Pages tagged “jack pendarvis”

Mythical giant vs. the modern world—readers win

Moby-Dick has a white whale. Gravity’s Rainbow has outsized sexual shenanigans. Awesome, by Jack Pendarvis, has both.

The hero of this short, dizzying comic novel is the title character, a massive, handsome, supremely powerful man who strides the earth like nobody’s business. He wears a derby hat. He lives with his robot ward Jimmy, who is Robin to his Batman, and he has a kind of love affair with his downstairs neighbor, Glorious Jones. After his plans to marry her go haywire, Awesome is launched into a series of adventures that find him careering from odd situation to odd situation, applying himself gigantically wherever 
he goes.

One of the crown jewels of Paste's hometown, the 2008 Decatur Book Festival, kicks off this afternoon. And, like any self-respecting lovers of beer, corn dogs, funnel cakes, live music, late-summer community gatherings-- and, oh yeah, books-- we're pretty excited about it. If you haven't looked at the schedule yet, do so-- but sit down first, 'cause it's a doozy.

As you're plotting out your weekend, make time to swing by the Paste tent, where we'll be offering our Pay What You Want subscription offer to festival-goers. We're also co-sponsoring the closing night festivities, a live performance on Decatur Square by the Drive By Truckers' Patterson Hood. And Paste's own books editor, Charles McNair, author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated novel Land O'Goshen, will make several appearances. 

Still overwhelmed? We've asked some of our favorite Atlanta-area bookish types for their picks for best of the fest, so take heed.
 

There are plenty of things about the South that I'm either indifferent to (NASCAR, sweet tea) or ashamed of (a history of slavery, segregation and racism; Ernest). But I'm certainly proud of our writing tradition, from William Faulkner to Alice Walker. Here are 10 great novels and collections of short fiction by Southern writers, set in the 20th Century South.

As with any of the lists on my blog, these are simply my favorites. We do plenty of lists in Paste magazine, all of which are researched, vetted and argued over endlessly. But what follows are simply 10 books that were a joy for me to devour. As you head to the beach, consider taking one of these with you:

Sex Devil rides again

Jack Pendarvis’ first collection of stories, The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure, heralded a new, brightly twisted voice in Southern humor. (Read “Sex Devil,” and after you convulse, you can buy me a drink.) In those stories, Pendarvis displayed his sure hand for character and knack for knowing humor.

Now comes his second collection, Your Body is Changing, and in it, Pendarvis serves notice that he has raised his game into what we high-brows call “literature.” These stories shimmer with real life while reveling in their characters’ absurdities.

In the title novella, an owl flies through a home, and you care about the carnage while guffawing, thanks to Pendarvis’ unerring, deadpan narration. His sentences spiral into surprising places much like the off-kilter music of NRBQ, a band that always hits the unobvious note. ‘Good’ funny is rare indeed, and Jack Pendarvis puts brains and heart behind the book’s many laughs.

Man of Letters: Pushcart Prize-winning writer unleashes hilariously absurd short-story collection...

Despite the Hardy Boys-ish title, Jack Pendarvis’s The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure contains nine hilarious, laugh-out-loud stories, plus a novella. Fans of early T.C. Boyle and, oddly, Samuel Beckett will love these treks into deep chasms of absurdity.

In “Pipe,” a security officer and a paramedic guard a publicity-seeking DJ buried alive for 46 days. They smoke dope and drink away the midnight-to-six shift, speaking into the air hole, never getting an answer from below. The older guard tells his secrets to the invisible disc jockey, perhaps falls in love with him, and wonders on the puzzlements of life. His wayward sidekick brags about his women, his transvestites and his ability to live beyond the law (though he still lives with his grandmother). The pair’s interactions recall Endgame or Waiting for Godot, and the guards’ ultimate non-knowledge of what occurred over a month and a half offers a primer in Existentialism.

“Sex Devil,” “Dear People Magazine, Keep Up the Great Cyclops Coverage” and “Our Spring Catalog” are epistolary. In “Sex Devil,” the narrator (either a teenage boy or a grown man who needs to back away from the bong) pitches a comic-book publisher. In his bizarre yet heartfelt query letter, he provides a complete history of one Randy White, aka Sex Devil, a tormented cleft-palated youth who will later seek vengeance on Black Friday (a bully in Sex Devil’s school days) and gain the confidence and love of his long-lost high-school love Jennifer. Sex Devil’s amazing powers and knowledge of “jah-kwo-ton” emanated from the school janitor, a kind man who understands Randy’s humiliation. “Dear People Magazine…” contains a series of letters to the editor, each more ludicrous than the last, written by fans of Cyclops, the leading man du jour. “Our Spring Catalog” builds into a rant, written by a disgruntled copy writer at a small independent publisher:

From Eat the Lotus, by Marie Overstreet / retail price $22 241 pages:

I swear to God I’m going to cut my own throat. I just don’t give a shit. Husband and wife reach a crossroads in their relationship against the colorful back drop of blah blah blah. They’re haunted by the suicide of their only son. Pull yourself together you pussies!”

The 90-page title story, narrated by one Willie Dobbs, self-described “laziest man in town,” concerns an unemployed, unhappily married man who decides to write the entire history of South Preston, a town unlinked to a North, East or West Preston. Through his inventive digging around, we learn “trash birds” once attacked people willy-nilly; certain members of the community hold racist views; every police department plays good cop/bad cop; a Sheep Man roamed these parts, etc. And we learn to despise Willie Dobbs’ father-in-law as we root for Willie to discover the “mysterious secret.”

Jack Pendarvis has unleashed a powerful first collection of stories. In “So This Is Writing!” a drunken Southern writer, giving a public reading, blurts out “Thank you, George W. Bush!” for no apparent reason—probably sarcasm. That scene alone sold me.