| Title | : | Editorial |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0615612091 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780615612096 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 158 |
| Publication | : | First published February 4, 2010 |
Editorial Reviews
-
Arthur Graham is a panty-sniffing, booze-hounding, tax-dodging rapscallion, and he has been known to trick people of indeterminate age into viewing nude photos of himself online. He once killed a drifter in order to obtain an erection, and when that failed to work a second time, he started strangling kittens instead.
He doesn't love his mother, and he only cleans his toilet once every several months.
Arthur Graham is actually a double-agent working for STGRB, and he is only posting items in protest of GR censorship policies in order to collect "likes" from persons of interest to Michelle Obama and the NSA. -
There's so much to hate! Some readers are going to toss this book across the room to get it as far from them as possible.
There's so much to love! And I mean luuuuuvvv, baby... Some readers are going to toss one off to this! (If they have a willing partner, they might even toss their salad.)
That dichotomy makes for an interesting book!
The chapters in Arthur Graham's Editorial are short and sweet/sick, reading like vignettes for the scatterbrained as they flitter from one to another storyline like a diseased butterfly on decaying flowers.
Graham echoes Kafka. For no logical reason, characters are thrust forward into the unknown and the reader is left just as in the dark as to why as are Graham's hapless anti-heroes. And he echoes Bukowski. Besides the "fuck it all" attitude, one of the characters is literally a booze-soaked writer.
The overall story intentionally circles back upon itself as I knew it would, but in a way I found unexpectedly satisfying. I loved the apocalyptic commentary on the human race. Some readers will be tantalized/traumatized by the frequent mention of vages and pee-pees, because reading Editorial is like receiving a forceful enema from your mouth to your ass, leaving you feeling much dirtier by the end, and you'll fucking love it, you filthy sod. -
Rating: 4.25* of five
The Book Report: Did you ever wonder, standing there in front of your bookshelves, “Self,” you have to call yourself “Self” to make this work, “Self, what would happen if Virginia Woolf in full Orlando mode sat at a table with a bottle of Boodles and collaborated with Samuel Beckett and Bret Easton Ellis to rewrite Naked Lunch?”
You don't need to, actually, Arthur Graham did. He called the resulting...writings...Editorial: The Bizarro Press Edition.
My Review: I thought bizarro, the literary genre to which this novel (?) belongs, was juvenile, kinda like the showoffy po-mo nonsense that poseurs like Rick Moody and his unbearable Purple America or David Foster Wallace and his aptly titled but clearly misinterpreted Infinite Jest goof on pretentious literary snobbery, only not afraid to say Dirty Words or discuss Naughty Things.And the years flow past, each of them as unremarkable as the next, as unnoticed as nanoseconds, in fact, not even long enough to contain anything noticeable – centuries just barely registered as moments in space/time. Soon the millennia are passing by at a modest rate of 47 per minute, and of course all manner of things noticeable and not-so-noticeable occur along the way (though most falling into the latter category). Naturally there come periods where lying is greatly rewarded, followed by periods where lying is greatly punished (our poor unlucky editor!), along with every other conceivable and inconceivable reversal and re-reversal of standards, and…
Wait, did anyone else just hear God yawn?
So I started reading this book, provided to me by its author in the Satanically twitchy, horribly inconvenient PDF format, without a lot of expectations. Short hits of bizarro, like poppers, can enhance the momentary pleasures of reading. More often than not, I'm fine with the literary equivalent of fast-food sex, the warm glow passes soon enough, but hey don't cry because it's over snigger because it happened, and this afternoon I was in a fast-foody sorta mood.
And slowly it dawned on me. This guy isn't pointlessly showoffily using the fashionable conventions to obscure what is otherwise a fairly average and not so terribly interesting tale (see the two titles I've chosen for whipping above). This guy is, in his vulgar, potty-mouthed way, making a point that might actually be worth thinking about, like about perspective and perception:Florida was like a pathetic, flaccid cock unable to work it up. Meanwhile, Cuba sat waiting like a big, wet pussy, not even a hundred miles out.
Not an original thought, necessarily, but a thought presented in a way that cuts through the fog of ideology and politicking and associated foofaraw to present a multi-layered image that both defines and illuminates a geopolitical reality, while revolting the delicate and amusing the coarse. Well played, Mr. Graham!
At the end of the story comes the philosophical payload that you just knew, from word one, hadda be coming. The surprise to me was how succinct and unwrapped the payload was, a bareback mindfuck:Then it hit him: On a long enough timeline, not only did all things become possible, they eventually became inevitable. … So, given that so much is happening every moment,
and given that the interpretations of each moment are as numerous and varied as the uncountable beings (sentient and “nonsentient”) experiencing them, and given that history repeats itself over and over again in seemingly infinite circular variations while at the same spontaneously generating and shifting from one species, paradigm, and reality to the next, and given that on a long enough timeline not only did all things become possible, but in fact became inevitable, then why couldn’t {his} client
have been everything AND everywhere all at ONCE?
At the quantum level, ladies and gentlemen, all times are now and all places are here. The same strings that vibrate to create rocks, vibrate to create thee and me. And this, I think since I didn't ask him, is what Graham's nonsensical tale of the weresnake destiny of humanity is more or less about.
Or not. Who cares. If you don't like the quotes, you'll hate the book, and won't buy it. I think you should anyway. Read it to keep your reading bowels from getting blocked.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. -
This novella concerns the trials and tribulations of a young man forced from his aunt and uncle's home with naught but his wits and a suitcase full o' porn. Out in the big, bad, bizarro world he learns why we should envy prostitutes and that it pays to be flexible. He also deals with this depressing scenario:
No one reads books in this distant future, because a strange virus destroyed all written material long ago. It might be more accurate to say that the books were destroyed by fire, after this was identified as the only reliable means of killing them, but we never would’ve had to burn them all in the first place had it not been for the virus. One day without warning, every piece of paper between two covers seemed to develop a taste for our blood. Pamphlets and paperbacks would whisk along the streets, picking away at toes and tendons before descending upon their fallen prey. Encyclopedias, while relatively immobile by comparison, proved to be especially voracious volumes. Most hardcover titles were strong and fast enough to make the top of the food chain as airborne snapping deathtraps.
The writing pulsates with a semi-surrealistic vibe. (No, I have no idea what that means, but doesn't it sound impressive?)
Though none of the characters had enormous thumbs, I was reminded of early
Tom Robbins. And, though there were plenty of salacious drawings, none of them were of an asshole, yet I was still reminded of
Kurt Vonnegut. It would probably remind me of
Charles Bukowski, as well, but I haven't read anything by him yet. -
Only seven days, one week ago it was when skanking home alone in the bitterest of March winds I thought I caught a glimpse of the notorious Arthur Graham as I passed the reeking alley which leads to the King Billy public house, where no one goes except they who have to. He was hunched up against the wall lighting one cigarette off the end of its predecessor. I turned back in time to see him slither into the King Billy itself. Not being in possession of a loaded pistol or two fists of iron, it was folly therefore to pursue the scumbag into the bowels of the worst pub in Sneinton (the second worst area in Nottingham) but I felt I could not refrain. The sighs of uncounted readers were hissing me onward. Don’t let the bastard escape, they cooed. So close now, so close, they mewed.
I shoved the peeling door open and was almost felled by the rank stench of Billydom, the collective murk of the generations of pimps, child molesters, smackheads, crackheads, whackheads, tax gatherers, the halt, the lickspittle and the younger sisters thereof. Not an eye that wasn’t bloodshot. Not a single area of untattooed flesh. Not a fresh face in the whole bedizened roomful. I shovelled aside some limp bundles I took to be several less robust patrons and leaned forward at the bar.
“Did you see Arthur Graham come in here just now?”
“What’s that, sunshine? Are you police? You don’t look like police but the police don’t look like police these days.”
“No, I’m not police. Look.” I showed him my not-police ID. It was a small plastic card with an old photo of me endorsed with the words “I hereby certify the card holder is not employed in any capacity by the police force of Great Britain. “ Signed by the Chief Superintendent of the Met.
“Well okay, what you want anyhow? Who’s Arthur Graham?”
“This guy” I slapped the usual photo of him on the bar.
“Hmm” said the bartender, “such a handsome devil would be noticed anywhere.” He pointed towards the gents toilets. I squeezed through the heaving mass and stepped round several 12 year olds who were openly fixing up just inside the toilet door. I checked the stalls. Two transvestites, one straight looking office worker, clearly a client, and nothing else except smeared walls and graffiti promising the usual curt versions of paradise. But wait. What was that poking from the bowl in stall number five. A tail… an Arthurian tail, squiggling frantically. I seized this green, glistening, supple muscle. I tried to play the rowdy dowdy do on his scales but he was strong. Not able to haul the Grahamian beast from where he was lodged, I instead gave him a push and clung on. There was a dreadful sucking and slithering and as I looked back I saw the top of the toilet bowl receding, Arthur was pulling me down down down into the coils of piping, through the vast Victorian maze of sewers, down we went at a fierce pace as he thrashed his magnificent tail and as I clung on, riding the beast to who knows where as the detritus of Nottingham flushed around us, the filth, the disastrous dinners, the unwanted pets, the copies of Real Life Lolitas, the broken hearts, the broken arses (and their contents), the promises not worth the paper they were written on, the old songs which were the best, the harried looks, the despairing sex, the fruitless afternoons, the tissues and fissures of ordinary abandonment, the childproofed overdoses of everyday sorrow, the debouched drugs, the contact lenses, the future tenses, the used condoms, the caterwaulings, the cupidity and the lost phone numbers, it was like the excremental version of whirling to Oz on a tornado, but where whirled this strange author-reader crossbreed? We were violently disgorged in what I first took to be the Sargasso Sea but quickly realised was London Docklands. My long tail wriggled sinuously through the tin cans, body parts and rusted supermarket trolleys. My golden slitted eyes regarded the ruined Canary Wharf skyscrapers with mordant pleasure.
“So this is what it’s all about, Mr Graham,” I lisped. I had not mastered the tongue yet. It is quite a trick.
“Yes, “ he said. “Is it not delightful? Let us get jobs as arbitrageurs and then join a band –“
“I suppose it has to be Whitesnake –“
“sleep with William Burroughs –“
“can’t it be Donna Tartt? No? Edna O’Brien in 1966?”
“and wake up in the year 3123…”
“You know, “ I said, “this is as good a Friday night as I’ve had in a long time” -
Why Arthur Graham, I do believe I’m blushing!
I tell you, when you have to listen to depressing war stories or schizophrenic ramblings day after day, it’s so refreshing to get your hands on something that makes you laugh. Not little chuckle laughter (although there are plenty of chuckles to be had). No, I’m talking about snarfing coffee all over your monitor laughter. Cackling on public transit laughter. The kind of laughter that makes your tummy hurt. Oh yes folks, it’s very funny. That’s if you don’t mind a little filth in you humor. Me? I prefer it. A little filth, a little mind-fuckery; it’s an ace in the hole! And did I mention it’s clever? Very clever indeed.
This novella has a little bit of Vonnegut-esque quirk (complete with Breakfast of Champions style pointed illustrations) paired with some Pynchonian perversion, sprinkled with a bit of Tom Robbins wit for good measure, told in a voice that is all Arthur Graham.
Just go read it already.
****
Oh shit! I forgot to add the soundtrack: Ouroboros!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slXpsC... -
This is a refreshingly different book. It is written in an unconventional style, and tells the story of humanity as it occurs and reoccurs, always to the same end. Despite the infinite permutations of possibilities between time periods, we never learn. Irreverent but always relevant, the seemingly unrelated parts of the story ultimately fit together. Included are simply drawn sketches which cannot be unseen, and a desert episode that would make the Lizard King proud.
-
UPDATE: I FINALLY received my autographed HARD copy of
Editorial by
Arthur Graham. I must say, when I licked it, it tasted better than the e-book.
_____________
I absolutely LOVE the crude ouroboros, and other provocative illustrations. Then there is this: "It is no small secret that many writers are also alcoholics, drug addicts, sexual deviants, or habitual wearers of blue jean … Ed II was the rare writer (possibly the only writer) who never used booze … to bolster his creativity … he used it to dissolve the grotesque products of his mind, drowning the sick little bastards in the tub of his own skull before they ever saw the light of day.”
It may be first-time e-reader subliminal type-4 brain trauma, but I am now looking for a writer with a mind like Ed Tor II. I’d like to see just what he’s got up there worth drowning.
I suppose I should thank Mr. Graham for giving me the idea for a new start-up. If all goes well, I'll be rollin' in the dough by the time I'm 90!
In case you're interested, we are OPEN for business:
I also wonder which Ed II God-complex manifestation I would most enjoy being, “exaggerated male genitalia” or “cunt cannon”? How about both?
Editorial has given me the star charts, and I have set sail to explore my own God-complex manifestations. I'm thinking: Vishnu with a tail beating the crap out of a naughty-lus:
Or, Vishnu as a turtle with a large dildo-like protrusion:
Either way, I think I’m a winner. I may be brainwashed, maybe I read too much into it, maybe it’s the funny tea I’m drinking, but for whatever reason Editorial’s circular motion reminded me to re-visit my favorite esoteric teacher, Gurdjieff, and start "Eating the I".
But, then again, maybe I'll just take a nap and dream of all the possibilities for my new business exploits. -
Sometimes it takes a madman to write about a mad world. Or a mad man. And Arthur Graham comes across as one pissed off mofo in Editorial. He does not suffer fools gladly. He’s angry at this stupid, ignorant messed up world filled with toxic poison, liars, and politicians. Excuse me, that was redundant.
Chaotic. Satiric. Bizarric. Editorial is barely contained; it’s bursting at the seams, running off the rails, a few crayons shy of sanity. You have to stick with it to the end to make sense of it. And by “sense,” I mean kinda. It’s a slippery eel of a book. Even when you start to get what might be going on, you lose it again. It fools you and taunts you.
This comes from Bizarro Press, and it does have that hard-to-quantify Bizarro quality to it, which I describe as a willful disregard for the polite niceties of mainstream sensibility. Given what little Bizarro I have read,* I think of it not so much as a specific style but an impression of an author breaking or tweaking taboos. The feeling that they are challenging that which is supposedly sacred, revered, or just plain family-friendly. I respect that as a goal even if I don’t seek out much Bizarro lit. Editorial strays from what I understand as the typical works of the genre in that most Bizarro is straight narrative. Albeit with talking testicles, an anus with teeth, or babies taking murder holidays in the Hamptons. While Editorial has that Bizarro vibe, it also has an experimental edge, that of an author who is breaking narrative conventions, too, and pushing the possibilities of writing.
[Interlude]
Both of my novels have been described by a couple of readers as Bizarro. I find this categorization peculiar. It seems to equate “weird” with “Bizarro.” By that token, Williams S. Burroughs would be called “Bizarro.” Categorizations are imperfect, let’s admit that. “Experimental” is an ambiguous term. But I wrote Death by Zamboni in 2000 long before Bizarro ever existed. And by the time I finished A Greater Monster, I had only just heard of the genre Bizarro and had never read a Bizarro story. I may have a weird imagination, but I think after reading a couple Bizarro novels, neither A Greater Monster nor Death by Zamboni feels anything like Bizarro fiction. For all its flaws, “experimental” is a better term to my mind, and I consider myself to be an experimental writer.
Perhaps even better than being bizarre, I found Editorial to be funny. One utterly ridiculous scene involving Charles Bukowski makes no sense at all (even the character in the story went “huh?”), and I burst out on the L reading it. Editorial deserves four stars just for making me feel foolish in public.
*I know, you’d think I’d have read more, right? But, no, this is only the third Bizarro novella or story I’ve ever read. -
For Pete's sake, how come I am the only person around who has not read this yet?
Ttime to get excited again.
WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
I'm so revved up for this that I'm going to pee on the living room carpet!!!!
or smash my car into the sidewalk!
or trip over my own feet in front of a super hot dude covered in tats!
or pee in my pants in front of a super hot dude covered in tats! (That one would be worse)
or just... swallow my own epiglottis!
*cough* *choke* -
You're trapped in this sphere. The sphere is built out of all the individuals in the world that have lived or ever will live. And all of their bodies are overlapping one another so there's no light in the hollow center of this sphere - just the voices of these people all shouting their stories at you. And their stories are the thread that holds this mass of flesh together like patchwork.
So there you are in the center of this thing and all of a sudden it starts rolling down a hill. You lose your footing and now you're bouncing around. You're randomly smashing into all these different people. And every time you hit somebody, they try to tell you their tale or beg you for help, but there's nothing to grab onto and no way for you to help them. The sphere keeps rolling faster and faster and you keep smashing into more and more people until one day you finally reach the bottom and now you can stand up. It's still dark. Their stories are still being told and your still trapped in this horrific thing and you're beaten and bruised and can barely breathe, but the world has stopped spinning for the moment. And everything seems okay.
Of course, that's when you realize that the sphere actually hasn't stopped rolling at all. The pressure and force of your descent has destroyed you. You've been atomized and then smeared across the walls of this thing like wet paint. You're now a part of it. And all of a sudden there's someone else inside. And they are trapped. And you're just one of the billions of faces that make up the fleshy walls of this human balloon and you're trying to tell him your tale too but he can't hear you above all the other voices crying out to him which is ironic because those voices are all screaming the exact same thing.
We're all telling the exact same story. We just start at different points.
That's what reading this book felt like. -
In one of his monthly installments of "Stuff I've Been Reading" for The Believer, Nick Hornby posits that for those of us that are voluminous readers, our "reading body" will let us know when it needs to be fed a certain type of book, much as our human body sometimes needs a steak, a salad, a piece of chocolate cake. Graham's Editorial was the exact book that my reading self craved, at the exactly perfect time.
Irreverant, hilarious and thought-provoking, this novel has all of the building blocks of great fiction. Did I mention awesome, hand drawn pictures? Check that box. Throw in a chapter XXXX'd out to play to our most depraved imaginations, and you have the makings of a fictional smorgasbord with something for anyone/everyone to love.
The employment of the Ouroboros in the narrative works. Following the storyline along the scaled back of the world snake takes the reader along for a wild ride with interesting (and very, very funny) twists.
4.5/5 stars - I am looking forward to reading another Graham novel. -
Goodreads author
Arthur Graham promises that if enough people pretend to read his book he will pose naked with a motor-oil soaked sponge!
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
That's how I'm interpreting it, anyway. -
Book Info: Genre: Bizarro
Reading Level: Adult
Recommended for: Fans of bizarro fiction, those interested in circular meta-fiction
Trigger Warnings: Graphic sex (including bestiality and coprophilia), (implied*) incest, (implied) child molestation, genocide, blasphemy, non-PC use of “faggot”
My Thoughts: This is an extremely strange and disconnected story, which is really the point I suppose. It’s definitely not a light or quick read, as it is very important to pay attention to understand where and when you are, who is telling the story, etc. That said, there are some really good ideas expressed in this book. Since there is no real way to explain it, I’ll mostly provide quotes so you can have an idea of the really wonderful writing style of this author.“Mealtimes with aunt and uncle were always an incredibly interesting, if dreadfully dull affair.”
While I wouldn’t say this is the sort of book I would recommend to just anyone, the writing style is really amazing, and a lot of the ideas resonated strongly. Bizarro fiction is often full of graphic sex and violence, and this is no exception (at least the sex), so if that bothers you, best to stay away. The writers also frequently thumb their noses at PC language, so keep that in mind. However, if you are interested in some circular meta-fiction that will definitely make you think, check this book out. And, of course, if you’re a fan of bizarro, don’t miss this one!
“Homo sapiens—the so-called ‘wise ape’—is the only one that bothers to cover its ass. It is also the only species that purposefully poisons its environment and murders its own kind en masse.”
“It is no small secret that many writers are also alcoholics, drug addicts, sexual deviants, or habitual wearers of blue jeans (in some cases all of the above).”
“On a long enough timeline, not only did all things become possible, they eventually became inevitable.”
Disclosure: I received a PDF copy from the author in exchange for a review. I later downloaded an updated edition from Amazon when it was on free KDP promotion. All opinions are my own.
Synopsis: Follow the editor and his client into the infinite ring of Ouroboros, the self-devouring, in this episodic novella by Arthur Graham. A story told through concentric circles of narrative, each adding a layer of truth while further smothering all notions of certainty, Editorial will leave readers wondering just how many times the same tale can be swallowed...
*Please note: When I use (implied) in my trigger warnings, I mean the subject comes up, but is not graphically represented. It is, however, implied that it happens. -
Here’s a quick synopsis that I hope gives nothing away. This book is a series of stories and it is your job to put them all together. The book features an orphan who tells his life story. It also features a strange drifter who turns into a snake. There’s also a horrifying dystopia a thousand or so years into the future wherein global warming is no longer questioned as a valid reality and, most interesting to me, some meta wherein an editor interacts with a book, which may or may not be this novel.
I really didn’t like this book at first and almost set it down around page 40 because I seriously had no idea where it was going. But even in the initial seeming-chaos of the plot, Graham’s engaging writing style kept me going. I am also not generally the biggest metafiction fan because meta as a plot device has lately become tiresome. Writers need to have a good reason for using meta elements and need to be good enough at their craft to pull it off. Writers like David Foster Wallace (whom I find very nearly unreadable and I receive a lot of flak every time I reveal this opinion) and Charlie Kaufman have spawned a lot of imitators who mistake endless snarky self-reference for fine writing and invoke meta rather than write a good novel. I am happy to say that Graham’s meta – if it is meta – works.
You can read my entire discussion of Graham's book here. -
I wasn't sure which I appreciated less—the insincere concern or the genuine indifference.
There was a certain apprehension in approaching this book. There is a politeness to goodreads (despite the intentions of its robber baron overlords) and I dreaded interrupting such civility. The author is a sociable figure, not mercenary. One who regularly succeeds in making me laugh. His presence doesn't appear to simply push his own work. That is refreshing. I was hoping I wouldn't find a drunken bizarre exercise in the grotesque. Editorial certainly contains those elements, but is so much more.
Gentle were the small night waves lapping warmly against its cold, monolithic form.
Creation is a starting point, the concept is explored in myriad guises and finds form in consumption and then evacuation. Editorial recalls the best of Bataille: grim and often hilarious
4.7 stars -
*dons nipple pasties and ginger wig*
giveaway, motherfuckers.
you have to play to win.
*climbs onto pole and gets back to #werk* -
This review is not about the book, I haven't read the book, so I can't talk about the book, when I haven't read the book. Hope that's clear.
Note that if this was an unpublished book, I could review it and rate it and talk about the book if I haven't read the book. It says I can in GR review rules, so it must be true.
But this is a published book, not an unpublished book. So a different logic applies in GR rules, it gets confusing what and how that was, anyway it was above.
No, this review is about the author behavior. Hang on, GR, I'm not going to say anything wrong about this author's behavior. OK, I heard from reliable sources that he has recently posted naked pictures of himself on the internet. I'm not one to check writers' naked pictures on the internet, so I will not confirm the information, but it must be true because he said so himself. Which makes him a reliable source, at least on his naked pictures. I don't know if he is a reliable source of books, because as I said, I haven't read the book, so I can't talk about the book, when I haven't read the book, where was I.
I rate this book because I can rate a book I haven't read, it says so in Users Rights Act at GR, unless it was Users' Rules known as Review Rules, yes, this must have been it, why did I think it was about users' rights I don't know. But it says there I have the right to rate books, which I rate on author's behavior as reliable source of information. On naked pictures, since I haven't read the book, hope that was clear.
Note: this review is about author behavior, but in relation with THE BOOK.
This work by
Alfaniel is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. -
Well. Well, well, well.
What you're about to read is a review that in no way does justice to this book. I'm not sure any reviewer could, so it's surprising to see so many have tried. I'll give it a go, but I'm not expecting to be happy with this review when it's done.
What's it about? Well, it's about everything. Happening all at once. Over and over again. But funny. We're led through a series of absurd episodes across time and space by an unreliable narrator, occasionally clumsily but frequently with such effortless sleight of hand that you don't notice the joins from one scene to the next. We zip back and forth between settings and characters - a young boy growing up in the desert, a nuclear apocalypse, a travelling salesman passing the time in Reno - while certain themes - snakes, stories, masturbation - crop up time and again.
I guess the most obvious thing to say (and I'm loathe to do it) is that it calls to mind the work of Kurt Vonnegut. It doesn't seem very fair to go comparing any work by a first time author to that of one of the greatest literary minds of the 20th Century, but is it my fault it invites comparison?
Graham has a similar way of tackling the minutiae of life and its grand, daunting mysteries on the same stage (often in the same paragraph). There's a fervent cynicism to the writing, matched by a mad, absurdist bent, at once excited by the boundless possibilities of the universe, tempered by the sadness of the inevitable.
One thing that KV had, though - perhaps lacking here - was compassion. You rarely get much of a sense from Editorial that Graham cares about his characters (mostly broad archetypes or intangible sketches by design) or even humanity in general. That keeps things light (no easy task when trying to address important questions about truth and the objectivity of reality) and, again, it's not fair of me to keep comparing one writer's to another, but even on his own terms, Graham demonstrates at least one moment of real compassionate writing, describing one bizarre, life-changing night in the life of a drunken bum on the verge of committing suicide.
It's the only instance in the book where I really connected with a character (though I frequently connected with ideas) and if there had been a few more of them this would probably be a five star work.
As it is, Editorial is a mind-bogglingly ambitious work of meta-fiction sure to have you grinning just a frequently as scratching your head in frustration as you try to piece together its strange jigsaw puzzle of satire, conceptualism and dick jokes. I won't pretend I've got it all figured out, but I'm certainly impressed. -
I keep trying to write this review with a straight face and I cannot do it. My face keeps breaking into a spontaneous smile from which laughter ensues. I keep wondering how in the heck I will convey this book, to you dear reader, to which you have probably not had the pleasure of reading, but should (and if you already have read this one, well then, you'll probably be able to follow this patchwork quilt of a review better than most).
Arthur Graham has crafted a wonderful fable-like adventure that evokes the absurdity and alienation of existence with intelligence and boat loads of depraved graphic humor. The only way I can describe it is: if this book were a visual artist, Dali, would be its name. Now mash that up with They Live (a wonderful John Carpenter movie), Hunter S. Thompson, The Doors, and hopefully you can sort of visualize as to what I'm getting at here, hopefully.
What I can say with a straight face is that book will never let you down. If it starts to get boring, something ridiculous occurs or is said. As is written in the book itself, "All things begin and end with either an action or utterance."
The story begins horrifically, in a way that is quite believable, and then morphs it into a bizarre story that is being worked together by an editor, who really wants to be a writer, for his client. However, when I started to wonder how the heck all these pieces were going to fit together, I was surprised by the ending, in which everything is pulled tightly to make sense.
So, if you want to go on a 31st Century adventure, in which anything can occur, and a lot of unbelievable things do, pick up a copy of this book today. I don't think you'll be disappointed. At least I hope not. -
My copy of this book, signed by the author, is among my most cherished possessions.
-
REVIEW ALSO ON:
http://bibliomantics.com/2012/04/26/b......
This is the first time I have ever read a book that I considered to be a complete mind fuck. David Lynch in prose. No clear genre. I finished not exactly sure what I had read or what I was meant to learn when I reached the last page. Like the ouroboros on its cover, the narrative was cyclical with a similar story being written and retold in a constantly shifting narrative. When I finished I felt like I had read a book within a book within a book. Is it the Inception of books? Almost.
The initial story opens with our nameless narrator, recently having become an orphan and forced to live with his horrid aunt and uncle after his parents died in a horrific car accident that he inexplicably survived. He spends his days eating, reading, and masturbating until one day he is ejected from their home and wanders through the desert. At which point he sheds his skin and turns into a snake. What what what?
What follows is a series of narrators, from the orphan boy to a traveling salesman, an editor who is writing a similar story about the orphan boy but set in the future, someone who is hired by the possible orphan boy to write his life story which becomes the content of this book (who may or may not be the editor), all of whom write in leather bound black books, the list goes on and on. As if the changing narrators wasn’t enough, the point of view also changes from 1st to 3rd person and occasionally in 2nd. There’s even some breaking of the 4th wall/glorious meta-fiction when Graham writes, “My editor is telling me…” Is it still called the 4th wall in literature, or would it be breaking the 3rd page?
A great deal of the novel is set in the year 2483, with the first female president, who is essentially the best president of all time in the public eye. Girl power! She has cut carbon emissions, unemployment, crime rates, prison overcrowding, and has legalized weed and used the extra tax money earned off it to fund universal healthcare. I’d definitely do that last bit if I were president, it would probably get us out of our economic slump.
However, the lowered carbon emissions somehow results in a worldwide global cooling, with the increased frozen water dropping sea levels thousands of feet, turning beaches into giant cliffs and revealing the long lost city of Atlantis. As we are told, “Predictably, this turn of events resulted in much jubilation and declarations of ‘told ya so’ amongst those whose forefathers had somehow managed to remain skeptical of global warming, even as dead polar bears floated through their backyards on the flooded banks of the Mississippi.” Hysterical satire like this pervades the pages, and makes the glimpse into the future even more ridiculous. Not to mention the dolphin rape and the government created Ark Force One.
Even farther into the future, all the books are stricken with a disease which makes them come to life with an appetite for human flesh. Literally, killer books. There is a hierarchy in the book food chain with hardcovers at the very top. Obviously. The narrator recalls a time when some people, “Couldn’t be troubled at all to pick up a book in earlier times (at least one that wasn’t about vampires, celebrities, or chicken soup)”. Oh humanity, you are such easy fodder, you and your hatred for the written word and the delicious smell of a new book. Although I wouldn’t attempt to smell a ravenous book from the future.
Throughout the narrative shifts it becomes increasingly apparent that we are dealing with an untrustworthy narrator, one who allows others to write his history as they see fit, who alters his own history, and who even claims to be immortal. Or an immortal snake. Whichever way you read it. Speaking of, the snake is a constant them throughout the text, from the one on the cover, the snake eating itself (AKA the ouroboros), references to slithering, people devouring one another whole, and plenty of biblical references. As expected, there is even a retelling of Adam and Eve which plays into the rest of the story here and there.
One of the things I love about Graham’s writing is the way in which he plays with vocabulary. For once I actually needed to use my Kindle to look up words, and that’s just fine by me. From vittles/victuals, which means food or provisions to onanistic oeuvre, a kenning for a collection of masturbatory materials, and even podiatric parts in place of feet, it quickly became apparent that Graham is one smart fellow. No awkward out of place thesaurus use here, just bold, intelligent prose.
Editorial is incredibly ambitious, with multiple narratives, retellings, connective elements, interweaving timelines, and a plot that reads like a moebius strip. However, this is also its downfall for some, and certain readers might be thrown off by the confusing plot and immense scope. Regardless of these tiny qualms, the novella is incredibly well written and Graham has a pitch perfect sense of humor. It’s my first foray into a Bizarro Press selection and will not be my last. -
I do not even know if a review will do this justice, but I will try. This was unlike anything I have read. The circular nature of the storytelling and the way that the plot wrapped around itself was certainly different. The reader must pay attention to detail (don't try this while half drunk or half asleep) and reading it was sometimes a bit challenging, but so worth it. While reading the last 10% of the book, I had a shitty grin on my face the entire time. It was like there was a firework show going on in my head as the seemingly random strands came from all angles and I really understood the depth of what I was reading.................That is all, I don't know what else to say!
P.S. Maybe read Danger's Review below for a more concise description. -
I wanted to read this in one sitting. My wife walked in looking delicious and I just finished reading the behind the diner scene and it was something I had to partake in myself.
A walk with an editor and his client to write a life story. Arthur gives you a world of bizarre. Snake skinned people, a sneak peek at the 31st century and some sex. Some of the events may take place someday. Just when you start getting bored with a chapter, he says something funny again.
A must read for fans of strange events. This book is said to have similarlies to The Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. -
Get real. I am NOT going to read a book by a guy who pastes nude pictures of his ugly ass on the internet. Now, pictures of his #$@& sent via iPhone to girls....... well, THAT's different.
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A highly entertaining and bemuddling collection of fantasy narratives - from almost possible to delirious to utterly bonkers - presented through focal personalities that merge into one another irrespective of gender, and indeed species, in a rather consistent manner; not a one-off transformation around which everything hinges, but a continuous cycle of back and forth reminiscent of Pelevin’s Life of Insects.
Sudden plunges into Ballardian/Vonnegutian versions of the future - a global cooling, where the growing polar ice has absorbed so much of the world ocean’s water that “Beaches became towering mountaintops. Seabed gave way to salt flat”, leading to economic upheavals: “While many were happy to have reclaimed so much land from Neptune’s briny grasp, for mariners such as I it was a complete disaster.”
“Finally, a hint of normal far out speculative fiction,” thinks the beguiled reader, before the swift snowballing into extravagant exploratory narratives worthy of Gargantua and Pantagruel, or Baron Munchausen: the more north the ship sails, the hotter it gets… additional suns appear in the sky… boiled sea creatures float all around… the crew also suffers from severe cases of boiled alive.
This is all of course a mere 2% of the stuff going on in the book. Among other things there are also possible quotes of Tideland (girl helps Daddy with heroin), Evil Dead (blood sucking hardcover tomes flying about).
Googling the author yielded unexpected results: American. Whereas the prose style was at places very English - and by very English I mean deliberately eccentric Robert Rankin style – while the structure itself is decidedly continental, of the non-Latin variety: German, French, or Russian, or like that quasi-European Brit genius Iain Banks.
A thoroughly un-American book. I’ll be sure to alert the authorities.
I wonder how the book market and public reacts to such a style – after all, the quasi-European style, nah, ‘quasi’ has a crappy ring to it – after all, the meta-European style is tolerated only in one figure per generation: Vonnegut, Banks, Foster Wallace…
There is a subtle presence of Jodorowski too, the meta-baron of meta-Europeanism. Beware sudden bursts of El Topo type symbolisms.
Total disregard for the prevalent commercial rules of show don’t tell and similar crud, which I applaud by default, not having the guts to quite ignore the aforementioned crud myself.
A hint of earnestsnessnessicity resurfaces here and there, a shred of pathos, which almost breaks the magic of the flow, but doesn’t. It only hangs as a threat for a while, and then retreats.
This is a book about sex, about masturbation, about interaction, about capital, about the eternal cycle of being cut off from the mother and being reabsorbed by her; of being a separate identity and merging with someone else. About the other eternal cycles of more geological and cosmic proportions. Of shedding one’s skin and renewal, and of an interpretation of society as basically based on different shades of cannibalism and prostitution: we are all cannibals and cannibal food, whores and whore customers, and the sh*t powered toilet-rocket of the poet has just reached orbit.
Yes, this is also part of the plot. Fantastic. -
If William S. Burroughs and Kurt Vonnegut turned into hermaphroditic snakes and had a baby together, this is the kind of book it would write. Editorial by Arthur Graham (with whom I share a publisher) is crude, funny and profound. Graham wrestles with big ideas like the theory of relativity, Marxist historicism, humanity’s impact on the environment and the nature of storytelling. He also writes a scene in which Charles Bukowski defecates on a man riding a flying toilet. Graham seamlessly blends the intellectual and scatological—often within the same sentence—in this challenging experimental novel. This is a wild ride of a book, one that I didn’t want to see come to an end.
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I interviewed Arthur about this book and more, and you can listen
here!
A mixture of Calvino, Vonnegut, Burroughs and Graham. Alternative title: “if on a traveler’s dick a snake.” Trusting there’s method behind the madness pays off, and when the method is learned, it makes you wanna go back and read the whole thing again in context. -
Chaos and destruction without the complete obliteration of the "world".
A very pompous sort of narration but so brilliantly written the tone changes with every s
I have to agree. I don't know what I just read. I mean I do...but then when I try to properly review it I realize I have no idea what the fuck I am saying.
The narration of this book comes off pompous but it is so brilliantly written mixing a proper worded sentence with "hours of page-peeling and penis pumping" just for example. The flow of narration is seamless and reads like a manic, sleep deprived, alcoholic, slur with the class and style of a well written piece of literary work....yeah I don't know how that's possible either. To be able to tell a story in a very intellectual manner while at the same time just running at a nonsensical pace pretty much had my brain trying to keep up.
I have seen movies that run around in this sort nonsensical sensical manner. Tide Land and Magnolia stand out. Donnie Dark does too.
The Editor reminds me of someone Hunter S. Thompson would have come up with.
Pretty much confirms my desire to not only have a penis but to be able to give myself proper head. Wouldn't mind giving myself proper face, but there's something bout the male orgasm that has me fantasizing.
A swirling chaotic mess of a cum stain that you can sniff and sniff and sniff and stil only come up with part of the story of how it got there. -
Graham manages to make a highly readable experimental narrative in this bizarre work. Some of the bizarro takes on experimental fiction that I've seen become extremely difficult to read, but not this one. Possibilities and eventualities, Graham's writing in this one is conceptually challenging at the same time that the prose is loose and fun. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Chapter 43 is a particular masterpiece.
