Book Review : "A Dirty Job"

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It's rare for me to give up on a book I've already invested time on, but having slogged through a third of this one, I was not about to endure any more.

If you like middle school level humor, casual white male privilege that thinks it's cute, or reading the phrase "beta male" seventy thousand billion times, then this may be the book for you. Moore has evidently been told how hilarious he is so often that he never says in one sentence what he can stretch out to five in order to include all his knee slappers. Ugh.

The characters here are not really characters, they are caricatures. The plot had promise, but Moore tangles it up in so much nonsense and convoluted silliness that it leaves the reader wondering WT exact F? I found it not to be worth the effort of finding out. By the time I had waded through the easy shots at women, Asians, and blacks, I'd had enough. You don't have to be the PC Police to know stupid.

NOT recommended.

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The Knave Of Hearts Victorious

There is a sweet weight beside me in bed

curled close,

and that is my heart wandering

beyond the edges of my skin.

There is a jester who conquers with nonsense.

Ancient queens called, "Bring me my fool!",

but I am the witless one enticed into battle

over a headless rag that used to be a green frog.

See, Master? My heart is flown

and follows wherever you go,

like a colorful pennant declaring my imprimatur and blessing 

over Lord Goodboi, royal dog!

________

for Sunday Muse #119.

Old King Bosco, blind but still all-seeing. I was (and am) his personal Sheep to herd.

 

Young King Bosco, certain of a treat!

Zacky Peanut, heir to the royal throne!

Apes In The Coffee

There are apes in a woman's coffee.

"We warm ourselves against a hostile environment," say the faces upturned in the steam.

"Asian disciplines,

activism,

on-line broadsides,

these failed.

But this warm pool...is become our haven."

The woman's mind and limbs are heavy as asteroids, 

her heart a falling anvil,

her simian teachers ascended, sanguine.

_______

for Flash 55, hosted by the amazing Hedgewitch O' The Wilds, noted connoisseur of cofveve. 

__________

Book Review : "Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant"

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Honestly, after reading the goshawful "Breathing Lessons" (Pulitzer Prize? Really????), I had sworn off Anne Tyler novels for years. To me, she is very uneven. "The Accidental Tourist", "A Patchwork Planet" and "Saint Maybe" were great, "Celestial Navigation" was good but horribly sad, "Morgan's Passing" and "Searching For Caleb" were okay, "Ladder Of Years" could have been good but the wimpy, irritating ending ruined it, and "Breathing Lessons" and "Back When We Were Grownups" were just awful. That said, I kept hearing that this novel might be her best, so I decided to read it and I have to say, it was every bit as good as "Saint Maybe."

I couldn't give it five stars perhaps for personal reasons having nothing to with the writing. The dysfunctional Tull family was way too weirdly like my own original family and so it was hard for me to read; it was like being suddenly plunged back into my own past and that isn't a place I want to go, ever. So I guess I recommend it for Tyler fans, and I'm glad to have read it, but it did not make me want to read another by her. Ten is plenty.

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Book Review : "The Sea-Beast Takes A Lover"

The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: Stories by Michael Andreasen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Holy cats, did I love this. As a big fan of Donald Barthelme, this collection reminded me a lot of his stories, though of course this one reads as more modern. Andreasen creates bizarro worlds and story lines to illustrate all too familiar themes of isolation, the desire for connection, and that old show stopper, the continuing misery of being alive. That said, these stories--for the most part--are anything but somber, and several of them are howlingly funny. It is, in part, the author's perfect ear for language that makes this work. He boomerangs from scholarly, arcane language to the most casual slang and back again, and he plays fast and loose with time as well, all to glorious effect.

The title story is the best, in my view. We meet a crew of salty sailors whose ship is locked in the embrace of a love-struck kraken whose misguided desires are dragging the ship down by degrees. The story is up to its gunwales in seagoing parlance, but just when the reader gets into that Mutiny On The Bounty vibe, sailors start appearing wearing sunglasses and ear buds and playing video games to pass the time as the titular Sea-Beast embraces their vessel. So, who's in charge here? The cannibalistic Admiral, that's who. I laughed so hard at this story that I had to stop and gather myself before finishing. Arr!

Here's a quick note on the other ten stories:

Our Fathers At Sea--a meditation on failure of family connection, in which the elderly are sent to the bottom of the ocean in pressure-resistant capsules launched from a carnival-like seaside park.

Bodies In Space--On a business trip, a married man referred to only as "The Man Of The Future" strays with a co-worker in the back seat of a Volvo. Just as satisfaction is at hand, both he and his paramour are abducted by aliens.

The King's Teacup At Rest--The King Of Retired Amusements buys a closed fairground and discovers the impossibility of bringing the past back to useful life. Don't eat the hot dogs.

He Is The Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah Hallelujah--A grade-school age girl tells the story of her ever-cheerful and nearly Holy Infant-ish baby brother, as well as the story of her mother and "aunt" who are trying to avoid the aunt's ex-husband. This story, despite its odd elements, was more serious than most, and one of my favorites.

Rockabye Rocketboy--an airborne teenage boy is admired from afar by a beautiful porn star. Sometimes we only want what we can't really have.

The Saints In The Parlor--four saints (Saint Her Own Hand On A Plate, Saint Upside Down Skull, Saint Tongue Of Flame and Saint of Dubious Or Mythical Origin) somehow find themselves materialized in someone's parlor.

Andy, Lord Of Ruin--third grader Andy, a pulling-wings-off-flies type kid, becomes dangerously unstable at an atomic level. Officials, teachers, parents and neighbors debate what to do before he explodes.

Jenny--The narrator's teenage sister is a normal girl except for not having a head. He loves and resents her at the same time, as her condition controls the lives of the whole family including him.

Rite of Baptism--parents and congregation vow to help (name) through life's shitty trials, and they are legion.

Blunderbuss--something goes wrong during a field trip to the Time Institute. This had me in tears from laughing.

One of the best short story collections I have ever read. If you can't abide the bizarro stuff, it might not be for you, but i adored it. Highly, highly recommended.

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Love At Zero Or Twenty Atmospheres

We gave each other little sips of air,

enough to keep hearts beating, but

hypoxia made us believe it was love.

Your fallen eyelash black on the pillow

turned to a swan,

our future a loaf.

We called its hissing a song and danced

in the night of its wing, warm and blind.

Our marriage in space, though invalid, was dope ballet.

Now we have a cat, and the swan is dead.

I live in our cat's ear,

you on its tail,

composing music out of echos 

transforming motion into purpose,

all of it faux and yet it takes up every space,

Every thought,

every moment.

So we say, "Look at our cat, stuffed with swan,

his head tilting side to side at us,

isn't he absurd?"

He licks his lips and bats us together,

like dolls in the hands of a misfit girl

Laughing, screaming, friendless except for the stuff she can summon from her damaged and endless imagination.

________

for Sunday Muse 117. 

Bucket Of Tar

Here is a bucket of tar 

and a photograph of us dancing

on the head of a pin

shaped from a cloud already burning away.

I know how angry you are,

that you'd love to pour across my border

and make me care, but 

my bridges are mirrors where magpies scry. 

I know I said things, we both did,

with knives and roses in our teeth.

I am Eve with an apple in my jaw,

for whom God made highways and the will to survive.

Take the tar

and make your skin warm again.

Travel over yourself to the next natural barrier,

listen to the river and toss the photograph in.

______

for The Sunday Muse #117

photograph by the amazing Susie Clevenger