<DIV><p><I>But the lack of everything, is forming quite a blank. And the testament I give can't hold such a rupture: The unholy blank, a middle, around it another pillow blank. These things, in accordance, are not conducive to electrical strain (ME to YOU), So let's play:</I></p><p>Confession time: Ken Baumann's debut <I>Solip</I> isn't a novel. Think of how it feels to watch an engrossing film; now imagine <I>becoming</I> that film, your vision little more than a flickering image, your body just a burst of white vinyl. Baumann's non-novel, a vast detonation of language, not only captures that feeling, but also challenges you <I>not</I> to be held in its thrall. Indebted to Samuel Beckett and Gaspar Noé, <I>Solip</I> asks the reader to give up all human prejudice and surrender to life's new texture, the flesh become word: a code all Baumann's own, which bludgeons language as much as it opens prose fiction up to the highest horizon. <I>Solip</I> is a world for those who already dwell in the sentence, an anarchic hell that sounds something like heaven, by one of America's most promising young writers.</p><p><B>Ken Baumann</B> lives in Los Angeles, California. He's worked as an actor for ten years in film, theater, and television. He currently stars in <I>The Secret Life of the American Teenager</I>, a series on ABC Family. His fiction, poetry, and essays have been published at <I>VICE</I>, <I>Juked</I>, HTML Giant, <I>The New York Tyrant</I>, Lamination Colony, and elsewhere. Baumann also runs Sator Press, a nonprofit that publishes innovative literature.</p><BR></DIV>