The Crumbling of a Nation and Other Stories

A remarkably well-chosen birthday gift from Dylan, this self-published work, presumably via Amazon, is as sad as it is necessary. It holds a mirror up to the United States and takes the current state of the nation through to one series of possible conclusions. The country's citizens should take heed. A failure to recognise the more extreme and insidious parts of American capitalism, "nationalism", state-sponsored fear and its relative violence could create the dark and dystopian worlds Ginsberg imagines. He can be thought of as following in the footsteps of Jonathan Swift, but with nods to Kafka and Ballard, among others. I thought he was stronger on his contemporary critiques, per "Just Another Day in America", "Dinner and a Show", or "In the Algorithm We Trust"—my favourite—than when he became more spiritual. Nonetheless, overall very worthwhile.

By Ryan David Ginsberg