The Counterforce - Ghostpine2026-08-17T16:05:42.000-04:00https://the-counterforce.org/tag/ghostpine/The Counterforce - GhostpineTemporary Palaces by Jeff Miller2026-08-17T16:05:42.000-04:002026-08-17T16:05:42.000-04:00https://the-counterforce.org /jeff-miller-temporary-palaces/<p><em>Contributed by Lisa Czech</em></p><p>Since 1996, Jeff Miller’s patient eye has documented the DIY spaces he moves through. In his fanzine, Ghost Pine, he continued the punk literary-documentarian tradition established by predecessors such as Aaron Cometbus and Fly (Elen Orr).</p><p>Temporary Palaces (House of Anansi Press, 2026), is the Ottawa-born author's first formal stab at long-form fiction. If Ghost Pine catalogued a milieu, Temporary Palaces inhabits it.</p><p>The core of this story unfolds in the aftermath of a police raid on a squatted house, occupied by a housing rights group. The love triangle among the three central characters functions as allegory: Ben, Alex, and Rob form the overlapping cells of a Venn diagram, embodying the intersections of music, the visual arts, and politics, respectively. Alex and Ben are both agonizingly passive and hornily entangled with each other as well as with Rob. When the story jumps forward ten years, Rob is physically absent yet continues to psychically haunt Ben and Alex as they try to survive—and thrive—while remaining true to their values.</p><p>The protagonists Ben and Alex cannot move forward, tormented by their past choices, seemingly irreversible and distorted by years spent brooding over them. In tandem, the true antagonist of the novel -ever-accelerating gentrification- is an unrelenting shadow. The romantic and housing crises mirror each other: cities change and are difficult to save from bourgeoisification, but refusing to commodify our own relationships and communities is its own form of resistance. Miller examines this aspiration from varying, subtle angles.</p><p>For the knowledgeable underground enthusiast with their share of obscure bootleg t-shirts to prove it, the accumulation of references can feel at times more like post-gig namedropping than material that serves the narrative. Yet what at first feels like an oversimplification gradually reveals itself as a device. Memory, refracted through the prism of nostalgia, becomes deformed and compressed. The memory is glossy, at times shallow, like the 2007 GERMS biopic where everyone was handsomer and more eloquent than they probably ever were. If this novel is meant to be accessed by a general public, punk here stands in for any other affinity group. Miller has tapped into a culture he knows well to tell a universal story. As Sylvia, the charismatic gallerist who mentors Alex, reminds us, “before you make anything new, [...] see what’s already there”.</p><p>Punk scenes, just like cities, are ever-changing, shaped at once by money, politics, and by the ebb and swell of the people who inhabit them. Temporary Palaces understands that tension, capturing a world that was already vanishing even as its characters were living in it.</p><p><em>Published by House of Anansi, Toronto, 2026, 314 p. III. Black and white and color. English.</em></p>
<p><em>Contributed by Lisa Czech</em></p><p>Since 1996, Jeff Miller’s patient eye has documented the DIY spaces he moves through. In his fanzine, Ghost Pine, he continued the punk literary-documentarian tradition established by predecessors such as Aaron Cometbus and Fly (Elen Orr).</p><p>Temporary Palaces (House of Anansi Press, 2026), is the Ottawa-born author's first formal stab at long-form fiction. If Ghost Pine catalogued a milieu, Temporary Palaces inhabits it.</p><p>The core of this story unfolds in the aftermath of a police raid on a squatted house, occupied by a housing rights group. The love triangle among the three central characters functions as allegory: Ben, Alex, and Rob form the overlapping cells of a Venn diagram, embodying the intersections of music, the visual arts, and politics, respectively. Alex and Ben are both agonizingly passive and hornily entangled with each other as well as with Rob. When the story jumps forward ten years, Rob is physically absent yet continues to psychically haunt Ben and Alex as they try to survive—and thrive—while remaining true to their values.</p><p>The protagonists Ben and Alex cannot move forward, tormented by their past choices, seemingly irreversible and distorted by years spent brooding over them. In tandem, the true antagonist of the novel -ever-accelerating gentrification- is an unrelenting shadow. The romantic and housing crises mirror each other: cities change and are difficult to save from bourgeoisification, but refusing to commodify our own relationships and communities is its own form of resistance. Miller examines this aspiration from varying, subtle angles.</p><p>For the knowledgeable underground enthusiast with their share of obscure bootleg t-shirts to prove it, the accumulation of references can feel at times more like post-gig namedropping than material that serves the narrative. Yet what at first feels like an oversimplification gradually reveals itself as a device. Memory, refracted through the prism of nostalgia, becomes deformed and compressed. The memory is glossy, at times shallow, like the 2007 GERMS biopic where everyone was handsomer and more eloquent than they probably ever were. If this novel is meant to be accessed by a general public, punk here stands in for any other affinity group. Miller has tapped into a culture he knows well to tell a universal story. As Sylvia, the charismatic gallerist who mentors Alex, reminds us, “before you make anything new, [...] see what’s already there”.</p><p>Punk scenes, just like cities, are ever-changing, shaped at once by money, politics, and by the ebb and swell of the people who inhabit them. Temporary Palaces understands that tension, capturing a world that was already vanishing even as its characters were living in it.</p><p><em>Published by House of Anansi, Toronto, 2026, 314 p. III. Black and white and color. English.</em></p>