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Title: Headless: Stories (Little House on the Bowery) by Benjamin Weissman, Dennis Cooper ISBN: 1-888451-49-1 Publisher: Akashic Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Headless Weissman
Comment: Benjamin Weissman is a unique voice in fiction. His mix of humour, sexuality and neuroses has proved a winning formula for many authors, but I can't say I've read anything quite like him. His new book, 'Headless', part of novelist Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series, is a collection of thematically-related short stories, the themes here being (among others) sex, masculinity, skiing and scatology. As is to be expected when you have over 20 stories collected in one place, I found some of the stories to be forgettable, and some to be just average, but there are some real gems in here, too.
The book is divided into 4 sections: Bloodthirsty Man, Marnie, Tips From the Sensual Man, and Technically Dadless. My favourite section was Marnie, all the stories in it really worked for me, especially the one from which the collection takes its title. Some other notable stories are: 'Of Two Minds', not necessarily amazing for the plot, but I thought the idea of a schizophrenic narrator who writes one sentence in past tense, the next in present tense ("each sentence, a shadow of its former self...")to be pretty darn cool. Also, 'The Fecality of It All', about an overflooded toilet, and 'Pink Slip of Wood', a monologue in which a man is fired for a reason I can't mention if I want my review to appear on this website.
If you're looking for something smart and very different, and aren't the type to get offended by extremely graphic writing, this might be the book for you.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Return of the King
Comment: One of the best readings I've been to took place in early March of this year at the venerable old City lights bookstore here in San Francisco, when Benjamin Weissman, who had not visited us for many years, took over the house and made it his own. He read two stories from his new book HEADLESS, each of them completely different but complementing the other with what one had felt to be the missing piece out of American fiction. Reading his new collection HEADLESS is like breathing pure oxygen at the top of some snowcrested mountain of madness. Every page is embedded with a jewel that will make you crazy. Perhaps this is what happened, without him knowing anything about it, to the earliest Amazon reviewer of this book. Weissman's best stories are as beautiful as the long poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, but it's a Rilke with a Chris Rock kind of postmodern irony and culture blasting. Try reading the opening lines of HEADLESS, you will already have discovered the seedbed of a classic act of love.
Rating: 5
Summary: Running naked and wild outside of the box...
Comment: This book is simply beautiful, ugly, and brilliant all rolled into one sublimely satisfying read that flat out gives new meaning to short story collections - "cult" or otherwise. This reading experience is what reading CAN be, but sadly so rarely is. Weissman's stories are definitely outside the box, sometimes FAR outside the box, but once you get there, they are some of the most beautifully constructed pieces of individual truth I've ever had the opportunity to read. Clearly not for the average, mainstream reader, or someone hoping for happy little Hollywood endings where the hero gets the girl, this collection of the bizarre and heartbreakingly beautiful has shot straight to the top of my list and I really don't see it being replaced anytime soon - if ever.
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Title: Dear Dead Person: Short Fiction by Benjamin Weissman ISBN: 1852423307 Publisher: High Risk Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1994 List Price(USD): $10.99 |
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Title: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse by Robert Rankin ISBN: 0575074019 Publisher: Gollancz Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Goat: A Memoir by Brad Land ISBN: 1400060931 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: High Life by Matthew Stokoe ISBN: 1888451327 Publisher: Akashic Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Venus As a Boy by Luke Sutherland ISBN: 1582343993 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Pub. Date: 01 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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