#kechagiar

UK-based Boat Magazine presented Pilotless Press and MHLH in their Athens issue. Here's what they had to say:

"Their dedication to print could be seen as merely nostalgic, but there is nothing old-fashioned about their publication. The design of the chapbook and the postcard it came with brandishes an image that resembles what I can only describe as a metal spring (one that is either bent or self-enveloping, depending on how you look at it). This image could be seen to reflect the Pilotless Press ethos: the infinitely intangible quality of that tricky little thing we call memory. The chapbook format could be considered much more post-modern than it is old-fashioned then, and they don’t plan to stop the experimenting there either. “We might at some point publish hardcover books, loose pages, folded napkins, or folios. No one knows”, said their Co-Pilot."

There are many words that would attempt to describe the physical object in all its analog glory: aerodynamic, fuselageous, oleophobic, aluminum, spacious, comfortable, business class, airborne. It could be said that it lives inside a hangar and exercises in a wind tunnel. All of the above, though, would be in one way or another outright lies. In truth, the words that can describe it are the following: hand-sewn binding, 48 pages of pure fabrication, 80 gr., 300 gr., black and white like the best of photography, and, finally, sexy, the way book publishing ought to be.

Dimitris John Raptis reviewed Allen Kechagiar's The Mundane History of Lockwood Heights at alternality.gr. A brief excerpt:

"Το διήγημα του Άλεν Κεχάγιαρ στις μόλις 45 σελίδες του αφηγείται την επιστροφή ενός άντρα στην γενέτειρά του. Ξεφεύγει όμως από το κλισέ ταξίδι ενδοσκόπησης που είναι συνήθως τα homecomings, και μας παρουσιάζει την πόλη, που φιγουράρει πίσω από κάθε λέξη και κλέβει τον πρωταγωνιστικό ρόλο από τον αφηγητή. Η πόλη παίζει το ρόλο του αντιήρωα, ενός όντος που δεν ξεκαθαρίζεται αν είναι κακόβουλο ή απλώς δεν ξέρει πώς να κάνει το καλό, που φυλακίζει τους πολίτες της."

A brief excerpt:

"Το διήγημα αποπνέει μια έντονη αίσθηση διακειμενικότητας· και πριν φανώ εντελώς pretentious, να εξηγήσω τι εννοώ: καθώς το διάβαζα μου δημιουργήθηκε η ιδέα ότι είμαι κι εγώ μέσα σε ένα βιβλίο, στο οποίο αναφέρεται το διήγημα The Mundane History of Lockwood Heights, στο οποίο αναφέρονται άλλα βιβλία, στα οποία αναφέρεται ο Jefferson Rohr, δημιουργός των ταινιών, κ.ο.κ, σαν παράλληλοι καθρέφτες που δείχνουν την ίδια αντανάκλαση επ’άπειρον".

In the Mundane History of Lockwood Heights, a short story by Allen Kechagiar, a young man returns home after years of absence to find that, as always, some things have changed while others, as always, have remained the same. He comes back to the hometown he escaped from to try and sell the two things still left untouched on his body. His story, though, is just an illustration, a guide to lead you into the sunny corridors of Southern California, but never out of them. It is a symptom of suburbia receding in a fade-out that cannot be reversed. Of course, it could be read as the hidden tale of a family dissolving in the bowels of Southern California, or taught as the secret history of the State, dreaming itself into oblivion.