Surface Studies
by Mike Corrao

ISBN: 978-0-900575-22-8 | 46 pages | $16.00 | Release Date: April 15, 2024

“The text is not a passive object. And the reader is not a passive observer. In reading a text, we mutate it with our gaze, however briefly, in however isolated a setting. In less conventional works, the reader is often asked to search / investigate, map out the potentially chaotic or uncharted interiors of the work.”

Praise for Surface Studies

In Surface Studies, Mike Corrao takes “close reading” to a new level of radical intensity. His writing about the sprawling literature of the US underground is driven by profound fascination; his experience of the texts is somatic and dynamic. If Sontag asked for an erotics to take the place of a hermeneutics, Corrao reveals that the two can exist as one.

— Johannes Göransson

If I had to single out one of the many interesting endeavors taken by 21st century literary authors, the attempt to write “contemporaneously” about contemporary books would probably rank as #1. Among those who have been committed to the task (i.e. Blake Butler, Christopher Higgs, and John Trefry, among others), Mike Corrao is, as far as I know, the only one who has been systematic enough to put together a book like Surface Studies probably the best conceptual roadmap of the expanded field, and a wonderful introduction to the future of writing about the books to come

— Germán Sierra

About the Author

Mike Corrao is the author of numerous works including Gut Text (11:11 Press), Under Reef (Onomatopee Projects), The Persimmon is an Event (Broken Sleep Books), and Smut-Maker (Inside the Castle). His work often explores the haptic, architectural, and organismal qualities of the text-object. As an artist and designer, his work has been featured in the catalogs of 11:11 Press, Fonograf Editions, Milkweed Editions, Apocalypse Party, Inside the Castle, and other presses. As an editor, he operates CLOAK.wtf.