K B Dixon

In a new collection of idiosyncratic essays on the subject of photography, Too True, K.B. Dixon offers a close-up look at an enduring fascination. A writer and photographer, Dixon comes at his enigmatic subject from every direction--from the experience of reading Roland Barthes to the question of posing, from the art of the author photo to a real-time history of the Vivian Maier phenomenon. He provides the reader with a distinctly personal take on the many mysteries of a maddening medium.

"Haircut today. Another half-hour with Beth, the stylist, telling me tales of her sullen daughter, Phoebe, and her incontinent Chihuahua, Norman (a depressed and depressing little rescue dog who sleeps curled up in a mouse-colored bed near the shampoo station). Another half-hour of struggling to make small talk-something I do not do very well at all." A daily diary started by the narrator as a sort of orientation experiment, Notes, K. B. Dixon's new novel, follows a single year in the life of obscure composer, photographer, and essayist David Bacon. It offers a compact and comic look at both his world and the world around him. Here in elliptic notes is a snapshot of Bacon's wife, Emily; his perpetually fearful neighbor, Mrs. Hampton; and his continuing struggle with a recalcitrant composition tentatively titled The Coward's Quartet. Here in black and white is the documentary evidence with which one might-if so inclined-confront a conveniently unreliable memory.

"Maybe I should take a little time off-not just from my formal fiddling with the epistemological puzzles of narration, but from fiction in general-time off from imaginary people and imaginary experiences. Maybe I should try something 'conventional, ' reportorial, nonfictional-get in touch, even if just obliquely, with the real world again." Purportedly culled from a cache of donated papers, K. B. Dixon's new novel, Novel Ideas, is an unorthodox character study, a look at one writer's life from the inside. A mosaic collection of excerpted letters and emails written by the author Stephen Styles to his close friend, the novelist Alan Dodd, the book follows Styles as he struggles to write a true crime story-a story that must, in the end, compete with friends, family, and other ideas (novel ideas) for his attention.

"The clich s of beauty are irresistible. It is usually (although I have to concede not always) some sort of affectation to pretend otherwise." A quirky catalogue of imaginary photographs K. B. Dixon's new novel, The Photo Album, is an idiosyncratic mix of character study and meditation-a glimpse into the life of a peculiar photo-enthusiast named Michael Quick and a questioning, if somewhat cursory, examination of his present obsession. It is a portrait not just of the photographer, but of the time and space around him. Also the people-his camera-shy wife Amy; his friend, the writer Ryan Richardson; his neighbors the Moores, whose son is mysteriously missing. A concise and unconventional wander, it is as much a comic adventure as a contemplative one.

The Ingram Interview, K. B. Dixon's unrepentantly quirky new novel, weaves its way interrogatively through the life of Daniel Ingram, a retired, none-too-healthy English professor who has been kicked out of an assisted-care facility because he was depressing other residents. Moving in temporarily with a former student of his-a young art-film maker named Michael Berger-Daniel works fitfully on a ramshackle memoir as he continues to pursue a reconciliation with his absent ex-wife.

K. B. Dixon's work has been described as original, clever, pithy, lyrical, insightful, gonzo, and laugh-out-loud funny. His new novel, A Painter's Life, is a characteristically mischievous oddity. A mix of biographical scraps, journal entries, review excerpts, and interviews, it is an intimate and introspective tour of the art world-a portrait of the sometimes portraitist Christopher Freeze. Focusing in part on Freeze's friends, family, and fellow artists-as well as his relationship with his frazzled dealer and his would-be monographer-it is an inventive, seriocomic look at one peculiar man's ceaseless struggle to make something beautiful.

"How was my day? I'm trying not to remember." A wry, unconventional character study, Andrew (A to Z) is a sort of mosaic that the reader assembles subconsciously. Focusing on the narrator's family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors, it is the story of a quasi-neurotic malcontent on the edge of the edge of middle middle-age. An amateur photographer, the office satirist, an evening's dinner guest, Andrew pastes together in alphabetical disorder a collage portrait of his baffled suburban life. Excerpt: "Arizona. There is a rumor I was born there, but I don't believe it. I don't feel like a person who was born in Arizona, I feel like a person who was born somewhere else-somewhere with trees and an ocean and a liberal political tradition. Somewhere like Washington or Oregon or Massachusetts."

"Maybe between the two of us we can trick me into being honest with you." A collage of notes written in a sixth-floor men's room, The Sum of His Syndromes is the story of a slightly disturbed young drudge who has found himself at a personal and professional crossroads. There is a job he doesn't want, a girl he does, and a friend who is writing a book. If it weren't for the wise counsel of his therapist, the anomalous Dr. C, who knows what might have happened.