Do you know someone who when they say “Right now I’m reading…” they really mean “Right now I’m listening to…” ? Then this is just the thing for them! Be a good friend and switch them on to DESPAIR PRIORITIES.
See the previous post on this website to download a free pdf of the novel!
Eugenio Negro built a $75 Survival Hut and a $750 Survival Hut!
Click below to download the PDF and enjoy! Absolutely free, no selling no how under pain of dismemberment. I am very excited to do interviews about it, so hit me up at negrocomics@gmail.com.
Read it? Changed your life? Consider giving a tip via Éxitos Gnosis, either Venmo @Exitos-Gnosis-Art or paypal exitosgnosisexg@gmail.com
Loved it? Hated it? Didn’t get it? Please consider writing a review of the book where you review books online!
Here’s an “audiobook” chapter as well!
FREE DOWNLOAD COMING NOVEMBER 2023 FROM THE AUTHOR OF BYEBYE AND SHLORT
A lot of stuff has changed in Santa Clara County since I started writing Byebye and Shlort in 2015. At that time the big break for downtown’s homeless former foster youth was still Martha’s Kitchen. Now there are the shower trucks, and other stuff I’m probably no longer hip to.
Now Dave Cortese is announcing that Santa Clara County former foster youth will receive new financial support for a year, branded ever so trendily as “universal basic income” or “UBI,” as they age out of the foster system. What hasn’t changed is people’s callousness toward and judgment of former foster youth, which is like having a felony or something. Statistics, video, etc. on foster youth’s ending up homeless is widely and easily available on the internet.
The catch is that individuals must make it all the way to 24 before eligibility for the $1000/month support for one year. There’s enough for 72 individuals so far. The article linked above is worth reading in its entirety. I would embed a video on the subject but it’s only on Facebook, so.
I was invited again by my excellent camarada Diane to talk about my book on her KKUP show. No spoilers happened. She was interested in the realistic Gentri-Fi part, ha ha ha! We didn’t talk at all about hatestep, the perceptual problems or my essay in dialogue. You’ll have to read the book for that!
ALSO DUDE, I don’t know how, but SJPL finally has both my books. Hella stoked. Is there a machine that you feed a book to it and it scans it in or …? Spooky! I had not previously had any luck getting the eBook or hardcopy of Meat Ladder to SJPL and an eBook of Byebye doesn’t even exist so wtf. OHH or Exitos Gnosis submitted it to some local-invitation cycle? Not gonna complain or ask questions!!! Get yer library account open and do Biblioboard!
Byebye and Shlort is “approved” by IndieReader.
It’s time for GENTRI-FI!
Bell’s Palo Alto – Bound Together SF – Pt Reyes Station Books – Monkeywrench Austin – Wooden Shoe Philadelphia – Bluestockings NYC
After seven years of holding down the rowdy and fascinating Drunken Odyssey, literature professor, drinker and writer John King, lately of Florida, has released his novel Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame upon the summer reading market. This writer thinks shame like walk of shame, like you’re wasted. It’s a story about a decadent goth band’s journey to get a decent gig that involves reliving the legend of Gilgamesh for this weird-ass superfan in his fortress in Tennessee that must be modeled on Adrian Belew’s house.
King’s site is full of truly interesting and mostly-useful perspectives on literature, including an entire series on Shakespeare films. Also discoverable is a tender longitudinal document of King’s friendship with Orlando’s Nathan Holic. His name is Holic, people! John’s like breh, I’m a holic too, wenn du weisst was ich meine. I can imagine them together, drinking or eating opium or what the hell King does, and discussing the tough choices of writing novellas.
Where Guy Psycho comes in is its connection to King’s noteworthy love of comic books and B movies, documented on the site under “curatory of schlock.” The reader gets a strong sense when reading down Guy Psycho‘s relatively slender spine that the novel, far from being one of those “serious” books, is to be read as a comic-book ride, which is appropriate since Gilgamesh began as the comic book of its day, as did Faust.
Right away this writer liked how the story is about a fictional band, because fictitious music is some of the best (see hatestep). In the front of the book we get the members of the band conveniently listed, followed by the admonition “style is meaning.” Thanks, professor! The book then drops us into a wheel of speeding events that definitely give flashbacks of harried nights on tour, all arranged to a sort of ritual importance that should not be overlooked just because it’s a crappy band on a crappy tour. Did King play punk rock? “Oh, but Beto O’Rourke did. Did you know he can skate too?” Fuck right off.
Early on in the text we get something of Douglas Adams’ ability to render the prose itself scaled to its significance, oscillating within painstaking precision and hyperbolic decadence, though this attenuates as the plot thickens. King writes to write, and his affinity for comic book slapstick backs up against all kinds of cultural signifiers and name-drops disguised as hallucinations. This writer bets that such economy is probably what he was going for in terms of technique in Guy Psycho. What Carl Hiaasen would read like if he weren’t a boring normy.
The text is at turns cleverly satiric, intentionally “psychedelic,” as some commentators have named it, and often claustrophobically jumbled. Without giving anything away, the whole story is in a series of interiors, and there are times when this writer stopped reading to imagine both how all these vistas would render to the naked eye, as well as how stressful some of these leaps of imagination physically would be. Keep in mind that I did Cumberland Cavern once and am still traumatized. Did King squeeze through Cumberland Cavern before he set this son of a bitch somewhere beneath Rock City? I’ll keep my comments to myself.
Besides our mutual love of Tennessee, ziggurats and made-up bands, I noticed that I easily could grab King’s references to ancient literature, but part of me wonders if the lay reader would get some of the characters’/settings’ intentions/functions. My only critique would be for King to slow down and let us feel it, and to let the characters really work things out. There are some feelings expressed inwardly by the guitar player, but by way of late-placed exposition, instead of an opportunity to test Guy’s ego in front of the family, or make an in-your-face parallel to the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu that many readers might need. Or not! Just thinking on the keyboard here.
As Gilgamesh and Guy Psycho run on epic running-gear, I don’t expect Hamsun’s psychological clarity, but I would like to see the band members really come up against each other’s abilities, will and personalities to provide some kind of tension in need of decision. Without it the book only really pinches at the band members’ high-heel-tortured feet, and reads like one of my 2-Strats comics, where the reader is just along for the ride and doesn’t get to touch.
All in all Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame is filled with hilarious visuals, insightful gags and a brief lesson in ancient epic. What Guy has to be ashamed of is up to the reader. Don’t download it, dickieeeeee, buy a copy and then give it as a gift after you read it!
My new “gentri-fi” novel Byebye and Shlort is here! It’s got what you need: comedy, tragedy, language traps, language weapons, mayhem, friendship, frenemies, migration, deportation, drugs, yuppies, nonprofits, landlords, gentrification, displacement, homelessness, death from exposure, everyone’s excuse for how we can’t live any other way, and of course beer and weed!
It’s my love letter to San José, in hope that the people through education and cooperation can get the city we deserve, as the guy says. Hope I can go on living in San José for a few more years! Of course you can all make me rich by purchasing the book and send me off to Aptos…
Check “where to buy” to both buy a copy and use your library system! The list will be growing as Éxitos Gnosis and I build the circle of friends and co-conspirators.
I’m especially excited that the book will be at Bluestockings in Manhattan! You can call Hennepin County and Denver libraries and tell them to take that offer that they got this past week!
Anyone who reads the book can keep the world turning by rating it on Goodreads as well. ¡Viva la anarquía!
HOLY SHIT SCOTT WALKER DIED!
Hard to put into a flat dead blog how much of a presence he’s had in my life the last 15 years. How about a video.
As for his death: Was it me??? My new book, which prints within a few weeks, has his song in the epigraph. It just went to the printer today and I find out Scott died. Shit!! Too much Pynchon in my life right now. Time to drink. Vaya con los ancianos, Scott!!!
Time to visit www.exitosngnosis.com and pre-order your Byebye and Shlort, recipient of a 4.5/5 score from IndieReader! It’s much cheaper before May! Or be smart and tell your library to get it for you!
Review here: https://indiereader.com/2019/03/byebye-and-shlort/
Eugenio Negro Comics 