Matthew Stadler's "Landscape: Memory" is formatted as a memory book, a variety of diary, with entries for about 114 days within the period stretching from August 7, 1914, through February 12, 1916. Creating the memory book is Max Kosegarten - "Dogey" to his friends - a San Franciscan finishing up at Lowell High School. His best friend is Duncan Taqdir, whom he met in the aftermath of the earthquake and fire of 1906. Another friend and classmate is Flora Profuso, who often accompanies Max and Duncan. Family circumstances cause Max and Duncan to become closer and enable them to develop their relationship further. Stadler does a good job of recreating the San Francisco of the period, from the perspective of a native who takes much of the city environment for granted. Max's family lives near Presidio and Lyon (in modern Presidio Heights). Unlike today, Max would gather firewood off of Lone Mountain, walk past dunes to the Cliff House (on the Ocean) or take Model T rides to Lake Merced as a drive in the country. Max observes the beginning of the present Marina District in the form of the mostly temporary buildings of the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915. (The full development of the western third of the City awaited the completion of the Twin Peaks Tunnel in 1917.) Stadler shows the western City, rather than the more familiar downtown and Barbary Coast. [Maps and a good photo of the Exposition would make a nice addition.] Some scenes are set on the, less developed, west coast of Marin County. Stadler is especially attentive to bringing out a sense of the natural world. Many of the final scenes are set in the East Bay, by which time relationship issues are paramount. The chronological format tracks Max's relationships well, focusing on the one with Max, and contain a parallel set of essays and concerns relating to memory and how to keep one's memories accurate and true. This latter line of thought begins with Max sketching landscapes with his mother using the laws of perspective. How does one know the image captures a true memory? Stadler likes to include different art works in his narrative. Scattered in the text are a sequence of related landscape sketches tracking Max's skills and thoughts of the moment. There are poems and a piece of sheet music too. Stadler also shows the rough-and-tumble of adolescence and gives glimpses of some of the prejudices of the times. One can detect a light Walt Whitman spirit. Many arts are recruited to support the themes of the book. It is an enjoyable read; Stadler has a smooth, natural style. The various compromises one has to make - how much local and period knowledge to assume; how confessional or guarded a tone to take - are handled reasonably for a current reader. While my favorite parts were the evocation of old, west San Francisco and the Bolinas area of Marin, Max is engaging too.

A shimmering, achingly beautiful novel about two San Francisco boys, spawns of free-thinking parents, as they are finishing high school, spending a summer in Bolinas, and starting college at Berkeley, ca. 1914-15, i.e., against the backdrop of the Panama-Pacific Exhibition and news from the trench war in Europe. The narrator is grappling with question of memory and perspective. Neither boy gives much thought or pays much attention to social conventions

Poorly designed, nothing more than reprints of selected pages from each issue. If Nest is going to do a book, I want to see a "Nest"-y type book featuring the same wit and creativity that characterizes the magazine, not some self-congratulatory, half-baked reprint. Buy the back issues instead, don't waste your money.

Holtzman is the John Waters of interior design: ironic, iconoclastic, an impresario of the outrageous. His publication is die-cut and drilled (I thought Grant Mudford was going to punch him out for piercing his images when the two met at an LA reception for nest) but never dull. This editor has progressed far beyond conventional notions of good taste, juxtaposing stately homes and prison cells, trailers and Carlo MollinoÕs Turin apartment in a surreal collision of styles. As a minimalist I put down this book with a shudderÑthe riotous excess brought on an attack of claustrophobiaÑbut others may love it. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

Nest has been a true godsend in the otherwise discouraging world of disposable-vehicle-for-consumption magazines. Not only does nest have more visual appeal than the slickest of fashion or design magazines, it also has content: articles ranging from the scholarly to the surreal, but always well-written; photography by the likes of nan goldin and richard barnes. Anyone who is interested in architecture, design, photography, or simply the peculiarities of human behavior- in fact, anyone who is interested in anything at all- would enjoy reading nest.
For those who don't know the magazine, this book is a great introduction to the first twelve issues. And for those who are already fans or even devotees, the book provides wonderful insights into the design and editorial process of the magazine's creators. It also contains material from the first issue, which is impossible to find used.
This book will inform, educate, entertain and astonish you. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

"The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee: His Researches" started off very well. It was pretty in prose, it seemed to be heading off to an excellent finish. Suddenly, there was sheet music, which related to the story, but seemed sort of confusing. Next, the character of Nicholas Dee started writing his own book, with a change in font to differentiate between the stories.

Just as the book starts to redeem itself from the strange and frequent interruptions, the main characters are suddenly whisked off to a different land, literally, to do research, running from the police but not running from the police, involved in a "hustler" ring but not involved in a "hustler" ring. Meanwhile, the story of the research into an Opera House and the characters becomes more and more part of what is already a confusing story. It seemed as though there were five different plots running through the story, and while they were supposed to be set up as though they were parallel, it didn't come across this way. Instead, it became a convoluted mess, with me wanting to skip the less interesting stories (opera, his novel about insurance (hardly an appealing subject matter) and concentrate directly on Nicholas Dee and his daily life.

It started out with an interesting subtext, hinting at great things to come, but never really delivering the payoff. Jumping too quickly into a soap opera drama where police officers are drugged, characters seem to just exist to perpetuate the "mirrored" story of Nicholas Dee and the opera house.

A very very strange story, and if you feel up to trying to decipher this tangled web, I encourage you to do so.

Matthew Stadler is a reader, and his novels are a joy to immerse oneself in for this reason. I disagree with the assessment that The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee book is plodding, difficult or even "experimental." Why would I want to read a book that is structured, plotted, and populated so sterertypically that I won't even need to pay attention to it while I'm reading it?

I don't read to carve chunks of time out of my own life. I read because stumbling across writers like Matthew Stadler is a thrill that can't be duplicated by any other activity. To see my own unorganized musings perfectly crystalized on the page is fantastic. I'm far too lazy to be a writer, so I'm very grateful to Stadler for doing the work for us all. His own words, in discussing Proust, aptly sum up my feelings about what makes The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee ideal reading:

But what if reading involves a dissipation into languor and ease, rather than any kind of mounted effort toward victory? What if the book is our final and only destination, a place we live in rather than "get through"?

While reading the book, I was struck by all the similarities to Hollinghurst's amazing "The Folding Star". Both books feature a teacher who lusts after teenage boys, a trip by this teacher to a non-English speaking "old world" country and an unusual blend of historical fiction, unabashed erotica, and Proustian pyrotechnics.

The writing is quite wonderful in this book, but is not as dense or as high-brow as Hollinghurst's. Instead of impressing us with his vocabulry, Stadler brings a unique gay American sensibility to the novel, which gives it quite a different sensibility than Hollinghurst's.

While both writers will obviously be compared to Proust and to Mann, I find both Holinghurst and Stadler to be reminiscent of A.S. Byatt. Just like in some of Byatt's writing, the search for historical truth also parallels the search for truth in one's own life. I definitely recommend this book, although If I were to only read one of them, I would read the better book, The Folding Star

Matthew Stadler writes very well--sometimes heart-stoppingly well--and is bold both in experimenting with narratives and in again and again and again focusing on loving boys, an extremely fraught subject in contemporary America. I think that his first novel, Landscape:Memory, remains his most fully accomplished book (and, OK, it makes me more comfortable when the boylover is not an older man). Still, I like the ironical voice of the narrator in his desultory research on Gertrude Stein's nephew, his account of his friendship with a gay man of his own age in Seattle, and of his obsession with the son of the family with whom he's staying in Paris. The endings of all four of his novels seem forced to me, but I find the sensibility interesting and some of the sentences jewels. Anyone who believes that adolescent males lack any sexuality will be upset by the book. Others may still want to shake the narrator out of his complacencies and wonder if Mr. Stadler is in a rut -- even noting the different locales and eras represented in his oeuvre to date.

I really enjoyed this very funny, erotic and different novel. Matthew Stadler is probably one of the most gifted young novelists writing today. Even though his books are disturbing, they have a way of captivating you so that you can't wait to read the book right through. I lost some sleep over this one.

This is the story of a young teacher's journey to Paris to uncover the sad history of Gertrude Stein's troubled nephew Allan. The teacher travels to Paris under an assumed name, after being fired from his job because of a sex scandal. In Paris he becomes enchanted and obsessed with a 15 year old boy. Thus the story continues from there.... Forget the pedophiliac part of the story, this should not frighten you away from Matthew Stadler's excellent writing & descriptions of this time and place. His writing is so elegant at times its like reading a classic or it will be in time.

Whether he is shocking the reader, or enticing us with beautiful prose, Matthew Stadler, certainly know how to keep a reader's attention, and take you places you might not dare go alone. This is perhaps his best book yet.

I read this book after having read the same author's "Allan Stein". Where that book was lyrical and had a real sense of loss, this book is just a shambles. It pieces together bits of other dystopian works like "1984" and Terry Gilliam's film "Brazil" but is nowhere near as clever or as interesting as either one of those books. To be honest, I was so disappointed in this book that I literally threw it in the trash the minute I finished it.

I give it two stars because Stadler is, it must be admitted, a gifted writer. It's just a shame that he squandered his prose on this half-baked premise.

The Sex Offender by Matthew Stadler is a reading nightmare. When you think it's coming together and starting to make sense, everything goes astray. It peaks the imagination, but ultimately leaves you, like it's hero, overexcited and unable to perform. The writing is someimes beautiful and sometimes indulgent. It would be nice to be inside Matthew Stadler's brilliant mind and travel with him on this convoluted trip.

Stadler's novel is a romantic and surreal pedophilian nightmare. (un)dressing Lolita in boys clothes and puting Drag Queens at 1984 command. He mix humour, homo erotism and cruelty with perfection. One of my best readings, ever!