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kfan's review
2.0
Although I liked Pasha's previous book, The Withdrawal Method, I felt its main drawback was that the language and composition of the stories was so formal. I wished Pasha would just cut loose and write some shit, you know? So I feel slightly bad for not liking this book more, which is, in fact, exactly what I asked for.
The writing here is very off-the-cuff, much more random and experimental. Some of it is good, but some of it feels hokey, the humor falling flat.
I like that other people like this book, and I get why they like it. Here are two factors that kept me from loving this:
1) the free verse style. Pasha has referred to this book as "jokes with line breaks" and it's the line breaks that kind of ruin it for me. I think if he had written these out as prose poems they would have been much more successful, reading as just strange little stories, a la James Tate, instead of "look I'm writing funny poetry!"
2) I read Chelsea Martin's "Everything Was Fine Until Whatever" at the same time as this. That book is just really fucking good, and treads similar territory, so I couldn't help but compare them.
What else. I guess there was some stuff in here about sex and homosexuality that made me uncomfortable, but that can be about me.
In summary: wanted to love it; liked it just ok; would have liked it more than just ok without line breaks.
The writing here is very off-the-cuff, much more random and experimental. Some of it is good, but some of it feels hokey, the humor falling flat.
I like that other people like this book, and I get why they like it. Here are two factors that kept me from loving this:
1) the free verse style. Pasha has referred to this book as "jokes with line breaks" and it's the line breaks that kind of ruin it for me. I think if he had written these out as prose poems they would have been much more successful, reading as just strange little stories, a la James Tate, instead of "look I'm writing funny poetry!"
2) I read Chelsea Martin's "Everything Was Fine Until Whatever" at the same time as this. That book is just really fucking good, and treads similar territory, so I couldn't help but compare them.
What else. I guess there was some stuff in here about sex and homosexuality that made me uncomfortable, but that can be about me.
In summary: wanted to love it; liked it just ok; would have liked it more than just ok without line breaks.
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