The Bride of Brief Thoughts

Yup. We're doing this again.

Sick City by Tony O'Neill

Now this was a fun read. In this neo-noir thriller, a junkie named Jeffrey comes into possession of a sex tape featuring Sharon Tate after his lover dies. Knowing that this tape could be worth millions, he sets about to get himself clean so he can cash in. While in rehab, he meets Randal, another junkie from a rich family with connections in Hollywood. They team up to find a buyer for the tape. All the while being trailed by someone who has it out for Jeffrey.

This book is a fun page-turner, and even throws some entertaining barbs at the Hollywood system and the rehab industry. Easy targets, I'll admit. But some things you never get tired of seeing beat up on. If you're a fan of thrillers or neo-noir in general this is definitely worth a read.

Buy Sick City by Tony O'Neill here.

The Kid by Sapphire

The Kid is the sequel to Sapphire's first novel Push, which is probably better known by the movie Precious.

I think Push showed that Sapphire is a talented writer. However, she has a tendency to pile it on a little too thick. I can take a retarded baby conceived through incestuous rape seriously, but when you name it "Mongo", you start to lose me.

Sapphire works in a similar vein as Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, in that she paints a nasty and vivid picture of the life of poor urban blacks. Unlike Slim and like Goines, she has the unfortunate tendency to engage in a certain degree of preaching. She ended Push on a "hopeful" note, with Precious learning how to read and her second child, Abdul, being born healthy. Reading the reviews of The Kid was interesting, because that hope is shattered at the beginning of this book when Precious succumbs to complications from AIDS. This upset a lot of people.

Another thing that bothered a lot of people is the stream of consciousness style the book is written in. This book is about Precious's son Abdul and his life from childhood to young adulthood. Unlike his mother, Abdul is intelligent but also plagued by a lot of mental problems. This results in him doing things like blurring the line between his dreams and what actually happens, engaging in mantras to keep himself steady, and jumping between his memories and the present. Especially in the final chapter, it begins to border on Faulkner levels of confusing. That said, it makes for a highly visceral read.

Like Push, Sapphire piles it on way too thick. I'm beginning to wonder if she's capable of writing a character who hasn't experienced childhood sexual abuse. The scene where Abdul is attacked by an older boy is disturbing, but loses it's impact from the boy attacking him being called "Batty Boy". Seriously.

The fact Sapphire tries to cover so much results in things going nowhere. For example, there is a scene where one of Abdul's friends comes out as transgender to him. You think this will lead to something. It doesn't.

In the end, if you liked Push, then The Kid is worth a read. If not, skip it. Personally, I think Sapphire's command of language is strong enough that I'll probably check out her poetry at some point.

Buy The Kid by Sapphire here.

Book Review: Mad by Jonathan Bowden

We are all failures because we all die.

About a year ago, Jonathan Bowden died of a heart attack. He was 49, just a few weeks shy of turning 50.

Politics is a matter of life and death.

Bowden is probably best known for his involvement in various British right-wing movements. At one point, he was the Cultural Officer for the British National Party. He gave several speeches over his political career and was regarded as a master orator by his peers.

Art hates ideologies because it is the one that encompasses all the others.

Bowden's other great passion was in the arts. Many of the speeches he delivered were in regards to the relation of art to right-wing politics. He was also an artist, a writer, and an actor. He acted in two films (which he also wrote), produced several drawings and paintings, and wrote several books. His first book was Mad. Apparently written when he was 18, and originally released in 1989, it was re-released in 2009 by Nine Banded Books.

In spite of his conservative political beliefs, Bowden's artworks have a very modernist sensibility to them. This is very apparent in Mad.

It's difficult to say exactly what Mad is. It's too scattershot to call it a proper essay, and it's too experimental in form to call a polemic. As vague the description is, it would probably make the most sense to call it a prose poem. Though even that may not be accurate.

In short, this is an attempt to understand the Marquis de Sade. A man who was destroyed by the revolution he created. There was something bad in him. Baudelaire was right: when you want to discuss cruelty we must always go back to de Sade.

Mad has three major themes running through it. The first is the inherent cruelty of humanity that civilization is based on. The second is the fact of human mortality. The third is human sexuality.

The first theme is best summed up by the first two sentences in the book.

Terror is the chief motivation of civil behavior. No other explanation does as well.

He bangs on this particular drum very often in this book. However, it's never boring. The phrases and associations he draws from this are amazing. A particular favorite of mine is near the end when Bowden discusses fascism. The part is too long to quote here, but it's essentially about how Peter Brueghel's The Triumph of Death foreshadowed the fascism of the mid-20th century.

The final part of the book is especially fascinating in general, given Bowden's later activities. He engages in a dismissal of almost every major political doctrine. Fascism is "the moral equivalent of venereal disease in the politicals of the body", liberalism is "bourgeois guilt", conservatism "has no ideology except self-preservation" and communism "commits plastic surgery on a face which had not been damaged". His critical view of the state itself even seems to indicate anarchist sympathies.

States are built on mountains of skulls. A state is a revolution against nature; enacted in alliance with nature. States represent nature in so far as no-one rebels against their moral squalor.

It would be interesting to hear how Bowden went from this view to being involved with right-wing party politics.

The third theme was, for me, the most difficult to get a handle on. On the one hand, I admire that the views on gender and sexuality presented would piss off traditionalists and feminist/queer activists at the same time. On the other, this is where Bowden makes the most ludicrous statements in the book. The worst of this is where he characterizes masturbation as a "homosexual act". Yeah, okay.

Something that may be a sticking point for others is the use of punctuation in this book. It's used in obviously "wrong" ways several times. This is coming from a guy who constantly needs to look up rules regarding commas. Yet I don't think they were mistakes. I get the impression he was attempting to create a unique cadence with the way he abuses commas, semi-colons, dashes, and colons.

Even if they are actual mistakes, they don't detract from the book for me. That is the key attraction of this book for me. The complete fury I sense coming from the work. Reading this, it seems like something Bowden wrote in a complete fugue. I can picture him sitting at a typewriter. Eyes wide, teeth clenched, and breathing heavily. Pounding furiously at the keys. Tearing away the filled up paper and slamming it on the table next to the typewriter. Annoyed by the time it takes to load a new page to abuse.

The result is completely enthralling and often very thought-provoking. Because of that, I highly recommend Mad.

Oh and that second theme? I think Bowden is all too familiar with that now.

Sadly, though, moments of ecstasy are rare. Most human-beings are on a treadmill of sorrow. They know they’re going to die, and they have repressed it. They have not taken responsibility for it. They have not realized the truth. They have not understood that men are born screaming; and when they stop; they die.

Buy Mad by Jonathan Bowden here.

Book Review: Janitor of Planet Anilingus by Andrew Wayne Adams

Don't let the title fool you, this isn't science fiction porn. Technically. I think.

Andrew Wayne Adams' debut novella is about a janitor named Jack who lives on the planet Anilingus. With me so far?

Anilingus is a sort of resort planet run by the Catholic Church where people come year round to engage in non-stop ass-licking. Except during Lent. Lent is Jack's favorite time of the year, because he has the entire planet all to himself, and he can clean the place without being surrounded by butt-lickers. However, he's not alone this year. While out cleaning, he meets a woman named Nimue who has been stuck on the planet because someone is trying to kill her.

Jack and Nimue soon run into the man after her. After narrowly escaping, Jack goes back to work the next day to find he's been fired and is going to be replaced by a man-child who is one of the boss's relatives. Then things start to get weird.

Do I have Satan in my rectum?

The story in Janitor of Planet Anilingus is absurd and hilarious.The ridiculous world Adams creates is fascinating and fun to inhabit for the duration of the book. The way Adams twists science fiction tropes kept me enthralled through the whole thing. It even manages to make some commentary on religion and belief without sounding pompous or pretentious.

The cast of characters is limited but well developed. None of them went in the direction that I expected them to.

It isn't perfect. There are times where the prose felt a little clunky. There are also some attempts to explain the metaphysics of the world that just made me kind of space out. Uninteresting technobabble.

That said, if you want a completely insane science fiction adventure story, pick this is up. It's a short but highly enjoyable read. I see a lot of potential in Adams as a writer. He sent this to me for a review, and I plan to check out his future work.

As for you, pull your tongue out of that ass, and buy this to support a new writer.

Buy Janitor of Planet Anilingus by Andrew Wayne Adams here.

Book Review: The Talkative Corpse by Ann Sterzinger

The protagonist of Ann Sterzinger's The Talkative Corpse calls himself Johnny Jaggo. That's not his real name. Whatever his real name was is lost, because he's dead. Long dead. Everyone he knew is dead. He lived in Chicago, but whatever is left of that is buried under rubble. Jaggo had enough foresight to know that would probably happen and took it into consideration while he wrote his message for the future.

I will print it all out on the highest-quality paper I can find, and then cover it with plastic laminate. I got a great deal on the laminating machine. And plastic? Plastic might even outlive nuclear waste. So what if none of the current weasels pay me no nevermind, not even enough to give me a job at a decent wage; in this gob of hopefully unmelted plastic I hope that part of me will outlive them all. From here on in I’m all about you, anthropologists of the new dawn!

Jaggo decided to document his present time to preserve information about it for future generations. Specifically a few months from 2011 to 2012. He's more interested in venting his spleen than doing any documenting though. One could argue that's a far better way to capture the basic essence of American life in the 2010s. I'd be inclined to agree.

Jaggo attacks everyone in his diary/time-capsule. His asshole bosses, his asshole neighbors, the privileged, the poor, and his ex-girlfriend. Eventually his rage builds to the point he accidentally summons a demon during a drunken blackout. Don't you hate when that happens? Worse, the demon Bertram will only leave after he's killed one person Jaggo hates and one he loves. Fortunately for him, he doesn't love anyone. Yet.

Anyone who's had the displeasure of looking for a fucking job within the last few years will probably know where Jaggo is coming from in his rants against the people who do the hiring.

Who’s working in HR these days? Burned-out kindergarten teachers?  Planet of the assholes… at least I can enjoy thinking about the wonderful relationships they’re setting themselves up for, with ruddy financiers who love only whiskey and employees who lie on their resumes and everywhere else…

Of course, anyone who's ever had a job at all won't have trouble seeing where so much of Jaggo's bile comes from.

And the way things are going, I might as well have stayed a medieval serf. I’m writing for you, Future, because you’re the only people I can talk toward, but really, I want to go back in time, way back in time, to back when people didn’t fucking hallucinate that oi polloi could somehow be “free.” We’ve always been serfs for life, but we used to call a spade a spade. So I hate you, America. You sneeringly frozen plutocracy, with your false promises of a fair shot for the best of the lackeys. You’ve convinced the morons that you’re a democracy when you’ve got too many citizens to even make a decent empire.  

The blurb on Sterzinger's previous novel NVSQVAM (nowhere) compares her to Knut Hamsun. That's appropriate, because I was reminded a lot of Hunger while I read The Talkative Corpse. Especially in how hope and some relief from his suffering will constantly be provided to the protagonist, only to have it immediately yanked away so that life can shit down his throat some more.

Jaggo is full of hatred and anger, and all of it feels completely justified. Well, his fantasies of murdering his ex-girlfriend are a little excessive. But hey, he quotes Magnetic Fields lyrics while he imagines beating the shit out her, so that's got to count in his favor. Right?

Once things take a magic realist turn and the demon Bertram shows up, it becomes pretty clear there's absolutely no way this will end without blood spilling. I won't spoil it, but the ending delivered while still being somewhat surprising.

Occasionally, Jaggo's rants begin to feel a little repetitive, but Sterzinger's violent and funny prose keeps things interesting enough that they were never boring.

In The Talkative Corpse, Ann Sterzinger tears into the bullshit of contemporary American life with a mixture of venom, humor, and even a little empathy. Sterzinger was kind enough to send me the text in advance for a review and I'm glad she did. I recommend you pick this one up once it's released. I have Sterzinger's NVSQVAM (nowhere) on my shelf and I'm looking forward to reading that as well. Unfortunately for assholes like me who fetishize physical books, The Talkative Corpse is only going to be released as an e-book as of this writing.

For those who still need some convincing, you can read the first three chapters at Fine, I'll start a goddamn blog.

Buy The Talktative Corpse by Ann Sterzinger here.

Book Review: Perversity Think Tank by Supervert

Supervert (I think it's safe to assume that's not his real name) is man who has had his hands in several projects over the years. One of those was the website PervScan (a site I wish I had known about in high school) which cataloged stories about perversity in the news from its inception in 2003 until 2010, when it culminated in the publication of the book Perversity Think Tank.

To Supervert's own consternation, PervScan did not inform this seminar on the nature of sexual aberration very much. As he points out:

Many of the acts I covered on PervScan — like the three middle-aged brothers who sexually assaulted their bedridden mother while she lay suffering amid lice, roaches, and fecal matter — struck me less as perverse than as ignorant, heedless, cruel. There were days when I thought my compendium of deviant doings was nothing more than a catalogue of errors in judgement and lapses in common sense.

And so Supervert is forced to go back to square one by answering a basic question. Just what is perversity? He sets about to attempt to answer this question with the help of thinkers like Freud and Schopenhauer and de Sade, artists and authors like Joel-Peter Witkin and Charles Baudelaire, as well as his own personal experiences. 

The book itself is divided into three parts. The "main" essay is a philosophic examination of the nature of perversity.

An interesting part of this essay is where Supervert examines and ultimately rejects the "traditional" definition of perversity. That is, any form of sexuality that hinders reproduction. He points out that by this definition, heterosexual sex in the missionary position where one of the partners has been sterilized is "perverse." Surely that can't be right?

Of interest to note is that Schopenhauer subscribed to this school of thought.

Schopenhauer argues that the dependence of reproduction on sex implies a “metaphysics of sexuality.” The purpose of sex, he thinks, is the constitution of a new generation of beings. Everything that seems instinctual is a matter of duping the individual into propagating his species. Conversely, non-reproductive acts and proclivities have the purpose of preventing the individual from perpetuating his presumably defective characteristics.

In addition to this, Schopenhauer also believed that giving birth was ultimately negative on the ground that suffering always outweighs pleasure in life.

In the essay, Supervert argues that for an act to be perverse, it has to have intentionality of wrongdoing on the part of at least one the participants in the perverse act. As an example, he contrasts the stereotype of the hillbilly who has sex with his daughter with one of de Sade's libertines. The hillbilly has sex with his daughter because out in the sticks, she's one of the few girls there. The libertine, on the other hand, desires to have sex with his daughter precisely because she is his daughter. The hillbilly is satisfying an urge with his limited options. The libertine has an urge to commit an act considered wrong by most because it is considered wrong.

To bring this back to Schopenhauer, let's consider a heterosexual couple who accepts that giving birth is ultimately negative and has a child anyway. Could this couple be considered "perverse" in their actions? They certainly are if we accept Supervert's argument.

The second part of this book is a more "personal" essay. In this essay, Supervert uses examples of his friends and girlfriends (among other experiences) to aid in his examination of the nature of perversity.

One of the more interesting examples is a girl he knew who lived in Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village is known for its unusual characters, but this girl?

She seemed — dare I say it? — the most "normal" person I ever met. 

The fact that the girl was so "normal" made her all the more fascinating to Supervert. Especially in contrast to the people she was surrounded by. This leads Supervert to realize "the pervier the masses, the normaler the perv."

Homosexuality is increasingly socially accepted, premarital sex is hardly taboo anymore at all, BDSM erotica is bestselling material and weird fetish porn is a Google search away. As Supervert himself asks, does this mean that "prudes" who wait until marriage to have sex or who only have sex to have babies will eventually become the new "perverts?" One can't say for certain. I doubt my grandfather would have thought gay marriage would ever be legal in Iowa when he was my age. But it should prove interesting to contrast what I think of as "normal" now with what is considered "normal" several years from now.

The third part of the book is the "pictures." There are no actual pictures in the book. Only black boxes accompanied by descriptions of what "should" be there, as well as Supervert's reaction to the pictures. All but a couple of the pictures are easy enough to find with a Google search. I would personally recommend reading the whole book before you go looking for them, though.

None of the three parts stand on their own. Each one is required to fully understand the other two, yet none of them are ever confusing. He will briefly touch on a subject in one part, then more fully explore it in one of the others. I think it could be said that Supervert set out to create a "perversely" structured book. I think he pulled it off rather well.

I have to give a lot of praise to Supervert's writing in this book. It is highly readable. He discusses philosophical issues without sounding dry or pretentious. He has a great sense of humor. He keeps you enthralled even when discussing repulsive subjects.

Perversity Think Tank is not for everyone. If frank discussions of incest, rape, pedophilia and bestiality are beyond the pale for you, it's best you skip it. For everyone else, I can not recommend this book enough. It is fascinating, entertaining and an all around great read. I've purchased Supervert's other two books, and I very much look forward to reading them.

Unfortunately, the physical book just went out of print a few weeks ago. Used copies are also ridiculously expensive and Supervert apparently has no plans for another print run. I can only hope he'll change his mind and put out a second run for latecomers like me. Until then, Perversity Think Tank is available as a free PDF on Supervert's website. So go over and read that. While you're there, check out the rest of what Supervert has to offer. The website and its affiliates are full of great content.

New Poem and Coming Soon

I've posted a new poem at Let People Poems called "Unsent E-mail to a Right-Wing Friend". I hope you enjoy it.

I apologize for the lack of updates lately. I've been juggling a lot of writing projects, none that I want to give away here. I do have another review I hope to have up soon. The book is Perversity Think Tank by Supervert. I'm a bit reluctant to discuss it for a few reasons. One is that it just went out of print last week and used copies are ridiculously expensive, so I had to read the PDF on Supervert's site. I was so enthralled with the book that I feel the need to get my thoughts down here. I just want to wait another day or so. I'm worried my review would just end up coming across as mindless gushing otherwise.

Brief Thoughts Part 3

Yup. More brief thoughts on what I've read recently.

Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama

Now this is an unusual manga. Considering some of the manga out there, that's really saying something.  It's probably best to approach this as more of a conceptual art book than a comic telling a story.

The plot is very simple. A group of friends go to visit the eponymous garden only to find it's closed, so they go around the side and sneak in over the fence. The rest of the book follows them as they explore the garden.

The characters are basically a hive mind cipher. They all have a unique look, but no personalities to speak of. Their dialogue has a lot of annoying "no shit" moments. Things like a book falling followed by a character saying, "The book fell."

That said, it would miss the point to talk about the plot and characters. The garden itself is the real focus of the comic and makes it worth reading. The garden is a surreal landscape with things like cars used for planters, a river made of rubber balls, buildings on wheels and seemingly pointless but fascinating Rube Goldberg contraptions. The complexity of the garden as well as the artwork makes the book almost overwhelming at times.

If you want a pleasant mindfuck, this manga is worth a read.

Buy it here.

Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas

Ever read a book you know was written by a good author, but the book was just not their best work? That's how I feel about this novel.

The premise is intriguing, but at the same time a little fanficish. Jack Kerouac and the Beat generation versus Cthulhu. The book is written as a pastiche of Kerouac's prose and does a pretty good job at imitating his voice. I think this is probably part of my problem with this book. I'm just not that big on Kerouac. That may seem hypocritical considering I have a couple works on this site that are directly inspired by On the Road, but I wrote those both while and directly after I read it. Frankly, once I finished that book it didn't stick with me for long. Compared to the other major Beat works, Naked Lunch and "Howl", I'd rank it as the one that had the least effect on me.

Move Under Ground has some very hilarious and inspired moments. One of my favorites is when William S. Burroughs and Kerouac are trying to hop on a train, but Burroughs is too out of shape. This results in Kerouac trying to throw him on a train car, and throwing him against the side of one on accident.  The epilogue (which I won't describe in order to avoid spoilers) was also a great way to end the novel.

All that said, this book just wasn't as interesting to me as the premise would imply. For the most part, it just read as a pulpy, though somewhat weird, adventure novel. I'm sure Mamatas has done better than this, so I'm still willing to check out his other works.

This one? It's available for free online, so if the premise sounds interesting to you, read it here: MoveUnderGround.org or you can buy it here.