| Pocket fulL of loose razorblades |
| Collected fiction, Afterbirth Books, 2005 |
signed copy $15.95
|
+JEL is the psycho motormouth from Hell; his characters terminally zonked out on sizzling psychological and psychic torment that is as mega-foul and macro-funny as his inventive twists of logic in their brain-clasmic adventures...His stories end often so unexpectedly or with just the right ironic kill-point that I laughed out loud many times. Or grossed out. Or both. +Like all I have read by Lawson, Pocket Full of Loose Razorblades is infectious. Each story forcefully kidnaps your attention and doesn't let go until the very end, and when it's over you find yourself with a case of Stockholm Syndrome. With Lawson's unique voice, this smooth criminal twists and contorts your mind into believing the unbelievable; rupturing logical thought with industrialized bizarro worlds of corporate birthed chubby children first thought as impossible, and then giving belief in such impossibilities. The engrossment accomplished within his words leaves the reader pondering upon metaphors, reading deeper into the text to find a play upon our culture, our societies, and our humanity. A must read for anyone into the new genre of bizarro. +The thing that surprised me most about Pocket Full of Loose Razorblades was not its quality, but its intensity. The absurd, obscene images and scenarios that make these stories so original do not in any way distract from their intelligence and emotion. No matter how bizarre, Lawson writes with a deadly seriousness appropriate only to the book's title. +Knowing that John Edward Lawson is loose in the world not only makes me nervous, but whips me into a hot lather as well. His characters are hopelessly ensnarled in a world they never made...so they remake it in their own twisted images. If you like fiction that gropes into your psyche and rearranges the chromosomes, then this is for you. If you're into Jane Smiley and her ilk, you better go somewhere else. +Once again, John Lawson takes a jackhammer to the crotch of mainstream fiction. This collection of beautifully-crafted stories is more disturbing than a wet fart in a crowded elevator, and prettier than a whore three weeks dead. His razorblade candy will render you a godless gibbering heathen, and you'll enjoy every last minute of it. +Bizarro author John Edward Lawson's first short fiction collection is a messy affair. Messy in the pulsing, spurting, purple toxic sludge pit kind of way. Messy like those moments when Cronenberg decides to show you wet things writhing. For those jumping into this collection, invest in some wet-naps; you're going to feel dirty by the end of the affair. Lawson's tales here, many of which are experimental in a way that defies standard storytelling, are uniformly strange. For example, the best story of the batch, "Consumable Leftovers," involves a man who leaves behind his cubicle life for the wilderness. What starts as an entertaining attack on modern culture takes a grotesque (or is it just gross?) turn when the narrator finds himself encamped in the warm and fruitful bowels of a giant. I'm not kidding. But Lawson manages to take what could have been a juvenile exercise in ass humor and turns it into a funny and entertaining metaphorical rumination. Other stories of note are "Fabricating Opiates" in which three characters roam a labyrinthine house and are forced by old men to remove garments for reasons unknown, and "A Blight in the Darkness" about Urban Decay Specialists working in a corroding future to make sure the world continues to fall to bits. And the author has an obsession with ice cream trucks that can only be described as "unhealthy." Not every strange bird in this collection takes flight (as in sections 2-4 of "Less Than Lickable," a lengthy piece about the obsessions of a mentally ill man) but when Lawson's firing on all synapses he's got a gift for the surreal that makes you follow him into the weirdest, wettest places with a smile on your face. And for those looking for an escape from werewolves, serial killers, and vampires, Pocket Full of Loose Razorblades offers a nice vacation- as long as you don't mind venturing into a gigantic bowel now and then." +This collection is an excellent introduction to the work of John Lawson. His stories conjure up worlds that are like cover songs of our reality, where the original version is recognizable, but its absurdism, grotesqueness, humor, and refusal to adhere to the laws of physics make it into something entirely different. There was this feeling that I kept getting as I read this book, something difficult to communicate without sounding a little silly: something alien-like and gooey, like I was spending time in a radically different headspace. My favorite story in the book was 'Less Than Lickable,' which is novella-length. This one is a little different from the rest. Instead of using a world of the bizarre, Lawson chooses to use a more familiar setting while sucking up all the strangeness of his other stories into the body of the mentally unbalanced protagonist, who manipulates his environment in many amusing ways. |
This collection highlights dark surrealism at its most experimental and absurd depths. The texts are perception-altering and soul-poisoning, humorous in the way that accidental amputation and spontaneous combustion are. From the man who works at the foot fungus factory to the man who lives in a giant rectum, Pocket Full of Loose Razorblades will leave you wondering where you misplaced your sanity.
