After Denver by Big Bruiser Dope Boy (11:11 press): i liked BBDB's first book(s) on clash, which i bought based on a tweet by troy james weaver. after reading that book, i interviewed BBDB for vol. 1 brooklyn. i've had a few stilted conversations with BBDB on twitter, mostly for/about the interview, and once when there was some drama about an editor giving his book 4/5 stars on goodreads. based on these poems, and on his tendency to express frustration about reviews of him/his work on twitter, and his emphasis on accuracy/clarity in writing (both in things he's published and in editing my interview with him), i feel proactively self-conscious about anything i say in this review, but which is good/fine, since it's public, and i should feel confident in what i write, or not write at all. this is a very small collection and i read it over two 'sessions'. 11 of the 16 pieces in this book have appeared online and i think i read maybe 8 of them before getting the book and so they were already familiar to me (i have strong but yet-unarticulated opinions, for no particularly good or defensible reason, about books consisting mostly of already-published material). this collection consists of something like 8 mid-length poems, 8 stories, and an epilogue (i don't have it with me and am probably getting the ratio wrong), with sectioning based on whether the piece takes place before, during, or after BBDB's time living in denver (the epilogue functions as a manifesto of sorts to emphasize/clarify that these are all autofictional, and that writing about oneself with little-to-no literary intervention should be pursued as the correct way, or a correct way, to write). each piece, aside from maybe one poem and the epilogue, revolve explicitly around what feel like formative, related-ish experiences from BBDB's life, with an emphasis on working at bars and a high school crush. since these are autofictional, there are thus some consistent themes and images throughout and emphasis his previous (two) major relationships, male authority, and being an autofictional writer. i like the poems the most, i think, in particular the longer narrative one about a customer who obsesses with/harasses him. some other poems are sort of post-modern vents of frustration about writing/publishing and being understood/interpreted, as i understand them. he tends to leverage a sort of angry absurdity, as i read it, a sort of "is this what you want, fucker?" attitude about 'tropes' and ideas in his writing, the (in)ability, for others to separate identity from art, i think. i can't pretend to understand the reality that leads to the complex emotions behind this, but i can empathize, i think, to some degree, maybe, or at least i hope i can, and the fact that i have found myself thinking about them a lot leads me to feel like he's effective at expressing them. the prose section mostly consists of "Slabs", a set of interlinked narratives about having a crush on a fellow football player in high school. in these pieces, he employs many complex and unexpectedly (to me) expressive sentences and a wide vocabulary (i think he refers to ass cheeks as 'orbs' at one point, which stuck out to me because of some twitter discourse i saw once about young adult and/or fan fiction overusing 'orbs' for 'eyes'), but i personally found some of this descriptive language distracting and dense. but i like that there is a dark sort of humor expressed via long, complex paragraph punctuated by a short punchline-type sentence, and these punchlines (for lack of a better term) include some of my favorite lines/imagery, such as a line that's more or less like "I spent most of the summer eating mint ice cream and masturbating" following a detailed description of the summer training for junior varsity players. in terms of sequencing, i felt curious about what seemed to me like a sort of imbalance, with one subsection including all the 'slab' stories plus one story about a married man having a bed wetting problem, the inclusion of which felt "inexplicable", both in terms of the flow of this section as well as the epilogue, which decries attempts at obfuscating ones life through literary invention - since i don't think BBDB is married, the artifice of the story stands out a lot to me. i felt similarly about the end of the Slab sequence, with what is a more or less straightforward, realistic narrative ending with an absurd, surreal, nonsequitur-seeming scene. i liked this ending, actually, and enjoyed thinking about it, and how to interpret it, but the epilogue then made it less fun, i think, to think about, and more confusing. after this section, i think the story about his dad is a highlight (with its earnestness and clarity in style), and the story about working at the bar in Minnesota is a lowlight (with how it underscores the main plot with a text messaged paragraph summarizing the plot), but both of which (alongside everything else), i think, contribute successfully to this sense of holistic self-examination; BBDB isn't trying to frame himself any one way in this collection of autofiction, but presents all of himself, from his maturity/strength to his immaturity/pettiness. in this sense i think it's a good collection, is successful at doing what i understand he wants it to do, and i wish it were longer.
Since I Laid My Burden Down by Brontez Purnell (Feminist Press): my wife read and recommended this to me, but i'm not sure where she came across it. it is relatively short but took me a while to read. it is a loose, mostly plotless narrative about a 30-something Black, gay man who grew up in Alabama but then moved to California. the plot mostly revolves around the protagonist attending to funerals/deaths of men in his life - father, lover, uncle, etc., with each physical location (house, church, apartment, store) serving as a launching point for a reverie from his past revolving around family or previous lovers. the prose isn't very consistent or exciting, and is often awkward in an amateurish, copyediting way (confusing pronoun reference, confusing pacing, etc.), sometimes leaving me confused as to 'when' a certain thing is happening relative to other things, but it is still readable due to the continual, sometimes surprising and exciting little flourishes, like some turns of phrases or unexpectedly clear/brutal punchlines. there is also a strong adherence to comedy, exaggeration, silliness, shock humor, etc., in a way that makes it feel like a lot of the stories are being told over some casual family gathering or meal. there is a big emphasis on tying homesexuality up with trauma/abuse, on a proposed circularity of young boys being abused and turning into men who abuse young boys, and on how families and communities can often 'absorb' these traumas, or something, toward a path of forgiveness, or framing personal experience within a larger context of societal experience, which i have feelings about, on its surface, but which i don't feel qualified to say anything about. i think the book mostly serves as an intense, in-your-face, intersectional exposure of a lot of personal and cultural experiences that are generally hidden from straight, white, affluent people, or as affirmation for those who experience similar lives. most of the (white, straight, male authored) writing i've read has, for example, a certain approach to religiousness/christianity, a sort of condemnation of and alienation from the church, whereas, in this book, the characters that you'd 'assume' would be most alienated from their church find a supportive community because of these absorbed traumas. i feel unqualified to really say anything about this book or its purpose, but i think it's a good book and i enjoyed reading it, especially because of a particular scene toward the very end, which i feel was exceptionally provocative and put the entirety of the novel up until then into a different light, for me, which instantly transformed the book, in my mind, from a particular kind of book into something else, in a good way.
Human Tetris by Vi Khi Nao & Ali Raz (11:11 Press): this arrived as a free bonus with my order of after denver. i think several people received this book as a free bonus, based on pictures i've seen posted on twitter, which made me think that it was an unpopular/uninteresting book that they had published too many copies of, or something, seeing as how it's the default free bonus book. it is a collaborative collection of ~100 'personal ads,' like from craigslist, but written to be poetic, provocative, etc. the formatting of the book is such that each piece is printed sideways, with the title printed normally, so the reading experience kind of sucks, and requires holding the book in a stupid way to accommodate reading the perpendicular lines (i read several without first reading the titles, because of this, but then realized the titles often function as part of the text). i think the square shape of the book helps when holding the book this way, since there is more bend/give, allowing you to sort of hold it fully sideways more easily. each ad revolves around 2-3 themes for riffing, e.g. "cinderella + food", with the posted locations seemingly unrelated to the text (but sometimes sporting a joke) and a pun-based social media handle. i felt like after reading ~10 of them, i 'got' the idea of the exercise and felt uninterested in continuing, but continued anyway, only to find that little changes from piece to piece. the general pattern is to mix some real romantic/sexual content with non-romantic/sexual content, often in mixed, sort of meaningless but evocative metaphors. for example, i'm making this one up: "me: a starving cyclist with a bad case of road rash. you: a horny recumbent bicycle from the junk heap. let me ride you while lying down and eating a cliff bar, then we can ride off a cliff together and splash around in my jock strap." it reminded me of momo's mcsweeney's piece about doing kung fu, which is unfair to these authors and all the probably thousands of people who have done these kinds of projects in the past, but i bring it up because it feels like something that'd be interesting on mcsweeneys, but not in a book. some of the reviews i looked through mention a strength in how it treats race, gender, and sexuality, but in general it felt like, aside from a couple satirical kind of riffs (esp. in the first poem), these aspects play very little role in the conceit of each ad -- it felt like the details of each piece could have (or may have?) been randomly chosen or procedurally generated. the book would probably be more interesting to someone who has used craigslist or other personal ad services and/or engaged extensively in online dating, which i haven't done, such that it functions as a sort of parody text, and so if you're familiar with the source text, it's probably more interesting/nostalgic/etc. I'm in a bad mood, i think. it's a fine book.
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