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.

Book Review: Die You Doughnut Bastards by Cameron Pierce

I read a large chunk of Cameron Pierce's collection, Die You Doughnut Bastards, while feeling sick. After reading the title story and then trying to take a nap, I had a fever dream of being attacked by evil breakfast pastries.

I'm glad I let myself recuperate a little before I finished it.

The title story is funny and enjoyable in its own right but it isn't as fucked up, nor does it have the punch, as most of the other stories and poems in this collection.

My favorite story in this collection is probably "Disappear". A pregnant woman wakes up to find that she is no longer pregnant and her husband doesn't take this news any better than she does.

They had prepared for anything, but not for this.

Soon they find that they are not the only ones whose baby has gone missing. Once they learn who the culprit is, they set out to get they set out to get their baby back.

I think this story really shows how well Pierce balances his absurd humor with genuine emotion. This story remains absurd throughout yet doesn't hold back in showing how the situation affects the couple. They are sad, angry and confused and so is everyone else who lost their baby. The resolution is both funny and touching in the extremes the couple will go to retrieve their child.

"Lantern Jaws" is another favorite from this collection. This Lovecraft meets coming-of-age tale doesn't have the absurd humor of many of the other pieces but probably has the best fleshed out characters. In this story, a young man meets his first girlfriend who has the strange quirk of always wearing a surgical mask. Over time, he learns the secrets that she and her family are keeping. Like Lovecraft, the story ends with a sense of futility, but Pierce's story here is sad rather than horrifying.

"Mitchell Farnsworth" has the least "weird" elements in it and is also one of the funniest. It's a simple story of a woman recounting her days with an ex-boyfriend but the descriptions of their antics are hilarious.

"The Human Centipede 2 (UFSI Sequence) by Tao Lin: A Novel" is another very funny piece. As the title suggests, the story is a riff on both The Human Centipede 2 and on the writing of Tao Lin. Besides the obvious humor in juxtaposing the two, Pierce has some great lines here.

Martin stares at the bleeding foot of the boy as if it is a Gmail message from someone he doesn't like. Martin doesn't like a lot of people. That's why he wants to build a human centipede.

Of the poems in this collection, I'd say my favorites were "Strawberry Airplane" and "The Happiest Place on Earth". It's interesting to contrast the two. The former has Pierce using traditionally "beautiful" imagery while the latter has Pierce finding beauty in some very ugly imagery.

The only piece in this collection I would say I didn't like is a poem entitled "The Honesty of Marsupials is a Marvelous Thing", which I found to be an uninteresting word game.

This is an excellent collection and I highly recommend it, especially to fans of bizarre and surreal fiction.

Buy Die You Doughnut Bastards by Cameron Pierce here.

Have Some Links

Interested in the Bizarro genre or weird fiction in general? Check out this writing workshop. Hurry though, enrollment closes this Monday.

This Des Moines based lit mag is seeking submissions. Hit them up if you're looking for a place to submit a story.

The world didn't end in December, of course. That is a shame. Why are we sitting around with our thumbs up our asses waiting for the end of the world? Why don't we take some initiative?

Take a hit of LSD.

Does modern pop music sound a bit samey to you?

A leftist explains his distaste for liberals.

This is what other guys named Ben were doing with the internet back in the 90s. 

A critique of Islam from a different standpoint.

Book Review: Mastodon Farm by Mike Kleine

If I had to describe Mike Kleine's Mastodon Farm in a snappy blurb, I'd probably say it's what you get if you threw Less Than Zero, Bright Lights, Big City and a teaspoon of surrealism in a blender. That probably doesn't really give it the credit it's due, though.

Mastodon Farm is written in the second person. The main character is rich and famous, implied to be a movie star (though this is never explicitly stated), hangs out with celebrities and listens to music all the time.

The constant music is one of the more interesting details. The main character rarely goes anywhere without some music playing on a stereo somewhere. In one of the few moments of silence, it is described as being like electricity. It's ambiguous to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

In spite of the bare bones writing style, this book is full of detail. Celebrities are constantly name dropped. Names of books, movies and bands are meticulously listed. Brand names are always pointed out.

One of the things I like about this book is how many of the details are just ...off. There are brief moments of full blown surrealism, like when the sky turns purple and rains cum. But for the most part, Kleine describes the world of Mastodon Farm in subtly weird ways. New York City and Los Angeles are apparently the same city. Seattle and Miami can be reached in a few hours by car. It seems to take place in modern day, yet VHS tapes are still the format movies are watched on.

There isn't really a plot here to describe. The main character goes to parties, drives around in a red Ferrari, watches movies and listens to music. As the novel progresses, the main character seems to take less of an interest in brand names and buying expensive things. They seem to realize how empty their life is and how shallow their relationships with all these other celebrities are. In the end, they can't figure out how to be happy, but at least they seem to know they need to try something different.

Have you ever woken up and gotten out of bed then went about your day, not really noticing you just passed a cartoon character on the street and the dollar store next to your apartment building is now a military base and then woke up? That kind of dream is how I would describe the experience of reading Mastodon Farm.

I highly recommend this book. Mike Kleine's debut is a strong one.

Buy Mastodon Farm by Mike Kleine here.

New Story at The Mustache Factor

My story, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Saying Goodbye", has been published at The Mustache Factor. Thank you to editor Dustin Reade for publishing it.

Click here to read it.

Action, Figure Giveaway

I first became aware of Frank Hinton's work with an e-book she had published on Pangur Ban Party and I enjoyed it enough to check out her other work.

I found she was working on her first novel Action, Figure. An excerpt was posted on Metazen a few months ago that made the book a must buy for me. Unfortunately, I have so many books in that category that it got lost in the shuffle and the fact it had some delays in getting published didn't help.

Today, I found that THIS PERSON is doing a giveaway of the book. I'm not going to bullshit you. I'm writing this mostly to help my chances of winning of this book. But if this helped make some people aware of Hinton's work, then that's a good bonus. So go read those links I posted, then check out that post and read the rules for the giveaway.

The Wound (Short Story)

I'm stabbing my father to death.

Well, not “to death”.

That would imply he's still alive.

He hasn't been for a while.

I think I've been at him for an hour now. I'm surprised the knife hasn't broken. It's just a cheap kitchen knife. I would have thought driving it into his skull multiple times would have at least bent the blade. It didn't. His face looks like raw meat now. I've been going at the gut. I tried to slice him down the middle but the edge wasn't sharp enough. So I've just been jabbing it in. 

The first thing I attacked was his genitals. Originally, I was just going to cut them off and let them bleed to death. But I didn't like the faces or the noises he made. So I decided to stab it until he died. I just couldn't stop. 

I start feeling bored so I take the knife out. I go over and sit against the wall. I'm breathing heavy from the excitement of destroying him. My heart is racing and I can feel the hard-on in my pants.

I guess none of the neighbors heard. I'm pretty sure the cops would be here by now if they had.

I look at the sleeve of my right arm. It's covered with blood. I pull it up and reveal the bandage that covers my arm from the wrist to the elbow. I take the knife and cut the bandage off. I reveal the gaping wound that covers the entire underside of my forearm.

It doesn't bleed or fester.

I can't see any bone or muscle in the split skin.

I can feel intense cold coming from it. I feel wind blowing from it and white flakes come through it.

Snow.

I look closer.

I see mostly white.

I can see some mountains nearby. It's a calming image. It settles me and I let the cold wind blow against my sweaty face for a moment.

Then I get bored. I roll down my sleeve and wait a moment. I pull it back up.

I see a mostly desolate area this time. The body in the middle lays on the gray ground. It's bloated with a blue face. The vacant eyes are wide and staring up at me.

I remember this guy. He hadn't wronged me. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wanted to see if people could travel through the wound. So I found someone walking alone in a secluded area. I waited for him. Then jumped down and swung my forearm at him. It swallowed him right up.

I looked down in the wound and saw he had landed on the gray land. Apparently, the air was breathable because he didn't die right away. I guess he could see me too. He looked up and demanded I let him out. I shouted down that I didn't know how. After a day or so, I checked up on him. He was still there and he asked for food and water. I told him he could have some in exchange for his clothes. He didn't comply at first. After a couple days he broke down and stripped. He tried to toss his clothes up, but they couldn't reach. No food for you then, I told him. Every so often I checked up on him and he would beg and plead. I just ignored him. Eventually, he died of dehydration.

I should take a moment to explain the wound. You see, I don't know why it acts like it does. About a year or so ago, I wanted to die. I took a razor and sliced down my wrist. It hurt like hell, but I didn't bleed. I looked in the small wound and I could see something. I was looking at some other world. This first world I saw looked like a jungle with plants that were mostly red. It was like looking through a peephole. I sliced the wound further so I could see more. I could see strange animals wandering this red jungle. I was amazed. I decided didn't want to die anymore.

By experimenting, I figured out how the wound worked. When I covered it up for about 30 seconds, it would show me a new world. Except every other time, it would show me the same two worlds. The pattern was like this

1. New world.
2. The gray world. The body is in this one.
3. New world.
4. A vacuum.
5. Back to 1.

I could spend hours just looking at these new worlds. After a time, they simply began to make me depressed. All I could do was look at them. I couldn't climb through to them. I thought about cutting my arm off and climbing down that way. But I knew that wouldn't work. Every other place on my body I tried cutting just bled normally. If I cut off my arm I would bleed to death. I didn't even know if people could travel through. That's why I forced that guy into it.

Knowing that I could put bodies through the wound, I got an idea. I've been wanting to kill my father for years now. I could never think of way I could get away with it, though. Now I knew. I would just go to his house and murder him. Then I would dispose of the body in the wound. What could they do if they could never find his body?

I guess I got a little carried away. I'm lucky the neighbors didn't hear my rampage.

I think it's time to shove his body in the wound.

I decide to see what the next world will be first.

I cover up the wound and wait a moment.

I uncover it and look in.

It's a desert. I can see a pile of bones that have some meat on it. There's a creature picking at it. The creature has a body that looks like a giant roach and a head that looks like some kind of bird's. It looks up at me. It has black insect eyes. It goes back to picking at the bones.

I get an idea.

I yell into the wound. The creature looks back up at me. I turn my forearm to face my father's body.

I hope this works.

After a moment I hear flapping from inside the wound.

It gets louder.

The creature comes out of the wound. It goes over to my father's body. It starts eating it.

I smile.

I go into the bathroom to make another bandage for the wound.

I leave.

When they find his body, they'll believe that creature killed him. The confusion will keep them from ever knowing it was me. Better yet, I now know things can come here from the wound.

All I need to do now is bide my time and be patient. Soon, I'll find a world in the wound with far more destructive creatures. I'll entice them out and I'll release them on the world.