The ToB Championship Round: Martyr! v. James (tournamentofbooks.com)
I won’t save you the click to see who wins, but I’m with Nicholas Glastonbury on this one. “I had a feeling, when I first saw the shortlist, that these would be the Tournament’s finalists, and boy, they did not disappoint. What beauty and what terror. Two ambitious books, two protagonists writing themselves into life. Metatexts, double consciousness, oneiric encounters, the deceptions of names, the trouble of kin, the evil rot at the heart of the American enterprise. But if I must choose (and they tell me I must), then for its propulsive acerbity, its acrobatics of language, its sheer humanity, I choose Martyr! In this time of martyrs, I revere the grace and glory of this book.”