A precocious boy and his harried father are making a movie from scratch, using only materials in the backyard--or entertaining the possibilities. Their discussion expands to an examination of various cosmogonies and cosmologies, rational and borderline-psychotic, and gradually becomes a duel to the death
It lasts, this expiration, say, how long:/
a single flick's immensurate duration,/
a short-short subject, lit by half a pinch/
of volatile magnesium, wrung from weeds …
The contemporaries of Michelangelo found it useful to employ the term terribilita to characterize some of the expressions of his genius, and I will quote it here to sum up the shocking impact of [Tom Bradley's novel Acting Alone] as a whole. I read it in a state of fascination, admiration, awe, anxiety, and outrage.
R.V. Cassill, editor of The Norton Anthology of Fiction
Tom Bradley is one of the most exasperating, offensive, pleasurable, and brilliant writers I know. I recommend his work to anyone with spiritual fortitude and a taste for something so strange that it might well be genius.
Denis Dutton, editor of Arts & Letters Daily (“among the most influential media personalities in the world,” according to Time Magazine)
When is the world going to wake up to the genius of Tom Bradley? One of the most criminally underrated authors on the planet.
Andrew Gallix, of the Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman, the Independent, Literary Review and the Times Literary Supplement