brief book reviews

here are the books i've most recently read. they're all four very short books, which is funny to me, and is why i am writing this review so shortly after the last review post. they are also all, more or less, "alt lit", which is also funny to me

 

Thank You by Zachary German (AFV Press): i don't know much about afv aside from that they were/are like the norwegian contingent of alt lit, working with david fishkind on Logue but publishing mostly norwegian language chapbooks (i don't speak norwegian and can't parse out much about the site). this zachary german book is available as a free pdf. zachary german (now going by Jocktober the Mesh) was a kind of dickhead wunderkid back in 2008-2009 with a novel on melville house and some stories on bear parade, ny tyrant, logue, muumuu house, etc. this (chap)book is short and, for me, is primarily interesting in that it is autofiction and came out/was written (presumably) after the events in megan boyle's Liveblog, in which german and boyle 'broke up' but continued to suffer through living together and having sex for a week or something. my sense in reading Thank You is that this alt lit hey day and its associated relationships (both friendly and romantic) had a permanent, negative impact on him, and these stories are, maybe, an attempt to understand his life through a sort of detached, objective lens, which was also basically what his novel was like, but in this one the drama is more intense (less focus on fashion and college parties, more focus on abortions/international travel/hard drugs). in terms of style, Thank You is kind of more jaded and doesn't shy away from complex sentences (there's a good tao lin x zachary german interview where he notes that he edited Eat When you Feel Sad to preclude any complex clauses and introspection/evaluation, so there are a lot of instances of the same sentences throughout, which i think is cool, personally). the stories here are written with a mixture of journalistic-style clarity (few adjectives, lack of authorial 'opinion') but which, most interestingly to me, includes clear statements of not remembering things right. so most stories focus on a few key details and are awkwardly paced and include things like "he was holding a bow, like a gift bow, because it was his birthday, or someone else's birthday - I don't remember which." so this clarity of detail and lack of clear context is, for me, the strength of the stories in terms of writing. it sounds wistful, rambling, but also curt and bleak. the content is mostly interesting as another entry in the convoluted interpersonal drama of the alt lit figures, with some 'updates' from his life pre/during/post Liveblog, although there are some intense and provocative moments divorced form this context, like the scene in which he tries to mercifully kill a cat that had been hit by a car. this is a quick read, probably like 30 minutes of dedicated reading. i would read a longer version of this collection i think. zachary german/jocktober the mesh is currently suffering with addiction and seems to solely shitpost about politics and rap on twitter now.

I am Dave_Hello by Dave (self-published on amazon): Dave appeared mysteriously on indie lit twitter maybe two months ago and seemed to be a divisive shitposter/reply guy with an annoyingly positive attitude. Big Bruiser Dope Boy called him something like a "boomer steve roggenbuck" because of Dave's over the top typos and bad social media etiquette. there has been some discussion about "who dave is" (i have been accused of being dave, but i cannot fathom having the energy to post as manically as he does). i bought this book on the recommendation of kkuurrtt and cavin, who posted favorably about it on twitter, and because it was only $4, which seemed worth wasting if it turned out to be stupid. this is a book of poetry, and even though it's something like 120 pages, the font is mostly very large (and some pages are blank), so it's a quick read. the poems have that "boomer roggenbuck" vibe, with lots of typos, changes in font, strange formatting, smiley faces, etc. (i should clarify that i have never read anything by roggenbuck, i don't think, but i feel aware of his brand involving stupid typos and helvetica font), and content-wise range from bad/funny puns on his name to some kind of provocative imagery (i like the one about a cardinal dying the most, i think). the word "dave" is on every page (instead of page numbers?) and is frequently used in the text of poems, or as a sign-off, or as a address, or even a title, maybe. i'd say something like 30% of the text is the word "dave", sometimes coming both before and after a poem. reading the book makes it function sort of as a punctuation or something, and i think, weirdly, was effective in somehow tempering the pacing of the book. cavin described the book as "goofy", i think primarily because of its square shape, but i think it's a good adjective to describe the entire text. the funniest part of the book is the recurring references to Josh (i assume josh sherman? if i had to guess, i'd say he's Dave) and other indie lit writers in a non-malicious (maybe) way. he calls BBDB something like "Big Brother Doper Boy", for example, and talks about getting Doak to follow him on twitter. i think it's very clear that the book is written with an attempt to sound naive or autistic or something but it feels clear to me that it was written to be funny, sometimes more clearly in places than others, so that is maybe a point of failure for the book, where it feels like it's trying to make the humor seem accidental when it feels pretty carefully constructed. for example, there are several pages dedicated to asking for 5/5 goodreads reviews, but as far as i can tell, the book is not on goodreads, and there's a section toward the end where he includes blank lines and asks you to write you own poems with some words of encouragement after them, except for the last one, where it says "not very good, too many clichés" or something like that, which i 'get' and thus feels like a miss. i felt kind of uncomfortable/worried reading it, as it feels like it can turn malicious/mean at any point, but doesn't seem to actually do that. in this sense it's a sort of compelling read.

Nervous Assface (Gangster Remix) by Brandon Scott Gorrell and Gene Morgan(?) (Bear Parade): i don't think i ever actually read the entirely of the original nervous assface, and i'm unsure how i accessed the pdf for this gangster remix (doesn't seem to be easily found on the site, but comes up when you google) but i started reading from my kindle at night sometimes and loaded it up with all the random pdfs i have of stuff like this. anyway, it's the same as nervous assface but the character names (and a few other details) are changed to make the book about Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kanye West, and other rappers. the way that it was modified makes it clear that it wasn't just a 'find and replace' thing since one character is replaced by the entire group of Bone Thugz n Harmony and so required further modification of the text to say stuff like "one of them at a banana", but this was done sort of halfway in places, so i enjoyed thinking about whoever made this edit doing so manually, imperfectly. this is short, basically a chapbook, with little resolution to the plot. this one is maybe better than his poetry book because it's less navel-gazey and puts the anxiety into third person characters. i like gorrell's writing style, i feel like he was/is a sort of underrated alt it figure between this and his muumuu house book. he has a good way of escalating things into absurdity without it feeling dumb or predictable, for example in the scene where snoop dogg starts hitting on someone (successfully) at the bar, and in creating a sense of tension and humor in juxtaposing short declarative sentences to create a series of short, bristly loose threads in the narrative, or something. a something i didn't like was how there isn't much of a plot, so starting each (more or less unrelated) chapter feels like it requires a sort of cold start in terms of getting motivated to continue reading, but each chapter is worth reading, in general. i wish he was still writing/publishing. i would read a full-length novel by him. googling around, there's an interview on bookslut where it says he had written an unpublished novella. i just emailed him about it. maybe he'll send it to me. i have not heard back from him after ~5 days.

Weed Monks by Chris Dankland (self-published pdf): i've read this before, or i read most of it then didn't finish it, but then just recently (re)read it start to finish. i know about chris dankland by way of xray lit (he is a founding editor and boyfriend/husband/partner of jenn) but he was also involved with alt lit gossip at some point and has stories on the internet. this is a short collection of aphoristic-type, religiously phrased narratives about a mystical, mysterious sect of more or less independently-operating "weed monks." also included are crude photoshops of religious (christian) imagery with weed paraphernalia. there is a self-insert of Dankland as the 'scribe' who records these stories onto the notes app of his phone. it sounds on its surface like a completely stupid book but it actually is, in my opinion, very good. most of the stories focus on a single, life-defining moment of a particular weed monk, in which they use marijuana to achieve a sort of enlightenment. some of these have stuck with me, for example, comparing our time and purpose on this earth to that of a cloud of weed smoke, something about making others high before we dissipate forever. i can't really articulate why i like this collection so much. i think it's just very thematically consistent, unique, and clever. the length of each piece works well in terms of pacing and keeping you entertained, and the conceit doesn't overstay its welcome. seeing the weed monks in different contexts and hearing different apocryphal stories across different types of topics was engaging, to me, and the tone is consistent, never over-the-top or lazy, and there is a heaviness, emphasis on life and death, time. i have recommended this collection to people and think more people should read it.