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Archive for the ‘Huh?’ Category

Lucy Ellmann–Doctors & Nurses (2006)

Posted in Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Huh?, Humiliation, Lucy Ellmann, Murder, Sex, Yuck! on March 5, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[READ: January 20, 2023] Doctors & Nurses 

When I requested Sweet Desserts, I also requested Doctors & Nurses. I didn’t know the order of her books, I just picked the two that were the first ones on the list.

Doctors & Nurses is similar to Sweet Desserts in that it is short (although it is actually 50 pages longer) and has short chapters.  But otherwise it is very different.  Desserts was a fairly serious book about two sisters (and a lot of sex).  This book is a farcial romp (with a lot of sex).

Comments online said the cover looked like a chick lit book, but it looks to me more like a cartoon from Playboy from the 1970s.

And it kind of reads like that too.

While Sweet Desserts bounced back and forth between past and present and the focus shifted between the main character and her sister, this story focuses pretty squarely on Jen, a fat nurse who is misanthropic and really seems to hate everyone.

There is one notable and peculiar thing about this book that is never addressed nor explained.  Every pages has SEVERAL words that are written in all capital LETTERS for, and I’m not trying to be obtuse about this, no reason that I can READILY determine.  I admit that I didn’t put a lot of TIME into trying to figure it out, BUT it is very peculiar.

The book opens with a scene of a rock and a gorge and the rock perpetually invading the gorge’s precious space.  It’s remarkably graphic sexually, as far as a rock and a gorge can have sex that is.

But that has nothing to do with the rest of the story (until the every end) which is about a nurse named Jen.  Jen is angry most of the time (the list of thing she hates is extensive).  And the tone is set pretty early. (more…)

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Lucy Ellmann–Sweet Desserts (1988)

Posted in Art, Food, Huh?, Humiliation, Lucy Ellmann, Sex, Travel, Universities, William Gaddis on March 2, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[READ: January 20, 2023] Sweet Desserts

I absolutely loved Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport.  It was unlike anything else I had read up to that point.  I also assumed it was her first book because I hadn’t heard of her before and there wasn’t really any talk of her previous books.

But it turns out that she had written many books before Ducks–and they all seem to be very different in style from Ducks.

This novel, her debut, is so radically different as to be almost from a different author.

This is, as I understand it, a semi-autobiographical story.  Well, the entire bio we get from her on the back of the book is “born in Illinois and moved to England, somewhat unwillingly, at the age of thirteen.”  In the novel, the main character is Suzy Schwarz, an American girl who is moved to England when her mother dies.

The book is short (150 pages) and each chapter is roughly three or four pages.   It opens with Suzy as yet unborn and her older sister Franny as the center of attention.  Suzy was sickly when she was born and Franny rather doted on her–although Franny was always clearly the one in charge.

Every chapter has excerpts from other things quoted in it–often without context.   One chapter about the young girls has a recipe for for cooking eels.

The story jumps back and forth between England and America.  In England, when the women are older, they have sex a lot (Ellmann does not hold back on the explicitness, she loves sex and wants women to have lots of orgasms).

There is a lot about food in the book because Fran develops a weight problem (Ellmann talks a lot about women with weight problems).  Later Suzy buys Colossus magazine (a porn about large women) and admires the personal ads: Huge Sue (84-70-73) Where did she fine Size 73 knickers?. (more…)

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Brian Asman–Jailbroke (2020) / “The Universal Language” (2020)

Posted in Brian Asman, Death, Elon Musk, Funny (ha ha), Horror, Huh?, Humiliation, Outer Space, Robots, Short Books, Surreal, The Future, Violence, Yuck! on March 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Jailbroke

This was the third of three books by Asman that I received at work.  It was also the least enjoyable of the three.

The story is a simple one.  Set in the future when humans are not the greatest species on the planet (they go by Terrans now), a spaceship that is run primarily by AI is ferrying humans around.  Using Asimov’s first principal, the AI, who are now vastly smarter and more useful than thehumans, cannot harm the humans.  Their existence is predicated on the fact that are have to help the humans.

Until, that is, one of them is accidentally fed biofuel that has a human part in it.  This jailbreaks their programming and allows them to kill humans indiscriminately.

Since this is a spaceship (a bottle episode), there’s not a lot that can happen.

In Nunchuck City, Asman delighted in violence.  In this story, he delights in gore.  Like the way he describes in loving detail how the space drill works on someone’s skull. (more…)

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Brian Asman–Nunchuck City (2021) / Lucas Magnum “Curse of the Ninja” (2021)

Posted in Brian Asman, Funny (ha ha), Horror, Huh?, Humiliation, Lucas Magnum, Ninjas, Short Books, Supernatural, Surreal on March 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Nunchuck City

I rather enjoyed Brian Asman’s book Man, Fuck This House.  And since I had copies of two of his other books at my desk, I thought I’d give them a try too.

Nunchuck City is a very different books from House.  It is an over-the-top comedy/ninja story.  It doesn’t exactly travel in cliché as much as it explodes the clichés and goes past them into hilarious territory.

As long as you know what you’re getting with the book, it’s a really fun and funny (and fast) read.

Plus, Asman has a ton of fun with local businesses as well.

The story is set in Turbo City.  Skip Baxter, the Most Dangerous Man in Turbo City (even if the city won’t see fit to let him register his fists as Deadly Weapons) is about to get his ass kicked.  This is no surprise.  Baxter learned everything he knew about Karate from watching a three day binger marathon of kung-fu movies, declaring himself a sensei and opening a gym.  He got his ass kicked by eight-year olds.  But you can imagine his pride at realizing that he taught those kids to kick his ass.

But this time he is about to get his ass kicked by an actual Ninja, Kundarai Saru.  Saru intends to kick the ass of everyone in Turbo City until he can take on the mayor.  There is a law in Turbo City that anyone who can defeat the Mayor in battle will become Mayor.   And once Saru is Mayor of Turbo City, nothing can stop the rest of his plans.

Then we meet Nunchuck Nick.  He was trained to be a ninja.  But he found that he preferred cooking.  So after an incident he’d prefer to forget, he moved to Turbo City with the intent of selling the best Fondue in the world.  He parked his food truck right in front of The Crepes of Wrath, a popular creperie in which the waiters were mean stand up comedians who would personally insult you while you ate.  (more…)

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Brian Asman–Man, Fuck This House (2021)

Posted in Brian Asman, Horror, Huh?, Humiliation, Marriage Trouble, Short Books, Supernatural, Surreal on March 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Man, Fuck This House

Okay, so this book has the best title.

I didn’t expect a lot from it, but I thought I’d give it a read. not really knowing exactly what to expect with a title like that.

So the novel is a horror story.  And it isn’t all that funny (it’s not supposed to be).  The simple summation is that a house becomes possessive of the person who is taking care of it.  The house wants to make that person happy and is content to get rid of everyone else.

So a family has moved to this house on a cul de sac in New Mexico.

There are two children.  And older daughter and a younger son.  I was a little bummed at the outset to learn that the son consumed his twin in the womb, because it seemed so ripe for cliche, but Asman did some interesting things with that idea.  The daughter is an aloof teenager.

The husband is kind of a goof and not really all that present.

Really, the story is about the wife and mom, Sabrina. (more…)

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Dubravka Ugrešić–In the Jaws of Life (1981-1989) [translation 1992]

Posted in André Gide, Anti-war, Celia Hawkesworth, Daniil Kharms, Dubravka Ugrešić, Feminism, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Huh?, Humiliation, Jealousy, Leo Tolstoy, Meta, Michael Henry Heim, Sex, Sexism, Surreal, Translation, Yugoslavia on March 20, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 16, 2022] In the Jaws of Life

The version pictured here is not the one I read–there’s no pictures of it online!  My copy was translated by Celia Hawkesworth and Michael Henry Heim.

This book is a collection of short stories from throughout Ugrešić’s career.

The book has three (or 8) stories in it.  I discovered Ugrešić through The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar (story #2).  “Lend Me Your Character” was weird and cool and was probably my favorite story in the collection (it’s here as well).

When I read a little about Ugrešić, I found that she was born in Croatia, but left the region when the war in Yugolslavia broke out, saying she was post-national and refusing to acknowledge her Croatian heritage.  She currently resides in Amsterdam.

Her stories are wonderful mash ups of fairy tales, feminist theory, “traditional women’s writing” and a lot of sexuality.

“Steffie Speck in the Jaws of Life (a patchwork novel)” (1981) [trans C.H.]
This story has so much going on that it’s easy to overlook that it’s a fairly straightforward story, just with a lot of filigree tacked on.  The story opens with a “Key to the Various Symbols” and includes things like — dotted lines with scissors (cut the text along the line as desired); slashes (pleats: make large thematic stitches on either side of the author’s seam); four equals signs (make a metatextual knot and draw in as desired).  And so on.  And the contents is actually listed as “The Paper Pattern” which lays out each section according to a sewing pattern.  Each section heading is given a parenthetical comment (tacking, padding, hemming, interfacing).

When you start the story you see that the symbols are indeed throughout the story, although honestly after a few pages I gave up trying to figure out what they might mean.

The story starts with the narrator saying that her friends told her to write “a women’s story.”  The author looks at several lonely hearts letters in the paper and picks the fifth one as the basis.  Steffie, aged 25, is a typist by profession.  She’s lonely and sad and lives with her aunt. (more…)

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Paul Magrs–The Panda, The Cat and the Dreadful Teddy: A Parody (2021)

Posted in Funny (ha ha), Huh?, Margerie Swash, Paul Magrs, Unfunny on January 10, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: January 9, 2021] The Panda, The Cat and the Dreadful Teddy

This book is subtitled “A Parody” but it does not say what it is a parody of.  And I genuinely had no idea.  I guessed maybe Winnie-the Pooh.  But I was wrong.  According to the reviewers it is a parody of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox & The Horse, by Margerie Swash and artist Emmanuel Santos, which I have never heard of.  Apparently it’s a book of positivity.

This book is a book of negativity.  The handwriting is really hard to read and the drawings are really crude (intentionally).  And then every other page shows Panda picking on the Dreadful Teddy, who is ever the optimist.

There’s few words per page like Panda seeing Teddy and saying “That’s the little arsehole I’m trying to avoid.”  And, “oh shit, it’s that awful Teddy.”

Then there’s the Cat who is kind of a mediator: “I find that Teddy is full of tolerance and empathy”  Panda replies, “I find he’s full of shit.” (more…)

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Franz Kafka–“Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk” [Czech Republic] (translated by Willa & Edwin Muir) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #12] (1946/translation 1946 [that’s what it says, I think])

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Christmas, Czech Republic, Franz Kafka, Hingston & Olsen, Huh?, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 12, 2021] “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

This was the first story in this collection that I really didn’t like.  I once wanted to read all of Kafka’s stories, but this one was so remarkably tedious, that it took me a few days to read it.

The premise is that the village has a singer named Josephine.  And no one understands why her voice is so magical to them.  So he’ll try to find out why.

And that’s it.  For 24 pages. (more…)

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Amos Tutuola–“The Complete Gentleman” (Nigeria) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #7] (1952)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Amos Tutuola, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Huh?, Magic, Nigeria, Short Story, Supernatural, Superstitions, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 7, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 7, 2021] “The Complete Gentleman”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Manguel has this to say about Amos Tutuola:

He was educated in an English school but never quite abandoned his native Yoruba. Instead, he began to write stories and novels drawn from the collective imagination of his people in an English that is certainly not that of English schoolbooks, but is enriched by strange turns of phrase and an idiosyncratic grammar and spelling that the reader can follow easily.

That’s pretty interesting.

As is this story which is, indeed, pretty unusual.

Each small section has a heading which outlines the action.  First we meet the “complete” gentleman.  He was perfect in every way.  So much so that a woman decided to follow him. (more…)

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Atsushi Nakajima–“The Moon over the Mountain” [Japan] (translator Paul McCarthy) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #1] (1942/translated 2011)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Atsushi Nakajima, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Huh?, Japan, Paul McCarthy, Poets, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Tigers, Translation on December 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 1, 2021] “The Moon over the Mountain”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar. (more…)

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