Synopses & Reviews
Fiction. "In this joyful critique of a Randian, post-industrial society, Mathias Svalina comments on both the compulsive desire to make the inconsumable and the often intangible recalcitrance of our attempts to create something useful in a world increasingly characterized by a manufactured sense of lack, anomie and disaffection, where we are daily beset by 'a kind of numbness, a shadow of desire or fear offset against a blank world.' Svalina refuses this numbness and offers something else, something completely stunning, in its place"—Gabriel Gudding. "This is a subversive and necessary book: the quixotic entrepreneurial spirit of individualist American capitalism is revealed as an inherently poetic construct, one that rests on theater, liminality, imaginative drive, contradiction, and failure. I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEUR is poignant and brilliant; it's worth the investment"—Christian Hawkey.
Review
"In this joyful critique of a Randian, post-industrial society, Mathias Svalina comments on both the compulsive desire to make the inconsumable and the often intangible recalcitrance of our attempts to create something useful in a world increasingly characterized by a manufactured sense of lack, anomie and disaffection, where we are daily beset by 'a kind of numbness, a shadow of desire or fear offset against a blank world.' Svalina refuses this numbness and offers something else, something completely stunning, in its place." Gabriel Gudding, author of Rhode Island Notebook
Review
"This is a subversive and necessary book: the quixotic entrepreneurial spirit of individualist American capitalism is revealed as an inherently poetic construct, one that rests on theater, liminality, imaginative drive, contradiction, & failure. I Am A Very Productive Entrepreneur is poignant and brilliant; it’s worth the investment."
Christian Hawkey, author of Ventrakl
Review
"In this joyful critique of a Randian, post-industrial society, Mathias Svalina comments on both the compulsive desire to make the inconsumable and the often intangible recalcitrance of our attempts to create something useful in a world increasingly characterized by a manufactured sense of lack, anomie and disaffection, where we are daily beset by 'a kind of numbness, a shadow of desire or fear offset against a blank world.' Svalina refuses this numbness and offers something else, something completely stunning, in its place." Gabriel Gudding, author of Rhode Island Notebook
About the Author
Mathias Svalina was born in Chicago. He is the author of I AM A VERY PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEUR (Mud Luscious Press, 2011) and DESTRUCTION MYTH (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2009). He has also published numerous solo and collaboratively-written chapbooks, many of which were authored with Julia Cohen. With Zachary Schomburg, he co-edits Octopus Magazine and Octopus Books. He currently teaches writing and literature in Denver, Colorado.