| Title | : | Fuckness |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Audiobook |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
| Publication | : | First published March 13, 2011 |
Let Andersen Prunty (ZEROSTRATA, MORNING IS DEAD, and THE BEARD) guide you through a sometimes hilarious, sometimes violent and terrifying coming-of-age Midwestern gothic novel.
Fuckness Reviews
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This REVIEW is entitled MY
STEVE’S TIMELINE:
So here is a brief recap of my personal timeline...
Birth thru Day 14,833: Number of books I've read with the word FUCK in the title = 0
Day 14,833 thru Day 14,845 : Number of books read with the word FUCK in the title = 2***
***Almost 3 as
Rico Slade Will Fucking Kill You is on my TBR soon list).
CONCLUSIONS:
A. My reading habits have become more adventurous and less parochial of late.
B. I...have...been...alive...for almost 15,000 days...HOLY SUICIDAL BUZZ KILLS BATMAN, what a sad RAIN OF CRAP this mathematical realization has dropped on my life parade.
C.
This feeling that I have inside right now...this distant, disconnected, disillusioned feeling of utter unbelonging and undirected rage...this is what is meant by FUCKNESS.
Going into this book you should know that it is not a warm basket of soft home made cookies or a bright ray of sunshine heating the chill from your bones on a cool autumn afternoon. WRONG STORY! This is an emotional "snuff" film. It is the literary equivalent of:
(1) Stepping out of the shower and glancing in the mirror to realize that the “few” extra pounds you’d thought you put on turned out to have a zero behind them; or
(2) Noticing that the mole you found last year on your back has grown considerably darker and has a hair coming out of it; or
(3) The moment you realize that no matter how much you care and try to do right by people in your life, the world is just too full of gaggles of despicable nastiados to ever seem to increase the brightness around you; or
(4) How about a visual...
...Yeah, it is kinda like that.
It is also extremely well-written and darkly hilarious (please note the darkly modifying hilarious). This is the story of Wally Black, a 16 year-old 8th grader (he has been held back a number of times) who describes himself as tall, gangly and hideously ugly. His parents (who he refers as THE mom and THE dad) include a bitter, violent, ex-machinist who lost both legs in an industrial accident and a cold, mean-spirited woman who never quite recovered from the stroke she blames on Wally.
Wally is sad, lonely, has no friends and is bullied (despite his height) by both classmates and teachers. This is the story, as told by Wally, of his “BAD TIME” and a bad time it is. However, throughout the narrative, Wally’s tone and humor is such that you are able to follow him along on this “less than skippy” journey without reaching for the “third rail” of the track. Anderson Prunty deserves some major kudos for that because a lesser writer would either have had you caring less for Wally or being unable to continue the narrative given how bleak it is. Prunty rides the perfect emotional seam and tells an incredibly powerful, original tale that felt to me like a cross between
Flowers for Algernon and
Horns.
I was very close to giving this 5 stars but there were a few times in the story where I thought Prunty might have tossed in a belly laugh or sucked a tad more out of the scene. This is an extremely minor quibble and if I wasn’t feeling the FUCKNESS of being almost 15,000 days old I might have let it go. However, as a crotchety old man I, am damn well entitled to find something to bitch and moan about and there is nothing you young whippersnappers can do about it. So there!!
Still this is a strong 4 stars and I plan to read a lot more of Anderson Prunty. Well, that's about it. I am going to go now and search for any new places on my body in which I may be growing hair and maybe do a google search for ointments and creams or some other such FUCKNESS. Life well and truly sucks. Just kidding...maybe!!
P.S.
Let's see the kitty one more time
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#AbusedChild
#ViolentSchoolyardBullies
#CartoonCharacters
#AbusePlayedForLaughs
#NotFunny
#MomForcesSonToWearHorns
#LittleDemon
#ChildAvenger
#MultipleMurders
#CantTakeTheseDamnHornsOff
#MagicHorns
#Flashbacks
#Digressions
#TooManyFlashbacksAndDigressions
#ICanOnlyHandleSoMuch
#AuthorHasPurityOfVision
#ImpressivelyConsistentVision
#HisVisionIsOppressive
#TriesTooHard
#EventuallyBecameQuiteGrueling
#UnpleasantToRead
#IGaveUp -
Very Un-PC, deviously funny stuff... slapstick in the beloved & much appreciated Beavis & Butthead method. Somehow, this reminds me of the eons-better-than-this Joyce Carol Oates classic, "Zombie" since it's basically told through the eyes of a sociopathic murderer, too. It is grotesque & quirky. Fun. Yeah, fun. Gaudy. Also reminiscent of "Mister B. Gone" by Clive Barker.
But, then again, it IS trash. This is like being entertained at the CITY DUMP. Like, seriously. Go somxewhere better next time!
PS Cute title, though -
Have you ever watched a footrace where someone storms off the line as though they were born to run, charging past the other runners? Have you cheered with the crowd as that runner strode with an easy, powerful athleticism that got you to your feet and filled you with both envy and awe?
Have you then watched as that same runner tripped on their shoelace, windmilled their arms, crashed to the floor and painfully limped to the finish line minutes behind the rest of the competition?
If you have, or you can imagine such a scenario, then you have a ready-made analogy for Fuckness.
The teen protagonist of the novel, Wallace Black, is a misfit to rule them all, a high school kid who just can’t fit in, whose learning difficulties (or refusal to conform to the world around him) has seen him repeat eighth grade three times. He lives with a disabled abusive father and alcoholic abusive mother, has no real friends, is loathed by his teachers and only really has one meaningful human connection- a drifter who lives in the local park.
All Wallace wants to is to avoid what he calls the ‘fuckness’- the bullshit, flim-flam and artifice of everyday life that the people accept without question. Wallace goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid the Fuckness, refusing to participate at school and generally disengaging from everyone around him, most of whom he regards as conformist ‘blobs’.
So far so good. Wallace’s philosophy on life is at times very funny, and he is both perceptive and naïve, so he makes for an interesting and sympathetic character. His crappy life, surrounded by people he hates is a great setup for some sort of dramatic change.
Prunty writes well, and makes the inside of Wallace’s head weird and fascinating, so the first fifty or so pages of this story really sucked me in, providing the sort of gonzo-weirdo read you would expect from a book with a title like Fuckness.
Then, (sigh) it all gets magical-realism-y. Wallace acquires a set of horns, yes, like on a bull, or perhaps a devil, that are permanently attached to his head as though they had grown there. With great suddenness he turns into a vengeful dervish and brutally murders both his parents, beginning an odd journey through his town and his life that made less and less sense to me as I read on.
I scratched my head multiple times as the book jumped from weird scenario to weird scenario, many of which seem pointless or unimportant. For example, Wallace engages in several bouts of hyper violence – at one point slaughtering everyone in a dingy dive bar – but these killings seem to have little bearing on the story.
At the 120 page mark I was struggling, and by the final limp towards the unsatisfying finish line I was running short of my own fucks to give about what was happening in Fuckness.
There is the gristle and muscle of a great story in this book, and some stylish writing, but the sum of its parts lacks the co-ordination and stamina of a champion read. -
Full Disclosure: I don't know the author of this book. I've never interacted with him. He didn't provide a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I bought this book on Amazon and will likely be paying interest on this purchase for the rest of my life. I've seen this book around, popping up here and there, for quite some time, and I never much cared for the title. I thought it was kind of gimmicky and really didn't have much interest in picking this up. Then a friend recommended it and, since I sometimes listen to people, I got an electronic copy and soon discovered that the setting for this story is likely an analog for my hometown; the geographical coordinates of the place match exactly, along with other details provided by the author. This fact alone would make any review I'd write biased, because when I was reading it I was filled with a cold and bitter nostalgia. So, I don't think it would be fair to write a review of this book. All thoughts on its contents are tainted. Read it yourself if you want to know what it's about. You might like it. You might not.
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I just want to live life the way I want to live it.
The first 25% or so of this was great. Rude. Crude, Inappropriate and completely un-politically correct and super funny. Nice.
I was diggin’ it…
Then Wallace got himself a set of horns.
It never fully recovered after that for me and it was impossible to read on without thinking of Joe Hills “Horns”. Overall, I still enjoyed it, but feel it lost something after the “fuckness” of the horns.
May have been one of the rare instances where I should have read the synopsis ahead of time. -
Fuckness may be the most depressing book I've ever read. In some ways it is a nihilist's Pilgrim's Progress; a journey for a redemption that never existed, a coming-of-age tale in a world with no purpose. Prunty's 16 year old protagonist makes Holden Caulfield appear like an honors student. If it wasn't for Prunty's marvelous imagination and stunning ability to make the impossible seem plausible and the unspeakable poetic, this would be a difficult book to read. Yet I was entranced with it from beginning to end. I didn't think it held up to the author's other works like Zerostrata and Morning is Dead. Prunty's best works do hint of redemptive qualities in his bizarre and often bleak alternate universe. Yet Fuckness is a powerful and relentlessly dark minor masterpiece. Four and a half stars.
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I called my philosophy the Philosophy of Fuckness. I first developed this philosophy when I realized I was the type of person who would go to just about any lengths necessary in order to avoid trouble and misery. That is, I just wanted to live life the way I wanted to live it without any interruptions or having the answer to anyone.
I quickly realized this was impossible.
No matter how actively I avoided just about every situation, trouble seemed to find me. This trouble is what I called fuckness.
Wallace "Wally" Black is 16 years old when he figures out his Philosophy on life, "Fuck it". All the bad things in his life happen because he doesn't believe in playing the game we are born to play and just says fuck it to anything that doesn't go his way. Well, a lot of things do not go his way.
I highly recommend the audiobook to this one, the narrator really does portray the blobs, the fuckness and Wally in the best way. I laughed through out this book and really enjoyed it!
I have to say that Bizarro is becoming one of my favorite genres this year. I love my high-fantasy, sci-fi and horror, but Bizarro is sometimes a mix of that and it is awesome to see what the next Bizarro author will come up with. -
The narrator of this book is like a poor man's Holden Caulfield. Maybe that sounds like a put down but it's really a compliment. Instead of some spoiled rich kid whining about his non-problems this is about a kid with problems coming at him from all sides. It was sad and sweet and creepy and violent and funny. Plus, it was very well written. Mr. Prunty was able to write about absurdities without compromising the genuine emotions of the situations or the characters. Considering I only paid a buck for this book I'm very happy with it. But even if it wasn't so cheap it would have been worth the money. Fuckness is the Huckleberry Finn for the End Of Days.
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I was a drug counselor in Middletown, Ohio for three years. It's smack-dab in between Dayton and Cinci. Why do you think they call it Middletown anyway?? My clientele were of the adolescent intensive outpatient population. I almost feel I have a personal connection to this story because I believe it takes place there with these kinds of children.
Andersen knows his lay of the land. Middletown (Middleton, here) is like Mos Eisley in Ohio. A hive of scum and villainy.
Hang on before you hate on me for saying this (truth be told, I don't care if you do).
The tiny city is a perfect experiment of squeezing the dirt-poor right next door to Ohio Royalty. The former are bullied by society in general to believe that they have nothing ever - EVER - to look forward to and the latter thought that Bush Junior was the best-durn thang that done ever happened to these here U S's of A.
Prunty focuses on the former - a boy with sweet F.A. in his future or his present. He's weird and nobody at his podunk school likes him. His parents beat the holy hell out of him on a regular basis. Then one day, they give it to him good - he gets the horns.
Time to kill. The gods of Po' White Trash have chosen him to get rid of all of his shackles, murder his moron parents, steal the nearest riding lawnmower and go find himself so he can defeat The Fuckness.
Knowing Middletown like I do, it would take a bizarre adventure for the less-than-honeyed to ever hope to bust through the Van Allen belts of hate and despair and allow the last shred of your own personality to shine in the end.
Andersen Prunty is the Graham Greene of the 21st Century and this novel is a testament to that. I know many may think those are tall words for a Bizarro author, but he is so in touch with the human condition that he can take genre and truly examine humanity at its worst - but for the best.
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This is currenly available as a Kindle download for 99 cents:
Click
HERE -
2.5 stars rounded up to 3.
I’ve been reading through Andersen Prunty’s catalog and I have finally gotten around to reading ‘fuckness’.
This has an interesting story that follows an outcast teenager who suddenly has horns on his head that he cannot remove. The book then follows the protagonist as we read through his mumblings and experiences as he runs away from home to find a better place.
This book isn’t my favorite out of Prunty’s catalog but it has a sort of odd charm to it. The story was a bit repetitive at times which made the book seem longer than it actually was. The second half of the book seems to pick up though. The final chapter before the conclusion was very engaging as I felt myself on the edge of my seat the entire time I was reading it wondering what would happen to our protagonist. One of my main issues with this book mainly comes from the ending as it was a bit confusing and underwhelming.
Overall, this is a solid story and if you enjoy Prunty’s other work, you would enjoy this as it still contains the usual crude humor and violence that is depicted in his other works. I just wish that this had a bit more to it and that it had a more satisfying ending. -
interesting. definitely odd. the main character ( a deeply troubled young man with a father named "Racecar"), is one of the most unusual antagonists in recent fiction. his outlook is bleak. his horns are...horny. he lives by a philosophy he created himself known as "Fuckness".
this book--like The Sorrow King--was decidedly bleak, dark, and offbeat. the emotion level was pretty high as well, with the character describing his horrible life through a series of flashbacks and internal monologues that will make you cringe and weep and, sometimes, laugh.
Everyone else in the novel sucks. They are barely people. they are monsters.
They don't suck as in "they are bad characters". no. they are fully realized. they are just awful people. most of them. few exceptions.
a dark novel that took me a little while to finish due to its somewhat depressing subject matter, I would still recommend it to anyone who likes their fiction a bit too weird for most people, and a bit screwed up in the head.
the head of the book.
yep. -
I have to admit that I read this book mostly because of the title. It was a quick read, but the style felt a little bit like an exercise in imitation. I cannot really pinpoint it to a particular book, but while reading I had a constant feeling of déjà vu. Reminded me a little of Irvine Welsh. That is not a particular bad thing in my opinion, but I didn't really get into it. It did get better towards the end though, which makes up for the second star. Maybe I am just to old for coming-of-age stories, but this one is just about the standard teenage angst with a bit of gore thrown in for good measure.
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i have a vague feeling that there is something to this, but largely i am not willing to spend a lot of time carving it, or the specific lack of it, out. there are several points, lines/events that seem to come very close to something really good and compelling, but just kind of wane away, leaving their potential to slowly melt in a pool of mild unease and disappointment somewhere in the back of your mind.
having said that, it's a decent book. it has value. i hope andersen prunty keeps writing. -
Wow.
This tale chewed through me right at gut level, with a speed like a chainsaw through a teenager.
Told from the point of view of Wallace Black, an extremely unfortunate 16 year old, it begins in dark times, suddenly changes tone JUST enough... and then ends fantastically... though still feeling as if you've definitely been abused.
Someone else called it "darkly offbeat"...
I thought it was like being kicked in the ass.
Like... right where the hole is.
And liking it. -
This one kept me interested from start to finish. I really enjoyed how colorful the characters were. In addition, I never felt as though I knew what was going to happen next. The narrative voice was fresh. I do plan on reading more from the author.
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The most interesting thing about this book is the synopsis. It seems like a really interesting story from the back, but in reality it's a bloody version of Catcher in the Rye, except Holden has horns. The only difference between Catcher in the Rye, and Fuckness is that Holden is slightly smarter than Wallace Black, and I thought Holden was an imbecile, so just put two and two together to figure that Wallace is borderline retarded.
If you read it; plan on a lot of inner dialogue, wandering around, and a lot of complaining about "blobs". Not to mention the author loved the title more than I did (I thought it was a brilliant title). He goes into detail in the beginning of the definition of fuckness, and then proceeds to use the word fuckness on every single page from there on out. By the time I finished the book, I was ready to never see the word fuckness again.
The main character is too stupid to be likable, and I'm not saying that to be a dick, the idiot failed 8th grade twice, not to mention his thoughts seem to be of someone much younger than how old he's supposed to be, which is 16.
The dialogue between Wallace, and the other characters seems juvenile in the sense that it belongs in the teen novel section of Barnes and Noble. I've never read anything from that section, but one can assume it is complete drivel.
I feel like he just threw the ending together, or wanted it to have some sort of twist, but it comes out flat, and feels like it lacks originality. Almost like when a book or short story end as the whole story was a dream sequence, it doesn't end in a dream sequence, but just as bad.
I gave it two stars, one star for letting me obnoxiously ask for "Fuckness" in Barnes and Noble, embarrassing the shit out of the guy at the info desk.
Oh yeah, by the way, I hated Catcher in the Rye. -
This is my first exposure to Andersen Prunty, and I'm still not sure what to think of it. I think it was a story of an abused kid who takes a run through purgatory, seemingly on his way to hell (horns and all), and instead reaches heaven -- to his surprise as well as ours.
But I don't know if that's what the author actually had in mind. And I can't decide if that's brilliant ambiguity, or just weird.
The only recent book I can compare it to is Going Bovine, by Libba Bray. It's the YA story of a teenage nobody who isn't abused but is very much adrift in a middle-class world that he doesn't fit into. He gets mad cow disease and falls into a coma. The book's fantastical story takes place in his imagination as he lies dying in a hospital. We get hints that this is going on throughout the story, but since he's only vaguely aware that he's in a coma, it's not entirely clear until the end that his imaginary hero's journey is the only one he'll ever have.
Prunty isn't as explicit. His hero, Wallace Black, seems to slip from a nightmarish real life into pure nightmares without realizing that's what happened. But we never really know until a single sentence at the very end of the book, and even the narrator doesn't seem convinced of the information once he delivers it. It's up to the reader to go through the book's events and decide which way the author meant to go.
It's a dark, often funny book no matter how you look at it. But how you remember it depends, I would think, on what you believe the author had in mind. -
This was nice. Really nice.
This is one of the more "serious" bizarro-fiction books out there. It is a story about sixteen-year-old Wallace Black, and his journey to run away from the "fuckness" in the world. Like Wally himself describes:
"A man puts on a shirt and a tie five or more mornings out of the week and no one finds this absurd. It is not the man putting on the shirt and tie I would define as fuckness, it is the fact no one else finds it ridiculous."
He runs away from home, and his journey begins. To Johnny Metal, to the Tar District, to the Thiklet's house, he tries to keep all the fuckness away. And he does it with a pair of horns supernaturally attached to his head.
"Fuckness" is about finding yourself. Excellent novel. -
Coming-of-age stories don't get better than this one. Sober writing and impeccable scenes of somberness combine to tell the awkward growth of Wallace Black into adulthood. Wally is the narrator and I was always questioning his reliability throughout the text, but I liked his viewpoint so much I wanted to believe him. What really brought this book to the top for me was Wallace's philosophy on life (the title of the book). In it the protagonist gives fresh, and deliciously bent, perspectives of everyday things in small town living.
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Five stars for the author's constant, repetitive use of the word fuckness throughout the novel... Novella... whatever all that fuckness means.
"Fuckness" was littered throughout the story and completely appropriate in every instance. Comically appropriate in most instances. I loved this story.
Highly recommended weird fiction. Not bizzaro. Just weird. -
After reading this book I have realised we all suffer with a bit of fuckness. Maybe not so much as our protagonist Wallace black. This is a hard book to review so I won't however I feel a little fucked after reading it but in a good way.
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Amazon recommended this one. I stuck with it hoping for any kind of payoff or resolution, but it was a waste of time. Dark and pointless and depressing.
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promising start that never goes anywhere. once I stopped caring about the protagonist it became a chore to finish this book.
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Definitely the best book I've ever read with "fuck" in the title.
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I was about 25% into a reread of this yesterday when I ran into a copy of the audiobook via the author's Twitter feed. I was doing a few things, so I switched it on right away.
Normally, (well, back when real life WAS normal), audio books are just a convenience for me, not a preference. I've trained my brain to become friends with my Kindle robo-voice to the point where I can listen to her during work commutes just like any narrator.
BUT
The narrator of this Audible edition of Fuckness is so fuckin' awesome that this 'reread' turned into an entirely new experience.
Jeff Bower is the narrator of Fuckness, and although I'm about to stalk his ass to see what else he's done - he could just be The Voice of Andersen Prunty in my head forevermore. (Just DL'd an audio book which A.P. narrates himself, I'll comment more after listening.)
Jeff Bower though...how can I explain... he has this evil little giggle that he does, kind of to himself, and it adds something undefinable to his character. Love it. It reminds me of that evil, psychotic side of myself when I'm heartily laughing at something that I shouldn't be - does that help explain it? -
Andersen Prunty's "Fuckness" plunges readers into a world of misery, absurdity, and dark humour, all while following the turbulent life of Wallace Black, a sixteen-year-old grappling with the complexities of adolescence, bullying, and his own peculiar philosophy.Wallace's constant self-deprecation and the bullying he endures at school lay the foundation for his unique worldview. His "Philosophy of Fuckness" becomes a guiding principle, highlighting his inclination to find pessimism in life's intricacies. As the story progresses, Wallace's transformation, marked by the emergence of horns on his head, symbolizes his internal turmoil and growing acceptance of his own oddity.
The promise of "Fuckness," as suggested by the title and anticipated by me, falls flat in the face of the actual content. The absurdity that is expected from the novel ends up feeling forced and contrived. Rather than a natural extension of the characters and the world they inhabit, the absurd plotline comes across as a mere attempt to shock and provoke, lacking the depth and authenticity that could have made it truly impactful. For me, it was a so-so read. -
This book has a wide variety of things that are just not okay.
This is one of the more horrific titles I've read this year, and I love that it doesn't achieve this in a traditional sense.
Nothing overtly scary happens. A lot of the horror here does come from the sympathy felt for the protagonist, but it's experienced very strangely because of his attitude toward his situation. Pain, abuse, suffering, they're all just "fuckness" to him. The world is filled with it, and where can someone go when they've had enough?
There's also a creeping sense of unease that comes with Prunty's approach to narratives and refusal to answer questions or coddle an audience.
The reader doesn't always know what's happening, or how it's happening. And it isn't until the experience is over and you can breathe that you have to wonder.
What?
