I’m sick of blogging about the self-important, pompous, and utterly provincial British REF (“Research Excellence Framework’).  Enough miserablism  (André Breton), at least for today.

Instead, I would like to celebrate the October publication by Chicago University Press of Allen C. Shelton’s Where the North Sea Touches Alabama, the follow-up to his widely praised Dreamworlds of Alabama (Minnesota UP, 2007).

I have known Allen since he first invited me, over ten years ago now, to participate in the remarkable festival of arts and ideas he organized annually on a shoestring budget in Buffalo, NY under the Benjaminian title Ethnographic Dreamworlds.  Some of the richness of those meetings, which brought together intellectuals across disciplines, performers, and visual artists, can be gleaned from the soft arcades website that survives as a ghostly record of an extraordinarily vibrant event.

It was through Allen and Ethnographic Dreamworlds that I met, among others, Kathleen Stewart, Patricia Clough, Danielle Egan, and Susan Lepselter—scholars doing courageous and pioneering work that make the standard disciplinary boundaries in the humanities and social sciences seem no more than quaint and rather incomprehensible antiques.  Allen was kind enough to visit Lancaster University last year as a participant in a cross-disciplinary writing workshop for PhD students, on whom he left a lasting impression.

This is what others are saying about Where the North Sea Touches Alabama:

Kathleen C. Stewart, author of Ordinary Affects

“This is a beautiful and brilliant book. . . . The lives of Allen Shelton, Patrik Keim, Walter Benjamin, and many others intersect in these pages, rubbing up against each other, drawing on each other to evoke layers on layers of worlds in which objects, color, and texture are everything. Shelton’s writing is masterful.”

Donna Haraway, author of A Cyborg Manifesto

“Allen C. Shelton is really special. From the layering and subtlety of his writing to his sense of geography, intimacy, and sensuous detail, I don’t know anyone who writes quite like him. These interwoven narratives of the dead and the living form a boundary-crossing work of worlding, a productive new type of critical engagement; Where the North Sea Touches Alabama is not just a remarkable book, but a fresh genre of writing.”

Howard S. Becker, author of Art Worlds

“Allen C. Shelton is a provocative writer whose prose grapples with a lot of ideas we don’t usually allow ourselves to think about. Readers will have to think hard, but their efforts will pay off in new knowledge and insight: I felt that I knew a whole lot more after reading his book than I did before and I don’t often feel that way, nor feel that way so strongly.”

Jonathan Fullmer | Booklist

“Dense, wildly digressive, and divided into topical microchapters that cite more than 100 endnotes sometimes only loosely connected to the text, Shelton’s singular blend of art-, lit-, and pop-infused intellectualism may not draw a wide readership, but those who enter will find an invigorating analysis of death, art, friendship, and self-discovery.”

Luis Jaramillo | The Coffin Factory

“The sometimes abrupt shifts in subject matter make this a book that has to be read slowly to take in Shelton’s arguments. Fortunately this close reading is rewarded, especially in the moments when Shelton moves from more analytical passages to personal reflections, synthesizing the theories he’s discussing. . . . What makes this book so strangely wonderful is how Shelton moves from the abstract to the personal.”

Check it out here.