What’s the last great book you read? I loved the pair of Gwendoline Riley novels NYRB put out last year, “My Phantoms” and “First Love.” I enjoy reading about awful, sickening people, and these books are filled with them. But they’re awful and sickening in a way that, while not unfamiliar to my life experience, felt new — they’re awful and sickening in a way I’d not seen in literature before. Can a great book be badly written? I bought a book called “The Loser,” by William Hoffman Jr., based on its incredible cover (Funk & Wagnalls hardcover edition circa 1968).

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Persons: Gary Indiana, Joanne Kyger, ”, Lucy Sante, Dodie Bellamy, “, William Gardner Smith, Bill Berkson, Frank O’Hara, Joe LeSueur, Andy Kaufman, Julie Hecht, What’s, Gwendoline Riley, NYRB, William Hoffman Jr, It’s, Hoffman, Luck Organizations: Phantoms Locations: Japan, India