San Francisco, CA (August 14, 2012) – Sensitive Skin Books announces the new Carl Watson novel titled, Backwards The Drowned Go Dreaming, Kindle version will be available September 15, 2012. Watson is an American writer living and working in New York City. The novel takes place in the 1970s and is part road trip and part love story.

In Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming, Watson writes “Amongst the oil fumes and the briny dinge of the sea, greasy, tired, frustrated, I had a flash. Suddenly, I had it all figured out—the psychology of despots and CEOs. I figured that in order for civilization to exist, people have to stay in one place, and so it seems somehow natural that the evolution of society would be to create an illusion of motion where none exists. Faster cars. Faster editing. Increased sensory stimulation. But all the while we are actually sitting more and more still. The population is placated by the feeling of progress, when in reality they are imprisoned. Even if we feel or strive to be utterly irresponsible, we’re still somehow doing our job.”

A sample chapter from the book is posted online:
http://www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/late-night-phone-call-from-the-used-to-be/

"Carl Watson evokes his desolation angels with great empathy and care, but also with ruthless candor. He writes like someone who pushed himself to the wall, then pushed through it to the void and came back with stories to tell. Here he reclaims the Seventies, one of the more desolate of recent epochs, with the clarity of Proust, the balefulness of Bodenheim, and the raw honesty of an Iggy song."
—John Strausbaugh, author of Black Like You and Sissy Nation

"With prose unfurling like cigarette smoke bleeding into that cloud of half-forgotten memories forever shadowing missed opportunities that hangs over a noonday dive somewhere during the twilight of the last blown century, heartbreak rock-n-roll on the radio crackling in exquisite precision between AM stations and windswept interstates, Carl Watson daydreams before silent black-and-white televisions in SRO lobbies or as he drinks himself sober in crumbling Chicago tenements. Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming explodes the bleary-eyed myth of the American road."
—Donald Breckenridge, author of This Young Girl Passing

"Carl Watson’s work is desolate poetry. He writes with sharp nostalgia for a past that really wasn’t all that great. It feels like a stay in a down-and-out motel, but right on the other side of the paper-thin wall is transcendence. Watson never lets you forget that even in the most desperate situations, there is humor (even if it’s mostly black) and greatness of the spirit."
—Emily XYZ, contributor United States of Poetry

Watson is the author of Beneath the Empire of the Birds published by Apathy Press, and The Hotel of Irrevocable Acts (a novel) by Autonomedia. These books have also been published in France by Vagabonde Press and Gallimard respectively. Watson also writes regular opinionated essays (under several names) for The Williamsburg Observer, an anarchist publication that originated at the Right Bank Cafe in Brooklyn. Currently he is working on a book about Henry Darger’s autobiography, which he hopes will dispel the myth of literature and romantic genius and condemn all writers to the category of biological machines engaged in redundant self-constitution no different than the growth of crystals, the birth of stars, or the splitting of amoeba.

Sensitive Skin began in 1992 as Peau Sensible on New York City's Lower East Side. Contributors included Patrick McGrath, Lynne Tillman, Richard Hell, Joel Rose, Eileen Myles, Herbert Huncke, Jack Micheline, Emily XYZ, Darius James, Maggie Estep, Andres Serrano, Penny Arcade and James Romberger. Many readings were held at the Living Theater, the Fez, XOXO and Thread Waxing Space.  A 15 year hiatus ended in June 2010 with the new online version, a combination publishing platform and social network (inspired by reunions with various writers and contributors on Facebook). Since its rebirth, Sensitive Skin has published work by, among many others, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Justine Frischmann, Andrew Huebner, Elliott Sharp, Melissa Febos, Stewart Home, Max Blagg, Erika Schickel, Ruby Ray, Craig Clevenger, Rob Roberge, James Greer, Díre McCain, Mike Hudson and Ralph Carney.

Other upcoming releases include Music: Drawing Down the Muse, a collection of music-based drawings by David West; anthology Number 9, including work by Fred Frith, Samuel Delaney and John Lurie; and a collection of the complete original ‘90s run of the magazine in book format. Publisher Bernard Meisler now lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Author: Carl Watson
Book Title: Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming
Publication date: July 15, 2012 (book)
September 15, 2012 (Kindle)
ISBN-13: 978-0983927143
ISBN-10: 0983927146
BISAC: Fiction / General
List Price: $15.95/$9.95 for Kindle version
Page count: 228 pages
Trim Size: 6" x 9"
Color: Black and White

Publisher:
Sensitive Skin Books
San Francisco and New York
info@sensitiveskinmagazine.com
http://www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/

Visit author online at:
https://www.facebook.com/BackwardsTheDrownedGoDreaming

For press materials or additional information on Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming or Sensitive Skin please contact Fly PR:  T. (323) 667-1344 or flypr@flypr.net.

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