THE ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics)
Ummmmm... i guess this is an "attitude" or something, because it certainly doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense or anything. Mostly it's imitation turn-of-the-century style layouts and prose letters about Pissy the Owl and other bullshit that i guess is supposed to be ironic, but is actually just boring. The rest of it is a long series of cartoons detailing the adventures of a guy who looks remarkably like a bug-eyed tater tot. See the tater tot dance in front of a bored chihuahua! See the tater tot hug himself! See the tater tot infiltrate a Nancy strip! See him eat breakfast! See him sleep! See him wreck his car! See... uh... zzzzzz.... It IS kind of cool that they provided a page you can cut apart and make a mini-movie projector with, to show a loop of the tater tot guy stabbing himself in the eyes with a pair of scissors. Other than that, it's... uh... well, i'm glad i didn't have to actually pay for it....
ALBUM ZUTIQUE # 1 [Ministry of Whimsy Press / Nightshade Books]
The complicated version: ALBUM ZUTIQUE # 1 is the first in a projected series of pocket books that will focus on Surreal, Decadent, and Fantastical literature. This volume, edited by Jeff Vandermeer, is tagged as a general anthology of short fiction in the Surrealist or Decadent tradition. The original "Album Zutique" was a communal journal or blank book where members of a Decadent-era writers' group called the Zutistes ("the scorners / those who scorn") would write poetry or prose.
My take: Jeff Vandermeer has assembled a group of bad-ass writers and let them go wild. Anthologies are notoriously uneven. There are fifteen pieces in this collection and I can say with all honesty that there isn't a bad story in the bunch. The contributions can be loosely grouped into three categories: Those that are just plain good stories, those that (while not being bad by any stretch of the imagination) don't quite work, and those that hit you like a punch in the face. Jeff Ford's "The Beautiful Galreesh," Rhys Hughes' "The Toes of the Sun" and "Eternal Sunset," Ursula Pflug's "Python," James Sallis' "Free Time," Elizabeth Hand's "Mortal Love," Steve Rasnic Tem's "A Dream of the Dead," and Jay Lake's "A Hero for the Dark Towns" belong to the first category.
Stepan Chapman's "A Guide to the Zoo" and Brendan Connell's "Dr. Black in Rome" fall into the second category. The first is not so much a story as a tongue-in-cheek catalogue of Chapman's influences in animal form, i.e. "The Crumb (Strigiformes Roberts. Popular name: The Wounded Owl. When rejected by a female owl, the male exhibits an indiosyncrastic approach to venting his frustration. He pursues the female, tears open his breast, drinks his own blood, and sprays it at her." "A Guide to the Zoo" goes on a bit too long for its own good, with thirty "exhibits." The same can be said for "Dr. Black in Rome," which gets bogged down in what seems to be the author's attempt to put a Classics degree to good use. That, or I've spent too much time around academics and the dialogue rings a little too true.
The stories that hit me were K. J. Bishop's "Maldoror Abroad," Michael Cisco's "The Scream," both of D. F. Lewis' contributions ("My Stark Lady" and "Lights"), and Richard Calder's (writing as Christina Flook) "The Catgirl Manifesto: An Introduction." Bishop's "Maldoror Abroad" is one of those stories that grabs you by the throat (almost literally, in this case). It's a riff on, and update of, Lautreamont's "Maldoror" that packs more misanthropy, violence, and generally antisocial behavior into 24 pages than a dozen "horror" novels. The only things I can compare it to offhand are Garth Ennis' "Preacher" (gone real goth) and Jhonen Vasquez's "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" comic book series. Cisco's contribution is a nice little piece on the importance of a good scream in a haunting. If you want to know more, you'll have to read the story. D. F. Lewis' stories are like nothing I've ever read before. I could toss around words like "creepy," "unsettling," "disorienting," and "unnerving" and still not do them justice. A good jumping-off point would be the work of Thomas Ligotti. Lewis and Ligotti mine similar territory, but Lewis has a voice all his own. Christina Flook's (aka Richard Calder) "The Catgirl Manifesto" is a bizarre academic reading of the development of a human subspecies, Felis Femella, in an alternate late-90's and the intersection between fiction and reality. It's heavy, yet lurid.
ALBUM ZUTIQUE # 1 is a great read, and the pocket book format makes it a great way to check out some high-quality weirdness. If you get this book, your "to read" list will grow real long, real fast. Mine did. Jeff Vandermeer should be commended for pulling together such a disparate group of authors and making their stories flow together seamlessly. I should also mention that the book itself looks great. Artists and designers Johnathan Edwards, Dawn Andrews, and Garry Nurrish did an amazing job. I look forward to future volumes. [n/a]
Yet another serial killer book, only with a unique TWIST -- unlike all the others, which are generally set in the present and detail the process of tracking down the low down dirty mad dog who likes to eat people's eyes or whatever by using psychological profiles developed at Quantico and blah blah blah, this one is set in the 1800s, a time when the concept of a serial killer barely even exists... and there's certainly no standard procedure for hunting one. Enter Laszlo, the eccentric genius of morbid psychology, who has developed some new and interesting theories regarding tracking a killer by studying the remains of his victims and painting a psychological profile of the man through what he has left behind.
Set in New York City at the turn of the century, with Teddy Roosevelt (!) as the police chief desperate to catch a nasty killer who preys on transvestite child prostitutes, the story chronicles the progression of Laszlo's search, with the help of several others (a crime journalist, two eccentric brothers who happen to be brilliant forensic pathologists, and the NYPD's first female "detective"). The story plays out against a backdrop of political upheaval, the rich and the poor, the flow of the immigrants, and the Metropolitan Opera (!!)... a unique move....
Aside from being fastidious in its research and sharp in its details, the book is exceptional in its writing and pacing. In other words, it reeks of brilliance and towers over nearly everything in the genre, with only the books of Thomas Harris (RED DRAGON, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) and a few others coming even close. Choosing to pit the action against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century NYC (with its seething pit of dapper thugs, high- society magnates like J. P. Morgan, immigrant masses, and opera devotees all crammed into the pages at every turn) turns out to be a suave move -- not only do you learn some history, particularly the kind you never learned in American Government (which DEAD ANGEL never paid attention to anyway, preferring to perfect its skill at reproducing the Black Sabbath logo on desktops instead, which may explain why DEAD ANGEL knows a lot about Tony Iommi's gruesome machine shop accident but is kind of vague on how this country's government actually WORKS), but it's a welcome change of pace from the usual 20th-century urban decay motif of most books in this genre. Highly recommended.
If you've ever seen a Troma film, then you already know what to expect... and this book, "written" by Troma cofounder Lloyd Kaufman and sometime Troma scriptwriter James Gunn, pretty much delivers all the grotesque tastelessness your tiny pitted heart could ever desire. If you haven't ever seen a Troma film, then the cover -- featuring grotesque mutants, face-painted savages with meat cleavers, and well-endowed girly-girls in extremely low-cut outfits -- should clarify matters. Basically Troma is the group of disorganized individuals responsible for creating such tasteful fare as CHOPPER CHICKS IN ZOMBIETOWN, THE TOXIC AVENGER, TROMEO AND JULIET, SQUEEZE PLAY (a DEAD ANGEL favorite!), and SURF NAZIS MUST DIE, among others with equally ridiculous titles; they are also responsible for distributing equally deranged works by others (BLOODSUCKING FREAKS, ORGAZMO, REDNECK ZOMBIES, etc.). (They also distribute more wholesome family fare like MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, but they'd really prefer that you didn't know this, so... shhhhhh....) The Troma philosophy of filmmaking can essentially be summed up in one sentence: Naked breasts, buckets of blood, big explosions, and when all else fails, bigger naked breasts. Plus lots of bad taste. Bad taste is key in Tromaville.
The book is very much like a Troma movie: Kaufman rambles, digresses, passes on surreal and frequently obscene anecdotes that may or may not have anything to do with the subject at hand (usually not -- Kaufman is a world-class digressor), and occasionally even talks about -- yes -- making movies. Usually movies with bare-breasted women and cheap special effects, but hey, one takes what one can get in this world. It's full of behind-the-scenes stories about various Troma movies, but particularly the ones that made them a big deal -- SQUEEZE PLAY, the TOXIC AVENGER series, TROMEO AND JULIET, and the unheralded masterpiece (in Kaufman's mind, anyway) TROMA'S WAR. The funniest parts are generally in Kaufman's descriptions of how various "actors" fail him on the set and clueless shitheads in Hollywood give a thumbs-down to movies that later go on to become cult classics and make lots of $$$ (well, sometimes). Most of what makes the book successful is Kaufman's bizarre, dark, loopy sense of humor -- he spends as much time bagging on himself and his own crew as on the geeks who make his life difficult from the outside (particularly the MPAA, the crusty schmoes who continually force him to gut his movies in order to receive an R rating as opposed to an X).
Bonus points for the discriminating videohead include a detailed list at the end of all the Troma films with anecdotes about each one (including snide references to some of the now-big-name actors who've appeared in them but now probably wish they hadn't -- a partial list includes Kevin Costner, Billy Bob Thornton, Marisa Tomei, and Samuel Jackson); incidentally, were you aware that Ron Asheton of the Stooges appears in FROSTBITER: WRATH OF THE WENDIGO or that Lemmy of Motorhead appears in TROMEO AND JULIET? Other points of interest include many, many pix of busty and lusty Tromettes, and the actual inclusion of real details about filmmaking (they had to justify the title somehow, I suppose)....
A little-quickie that's nevertheless pretty cool... the bulk of the book is an extended conversation between the writer and John Waters about his life, his introduction to the world of film, all those kinky movies, and (of course) the miracle of Divine. (And Ricki Lake, too... DEAD ANGEL has the hots for Ricki Lake....) It covers all the films up through the immensely underrated CRY-BABY, with a handful of "testimonials" at the end by Patty Hearst, Ricki Lake, Pia Zadora, right-hand-gal Pat Moran, and more, and even a timeline that offers a handy synopsis of each movie. Useful!
The interview segment is really interesting -- not surprising, actually, given that Waters is first and foremost a showman in every sense of the word. He's also extremely literate and humorous, which always helps.... And the photography by F-Stop Fitzgerald is great too. Plus there are lots of pictures of Waters and his family, from his younger days, and even one in which he (gasp!) has LONG HAIR. (I swear i didn't recognize him at first....)
It would have been nice to for the "talent" section to have been larger; it would have been interesting to hear more from the actual players in his films, particularly Mink Stole. But then again, it's Waters' show here, and he remains the focus. And it's good reading, so scope it out if you get the chance... learn about the wild, wild world of perverted filmmaking!
From the foreboding Medusa on the cover to the handy chart of poisonous flowers in the back (your guide to the flowers that border each individual interview), this is one toxic bundle of pages, all right. Open the front cover and you're staring into the wild eyes of Diamandas Galas, covered in blood and brandishing a knife; flip through the pages at random and you'll see photos that, divorced from the text, look either bizarre (Kathy Acker at the mike, all tattoos and attitude) or weirdly pornographic (practically everything else). Actually reading the book, however, turns it into something else altogether. Essentially a lavishly illustrated collection of interviews with women from the fringes of music and performance art, including Kathy Acker, Susie Bright, Karen Finley, Diamanda Galas, Holly Hughes, Lydia Lunch, and Annie Sprinkle, along with a lot of others who are less familiar, its initial impression of pure titillation quickly gives way to thoughtful, provocative insights from a wide spectrum of beliefs, and ultimately emerges as a radical textbook for women bent on remapping their role in American culture.
Those who pick up the book based solely on its "naughty" look are in for a surprise: Wanda Coleman's observations on sexism and racism, Annie Sprinkle's sex-positive philosophy, and Susie Bright's eminently sensible approach to everything make the book far more valuable as social commentary. And the inclusion of Karen Finley's poem "The Black Sheep," which exists on an engraved plaque in the East Side of New York City as a memorial to the homeless, is worth the cost of the book all by itself.
There's some bad news, though. A number of the women interviewed can't resist the urge to engage in men-bashing, and if you're a guy, you may spend half the time reading with a protective hand over your crotch (especially during the interviews with Lydia Lunch and Sapphire). There are times in the book where interviewer Andrea Juno becomes so antipathetic discussing men that you start to wonder if, had the book been published a few years later, Lorena Bobbitt might not have been hailed in the book as a heroine for the masses. It's especially vexing when they blame men for problems (some even true) without offering any answers. The battle of the sexes, ridiculous as it is, apparently rages on....
Fortunately, the book spends far more of its time focused on ideas, particularly in explaining the motivations and intent of performance art, which many will find revelatory in itself. Final recommendation: check it out and decide for yourself what makes sense and ignore the rest. And don't forget to check out the work of these women when you're through reading!
ARE YOU MORBID? by Tom Fischer [Sanctuary Publishing]
Seeing as how Celtic Frost were always a big deal to me and INTO THE PANDEMONIUM remains one of my favorite albums ever, I was pretty hopped-up at seeing that the enigmatic Mr. Warrior had finally taken matters into his own hand and set in stone (okay, cheap paper) the real story behind the legend of the Frosted Ones. This book is no disappointment -- straight from the mouth of Tom G. himself, it spans the beginning of Hellhammer and continues right up to his current activities in Apollyon Sun, and contains not only the answer to a number of burning questions (bizarre moves by Noise, repackaging of albums, lineup changes, touring hassles, etc.), but also recounts a lot of sordid behavior. (Although their level of sordidness, especially in the light of Warrior and often others being complete teetotalers, pales next to that of, say Motley Crue -- for real sordidness, see the review below of their new book THE DIRT.) The two recurring themes in the book are the band's genuine innocence about the music (they have visions of actually being a bestselling mainstream band even though they are so deeply heavy and weird that even metalheads don't grok them half the time) and their ongoing war with their label, Noise Records. Tom's accounting of Noise's immense cheapness and bad business decisions suddenly explain a lot about Coroner's inability to get any kind of recognition in the US during the 80s. He also compiles a lot of helpful info about the releases themselves, including tracks that were deleted or stranded in some way by Noise the first time around (now pretty much everything is in print through the remastered discs and a compilation of sorts). Fischer also has a sardonic sense of humor that makes this a bit more entertaining than your average "this is what happened when i was in [insert band here]" bio. In fact, the only thing to complain about with the book is the glaring problem with dropped punctuation, typos, and poorly-edited sentences, a problem I blame more on the publisher rather than Fischer (who, after all is managing to do a pretty good job of describing all in what is probably, for him, a third language). I saw invest yer buckolas....
ASIAN CULT CINEMA # 32
A cool 'zine that I will most likely get a subscription to. As you might guess by the title, it discusses Asian films. I was most pleased by the pro-Japanese, anti-PEARL HARBOR (the film) editorial rant at the beginning, as there is nothing more I love than to see the sacred idols of Hollywood disgraced and blasphemed! [tmu: The real blasphemy of PEARL HARBOR that such a wretched movie even exists.]
The letters to the 'zine are a bit more laid back than the ones sent to PSYCHOTRONIC VIDEO and VIDEO WATCHDOG, which I was thankful for. My favorite articles were "Trash Taken Seriously?" by a Dr. Stan Glick, who discussed two 45-minute masterpieces, "The Ladies Phone Sex Club" and "Big Boobs Buster," with a fair amount of seriousness, but also with a sense of realization of what he is covering (unlike VWD). Another section was even better, discussing sleaze classics like "Entrails of a Virgin" and "Entrails of a Beautiful Woman." The section covering "Bollywood" (India's version of Hollywood didn't interest Me one bit, however. There's also a section on crime films, and an interesting interview with Maggie Cheung, which are also good reads. It's interesting to note that there are hardly any ads within this 'zine -- most likely because the same people who run ASIAN CULT CINEMA also run THE NIKKATSU COLLECTION, a massive selection of massively expensive sleaze films from Nikkatsu Studios in Japan. As they are the exclusive importers of these films, I imagine this easily covers the printing of the 'zine. Each film is $40, so unless tmu starts chuckin' green at Me [tmu: green? what green? i'm overdrawn, O Slime-Bearer of the Stars....] so i can review Nikkatsu films, don't expect to see any in the White Trash Sinema section anytime soon! [FCW]
Here's the deal: Hank Mitchell, an ordinary guy with an ordinary wife and career, is out hunting one afternoon with his no-account older brother and his brother's even more worthless friend Leo, when they stumble across a plane wreck hidden way in the underbrush. The plane, it turns out, contains one dead pilot and a bag filled with over four million dollars in cash. What would YOU do in their shoes?
Good question, but what they do is the obvious thing -- they decide to take the money. Mitchell insists that they sit on it until the plane is found; then, if no mention is made of the missing money, they assume the police don't know about it, which makes them safe, and they split it up and disappear. A simple plan indeed. Too bad ugly human nature gets in the way in a hurry, eh? To tell more is to reveal the plot in its entirety, but let us just say that stolen money turns out to be very bad karma.
Much better-written than your average greed tale, this actually calls to mind Donna Taart's THE SECRET HISTORY, which tells a similar tale and has the same general tone. Since I'm convinced that Donna Taart is one of only about five authors currently worth reading, that elevates this guy's first book to considerably-better-than-average status. And now that it's available in the glory of the paperback edition, you can get it cheap! (Well, cheaper than the hardback, anyway... six bucks for something I can read in one sitting is not exactly THAT cheap....)
AUTOreverse # 9
A swell zine published out of Dublin, Ohio that focuses mainly on artists who produce and release their own music, this is a pretty interesting thing to read. About half the magazine is taken up by bite-sized reviews of artists you never heard of, a great many of which are cassette-only or (i think) CD-R releases. How many reviews is that? Uh, over 150... pretty mind-boggling. Better still, the reviews are actually informative and low on the snottiness content that's overtaken so many of the other, bigger magazines you may be more familiar with (not that i would care to name names, although one has the initials ALTERNATIVE and PRESS). There are several short interviews with Eyelight, Mara's Torment, and Sara Ayers, plus a lengthy interview with guitarist Dave Stafford, who also runs the "microlabel" Studio Seventeen (home to Bindlestaff, Tiktok, Antifade, Futura, and Bryan Helm, among others). Plus there's even a sardonic little how-to exercise explaining how to record ambient tracks at home. Highly entertaining and informative, and i hope they're going to continue sending me copies so i don't have to hunt it down. [See EPHEMERA for contact info]
This is twisted stuff. Fantagraphics puts out some of the weirdest comics around, and this certainly qualifies. I've never heard of Glenn Head, but he appears to be heavily influenced by the likes of Kim Dietch, Art Spiegleman, and Chester Brown, except he's far more disturbed than his predecessors (well, maybe not Brown... he's REALLY messed up). The stories here are all pretty deviant and they all seem to end in disaster -- Bob the Snowman's troubles with women come to a halt when his topless-dancer girlfriend gets her head crushed by a police snowmobile; in two different stories about the perverted pimp Classy Gator, he manages the impressive feat of dying twice (in the first he gets turned into alligator luggage and in the second he ends up at the bottom of a lake, dragged down his cement- overshoed competition); and Danny the Dealer gets blown up by his gas oven... you get the idea. Black humor abounds through all of the stories (or sick humor, depending on your vantage point). The other stories are equally flaky and obnoxious. If Daniel Clowes were into hot rods and strippers and drugs he'd probably draw strips like this. Recommended only for the uneasily offended....
THE BIOLOGIC SHOW by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics)
Hmmm... in "Peloria," two kids Pim and Francie are chased by this ugly siamese twin woman (what is it with siamese twins in Fantagraphics comics, anyway?) with really big shark teeth. Actually, everybody turns out to have really big shark teeth... it must be a concept or something. Anyway, the girl gets away by catching a ride with a pervert while the boy ends up talking to a wino who mutates into a shark teeth person and starts eating his dim-bulb girlfriend (literally). It's all very morbid and sort of interesting, I guess. The art is really creepy. The whole vibe is really perverse. Don't do acid while reading this one, kids!
BLUES FOR BIRD by Martin Gray [Alpha Beat Press]
My understanding of poety is almost nonexistent -- I was generally sleeping off hangovers in class when the college professors went into endless discussions of iambic meter and the like -- but i like the idea of presenting a biography of Charlie "Bird" Parker in poetic format. The poem form seems intrinsically better suited for discussing jazz to me; after all, what is jazz but musical poetry? So while i'm not terribly inclined to quote and bloodlessly analyze specific stanzas of this work, i would like to stress that this is one of the better works i've read on the subject of Parker, and a very accessible work at that. (The poems are presented in trimeter form, if you know what that means; i don't, actually, but i find it extremely readable.)
This "book" is actually a series of chapbooks, broken into twelve segments, each one neatly encapsulating a period in Bird's life. Beginning with "Book I: Parker at His Peak" and progressing through "Book XII: Bird's Memorial," Gray presents a history of Bird (both as a man and a musician) through his own observations, quotes from musicians who worked with Bird, and historians who have devoted volumes of study to his life. Along the way, he reveals how Bird came to be the pioneer of what is now known as bebop, even while behaving in supremely erratic fashion (showing up late or not for all, hocking his horn constantly to buy dope, breezing his way through several failed marriages without bothering to actually get divorces first, and so on). A theme that emerges early on and pervades the entire work is Bird's struggle to reconcile his search for musical perfection with the increasingly shambolic quality of his personal life, and it is hardly surprising when the history ends with Bird's complete destruction at the hands of alcohol and drugs (he died at the age of 34).
One of the things i like best about the work is that Gray helpfully explains, within the course of the long poem, the nature of what Bird did and why he was considered so godlike; as such, it not only functions as a primer on Bird but as an introduction to the musical nature of jazz. One of the things that makes it difficult for me to wade through books on jazz greats is that they almost always assume that you understand the underpinnings of jazz; Gray does not make that assumption, and provides examples throughout of just why Bird's work was considered innovative, and exactly what (in musical terms) made it so important. In a sense, you can look at the work as an incredibly compressed version of a Parker biography with jazz theory thrown in for good measure. As a result, it makes an excellent introduction to the life and work of Bird... and those who want to know more can always consult any one or all of the many books written about the man (particularly BIRD LIVES, by Ross Russell, apparently Gray's main source of information and anecdotes for the poem).
The entire set exists as a series of seven chapbooks from Alpha Beat Press at $5.00 per chapbook; Gray is still hunting for a publishing house willing to publish the entire series as one volume. I hope he succeeds in finding one, for this is a fine work that deserves a wider audience.
This book is the epitome of coolness. Big (430-plus pages), bold (bright yellow and red cover! EEK!), and informative (i didn't know that most of Shakespeare's oevure came to exist in printed form thanks to publishing bootleggers), plus it's thick enough to beat people over the head with when they piss you off -- THESE are the qualities i look for in a book!
There's all sorts of sleaze at work here -- descriptions of shady characters with $$$ to burn, Korean (and other) CD pressing plants where the motto is apparently "Ai, looked like a bunch of tapes to me, how was I to know it wasn't legit?", mob-controlled jukeboxes filled with cheapo pirate singles, bootleggers booting boots of bootlegged bootlegs (imagine the hideous sound quality!), crydick artists who don't mind charging $50 for the privilege of seeing them live but twitch like eels at the thought of fans taking home a tape of a performance that might be less than perfect, crazed fanatics hiding in venue rafters with reel to reel tape recorders, bizarre loopholes in copyright law, and even more -- which makes it all frightfully entertaining, even when Heylin gets bogged down in recounting all the twists and turns in the labyrinthe copyright laws of different countries (no matter what the subject, copyright law makes mighty dull reading).
Apparently bootleg recordings really got going with the classical field (!), when Classic Editions released a version of Verdi's A MASKED BALL, that was actually a radio recording of a broadcast by the Metropolitan Opera Company. Then came "Roland Ernst," a mysterious figure with $$$ to burn who began collecting (God knows how) first-print acetates normally provided to radio and issuing them under his label Caballe in lavishly packaged and annotated editions -- a fetish that proved to be his downfall when his lust for the perfect edition caused him to end up driving taxis for a living.
The first rock bootleg, though, was THE GREAT WHITE WONDER, and this book goes into the background of that legendary release in some detail (along with lots of other by Dylan, including the pivotal Royal Albert Hall performance that STILL remains unavailable through legitimate release, even though Columbia's been promising to trot it out "any day now" for about the last five years). In fact, Dylan, Springsteen, the Beatles, and the usual cast o' superstars have a remarkably high profile in this book, although some space is devoted to newer acts like Sex Pistols, Television, Devo, Soul Asylum, Sonic Youth, and Soundgarden.
There's plenty of art, too -- lots of bootleg covers, magazine and zine pix, and other goodies of that nature. There's also much discussion (some interesting, some overly technical and not so interesting) of the economics of rock and bootlegs, ruminations on why major labels don't have the good sense to issue there own unreleased stuff and put the bootleg guys out of business, the fight over the DAT machines, etc., etc., etc. The book covers a lot of ground in less than 450 pages! The most amusing part, though, is that Heylin never even bothers to appear objective; it's pretty clear from the word go that he's squarely in the bootlegger's camp, and spends a lot of time ranting about the injustices of the mean major labels with all the subtlety of a shotgun stuffed up your ass, which is always lots of fun to read. There's nothing more entertaining that the mad bleatings of a man on a mission, especially when there's a lot of truth to his arguments....
So anyway, the book is savagely hip and informative and all that good stuff, so you should go buy it, ok? Thank you.
Well, this is actually a 'zine and not a book, but it's still pretty cool nonetheless. And one can hardly claim it's a case of false advertising or anything like that -- as the title implies, it's all about coffee, coffee, coffee, and coffee. (And, just in case you missed it, coffee.) Coffee as a beverage, a philosophy, an ideal, a... a WAY OF LIFE... how scary... but kind of cool, too. This is certainly a whole lot more interesting than the damn comic TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN (by Shannon "Please Pay Attention To Me" Wheeler) that hails (unfortunately) from my home town, Austin.
So, inevitably fortified by gallons of coffee, Marcel has compiled here a bunch of recipes, photos, ruminations, anecdotes, poems, songs, and various other ephemera related to... you guessed it... coffee. For a tiny b/w zine, this looks awfully good -- good layout, creative use of type (I have a weird obsession with type, it's an artist thing, you wouldn't understand), good photos (well, as good as can get with a copier, anyhow), and cool artwork. The stuff covered is pretty interesting too: recipes for Coffee Applesauce Cake and Atomic Coffee, discussion of Mississippi John Hurt's "Coffee Blues," several caffienated poems and stories, notes about hip places to scarf down big jagged cups o' caffiene, and even plugs for other caffiene-related zines/comics (including the hated TMCM). [DEAD ANGEL has a problem with Shannon Wheeler, but you guessed that already]
Anyway, it runs 28 pages, it's a handy 4 by 8 inches or so, and costs just $2.00. Mucho cool. Recommended... and I don't even drink coffee....
CANADIAN ASSAULT # 6
Hey, now this is some very killer stuff -- it has in-depth interviews, which i love! Probably My favorite interview in here is the nterview Bloodstorm, an extreme black death/thrash band whose lyrics are very much inspired by Kenneth Grant's writing on the Typhonian Tradition. There are also lots of other good interviews, as well as some of the best reviews I have read. Dale Roy, its editor, really enjoys ripping the trendies a new asshole with his sharp with. Anyway, check this stuff out, it's good. [FCW]
Reasons why CARBON 14, as evidenced by this particular issue, are unspeakably cool:
1) They say good things about Jackie Chan, as all semi-erect hominoids should, for Chan is possibly the most crazed actor on earth (do you think Tom Cruise would actually jump out of a hot-air balloon just for a cool scene? i don't think so).
2) They openly admit that Chow Yun Fat is the coolest actor on earth, which is obviously true, since he expends more bullets in one trivial action scene than can be manufactured in a year by all the munitions plants in New Jersey. [NOTE: These statements should NOT be construed to imply that DEAD ANGEL is "biased" toward Chinese actors simply because DEAD ANGEL's wife, hereafter referred to as The Goddess, is Chinese, even though DEAD ANGEL's wife is (as already mentioned) a goddess and looks really swell in slit skirts.]
3) They have introduced DEAD ANGEL to the seismic hellart that is produced (unearthed from a subconscious weaned on bad monster movies is more like it, actually) of Psychic Sparkplug, who get a million bonus points for the name ALONE.
4) Thanks to their included EP, i now possess a horribly rare Unsane track previously available only on the Australian version of SCATTERED, SMOTHERED AND COVERED blah blah blah, which is also good, because Unsane are seriously the most psychotic band on earth, bar none. (Rumor has it that they are forced to live in tiny metal boxes the size of wheat cartons and fed only burnt roadkill and battery acid, which makes them REALLY MAD, and then every once in a blue moon someone lets them out long enough to record an album before stuffing them back in the boxes, which is a good thing because by now they're so pissed off that they'd probably slaughter the whole west coast for kicks if they were allowed to walk among us. But this is only a rumor.)
5) They interview Matt Bower of Skullflower and clear up a lot of nagging questions, for which -- not only as a devotee but as the maintenance maggot of the Skullflower web page -- they have my undying gratitude.
There's lots of other reasons, including the incredibly cool insane foldout megapostercover and pissy reviews and cool articles, that this should obviously be required reading, but i'll let you discover those on your own. Cooler than a polar bear pissing ice cubes.
No way i can pass up an issue with a dark-haired Richard Kern gal on the front cover... i yi yi! Lots of interesting stuff in this issue -- Kern interview with many pix o' sleazy NYC girls; cool words with graphic artists House Industries; interviews with Jayne County, Neurosis, Cannibal Corpse, and other semi-suave musicians; and a pile of disturbed fiction (at least i THINK it's fiction, if not it's pretty goddamn scary). Plus Andrea Juno explains about the ReSearch split, Mark Pauline gives us a peek at what's up with Survival Research Laboratories, porn star Tyffany Million expounds on the sex biz, and as always, you get a free 7" listenable (this one includes Six Finger Satellite, Gone, MX-80, and Stinking Lizaveta). Plus lots o' reviews and other weirdness. An excellent investment of $4.00.
The zine that is not a zine, or the magazine that is not a magazine, or something like that. Every issue comes with a 7" ep of hip stuff (this one includes Hellacopters and Stuntmen), plus piles of reviews and long (cool) interviews with the likes of (in this issue, for instance) Bob Fingerman, Glenn Branca, Jayne County, the Nomads, Robert Williams, Zoogz Rift, Mick Farren, Candy Snatchers, King Diamond, Kim Montenegro, and MORE. You need this. Real bad. Trust me. I haven't even mentioned the swell artwork crammed on page after page, mutant "fiction," crazed discourses on the perils of Amsterdam, etc., etc. Repeat: You need this. Consume....
CHAOTIC ORDER # 12 (UK)
This is a most swank, small-sized, professionally-printed zine from the UK devoted to all things dark and twisted. Subjects include a lengthy interview with beyond-amazing fetish artist Michael Manning, an article on underground filmmaker Eric Stanze (ICE FROM THE SUN, SCRAPBOOK), art from always-eccentric Dame Darcy, an interview with STATIC VIDEO's Marco Fazina, some longish thing about NYC, hateful rants against George Bush and Karl Rove, an interview with painter Mark Ryden (who did the Marcy Playground cover that was originally intended for the Butthole Surfers cover for YOU'D RATHER BE AN ASTRONAUT, among many other things), and piles of other fabulous stuff, including reviews of extreme music and magazines. The zine's taste in reviewables tends to run toward the creepy and esoteric, which is always a fine thing. They can feel free to send me more issues in the future (yes, that's a hint, the Moon Unit is too fucking broke these days to buy his own shit). My only complaint is that the type is often in the eyestrain-o-vision category -- seriously, i just about went blind (well, blinder than i already am) trying to read the Michael Manning interview, and a couple of articles i skipped totally because the type was micron-sized. Outside of that, this is a staggering pile o' swellness....
CHAOTIC ORDER # 14 (UK)
First off, the cover: Bob Smith gets all defensive in the opening editor's note, but he need not worry -- the cover is brilliant, all black with an amorphous white dot in the center with the magazine's name in both Greek and English. Simple and most eye-catching, the art director (yes, we have one, he just hides a lot) at Castle Monotremata approves.... The switch to a bigger, cleaner font inside doesn't hurt either (i can actually read this one without a magnifying glass). And there is much of interest to read: A long interview with Mitch Davis of Infliction Films, grotesquely bleak cartoons, an interview with Mark Hejnar (director of the G. G. Allin film AFFLICTION), stuff about working sideshows, a long and much-needed interview with the godlike Zodiac Mindwarp (yes, he still lives! and rocks!), Loren Rhoads hanging out in the autopsy room, lots of weird art, more interviews with obscure film dudes, heresy against organized religion, words o' wisdom from pagans and witches, plus piles of reviews for music and films of a disturbing nature. Highly recommended -- check out their website for more details (see EPHEMERA for the link). They're taking subscriptions now....
From the bowels of Connecticut comes this fat-ass zine, a music zine that covers a lot of ground (although a lot of it is of the death and darkwave variety). Long interviews with the likes of Beyond Dawn, Siddal, Order From Chaos, O Yuki Conjugate, and Mindrot are generally interesting, although the weird typefaces make it a bit of an eyestrain (this may not be a problem in the future, though, since they're apparently planning to change the format to reduce a number of headaches on their end). About half of the issue (which is 70 pages long, not including the cover!) is dedicated to reviews, mostly of really obscure bands i've never even heard of, so if you're looking for stuff that's beyond the horizon, this would definitely be a good place to look. They're also putting out a CD compilation, NOVISIBLE SCARS, and promise interviews to come with Yen Pox, Loretta's Doll, and a tribute to Dario Argentio's SUSPIRIA in the forthcoming issue. Cool stuff, in other words. I have no idea how much it is -- i didn't find a price anywhere....
Now THIS is how a thriller should read. It's the bizarre tale of some crazed lunatic who starts kidnapping young girls and sending their hands back home in a box... but in a bigger sense, it's about what happens to the people of the small town where this occurs as the events come to pass. In a town where everyone knows everybody, as it slowly dawns on them all that the lunatic is in their midst -- is, in fact, probably someone they all know and would never suspect -- eventually every move, every action, on anyone's part is treated with the utmost suspicion. By the end of the book, the question is less about who the killer is and whether or not he'll be caught than it is about how the town will recover from turning on each other like a pack of rabid dogs. Brilliant stuff and highly recommended. What i want to know, though, is how come i've never even HEARD of this guy -- and it turns out he's written over a dozen other novels. Eek! Guess i'll have to run down to the library....
CITIES OF THE RED NIGHT by William S. Burroughs (Henry Holt and Company)
Obviously this is one of Uncle Bill's later books -- but that doesn't mean he's mellowed with age a bit. This one is split into three books, each taking up different situations and characters. Book One follows a private Dick -- Clem Snide -- through a missing persons case that turns up one dead American boy and another resumably incarcerated in a South American "experimental" medical clinic in search of a method of transplanting human heads. Snide ends up in Greece on the trail of the missing boy. There he ends up in the second case -- only after an interesting sexmagick ritual helps him track the whereabouts of the first boy. Plot line two -- a crew of opium smuggling pirates at the turn of the century try to establish colonies along the Central American coastline. Their founding idea: the Articles, ten laws that allow complete freedom while establishing complete responsibility to self-govern. They do successfully conquer two Panamanian cities but then we find out nothing more about them.
Book Two is concerned with the origins of the research done by the shady medical clinic of Book One. It transports us back to an Africa before civilization --or more accurately, an Africa as the bed of civilization. Ther strange, mostly magical research is done. The 7 Cities of the Red Night all have their specialties, their own idiosyncracies. Of course, bizarre sexual drugs exist here -- drugs that can make one break out in erotic rashes, sores that burn and transport to ecstatic planes a t the same time. Here we follow Clem Snide once again. He has been hired to find the lost book from the cities, a book that has the secret to something. What secret? Clem doesn't know, and doesn't think his employers know either. We learn more about our pirates also.
Book Three is classic Uncle Bill. A rebellion against the Cities in being plotted in present time. The clinic is South America houses a time warp allowing access to the Cities, time unstated. It comprises the plot to overthrow the dictator of one of the cities, the surreal battles that ensue (Mongol hordes fighting modern French soldiers, elephants pounding down streets filled with Mayan warriors, you name it!), and the destruction of the Cities by a black hole.
The unifying threads of Cities are the viruses that caused the original mutations of the human race. Strains of these viruses are apparently the root of the erotic drugs of Book Two. The original virus initiated all human mutation away from the "original," presumably similar to the current inhabitants of Tangiers. The book of knowledge Clem is hired to author is again a link to that virus. The smell of people sick from the virus is what brings Clem to solve the missing persons cases of Book One.
CITIES is a definite must read for Burroughs fans. I don't recommend him to everyone. Too many people I know get annoyed by a lack of unilinear plot. There are three distinct storylines in three distinct locations in space-time. Only Burroughs (well, there are a few other authors I've read ballsy enough to try this) can unify those three plots, link them by making personas completely fluid. There aren't really any new characters -- they all seem to be the same set of faces changed only by t heir existence in another space-time locale. [bc]
CONCAVE UP # 1 by Jesse Reklaw (NonDairy Publishing)
This is a cool idea... a comic book devoted to anthologizing and illustrating people's weird dreams. (It's also been done before, as Reklaw points out in the introduction, in RARE BIT FIENDS by Rick Veitch, but Rick never sent me anything so i don't care, ha!) By necessity the pieces are pretty short, and connected by one-pagers of an nineteenth-century style narrator expounding in amusing fashion on how we all must sleep sooner or later, and where there is sleep, there are dreams. Out of the ten or so entries here, my favorites are "Center Ring Sanitation" (a man dreams of watching a sanitation crew of clowns as they improbably pack the full contents of a dumpster into a Honda Civic hatchback), "Advertising Hint" (a room for rent ad on a billboard gets no response until the dreamer scribbles "eaters of the human flesh" on it as a joke, at which point many people start responding), and "Brian Eno's Pelvis" (take a guess -- and let me tell you, the mere IDEA of Brian Eno having a glam past and bragging in interviews about his big dick is pretty damn funny).
Definitely an interesting and surreal experience, and fun to read -- plus the art is great, always a plus. This is the kind of thing i like to see in comics. Very cool stuff. DEAD ANGEL sez check it out.
Another cool installment in Jesse's ongoing dream anthology. How cool is it, you may ask? Well, it's cool enough to have a four-panel mini-dream at the beginning of a man riding a giant grandaddy longlegs to work every day. How much more surreal can you get?
The answer, as the dreams illustrated in this issue prove, is PLENTY. The first one, "The Fountain," depicts a young woman being chased through a medical center until she steps out into a garden to find herself drowned in a fountain; another story follows a man's search for a murderer that takes him finally to a Turkish restaurant where he discusses the changes to be made in the movie of his dream. Gilligan and the Skipper somehow get mixed up with infectious fruit fly poisoning and martyrdom in "Bitten," while a young woman finds her serenaded by Morrisey in "Why Don't You Find Out." A funny hemp-related prank ends in arrest for the dreamer of "Chump," and in "Eye," bizarre eye conditions and an unexpected growth spurt lead to worries about insufficient health insurance... sounds like dream logic to me, all right!
As with the premiere issue, the black-and-white artwork is pretty spiffy and there's several other stories as well, all of which are either intriguing or humorous. There's a few other surprises scattered throughout, including the quirky four-panel weirdness of SLOW WAVE and impressive full- color painted art on the cover.
What we have here is mainly a long-winded story about an unorthodox scientist transplant goat sex glands into people with bizarre (but productive!) results, until his medical license is revoked, and which point -- after a failed run for governor -- he moves his operation to Mexico (then back to Little Rock, Arkansas) and continues to make millions until he dies of a heart attack while being investigated by the AMA and a lot o' government entities. In the meantime we are treated to a parade of grotesque hillbillies and white trash. I guess it's interesting in a bizarre kind of way, but it's too long... oh well....
The other stories fare a bit better. One that ends up with a man's stereo being invaded by cockroaches is acutally amusing, and "Meeting" is just so grotesque and bizarre that it makes the rest of the comic worthwhile (a man coming in to his boss' office for punishment waves a pistol around and then ends up commiting suicide, but the gun doesn't kill him instantly and their conversation between the shooting and the actual death is intensely surreal).
I know, this is kind of "mainstream" for this ezine, but Dave Barry is fucking funny, so bear with me, all right? As Barry himself, points out, he is perfectly suited to write this book (totally devoid of usefully info! a big plus!) because he has owned more than twenty PCs, including a TRS-80. Apparently he is one of those guys who has to buy a whole new system to "keep up" everytime they upgrade something ("Look! New modem speed! Better get a new PC!") So he's qualified.... He points out early on the division between Mac and PC users: Macintosh users are wimpy people (to him, anyway) who just want to get things DONE while PC users are the technogeek equivalent of manly wrestling types with thick necks who want a system they can CONQUER (but not necessarily actually use). And he's right... otherwise who would put up with Windows 95, eh? (Note that DEAD ANGEL uses Windows 95. But DEAD ANGEL could never afford a Mac.)
Other "highlights" include making fun of Comdex (the big technogeek festival of wares) and the adult-gaming answer to the same, making fun of goofy online behavior, trolling for useless web sites (is there really a pressing NEED for websites about toilets?), and a truly priceless picture of the perils of font abuse in employee documents. Plus he details a few lesser-known "emoticons," such as the following: >:-Q -... ("person who was enjoying a postcoital cigarette until he noticed, to his alarm, that there is some kind of discharge dribbling from his cybermember") and my personal favorite: :-OWW ("person vomiting a series of Slim Jims"). He's even a good enough sport to discuss the origins of the apparently semi-legendary "Chuckletrousers" post. So for a humor fix this will do... plus it makes great bathroom reading material, natch.
This is much better -- an amusingly morbid look at death in the rock music business. And not just the biggies like Lennon, Elvis, James Dean, Buddy Holly, and so on, but lots of really semi-obscure people, many of whom bit the dust in spectacularly gruesome fashion. (Such as Cliff Burton, the bassist for Metallica who replaced Ron McGoveny, only to be squashed by a tour bus in a freak accident while on tour in the UK during the Master of Puppets tour.)
And that's pretty much all you need to know about it, really. That pretty much sums it up -- death and rock and more death. Along the way, in addition to chronicling the careers and deaths of various rockers in capsule fashion, he alerts us to famous dates (did YOU know that Robert Johnson, Elvis, and Babe Ruth all died on August 16? did you even care?), bands who've made a living from the death fetish (Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Steve Albini, etc.) and a wealth of other arcane details. Lightweight reading, to be sure, but kind of interesting in a twisted way. Leave this in your bathroom for people to read when they're sitting on the can and see how many weird looks you get.
DESTROYING ANGELS # 1
This is a true Underground Art 'zine! The first issue is obviously influenced by TOPY in some ways, given by the wording used (Thee, Ov, etc.). [tmu: A wee note to you, the reader, o viewer of our insidious propoganda -- Fenris submits reviews in TOPY style, i de-TOPY them for clarity, and possibly because, to hear some people talk, i might possibly be anal-retentive and downright fascist about grammar and "style" and tedious crap like that. Yes, i know it's pointless, but this is what happens after working too many years on top-secret government publications that i can't discuss because of national security issues.] The first page features some artwork by Satan fucking a woman while latex-clad sex slaves lick his shaft, surrounded by Satanic, Chaos, and Occult symbolism -- neat! The next has SLEEP CHAMBER written around it and is a collage of dirty XXX-mag type ads with nun pictures superimposed. This is followed by an interview with John Coleman, and then there is more artwork by a fellow named Dennis Dread (who I believe took over for the third issue). His artwork could best be described as humorous Satanic artwork with an air of surreality and the macabre in some spots, and in others just plain macabre. For instance, a bizarre collage of penises entering sopping wet vaginas! There's a few more even weirder (if it were possible) drawings by Drin, one of which features an alien/predator-type combination with penis snakes going up a bizarre naked woman's body -- killer! All in all, a good first issue, reminding Me of My first issue of MASSIVE HEAD TRAUMA. (Which had a lot less artwork in it, obviously, but that was because artwork wasn't its theme!) [FCW]
DESTROYING ANGELS # 3
This is the other issue I received in a trade with Dennis of DESTROYING ANGELS 'zine. I believe the next issue was taken over by a new editor...? Anyway, there is a much better layout to it all, with a lot more content such as interviews, etc., to go along with all the killer underground Satanic artwork! There's an interview with Warhammer, a German extreme-metal band, as well as an interview with Chas Balun, and perhaps my most favorite, an interview with Church of Satan Magister Diabolos Red Church. The interviews are interesting in that they fit all of My main interests, those being metal, extreme film, and Satanic philosophy, so I'm admittedly already partial to them. However, the Chas Balun interview was quite a disappointment to Me, although I will say that it was nicely done and in depth. I was so disappointed in how -- might as well be frank -- un-extreme Chas was. For instance, he bashed the killer SERIES OF DEATH films (a personal favorite of Mine to boot) and TRACES OF DEATH, and said how people who enjoy such a series should really "examine your life and your values." Hmmm -- My life is just fine, and I have no values. Does this make me despicable in your eyes, Chas? He also commented on how the GUNIEA PIG AND AFTERMATH series were "the same old formula." He even lists his top three favorite films as "Ring of Bright Water," "The Magic Christian," and "Harold and Maud"?!? This is a man who Lucio Fulci has called "King of Splatter Films"?!?!?! I am quite dumbfounded at others' praise of him -- and I will continue to hold this belief, no matter how blasphemous others may perceive it.
On another note, the interview with Diabolos Rex Church was excellent, a really in-depth look at Satanic philosophy. I was amazed at how many ideological points I had in common with this man, without even knowing much about him. The Warhammer interview was pretty nifty as well -- I hadn't really heard of them before reading this 'zine. There was also an artwork spread/interview with Jeff Gaither, who does some really cool, bizarre/macabre artwork. My personal favorite picture was of a rat with its face loaded with goodies (cheeses, meats, etc.), as well as a peg-legged Satanic undead cat and a mutant undead Bullwinkle, the moose with a huge filth-spurting cock.... Recommended. [FCW]
This is the only collaboration betweeen these two seminal sci-fi writers that I know about. The premise of the book is interesting, but doesn't lead to much more than the surface-level dystopian paranoia of 1984 or Brave New World.
Set in London of the 1850's, THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE has a world populated with Babbage's difference engine, prototypes of which did actually exist. While the actual difference engine was little more than a bulky calculator, these engines could perform more complicated statistical analyses and stored their data on punch cards -- an imporvement Babbage only dreamed of. Ultimately, what starts as an interesting conspiracy plot turns into a historical thriller. The consipracy plot is still there, but surfaces late in the novel as a brief and unscuccesful luddite rebellion. The novel basically ends there, but there are additional pages devoted to snippets of information about the death of Lord Byron (not a poet here, but a rather clueless poitical leader), "the time of troubles," and other nearly pertinent information.
Basically THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE has an interesting premise and a decent reading pace. I don't think the idea of the computer revolution happening nearly 100 years too soon wasn't fully explored, and I really found the book a little disappointing. [bc]
THE DILBERT PRINCIPLE by Scott Adams [Harper Business]
Dilbert meets the Peter Principle and finds it unsuited for the nineties, necessitating a wee (but vital) update: "The most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage -- MANAGEMENT." (Note: This does not apply to the government, where management wreaks the most havoc.) This is essentially a fluffy but humorous expansion of the same vein of humor that made the Dilbert strip so popular (that is, making fun of work and stupid management practices), sort of like the strip with more words and less pictures. (A great many of the classic strips are reproduced, though, to illustrate the points being made.) My guess is that you'd already have to be a Dilbert fan to begin with to shell out the $20 for this, but it IS a lot of fun... lightweight, to be sure, but fun. Makes a great "bathroom break" book....
Oooo, a cool zine from Lithuania, of all places (where the hell is Lithuania anyway? i never was any good at geography....) -- and a METAL (more or less) zine at that. Actually, it covers metal, doom, and dark ambient. Some of the bands interviewed in this issue include Contingence, Dissonance, Fates Warning (remember them? they still exist! will wonders never cease?), Inferno, Lake of Tears, In the Woods, and even more. Most of the bands here appear to be mostly progressive metal or doom metal, with the occasional nod to dark ambient, so this is a good thing. The interviews are not bad either, particularly the one with In the Woods, who i would gather are a bunch of deep-thinking atmosphereic doom metal kinda guys....
The really happening section, though, is the review section. Not surprisingly for an overseas zine, there's lots of reviews of European, Scandanavian, etc. bands you've probably never heard of (hell, i never heard of them either) -- bands like Elende, Fleurerty, Naglfar, Opeth, and others even more obscure. The reviews are pretty informative and just the right length: not too long, and not too short. Ha! There's also an extensive section devoted to reviews of demo tapes, which is most useful. Prepare your postage meter....
The layout and design, by the way, are exceptional for a zine. This is quality printing, with slick paper and great graphics and art -- no eensy zine printed on bad copiers suffering from maximum tonerdeath, eh? So check it out if you get the chance -- it only costs $3.00....
Okay, i've got such big balls -- big CRAZY balls, as Ice-T might say -- that i'm going to baldly claim that A. M. Homes is one of the five best writers working in America today. (Notice i didn't say THE best... i'm hedging my bets... my balls aren't THAT big... not yet, anyway....) Even if the guy from National Public Radio DOES disagree with me. Ha! It matters NOT! The thing that makes Homes such a firecracker is that she doesn't play it safe; she wanders right out on the ledge, drinking tequila and puking on the gawkers below, spewing out stories and novels about immensely fucked-up sociopaths masquerading as normal people... or is that normal people masquerading as sociopaths? It's hard to tell sometimes in a Homes story. Granted, she has all the finesse of a strongman cracking eggs with a sledgehammer sometimes, but that's not a problem for me -- i LIKE my statements bold dammit, if i want poofy goddamn art i'll read Anne Tyler for Christ's sake.
The story at hand involves a twisted young woman with the hots for the 13-year old down the street who starts writing to a convicted pedophile about said lust. The story, though, is told from the pedophile's point of view, and he's a pretty eccentric guy -- and, as events make it obvious through the unfolding of the story, capable of immense brutality. What makes this so interesting is how Homes never flinches -- she wallows in the mud with the best of them, without ever losing sight of where she's going, even if her balance does get a bit wobbly every once in a while (she has a bad habit of getting sidetracked into repulsive sidelight scenes that, while upping the grotesque nature of things, don't really advance the story itself). This is essentially what Bret "yes i'm a yuppie cokehead and you're the fool who bought all my books, which one of us is worse?" Ellis Easton's AMERICAN PSYCHO could have been (assuming it had been written by someone with, um, talent) -- a thoroughly creeped-out journey through the hollowness of suburbia and a revelation that the monsters we lock up ultimately aren't much different from the monsters we allow to walk free every day.
Homes, though, is not without problems. Her narrative style leans toward the disjointed -- she started out as a short story writer and it sometimes appears she hasn't quite grasped that in novels, you're ALLOWED to expand on things; hence, she has an annoying tendency to move things along at a fast clip by occasionally jettisoning what could have been helpful exposition. She's also really fixated on being gross just for the sake of being gross, a "sport" at which she excels, although not always to the benefit of the story at hand. And in this particular novel, she keeps circling around the main question -- what really happened to wee Alice that got our antihero clapped in the slammer in the first place -- in a heavily repetitive fashion, so that toward the end, whole chunks of the text are essentially lifted from earlier scenes. While the circular motion is an interesting idea in theory, in practice it's usually irritating, and a lot of readers will probably find it irritating here.
But these are mere TRIFLES! Overall, this is a buzzbomb of a book flying under radar to let loose loads o' napalm on your subconscious, and when she's firing on all cylinders -- as she is most of the time here -- she's hands-down the creepiest writer currently active, kind of like Pynchon crossed with Flannery O'Connor after being thoroughly immersed in an acid bath. She WILL find your weak point and exploit it....