I don't know what possessed me to actually buy this book. I don't often pay attention to recommendations from my many book apps and sites (including gI don't know what possessed me to actually buy this book. I don't often pay attention to recommendations from my many book apps and sites (including goodreads), trusting, instead, friends and folks whose taste I admire, but I saw the ugly, toxic, choo-choo train cover and felt compelled to click some link somewhere and read the plot summary.
I think I found out at that point that Keith C. Blackmore was a Canadian author, so that probably influenced me. I remember thinking, too, that the cover of The Majestic 311 reminded me of one my favourite repeating billboards in my many Trans-Canada journeys, a billboard trumpeting the awesomeness of The Minnow Trap (a truly awful book by some goofy writer from Northern Ontario), and I thought The Majestic 311 would at least be some trashy fun to take my mind off all the serious books I've been reading. But even then I shouldn't have been convinced enough to spend the money on The Majestic 311, yet I did and much to my surprise I didn't just put it on my "to read" pile and let it languish for five years. I opened the cover and started reading.
Awesome decision.
I love The Majestic 311. It really defies description, but let me try one out without spoilers: a gang of Canadian train thieves finds themselves in the wrong train one cold, wintry, Alberta night, and that train takes them across the universe and back again. Or something like that.
The Majestic 311 started out feeling like an old black and white Twilight Zone episode, blending Western and the supernatural, then it turned into an 80s mash-up of Slasher & Western movies before becoming a full out Bizarro novel before morphing its tone to the New Weird before shifting to full-out Sci-Fi before giving way to John Carpenterism then eventually winding up in a sort of Rod Serling's Night Gallery double twist ending. I never knew what was coming next, what was waiting from train car to train car, and I loved every second of it -- much to my surprise. I loved it so much that by the time I made it about two thirds of the way through the book I had to slow down my reading just to savour the remaining story.
I'm not sure how many people I know would love this book as much as I do, but there is no denying Blackmore is a solid technician and a fiercely imaginative author. I'm already nearly finished the first book in his Zombie series -- Mountain Man -- and I can't see myself slowing up. Blackmore's writing is just too damn entertaining.
There is one sad thing about The Majestic 311, though. I have been dreaming of starting to record audiobooks, and I was going to beg Blackmore to let me narrate The Majestic 311. Turns out that audiobook ship has sailed. Too bad. Back to dreams of classics, I guess. ...more
WARNING: This review is of a book full of foul language, and I plan to use said language in my review. Please don't read this if you do not want to seWARNING: This review is of a book full of foul language, and I plan to use said language in my review. Please don't read this if you do not want to see the dirty words spelled out. Thanks.
In my ideal world, there is a film audience for an animated, XXX, adult fairy tale, full of pigs (and talking pigs) fucking, genitals being ripped off or bitten off or lopped off, inter-species rape avenged in brutal, face gouging ways, a crazed (dissociative identity disorder), emaciated, covered in shit, rotten toothed Princess named Pretty, her supposedly effeminate Feminist Prince named Francis, and buckets of Goblin Dragon fire + rivers of blood + ravenous vermin + Ninja Ladies in Waiting + Kaiju Towers + poop and fart and piss and taint jokes, all mixed with the foulest mouths and silliest show tunes you can imagine.
In that world, Shane McKenzie would be rich, rich enough to produce Pretty Pretty Princess himself, and he'd say fuck animation and go straight to live action, giving the part of Gavin the Talking Pig to a motion capture Jack Black (or me), the part of Pretty to the corpse of Karen Carpenter (or Ian McKellan in drag), the part of Prince Francis to Jonathan Groff (yep, just him), the part of King Balthazar to a leprechauny Gerard Butler (or me in my body of twenty years ago), the parts of the Ninja Ladies in Waiting to all of today's hottest porn stars (and me in drag in my body of thirty years ago). And when that movie came out -- XXX or NC-17 or unrated -- it would set box office records. And people would laugh. And people would admire McKenzie's balls. And people would see that even the most outrageous satires carry meaning and importance within their seemingly ridiculous exteriors.
But we don't live in my perfect world, so instead, if you can handle swearing and Pythonian excess and explicit sex and violence, you must read this fantastic piece of bizarro satire. You won't be disappointed (at least I sure hope you won't).
It's been a while since I careened around the strange mind pukings of Carlton Mellick III, so it was a lot of fun to get back to him by diving into hIt's been a while since I careened around the strange mind pukings of Carlton Mellick III, so it was a lot of fun to get back to him by diving into his Haunted Vagina.
I'm just going to say it: there needs to be a movie made of this. Some new John Waters has to be out there somewhere just looking for an appropriately pornographic but grounded in the real world (Portland's Kennedy School for Beer anyone?) but full of hidden meaning but really fucked up piece of literature to cast Asa Akira in a lead role and make the XXX (NC-17?) womb bending, cliff cervix penetrating, skeletons outside of skin suits whacko, intentional mess that is The Haunted Vagina. It is a cult classic that will never be. So sad.
But that's okay ... there is always the book. Thanks, CMIII, for the twisted stuff you make so much fun to read. ...more
There’s no denying David David Katzman (DDK) is a talented writer. He’s no hack. He’s no dilettante fuckinI hate this book, but that is a good thing.*
There’s no denying David David Katzman (DDK) is a talented writer. He’s no hack. He’s no dilettante fucking around because he thinks he has a good idea that “just needs to be published.” He’s the real deal. A writer’s writer. A writer with teeth and muscle. A writer with the ability to incite. And that’s what he did to me with A Greater Monster.
He incited rage and loathing, but that is a good thing.
He was a Cathead playing with me like the proverbial mouse (or a dog who refuses to masturbate) before killing me and eating me. His font games and wordplay were sadistic. His incessant twisting of homonyms and homophones was unbearable. Torturous is not an understatement. I wanted nothing more than for this book to end. I needed to be free of the trail of gunpowder he’d lit like a nasty, hallucinogenic Bugs Bunny. But all that’s good too.
It’s a good thing because there’s an audience out there begging for A Greater Monster – needing A Greater Monster. I may not be part of that audience, but they exist. I even know a few of them. And they will read this book on my recommendation and be incited to raptures and ecstasies, and they will rank it amongst their favourites ever. DDK is a voice for those of the urban subterrain; he is the voice of the edges and cracks and perforations of asphalt and post-industrial cubicles. People need DDK writing for them and to them and at them.
And he deserves to be read. Not just his brilliantly funny Death by Zamboni but this ugly, perverse, fomenting treatise of hyperreality called A Greater Monster. All DDK’s works deserve to be read.
I want him to be read. I want you to read him, whatever your feelings might be when you’re through. Read him. Love him. Hate him. Read this. Love this. Hate this. But don’t walk away from this book untouched, unaffected. Love A Greater Monster or hate A Greater Monster or love and hate A Greater Monster, but don’t put it down with an indifferent shrug. If you do that, the failure is yours. This book is extreme, so too should be your response, whichever direction it takes.
I hate this book. Almost as much as I love DDK. So when I get around to offering an upper level course in Bizarro fiction, this book will be the first on the required reading list. I hate this book, but I don’t have to like it to recognize its merit.
*it has always been my policy to rate books based on how I feel about them rather than their "merit."
I don't think there was enough representation for the Avacado community, and more could have been done and said about Defunding Parking Police, and I I don't think there was enough representation for the Avacado community, and more could have been done and said about Defunding Parking Police, and I am pretty sure the Man in the Mirror was never going to change his ways, but what else did I expect? I mean, I'd have to be a running and screaming nut to have thought that Eric Hendrixson would give a damn about my concerns. All he cares about is telling his mad tales however the hell he wants to tell them. A-tothefucking-men to that. ...more
I've wanted to read Andersen Prunty for a long time. Almost as long as I've been coming to goodreads. I mean, who wouldn't want to read books with titI've wanted to read Andersen Prunty for a long time. Almost as long as I've been coming to goodreads. I mean, who wouldn't want to read books with titles like The Overwhelming Urge, Jack and Mr. Grin, Zerostrata, The Sex Beast of Scurvy Island and Fuckness? Maybe Jack van Impe and Jimmy Swaggart, but for the rest of us these titles are like lesbian porn smothered in chocolate. So bad for you in so many ways but impossible to avoid forever.
And I've finally done it. I just finished reading The Sorrow King, and I fear it is the doobie-ous gateway to my new Prunty as heroin addiction.
I have to admit that The Sorrow King was a lot less bizarro than I had imagined it would be. Even with its semen monster and a zombie fellatio dream, The Sorrow King is more mainstream horror than bizarro madness. But that works. And works well. Those bizarro moments flavour the mainstream horror in ways that are horrible (rather than horrifying), spicing up a genre that often bores my tastebuds.
I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, but I seriously loved this book right up to the last chapter or two. I loved the shift in narrators; I loved that none of the characters were safe; I loved the way Prunty was able to maintain suspence and even surprise me once or twice; I loved the father and son bits between Steven and Connor; and I loved that Prunty remembered and could convey what it was like to be a horny teenage boy about to have sex. We need more of that in the books being written today. More of that would go a long way to removing the shame our society is piling on sexuality.
Back to the The Sorrow King, though. It is an excellent piece of horror fiction, and its cinematic qualities scream for a chance to find its way onto HBO or the big screen.
I don't know how you can be so prolific, Andersen, and still achieve the quality of The Sorrow King, but if the rest of your books are anywhere near as good as this one, I am going to be appreciate your speed and offer my vein up to you as my horror pusher.
In other news, this was the first novel length book I've read on an e-Reader. I can't see it becoming my main format -- ever -- but I like its convenience. I will read something that way again. ...more
Not at all what I expected, but worth the read nonetheless. 'Ganger's good. Dr. Blah Blah Blah annoying. The world fascinating, and nPow. Bam. Crack.
Not at all what I expected, but worth the read nonetheless. 'Ganger's good. Dr. Blah Blah Blah annoying. The world fascinating, and not so bizarro or far fetched as I went in expecting.
WARNING: This review contains the language of the book it discusses, including a couple of c-words. Please don't read this if you do not want to see tWARNING: This review contains the language of the book it discusses, including a couple of c-words. Please don't read this if you do not want to see the words spelled out or if sick and demented shit makes you want to throw up.
If H.R. Giger was a genetic meat puppet of David Lynch's, and the two of them shared a lovely dream about flesh altered fuck toys with multiple cocks and cunts, it would be something akin to Carlton Mellick III's bizarro-fest, Razor Wire Pubic Hair.
This is the story of a nameless genetically engineered fuck doll, used and abused by a horror show matron named Celsia with multiple cunts and razor wire pubic hair that cuts off penises if she fucks them too hard. Together they live in a surreal world of sexual torture, where sex toys are males genetically altered to carry all genital material (the better to fuck and be fucked with, it seems), where zombies drop rotting flesh from their faces while bathing in mud puddles, where roving bands of rapists threaten to burst through the walls of a flesh fortress and destroy the twisted metal utopia of Celsia, The Sister and the fuck doll, where God, resplendent with his white beard, comes to fuck the fuck doll, where mini, living, crucified Christs are buried deep in The Sister's multiple vaginas calling out their muffled torture, and the great debate of their lives is whether a fuck doll receptacle for birthing a repulsive, bloated baby of decaying cells can have a soul.
The story is full of dripping juices, tangy smells, appalling torture, creative blasphemy, poisonous fluids, and claustrophobic love/hate. It is disgusting, disjointed, filled with strange, pornographic works of art that seem to have no connection to the narrative and it is disdainful of all gender.
But there was no stopping once I'd begun. Like Giger and Lynch, Carlton Mellick III is good at what he does. The Creature/Author can write, make no mistake, and while the Creature/Author's product is about as accessible as a dinner at Titus' table, it is compelling. Worse still, I found it enjoyable. Maybe I shouldn't feel ashamed for finding something marvelous in Razor Wire Pubic Hair, but the indoctrination of my raising has me feeling dirty beyond cleansing for being fascinated by the Creature/Author's poetic use of language and the way my imagination worked Mellick III's world into a real space in my head.
I fear I have been scarred for life by my second foray into the world of Bizarro fiction; I will buy more and continue to sully my soul, shame be damned....more
WARNING: This review contains language similar to the book it discusses, including a few f-words. Please don't read this if you do not want to see theWARNING: This review contains language similar to the book it discusses, including a few f-words. Please don't read this if you do not want to see the words spelled out.
I’ve been playing around on the periphery of the bizarro for a while now, and though I haven’t fully committed to becoming an aficionado, I have come to expect and demand that the bizarro I’m reading contains some seriously fucked up shit. Shit that wouldn't just be "too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts," but would give said aunts coronaries or embolisms. But that fucked up shit needs to feel like a justifiable part of the story. It needs to be integral to what's happening and not just tacked on for the sake of being fucked up.
The Menstruating Mall, my second foray into the wacky mind of Carlton Mellick III, was a big disappointment. You'd expect that a title with such amazing coolness would deliver some crazy bizarro thrills. I went in hoping for the sloughing off of shoppers who'd helped to shape the Mall's endometrium. Or maybe the shoppers would be giant, living tampons used to absorb the flow of the Mall's menstruation. Or perhaps the Mall itself would be sentient, going through cycles of abdominal cramping (look out poor shoppers) and maybe even succumb to one of those rare psychotic PMS episodes. I expected lots of menstrual blood, something to do with fertility, and the Mall's halls as fallopian tubes.
But nope. For most of the book it is a mildly funny, sorta witty, rather mainstream attack on us zombified, consumerist folk and our "mundanity." A bunch of idiots are stuck in a mall; they can't get out, and one of them decides to start killing the others because they are too lame to live. They can see some sticky menstrual flow in the parking lot, menstruation from the titular mall, and it keeps them in the Mall’s uterus (although that reading is really pushing it). So for most of the book they wander from store to store, get to know one another, and share the things that they think make them unique prints on the tips of the world’s fingers.
Mellick III incorporates the scatalogical artwork of a friend -- one Food Fortunata (I imagine a mustacheod Twi'lek from Ryloth) -- but it feels like it is only there to remind us that the book is supposed to be Bizarro. (Don’t ask me why the sketches are all about feces; I’d have thought menstrual themed sketches would have been far more appropriate.)
On second thought, maybe the sketches are there to remind Carlton Mellick III, too. Unfortunately it takes until Act III for his reminder to kick in, and we are finally thrown a bizarro bone or two way too late. We get some really nasty sex, including a girl-on-boy anal rape that makes the latter fall in love with the former, a non-lethal Bat’leth impalement, and some hybrid life forms (human-demon, human-toaster, human-helicopter, etc.). It’s all too tacked on to be interesting or fitting, and all of my hopes for a truly insane foray into menstruation were dashed on the rocks of a fairly worthless piece of fiction.
Still, it isn’t without merit. It was a fast read, and I found myself putting aside better books for The Menstruating Mall. But I’ll tell you this: it was no Razor Wire Pubic Hair. Now that was some fucked up shit. In a good way....more
WARNING: If you're a Spurs fan you can sod off. If you are simply someone who knows nothing about football and Arsenal the analogy that follows will lWARNING: If you're a Spurs fan you can sod off. If you are simply someone who knows nothing about football and Arsenal the analogy that follows will likely be meaningless, but you're invited to read on anyway.
Have you ever seen Emmanuel Eboué play football? He's a wonder to behold.
He is a right back turned right midfielder turned right back turned utility man. He has a reputation for diving, but he's constantly fouled by opposition players. His finishing is for shit, but he still scores the occasional goal, and he gets himself into scoring position on a fairly consistent basis. He is crap in the air but is surprisingly effective at throwing off his opposition when they're going for a ball. He tackles well, tracks back constantly, but gets himself out of position because he pushes too far forward. Little he does makes sense, yet he's effective, and when Arsenal need a spark he is there to provide it. He is hated by the opposition, whomever they may be, loathed by referees, loved by his teammates and a little bit of both by his Gunner fans (he was booed off the pitch two seasons ago and has since become a folk hero). He's like a Jackson Pollack canvas on the football pitch, and I can't help digging him.
And I couldn't get Eboué out of my head when I was reading A Dirty Job by Chris Moore. There are few books that are so all over the place. It spans almost a decade; some years are covered in detail, others are covered in two paragraphs, and some days take up a third of the book -- time is nearly meaningless. Shit (both literal and figurative) comes out of nowhere on a regular basis (costumed-two-foot-bone-weapon toting-soul-beasts anyone?), sex smacks us upside the loins, full out comedy displaces horror only to be displaced by action only to be displaced by love only to be displaced by sacrifice. Spirituality plays alongside hedonism. Poo jokes abound while red-glowing-soul-vessels burn their need, and Death Merchants "sell" their collected souls to their ineluctably correct patrons.
It is bizarre, even pseudo-bizarro, wacky, stupid, sexy, sickening, entertaining and oddly compelling. More than a bit like a Saturday afternoon watching Emmanuel Eboué baffle and beguile in Arsenal red & white.
I stayed away from Christopher Moore because his covers were too catchy and cool, but not anymore. Biff is next. Thanks, Gio. ...more
You arrive at your summer vacation, the one your parents keep sending you on, across the country to spend time with your Grandpa. It is only a couple You arrive at your summer vacation, the one your parents keep sending you on, across the country to spend time with your Grandpa. It is only a couple of weeks, but it always feels like a month, or two, and this year, now that you're older and have so many more interesting things to be doing, you really don't want to go, but you go anyway, and the stories begin the moment you get in his immaculate car. He pulls into traffic and begins talking in that suprisingly soothing tone that won't relent for fourteen days.
In the time it takes to drive from the airport to his home in the willow trees you've discovered everything you need to know about the summer ahead. Every piece of information, every bit of knowledge concerning the trip's outcome, every person you will meet (except for those two who are a surprise, but even the meaning of the surprise is known) is known in those first minutes of driving and traffic lights and highway slow downs. All that will change over the course of your time are the words and actions he uses to inform you. They will amount to the same content, but they will take wild shapes, fantastical shapes, or tame and banal shapes, or whatever shapes the old man feels like conjuring at any given moment.
And there will be times when his words will amount to silence and you will simply be in his presence, a presence that begins annoyingly enough, but slowly becomes exactly what you need. You will wake up to the magnificent coffees he makes to order, espresso, latte, americano; you decide what you want before sleep, and it is there when you awaken, even though you awaken at different times everyday because he lets you sleep in, knowing it is something you don't get to do all that often. His voice goes along with those morning drinks, those drinks and the pastries he somehow sneaks in without you seeing, and you are happy to hear the same tales again with tweaks and twitches and turns you were fully expecting. You're always happy to know you're right about your expectations.
You follow as he takes you through chilly malls, waving to friends on benches in the halls; as he takes you through humid golf courses, both of you exerting yourselves as minimally as golf allows; as you and he relive zoo trips and museum trips and walks down park paths together, all the while he relates the stories you love more the more you hear them, stories of your past and his present and your future.
You mash the potatoes that night, that penultimate night before your parents come to fetch you, while he barbecues the chicken breasts, and you hear him through the screen, talking to himself or someone you can't see, and his pleasure to be speaking is as plain as it ever is, and you sit together at dinner and realize something is different when the silence you sit in together is real silence. His face radiates its usual calm and contentedness, but sound has stopped, and he is quiet. You see the stories are still running in his head, but while he eats he stops sharing. Then he begins again, the same old man you feared joining then learned to relove -- as you always do -- so together you clear the table, do the dishes and take the cards to the verandah where you play what he calls Spite and Malice, but what you've heard others call Cat and Mouse, and you trade wins back and forth, playing with buckets of pennies he's collected over the years.
When the game is over and you retire to the den to watch that show he hasn't missed in forty years, he goes to pour himself his nightly dram, that which will give him the single malt cologne you love to smell when he hugs you goodnight, but he surprises you again, this time with a dram of your own. He says nothing about what he's giving you. Simply passes you your glasses, clinks it with his own, and sits to watch the show with you, sipping his scotch between bits of commentary and remembrance.
And you go to bed without brushing your teeth, wanting that taste, that first taste of your Grandfather's prized drink, to stay on your tongue, and you fall asleep until he surprises you again, waking you up in the dark with a kiss. Not a kiss on the forehead or cheek, but a kiss on the lips, the sort of kiss your father and grandfather and uncles and brothers stopped giving you in your childhood, the sort of kiss that says without words that you are loved and cherished and that just your being makes the man kissing you happy. You feel the light kiss and the scratch of his growing beard, the beard that is always freshly shave before you even wake up, and you open your eyes to see him smiling in the nightlight he still keeps in this room for you when you visit. He brushes back your hair. His lips remain close in his knowing smile. He winks. You know that what he told you that first day, and that thing that kept slipping into what he told you for twelve days, is happening now. You fall back asleep and know that in the morning there will be no coffee waiting for you.
And when morning comes and there isn't you can't be sad. You feel the loss but you don't feel lost. You feel glad that you had this time you so dreaded, but you don't feel bad about the time you will not have because you know he wouldn't want you to feel that way.
When everyone weeps in the days to come and all you can do is smile, you feel their anger with your reaction, and some will never speak to you again, declaring that you are cruel and cold and selfish, but you are not; you simply know that you and he shared something profound and that cannot be taken from you, even in the delirium of old age, because it is now part of your fibre.
You are better for having known that man. His voice will always be inside you. And you are okay because you knew his love. ...more
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