It is what it is, is What It Is
In this experimental collaboration between writer Maziar and designer (and Cold War Kids bassist) Maust, poetry, prose and striking visuals merge in 134 pages of edgy observation.
Maziar is best telling stories about others, as in “Lamb in Lionsuit: Curly Under the Freeway,” a profile of a homeless man. He can write poetry too, flashing through black fences of description: Who would cry for the news coming from Hollywood, the news of models with giant deadness …
Maziar owes much to the Beats. Like those writers, he works best read aloud. (The ear may be a more open organ than the eye when it comes to the pleasure of words.)
Maust’s artwork earnestly attacks the conventional. Most memorable is a blurry old photo of a four-story building preposterously named Hotel Furkablick.
We could well see ?that spectral hotel again at the end of the world, the last structure standing, bone white.