The Lit Log: Eric Rivera

This is the second in a series called the Lit Log, where I ask people to document what and how they read. If you would like to contribute to the Lit Log, hit me up at andhertz [at] gmail. 

Eric Rivera (b. 1984) is from a cornfield in Indiana, a small, impoverished country in the U.S. Middle West sector. He spends his time drawing and printing comic books, riding his bike & running around, and making music in Energy Gown, a Chicago experimental music group. He can't go home again.

How many books (approximately) do you read a year:  Hmmm...I probably read anywhere from 2-6 books a month, but I don't usually finish most of them.
How many book do you read at a time: 2 or 3
The last great book you read: Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos by Samuel M. Steward, PhD.
Your desert island book: Survivalist Handbook of some kind...
Autumn book: The Secret Life of Salvador Dali by Salvador Dali; CF's Power Mastrs 1-3 (re-reading at the mo')
Best bathroom reading: National Geographic back issues from 1961-1970, 1990-1992; Ivan Brunetti's Anthology of Graphic Fiction Vols. 1 & 2
Are you satisfied with your literary intake: No.
Thoughts on contemporary state of literature: I really dislike this Believer school of contemporary writers, it just feels like this upper class of over educated, under experienced, East Coast, white, liberal to the point of actual conservatism, most importantly, basically bad writers. That being said, David Foster Wallace is one of my favorites. My other favorites are all dead. Wait, he's dead too. I genuinely forgot that for a second. My other favorites are LONG dead, then. To further defend my sweeping dismissal of all contemporary authors, though, I should say that in any art form, most of the people in each field are making basically bad work. And the nature of the world today is such that most of those..."hacks," let's call them, are really over-educated. Whether music, painting, acting, whatever...And it is our burden to work through the tangle of modern junk and figure out what is worth our collective memory and consumption. Then you start wondering how that truth affects the execution of the work itself. How can one author's book stand out in a sea of true junk? I dunno. I have to leave for work and can't finish this thought right now.