butler (35 pages) ****

I don't know exactly who Butler is drawing from, but similarities to disparate sources seem numerous, all put here in one single work that is totally newfangled. There's dreamlike oddity. There's sadness. There's absurdity. I'm reminded of Tao Lin. I'm reminded of the movie About Schmidt. Our narrator adopts a dog, a sick one, and tries to get rid of it. Our narrator keeps up a one-sided dialogue with a random person on e-mail. Our narrator sits, terrified of the plane he's riding in. Each section is short and to the point. Each section is beautiful in its own way. Did you know that today you are the oldest you have ever been? Of course, but I'd never really thought of it that way--until Butler's narrator brought it to my attention. Learn more obvious facts here at Publishing Genius.