In Jefferson Navicky's The Paper Coast, we find the vicissitudes of translators and sea captains, flotsam and fonts, swans and wax cylinders and burials at sea. Sometimes ghostly, sometimes arch, sometimes laugh-out-loud scatological, its stories hold the scent of salt, pine, and ether, of coffee, old books, and sardines. To read The Paper Coast is to immerse in the librarial alchemy of Borges crossed with the profane whimsy of Brautigan, infused with Dickensonian flint and slant, the blue and brume of a certain coastal Maine. Navicky's tales are curious, beautiful, transcendent. His sentences are luminous. Megan Grumbling, author of Booker's Point