We open Google Maps. We search for life on other planets. We search for Arafat Mountain. Then we search for palm trees and things like that.

Arafat Mountain
Mike Kleine
Paperback and Ebook
166 pages
ISBN: 1941918034

Advance Praise for Arafat Mountain

“These pages are a delicatessen, a thousand lives distilled into something quaint and beautiful. There’s cosmic magic at play on every page, speedboats and celestial catastrophe all surround the monolith of Arafat Mountain. Every subtlety is sumptuous, every page a journey. These pages are full of death and I wonder—has death ever been so delightful?”

—Frank Hinton, author of Action, Figure

 

“In his brilliantly imaginative and allegorical collection of linked pieces, Mike Kleine explores that which remains standing in the face of human mortality. From Google maps to the pink sky, the hospital waiting room to the moon and tides, Kleine conveys the eternity of nature within a web of impermanence.”

—Melissa Broder, author of Scarecrone

 

“Arafat Mountain is a sad eternity of pointless deaths and consumerism. A celebration of late capitalism in decline—dressed in animal skins and death. You will gnash your teeth and tear at your eyes and fill your mouth with charcoal and paper clips.”

—Ofelia Hunt, author of Today & Tomorrow

 

“Inject Kanye West with cosmological prowess and the desire to kill, and he just might write Arafat Mountain. This is one weird guide to the inner fashions of the violent rich.”

—Ken Baumann, author of Solip

 

“Come to no decisions. Expect nothing in particular. Expect anything. Expect everything. This is not an object you are holding. Arafat Mountain is a hole—like being in a light-speed car, where everything is super bright, a beautiful blur, but then the car stops for a brief moment and suddenly, you can see everything, before shooting away again at the speed of light. The parallel universes in this book exist, not so that Mike, or the reader, can explore the idea of parallel universes, but rather, to make it clear that with this book, it is permissible to inhabit a parallel universe. You, the reader, can create your own parallel universe, your own sense of fashion, your own gods. This book—for me—was a lesson in meaninglessness. Any attempt to settle upon a final approach was meaningless. And what makes this book so powerful is the fact that you actually can feel here, in what you read, what you aren’t reading. This book will startle you. It will startle you every time you pick it up.”

—Ken Sparling, author of Intention Implication Wind