I wake up. Yellow streetlight oozes in through my bedroom window. I look to my right. Coffee cup on coffee table. I love my coffee table. It’s that nice shade of black that’s almost blue. What happened last night? On the floor: bras, panties, lipstick, my handbag. Coffee cup has lipstick stains. I never wear lipstick. I thrust my left arm out, searching the darkness. I am alone in the double bed. It’s warm and soft. I imagine it to be a womb in which I am incubating. Healing and rejuvenating through the night. So red. I feel the heartbeat of my mother pulsating through the womb’s lining.

So warm. I’m swimming in an ocean of warm. Footsteps stroll past me and I taste vermilion as I submerge my head below the water. Where am I? That sound. Something is in the bushes. Yet the closer I get, the further away I feel.

“…I stretch my hand out, reaching for the Moon. It floats closer. Monolithic and grand…”

________________

I wake up. Yellow streetlight oozes in through my bedroom window. I look to my right. Coffee cup on coffee table. I love my coffee table. It’s that nice shade of brown that’s almost red. What happened last night? On the floor: bras, panties, lipstick, my handbag. I feel a breeze and realize that the window is open. Did I leave it open?

Lipstick.

Why did I just think that? I throw the covers off of me and cold air slaps my bare skin. I shouldn’t have gone to bed naked. I thump my feet onto the floor and drag myself over to the window. Yellow streetlight hits me full-on. I pull the window closed with a—

Slamming against the floor. Now she’s on top of me. I didn’t realize she was so kinky. She gropes my breasts and I growl in pleasure. Hot lips, moist tongue against my neck. She reaches into the darkness and rummages around in her bag. She’s grinning. I’m grinning too. Blackness apart from the streetlight, shining on us like a spotlight from a police helicopter. Suddenly she becomes rigid. Something glints in the shadows. She’s still grinning. Then she rams something into my chest. Sharp. Cold. I can’t breathe. She kisses me. Saliva runs down my cheeks. I feel the hotness of my own blood against my exposed skin and I orgasm.

I wake up. Yellow streetlight oozes in through my bedroom window. I look to my right. My beloved coffee table. It’s that nice shade of black that’s almost blue. On the floor: bras, panties, lipstick. Police siren passes by. Always crime in the city, I guess. My room is like a cave; pitch black but for the puddle of light by the window. I feel a breeze and realize that the window is open.

I throw the covers off of me. Even though I’m wearing pajamas, the icy air stings my body. Wondering if I should’ve just gone to bed fully clothed instead, I trundle over to the window.

Outside, the wind murmurs. The windows in the house in front of me are dim, unlit. I look up at the sky and it too is unlit. Clear, cloudless black. A void. I poke my head out of the window and look down the street. Houses upon houses upon houses. Streetlights into infinity. One of them flickers on and off randomly. In the distance, a fox dashes across the road. It runs around in someone’s front garden before skulking off into the bushes.

Bushes.

Moonlight gleams on the rooftops. It’s a full moon tonight. The sky is empty but for the Moon, which stares at me like a white, glowing eyeball. The craters, the little crevices and hills are all crystal clear. So close. I feel like I could almost touch them. I stretch my hand out, reaching for the Moon. It floats closer. Monolithic and grand. I can even see the dust particles racing along its surface in the lunar winds. It’s huge now. The sky is drowning in Moon. I clamber onto the window ledge. No sound but for the now wailing wind. I leap out of the window and soar upwards. The Moon’s gnarled, grey surface fills the sky and my mind. Far down below, waves surge across the ocean, smashing into the coast. All the houses and trees and roads seem so tiny from up here—so small I could hold them in my hand. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and sigh.

Ecstasy.

I open my eyes. Now the Earth is far, far behind me. Both above and below me, galaxies glimmer in the distance. Everywhere I look I can see millions of tiny pinpricks of light. Everything around me shimmers with color. Red. Blue. Yellow. Green. Purple. Violet. All blended together in rivers of color. And now the Moon eclipses everything. I drift in its orbit, slowly floating over its silent surface. I drift round till its gargantuan shadow makes it look only half a moon. I wonder if anything could feel better than this. Then I enter the Moon’s shadow and I am blind.

I close my eyes. In my mind, yellow streetlight is oozing in through my bedroom window.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Grant Abbott is a Japanese Studies student at Sheffield University. He enjoys spending his free time inappropriately.

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. 2 poems by Penny Goring
2. The Treachery of Dreams by Samuel Peralta
3. Two Fictions by Peter Schwartz

They asked me—yes—they, they asked me, they asked me—to justify my time— or to belittle—to laugh?—though they never—well, they didn’t used to—laugh to my face; they would laugh after, later, when the sun went down and I’d gone home and they were left to pick up the pieces. They had opinions and it didn’t matter to them how desperately I worked, stayed afloat, dealt with—with the disparagement and the yelling and the man. Everyday yes, every everyday there was, he was mean to me maybe so he didn’t have to go home and beat his wife. That was the only lucid thought I could come up with, that I was here to save someone else and that got me through the everdays—until they asked me—was it idle curiosity?—to tell them what it was I did every day when I went home—as if I was so different from everyone else, they even asked me if I ate. Well of course I ate, doesn’t everyone?—everyone eats and lives, and eats and lives. Why would they ask me to justify my time away? As if it were possible to be a yes/no question that might end with “I don’t do such things” and then they could label me alien from them. They always saw me as separate anyway. I didn’t work their shift or they didn’t want me or something —they did treat me as if I hadn’t home nor family, as if they’d never run into me at the grocery store—but it didn’t matter how nice I was—I bent over backwards nice—backwards nice! to prove to them I saw them as human. And once or twice last year, was it last year—it was sometime in the past this happened, that out of the corner of my eye or maybe it was head-on I saw one of them duck down another aisle or turn their grocery cart and go the opposite way as if they hadn’t seen me. I knew they’d seen me better than I’d seen them.  I saw them every day just like that, ducking out the sides of my vision to avoid something which would come of the interaction between our two life forces meeting. Because I am the one and they are the other and when we come face to face it is most polite to say how d’you do or some other inanity it doesn’t matter what so long as it acknowledges the existence and equality of the person before you. But they usually don’t, not with me, and that was why it so flustered me when that girl—yes, I think a girl, they’d replaced the last girl with a girl and just—it was almost like they’d peeled the face off one, like it was made of rubber. They peeled it off and kept it so she could quit and when the new one came they put this face on her so it would always be the same girl in perpetuity ad infinitum. She’d been the same girl long before I’d come and would be there long after they buried me—and yes! That’s what it was, that this girl without her own face, she didn’t duck away but turned on me with hard plastic eyes and demanded I justify my existence or go lay in an open grave and wait for the end. Which is not the way to say how d’you do and it was like slapping me in the face the way they asked this of me: what is it that I do at home?—and they brought in this woman I was sure she was different because she was in a suit—and they made her say things to me like: do you eat?—which is not the type of question an educated suit management person would ever ask. I smiled oh how I smiled more than ever because, because well, I could almost see what they were doing, so slyly, though I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t rest a finger on it, tap tap tap—that this was the end—somehow.

_________________________________________________________________

A graduate of Bath Spa University in England, Dawn Wilson has had the pleasure to dabble in kitsch, surrealism, and espièglerie. Her work can be found in Rabbit Catastrophe Review, Dr. Hurley’s Snake Oil Cure, Gone Lawn and Liquid Imagination and forthcoming from Apocrypha and Abstractions and Paper Darts Magazine while the author herself can be found dismantling the kitchen for wearable items, or at nightdawn.wordpress.com. She is at work on a madcap novel.

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. The Many Lives of James Brown’s Capes by Patrick Wensink
2. Amazing Moments in History by Patrick Walczy
3. You by Patrick Trotti

By Christopher Allen

Thank You for Your Sperm, Marcus Speh, Mad Hat Press

Marcus Speh’s Thank You for Your Sperm (TYFYS) is as much about “the author” as it is about fiction. Most of the pieces in the collection are indeed fiction, but there are also musings about writing, about the author’s life and an interview. In this sense TYFYS is a holistic, metavision of Speh’s work in its first years so that we find not only Speh’s art here but also the artist slowly writing himself out of his cage.

This is not to say that whenever “the author” becomes the subject of Speh’s prose that Speh is writing about himself. As I see it, these are near-selves, fictionalized selves. The author in the Serious Writer series, for example, is sometimes considerably older than Speh himself. Does any of this matter? Isn’t the persona of “writer” the subject of TYFYP? From “The Serious Writer in Texas” and taken completely out of context:

“The writer is a literary tourist—actually: he’s just a tourist stuffing himself with sunshine, dining out on false memories.”

The book is divided into Speh’s major projects over the last few years. If you have followed his online evolution from Finnegan Flawnt—“more than a character, but a creator of characters himself”—to Marcus Speh, you’ll have read many of these pieces; and if you haven’t heard Speh read them, well, you should certainly make the time to do so.

While I’m trying not to rave, it’s hard to talk about Speh’s work without doing so. The beauty of the author’s prose lies in his ability to surprise and to challenge both himself as a writer and the reader. As I read through these pieces again, I often have the feeling that Speh has set himself and his imagination no limits. The result is engaging, honest and often shocking prose.

There are elements of magical realism in many of the pieces, but there are also stories that remain within, or perhaps kick against, the constraints of realism, such a “Berlin Pastoral.” Though many of Speh’s characters look up into the heavens for answers, these stories and essays—for lack of a better word—are journeys into the writer’s interior world, or better: journeys to that interface between the fictional and the real, to that place where art happens. .

Recently, I asked a group of students—all adults in their 50s—to read and discuss four of the pieces in the collection. I chose “Electric Eyes,” “Ginger,” “Le Sucre Brun,” and “In the Nude.” There were four students present, so I gave each of them a story and asked them to read aloud with no preparation. To make matters more difficult, these dear guinea pigs were all non-native speakers of English. I was astounded by how fluid and natural their readings were. The reading of “Electric Eyes” was beautiful and passionate. The person who read “In the Nude” was by coincidence from Naples, which was spooky. The ensuing discussion of Italy and the church was stimulating.

I tell you this because great prose leads you along effortlessly. Great prose changes your blood pressure. Great prose makes you scratch your head for all the right reasons. Great prose sounds good. OK, now I’m raving.

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. Public Offender – The Sunday Review
2. Mediated Frenzy – The Sunday Review
3. Unsigned, First Edition – The Sunday Review

________________________________________________________________

I want you to tell me that it’s okay if I didn’t catch the last bus coming
out of the city or that it’s alright that my idea of happiness is a cup of
coffee that tastes like ice cream instead of Columbia or sleeping and
shutting down on the days where I’m supposed to be happy because if forced
euphoria is what we’re made of in this world, I’m fucked. I need you to
tell me it’s okay never to put sunblock on and that it’s okay to not be
okay, to roll over in bed at four o’clock in the morning crying because I
can’t fall asleep because I took too many drugs the night before and my
mind is hazy. I need you to know that time when I got out of bed and left
you sleeping, caught in the fishnet of blood-stained sheets entangled into
my mattress and ran to a coffee shop to go read William Burroughs and
finger the bandages that lined up and down my flesh from fist and forearm
- it didn’t mean that I didn’t love you. “Vic, just stay alive, okay?” you
said as you left my crying behind the shower curtain, bandaging up
whatever else I could salvage of myself. I didn’t mean to start bawling on
that southbound train. I didn’t mean to point out every building and annoy
you by trying to make you see how pretty they were. I didn’t mean to build
something sentimental out of sunlight peeking out over rooftops that day
we walked on the beach by the lake, our shoes dangling from our hands, the
truth is I just never know where I am. I need you to know that whatever
ink I make in this notebook of mine it doesn’t mean I don’t love you, that
the inches of love I have don’t equalize to the times I wake up in the
morning, think about myself, then run to the bathroom and vomit. The truth
is, on that southbound train, you turned to me and asked me what I was
thinking about and I hid behind the curtain of my hair and held my
tear-soaked face on your shoulder and didn’t say anything. I need you to
know that I can protect myself from the bridges, the fifteen-story
windows, and the pills I could so easily convince myself to overdose on. I
need you to know that when the train pulls out of the city, when the day
comes to finally leave, I need you to not look back and make sure I’m
still there. I really just need that from you.

_________________________________________________________________

Victoria Linhares is a writer and student splitting her time between Toronto and
Ottawa, Canada. You can say nice things to her at
victorialinhares73@gmail.com.

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. it’s only a circus//i miss everything by Alexandra Smith
2. Two Fictions by Peter Schwartz
3. Wide and Deep by Socrates Adams

A Description of the Room in Which

I, Roland Fuchs, am Contained as Part

of a Scientific Experiment¹

The room is approximately the shape of a cube.  The walls are white, and so are the tiles in the ceiling.  The carpet, however, is gray.² The door is in the east wall,³ and it is also white.  There are no windows.⁴ There aren’t any mirrors either,⁵ though if one wishes, one may view one’s reflection indistinctly in the television positioned against the north wall.⁶ Sometimes the television is on and sometimes it is not.  When it is on it shows only one program:  a man in a room similar to the room here being described.⁷ Unlike the television, the lamp in the northwest corner is always on, making it very difficult to sleep.⁸ The couch is positioned along the south wall, facing the television.⁹ On it there is a folded blanket and a pillow, both of which I¹⁰ brought from home.¹¹ Next to the couch on the west is a treadmill, and next to the couch on the east are a pair forty-pound dumbbells, for working out.¹² A desk is positioned on the west wall, which may also be used as a table for dinner.¹³ Ordinarily the surface of the desk is kept clean and free of all objects.¹⁴ A chair goes along with the desk.  Lastly, there is a toilet in the northeast corner, next to the door.  It is also white.^{15, 16}

“…saying that there aren’t any mirrors says something distinct about me…”

________________

~   ~   ~

1. It is interesting that they have not given me a title for the report this time.  Why would they do that?  Are they testing me to see if I will follow their standards, or did they simply forget?  Perhaps I should keep the title as is to see what they will say.^A
2. How do I know what I’m calling the east wall is in fact the east wall?  I got all turned around when I checked in, and without windows, I can’t be sure.  And you just know they’re going to make you take out such terminology.
3. They didn’t say to describe what is not in the room, though since most rooms have windows, I think it is worthwhile to mention it.  Certainly I think it relevant, and it is after all me whom they have asked to describe this room.
4. Mirrors are a different story.  Saying that there aren’t any windows says something distinct about the room, but saying that there aren’t any mirrors says something distinct about me.  So I should cut it.^B
5. Again with the directional terminology.  I need to think of the room as though I were floating in outer space,^C pick one object to start with,^D and then move around the room.
6. Should I describe this man’s room as well?^E
7. Obviously the part about sleeping is not objective, but since they won’t honor my requests to turn the damn lamp off, I think I should leave it in.^F
8. Should I mention that the couch contains a fold-out bed?  But what would be the point, since I can’t use it because the room isn’t big enough for it to fold out?^G

10.  This is my first use of the first person in the description proper.  Should I keep it in?^H

11.  Does it matter for the purposes of this description where the blanket and the pillow came from?^I

12.  What else would a treadmill and dumbbells be used for?  A treadmill is a treadmill, and there are no windows to throw the dumbbells through.

13.  “Which may…table for dinner.”  Unnecessary description.  See notes 4 and 5.

14.  Though obviously it’s not right now, while I’m working on this report.  This statement obviously places the room in time, though not the present time, as do some of my other statements (such as the TV being on sometimes and not on at others).  Is it appropriate to do this,^J since technically the position of every object everywhere is relative to a certain moment in time, and thus perhaps should be described statically, unless one wants to spend their life saying “and at this time the object is here, and at this time the object is here” and so on?^K

15.  The order of my description is kind of random.  See note 6.

16.  I just noticed that I didn’t put myself in the room, even though I am in the room at all times.  Would they want me to?^L

“…I just noticed that I didn’t put myself in the room, even though I am in the room at all times…”

________________

~   ~   ~

1. On the other hand, “as Part of a Scientific Experiment” sounds superfluous, given that the experimenters are the only ones who will read it.  And yet by that same token, my name, which they always include in the titles they give me, could be construed as superfluous, too, unless it’s to help keep my reports separate from the other subjects.  Perhaps then I should exclude my name, simply entitle the report “A Description of the Room,” and see what kind of mess that leads to.
2. Unless the purpose of the report is in fact to see how I, not someone else, would describe the room.  That does make a lot more sense than merely having me write out an objective description of the room, since they can walk into the room at any time—and do—and see for themselves what it looks like.  In which case, whether I cut it or not should be determined by whether I want them to think I care about whether I have a mirror.  Do I?
3. What possessed me to put myself in this situation, anyway?  How did I ever come to think that it would be a good idea to allow a bunch of scientists to lock me up in a room for ninety days with no contact to the outside world while they poke and prod me with all of their ridiculous questionnaires and reports they ask me to write?  The money certainly isn’t that good, and try masturbating when you’re never sure when one of them is going to walk through the door.  Was I trying to learn something about myself, is that what brought me here?  And if so, what was I trying to learn?
4. The door.  Start with the door.  That’ll show them where my focus is.  Wanting to get out the door.
5. And who is this man anyway?  Is he really another subject, as they have told me, one of the unlucky ones who got stuck in a room with a camera, or was that merely a lie on their part to produce a desired effect in me?  It’s his seeming contentment that has me suspicious.  He seems perfectly at ease every time the TV comes on, which leads me to conclude that he either knows when the camera is projecting a signal from his room or he’s one of the scientists posing as a subject in order to give me the illusion of contentment.  And is that what they want from me, to follow this man’s lead and become content myself?  Or do they want me to become even more irritated by the fact that I’m not content here?  Let’s hope for their sake it’s the latter, as I would just hate to be the reason their precious experiment went awry.
6. Because this is definitely something I would like them to know about me.
7. Which is something they very well know, and would also know that I would have to consider whether or not to include the fold out.  This is exactly what they are looking for, little moments where I cannot but distinguish myself from the other subjects, no matter what I write in my description.
8. Obviously if I decide to run with note A it would seem out of place, since there would be no use of the first person anywhere else.  But in light of note G, I have to wonder whether I shouldn’t litter the whole report with the first person, if for no other reason than to show them I am on to their little game.
9. If everything I’ve just been saying in these second set of notes is correct, then yes.  But I could go the other way with it, I could eliminate myself entirely and provide the scientists with a purely objective description of the room, as though I’ve become one of them, as though I just walked into the room yesterday and had no affiliation with it whatsoever.  Then they wouldn’t have a clue what to make of my description.  (Which reminds me, make sure to flush my two sets of notes down the toilet before I hand them my report.  Or eat them first, and let them be flushed the old fashioned way.)
10. Let them try and stop me.
11. It appears they’ve already got me thinking like one of them, like a scientist.  And just to prove it to them, after they take the report away I’ll move all the objects around, and when they ask me why I did that—because you just know they’re going to ask—I can say, “To mark the time.”  That’ll show them.
12. That’s exactly what they would want, for me to put myself in my description of the room just as I put myself in the room itself.  And if I leave myself out, what will they think of that?  That I do not consider myself a part of the room, or will they recognize what it really means, that no room can contain me, ever?  Go with Note A.  Wipe myself out of existence in order to assert my existence.  Then they will know they’ve met their match.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Wolfgang Wright is a novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer from North Dakota. He also stocks groceries.

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. Four Room Hotel by Vallie Lynn Watson
2. Sydney Hotel Room by Matt Potter
3. Ode to my Guitar by William Wright Harris

Before you learned I love you

We sipped white wine in the forest

Singing uneven hymns to stars

That once shone for my slumber party

Yesterday when you learned I love you

We were in a thrift store trying on hats,

They smelled like rich purple hands

You were slender and giggly

Today when you learned I love you

You dripped lemon goo in my water,

It smelled like my mother in summer

You were pudgy and sweet

Tomorrow when you learn I love you

Will it be simple and transient, like nipple in lace?

Nothing too harsh, but nothing too plain

_________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Knauss is a writer living amid the tree-lined outskirts of center city Philadelphia in a borough known as Cedar Park. She makes a living in the field of marketing, but the real fun begins when she is writing poems, short stories, and a middle grade novel about rabbits, or spending time with loved ones and popsicles.

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. I Cannot Know to Have Breathed by Elizabeth Farren
2. Bones of a Story by Jessica Knauss
3. Two Poems by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick

__________________________________

poem 12
the arteries look like branches on trees
soft transparent algae hair on the throat
in your eye there is a crack with ink dropping out
your hand is hollow
read details
without them, escape in vain
on your tongue
walking slowly like in a swamp
fishing in your throat unsaid
thumb on the eyelid
open, close, open, close
tears falling on you and your cheekbones
sometimes from the tear duct
I bite my teeth
I close my mouth
you touch my lips with your finger
I close my eyes and the ink dries out

*

poem 19
I feel so online
you click my name
I ilike your face
talk to my face
or punch it
I say to you I feel so cold
but I’m warm on the inside
I wish I could take care of you
you eat egg for breakfast
saying you wish to put the egg on my stomach
later on my eyes
you’re not hungry
I shout I feel so online
the connection breaks
I feel so alone

____________________________________

Caroline Alice Lopez swallows birds and throw them up. She is 26 years old and
based in London.

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. Two Poems by Andrew James Weatherhead
2. Groceries by Caroline Kepnes
3. The Correspondence of Glenn Clapham by Agustín Lopez

welcome to the way i talk

you turned me exactly
you turned to me exactly.
when i blinked, you turned to me
we spent time blinking quixotic morris code
it felt like a New Discovery
it felt like i told you everything that way
welcome to the way i talk

welcome to the way you talk

when you talk, you invented All words.
i am watching how they seep out of you.
i am inspecting each one.
each one i gather into this bizarre pocket
i gather them here so i can take them out later
and inspect them again
for the time that is coming
where you will likely hate me.
welcome to the way you talk

_____________________________________

Raven Clark is a girl in high school living in Missoula, Montana.

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. Two Poems by Christopher Miles
2. poems from the Quantum Letterbox
   by David E. Oprava
3. Two Poems by Maggie Smith

By Mike Kleine

Crapalachia: A Biography of Place, Scott McClanahan, Two Dollar Radio, 2013

-

The Before (My Anticipation And Things Like That) 10/10

Someone once said to me “Scott McClanahan is a great Southern writer.”

Actually, I’m lying.

No one’s ever said that to me.

I don’t even know what that means.

Great Southern writer.

Or even how I managed to think something like this.

…

Oh, wait.

Now I know.

I once watched a YouTube video of Scott McClanahan, a little while ago, and I remember thinking, while watching the video: Scott McClanahan definitely is someone with a Southern accent.

That’s how.

And for some reason, that really stuck with me.

Even now, as I write this review, all I can think is: Scott McClanahan, [Great] Southern Writer Extraordinaire.

(Which is weird, because saying it like that makes me think, immediately, of the Adult Swim television series, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law).

I don’t know why.

Hmmm.

But when I saw a picture of Scott McClanahan for the first time, on the Internet, I didn’t think, immediately: wow, Scott McClanahan sure looks like someone who speaks with a Southern accent.

No.

So I guess, you could say that it sort of came as a shock, or surprise, for me, when finally, I heard Scott McClanahan speak, for the first time, in that YouTube video, with a Southern accent.

And the people I know (and work with) in real life—they have no idea who Scott McClanahan is.

So I had to discover all of these things on my own.

And I guess it just feels like someone [really] once said to me: “Scott McClanahan is a great Southern writer,” since (already) I spend too much time reading about authors and books on the Internet.

And it’s like something in my subconscious (most likely/probably) created this sort of hybrid monster-character-leviathan-type-thing I feel has become the incarnation of everything I know and have ever read (like how I now believe that Scott McClanahan is a great Southern writer—as an example, for a reason I cannot yet explain).

And I’ve read a couple interviews (maybe like, five), where I’ve noticed that the interviewer-person almost always mentions Scott McClanahan’s accent and the way he writes his stories.

(Almost) always.

And why?

(Does that really matter?)

[Can’t we talk about something else now?]

Stuff about Southern story-telling and his (perhaps) intentional use of the oral tradition style of story-telling in the South (something along those lines, yeah, which, I feel, might get super annoying after a while—like, being asked the same thing over and over again, each time).

But Scott McClanahan is a real trooper’s trooper.

And his [Scott McClanahan’s] responses, each time, to these questions, are always so blunt and unabashed—it’s actually quite brilliant, really.

Like how he almost always mentions that actually, he’s from West Virginia.

And I feel like, Scott McClanahan, is someone, who acts like how I would expect him to act if (ever) I were to meet him in real life (which is refreshing) since I feel like a lot of (written) online interviews read like rehearsed (and heavily edited) transcripts.

:/

It’s like Scott McClanahan treats his interviews not like interviews, but more like real-life interactions—conversations: moments where he is sitting at home, with someone else in his house/apartment, a stranger/intruder, asking him questions about the things he does.

And all of his [Scott McClanahan’s] answers, essentially, for some reason, feel like they are littered with belches and farts, and then edited out, later (but not literally).

(Or maybe).

Seriously though! Go and read some of these interviews!

It’s awesome.

Like how Scott McClanahan is actually, maybe, like, the real deal?

You know?

Like, it’s about [fucking] time, finally.

But Here’s The During (Like, My Enjoyment & Stuff & How I Actually Felt While Reading Crapalachia) 13/10

About six hours into my first reading of Crapalachia, I typed Crapalachia and Scott McClanahan into the Google search box and…

…well, let’s just say there are already too many reviews of Crapalachia out there right now.

Like, more than I thought.

Fuck!

Well, not fuck, I guess.

That’s a good thing, tho, for Scott McClanahan.

And Two Dollar Radio.

I guess.

But I have to be honest about something here.

And I can’t lie about this one.

It wouldn’t be fair to anyone.

I got to about page 118 of Crapalachia on day 2, before I had to stop reading—like quit.

Really.

I stopped reading because I did not want Crapalachia to end.

Seriously.

And I knew I was not supposed to do this because of a deadline.

And even if the book is something that is so good I don’t want it to end, I still have to respect a deadline.

It’s the professional thing to do.

And that’s really selfish, now that I think about it, for me to do something like that—completely stop and not (actually) write a review because I feel like the book is just so good.

(It really is tho).

Literally, I stopped reading for a few weeks and sort of took a break from the book.

And I never do this.

I booked myself an extended mini-vacation—from writing and submitting anything having to do with writing—just so I could extend this wow-this-is-just-so-fucking-good-I-don’t-want-it-to-end-ever feeling.

I even got to the point where I was thinking about Crapalachia at work, without even reading the book.

Trying to guess what was going to happen next.

To the characters and the narrator and the setting (of a town in the mountains), and how I was reacting to the book/story—my interpretation of the text.

And it was great.

To sort of imagine what would happen next, on my own.

Reshaping the story, in a way.

Forcing myself to actually pause, and reflect, and think about Crapalachia, as a whole (something I feel I sometimes don’t get to do, really, ever, especially during times like these, when it seems like a new book is coming out just about every other day).

So many books to review!

But I digress.

I did other things too.

During my extended mini-vacation.

Like read other books.

I (also) read reviews of Crapalachia.

Tons of them!

(Something I always do when I am writing a book review).

Mostly, because I don’t want to repeat myself in the review of the book I am writing about.

But also, because I am just curious to see what everyone else has to say about the book.

Sort of like when I look up new album releases on Pitchfork.

(I don’t really care about what Pitchfork has to say—it’s just a platform for me to discover new music I would, otherwise, most likely, never even know existed. But like, in the end, ultimately, I am the reviewer and the judge of everything—I decide whether I like the music or not).

Okay, so not really like when I look up new album releases on Pitchfork at all, but sort of.

And the experience of reading Crapalachia reminded me a lot of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

In the sense that Crapalachia is exactly what I expected To Kill a Mockingbird to be in the 5^th grade, when I read it for the first time, without it (really) being what I expected it to be, in the end (To Kill a Mockingbird, not Crapalachia).

It was like a strange, hyper-long, moment of déjà-vu without actually really experiencing déjà-vu.

Very strange stuff.

Like, a lot of times, I’ll read something that everybody loves and calls “a classic” (like To Kill a Mockingbird) only to realize, later, (like when I’m much older—later) that it’s not as good as everyone thinks.

(But I remember not liking To Kill a Mockingbird, even in the 5^th grade).

Maybe I’m cynical.

(Actually, I (bet I) am).

But part of me (the younger me) believes that Crapalachia (its style and presentation and tone and everything) is how Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird should have been.

In other words, (and quite literally) I feel like Crapalachia is the parallel-dimension version of the 1960s Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Harper Lee.

In the sense that it is the quintessential Southern literature text that everyone should read.

Like the great American [Southern] Novel that never was.

Something that should become required reading in Middle Schools and High Schools across the country.

And books like Crapalachia are the kind of books that make me feel like I should be taking notes, constantly.

I feel like Crapalachia though, is also [secretly] this giant how-to on how to write a damn good story.

But let’s not forget about the front of the book.

The cover.

I’m super-big into book covers.

And, right off the bat, Crapalachia’s front reminded me a lot of Monty Pyhton-esque type drawings, paired with Jared Hess-styled artwork, which is very neat, I think.

And the head of the man-bird on the cover makes me think, a lot, of the film The Prestige with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale for some reason.

I don’t know why.

(Top hats maybe, even though the man-bird on the cover is not wearing a top hat. Just that same era I guess).

Charlie Chaplin stuff too.

Also, the lack of description on the backside came as a real surprise.

Like, there’s no synopsis or anything (tho this is actually found on the inside flap, I later realized).

On the backside: there are just three blurbs (one from Vice—dunno, tho, if this is supposed to be serious or funny) but I liked that it was done like this (since I feel like blurbs, in a way, coerce my train of thought and sort of influence how I am going to think about a  book) (not that this is a bad thing, mind you).

As a result, I was able to jump right into the story, with relative ease.

Even the official description on the inside flap is basically a quick summary of everything you’ll read when you look up most reviews of Crapalachia online, and I am not going to summarize the plot/book for you (though you couldn’t really, with a book like Crapalachia, it’s hard) (and like I said already, other reviews already sort of do this for you) but essentially, and bear with me as I attempt to put some feelings into words: it’s like you’re having a conversation with Scott McClanahan in a very small and dark and low-ceilinged room, like a basement or something, and at first, it’s sort of uncomfortable and you’re most likely sweating a little, since everything is so cramped and you don’t know Scott McClanahan (there are some chairs in a pile in one corner of the room—wood, metal, all types of chairs), but after a while, you begin to feel  more comfortable, with Scott McClanahan, as the story progresses, and the whole dark room bit (and chairs in the corner) you begin to accept, and the sweat has even evaporated a little, and [secretly] you’re hoping that Scott McClanahan never noticed that you were sweating (in the first place), and now, you sort of actually enjoy hearing whatever it is he is telling you, about his life, since, after all, he does have that special gift—his own little way of telling you the story of the place where he grew up, and that becomes a sort of a unique and hallucinatory and special experience for you. And meanwhile, [and I almost forgot about this] slowly, the dark, cramped, filled-with-chairs-in-one-corner basement-type room(?) is becoming this room that is actually full of light, and bright little things like butterflies, and things that entice feelings like joy and hope and ecstasy.

That or I am just full of shit and totally misunderstood/misread the text.

But back to the cover.

Two Dollar Radio, I feel, is an independent press who spends a satisfying amount of time on book design.

From the quality of the paper (deckle edge anyone?) to the actual image that was used.

Crapalachia is, quite honestly, a book I know people who visit my apartment will want to touch.

Probably.

I mean, I like it a lot.

And I don’t want to call this style of writing Southern or anything but really, it’s very well done and different from what I was expecting.

…And Then The After (In Retrospect, What I Thought, And Things Like That) 17/10

Whatever tho, Scott McClanahan is a great American/Southern/Whatever-You-Want writer.

(NB: This was my first time reading anything Scott McClanahan).

And is this really Southern Lit?

I don’t know.

What is Southern Lit?

Does it really matter?

Definitely a sort of unique experience tho, that really should not be ruined by any review.

(And I’m trying to not do that here).

But yeah—so fucking good.

Crapalachia.

It’s great.

Like, no regrets.

Seventeen out of ten.

Forever.

Scott.

McClanahan.

Yes.

—

Mike Kleine is an American author of literary fiction. He graduated from Grinnell College with a B.A. in French literature. Someday, he will begin his M.A. in English literature. He currently lives somewhere in the Midwest. Mastodon Farm (2012, Atlatl Press) is his first book.

© 2013, Metazen.

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1. Unsigned, First Edition – The Sunday Review
2. A Tree With Roots – The Sunday Review
3. Public Offender – The Sunday Review

The desk officer recognised the woman’s voice on the phone. “I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him,” she was screaming .

The squad car squealed down there, the ambulance was on its way.
Sobbing , she led them up the stairs.
Man’s body in a heap on the bed, blood-sticky, broken glass everywhere.
Well known to police. Usually she was crying for a different reason, when he’d
battered her.
Christ, he’s had his come-uppance this time.

Breathing. “He’s not dead, love”.
But lucky.
Sgt  Gray knew when he sobered up, when he found out she’d hit him, she’d be in for
it.
They’d be coming back here later, for sure.

Get him out. Down to the station.
A big lad. What a weight. Two PCs and an ambulance man lift him to his feet.
He’ll jump-start if he sees himself.
He’ll kick off.
That big mirror on the landing. Put a coat or something over it.
Keep him moving.
“Come on Billy, son, you’ll be alright with us”.

Groaning into the car , then in and out of custody.
Get a mop across that floor, son.
Waiting ambulance to Casualty, stitches and sleepover.

Sgt Gray back to the house.

“He’s alright, love. He won’t remember any of it.
A car ‘d hit him and we picked him up in the street.
Plenty of time to clean up, and lose the sheets. Turn the mattress over.
Somebody from day shift ‘ll call by in the morning.”

JN / March 2013

© 2013, Metazen.

Related posts:

1. Her Mouth Small and Round by Jack Swenson
2. Sing for Me: A Satire by Jack Swenson
3. Two Fictions by Peter Schwartz