( response/reflection on Mishka Shubaly’s ~The Long Run and other true stories~ )

The Long Run & other true stories
Mishka Shubaly
2022

I circle this fucking thing and circle it later like a different fucking thing. I read half of it from my first copy, and the second half of it from my signed, second, copy. Mishka Shubaly seems a descendant of that writer one has probably read wrongly but that one has let go thinking correctly subconsciously that there’s another about to do it, not necessarily rightly, but separately with sadder madder swag. I made this a competition and oh well. My better angels are visiting family. Speaking of god, his ruining of the selfie is historic but not legendary. This thing reports, but drugs reportage, is direct, but overtaken and possessed. Shubaly is both an avoidant jokester and self-harmed other. He writes as one believing that the resurrected have been reincarnated as character actors. How unfair, how perfect. Read this book. It goes far enough, and it comes back. Pages 225 to 349, for me and my recency bias, seemingly recreate for the first time the how and the how of how the soundtrack kills the playlist. I felt like I ought to feel desire, writes Shubaly. Look, I don’t have a word to take, but the witness, here, proves proof. It won’t change you but changes itself. Thank hell.

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response/reflection 
by Barton Smock