Brian Alan Ellis

Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty: Stories
By Brian Alan Ellis
House of Vlad Productions
Reviewed by Karl Wolff

The dedication reads "For heroes, villains, and perverts." The stories include drunks, coke fiends, sadistic children, disastrous love triangles, and two creepy sex-obsessed losers. Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty: Stories by Brian Alan Ellis stands true to its name. Ellis lives in Tallahassee, Florida, and the down-and-out redneck psychopathy shines through. These stories lack the polished prose associated with middle-class First World Problems. Everything here is downscale and rank with failure. But make no mistake, this isn't all doom and gloom. For anyone who enjoys Trailer Park Boys or Shameless (UK or US versions) will understand where Ellis is coming from. Desperation, failure, and violence make for great comedy.

The stories encompass a variety of foredoomed characters. A couple come across like snapshots, while other stories read like novellas. "Kool-Aid" is a hilarious and nauseating inner monologue by a horny cokehead. "Holiday Diner" is a quiet meditation on loneliness and sexuality, at least until the waitress pulls out her gun. "Proposal" is a tour-de-farce, an epic love triangle involving a con man, a heartless mother, and a sadistic little girl. The story rides the fine line between a comedy of manners and torture porn. "The Faggot Story," beyond the shocking title, involves two bored losers trading violent sex stories. One doesn't laugh with them so much as at them. But when you laugh at them, it stems from a nervous laughter. First, because anyone who spends their time dreaming up stories of sex, violence, and rape must have a monumentally empty life. Second, these people actually exist, which is no laughing matter. Add an "S" to the beginning of "laughter" and see what you get.

Beyond the shock and the sadness and the impoverished circumstances, Ellis knows how to turn a phrase. The prose exhibits a refreshing raggedness. These are stories about people who don't read The New York Times Book Review or listen to NPR. Life is a struggle. It's brutal, nasty, and short. It also becomes a mockery when one is surrounded by beaches and palm trees. Florida isn't simply vacation resorts and Disney World. The world view can be summarized with a sentence from the last story, "The Floating Mickey Mouse T-Shirt," "I know he's lying because instead of telling us about haunting houses and being dead, he goes on and on about typical human being things - like being broke; like knowing there isn't a chance; like feeling as though you are being brushed away like some repetitious gnat forced to feed off the corn embedded in society's turd, and so forth." Real uplifting, huh?

This is the third book I've read by Ellis and I've come to understand more about the sick, sad world he writes about. Samuel Beckett wrote about tramps and individuals in doomed situations, but he also brought a dark comedy to it. Ellis also shines a comedic light on the same desperation and absurdity of the human condition.

Out of 10/9.0

http://www.cclapcenter.com/2015/10/book_review_something_good_som.html… (más)

Only three types of people would be interested in reading this book -

- Those who aspire to be the 20-something version of Holden Caufield.
- Those who want to vicariously live someone else’s hangover.
- People way too into schadenfreude.

I can’t decide what category I fit in or if I even hate or love Ellis’ book. But his crude stream-of-conscious style of writing is enticing even though it comes off as being written by a creative writing studies dropout.

You don’t empathize with the unnamed narrator. You walk with him while judging his sick-sad choices. I gagged at times while breaking down in laughter at a cat named Dio.

It’s worth the ten minute read.… (más)

This is my honest review for a book I won in a GoodReads.com giveaway.

Before I could barely wink an eye before I’d finished reading this amazingly brief endeavor written by Brian Alan Ellis. In compiling this, the author wrote each entry without any regard to the language he used. The language which is blunt, coarse, and at times even vulgar aids in making the image one sees more vivid, and the characters more human. The actual truth regarding the state of the many things we have to deal with or live with is represented by the language used in describing them. While I might feel I’m a too old to be reading this material, I feel it’s a prefect reading for anyone who still in their twenties, are into drugs or alcohol; or into still the same type of language used here. Which is why I’m giving it 4 STARS.

Robin Leigh Morgan is the author of “I Kissed a Ghost,” a MG/YA Paranormal romance novel.… (más)

King Shit
By Brian Alan Ellis; Illustrations by Waylon Thornton
House of Vlad Productions
Reviewed by Karl Wolff

The title says it all. King Shit by Brian Alan Ellis is about one night of bar-hopping with Elvis McAllister and his knife-wielding friend Ralph. Elvis is a "factory worker, storyteller, Graceland enthusiast, and overall hornball." Once again we return to the "Sick-Sad" world of Brian Alan Ellis. Last year I reviewed Ellis's short story collection, The Mustache He's Always Wanted but Could Never Grow and I enjoyed reading this as well. It is similar to Mustache in its episodic nature and its cavalcade of trashy losers and misfits. Beneath it all is an undercurrent of violence and a humor that grants the bar crawl a bit of much needed levity.

The novella revolves around one night hopping bars with Elvis and Ralph. Elvis is also dealing with his break up from Donna, who he later witnesses cussing underneath a street lamp. Prior to this, he encounters a series of odd characters. Rockabilly-greaser junkies, a bow-legged burlesque dancer, a Mexican dressed as Santa Claus, and an angry dwarf. Elvis deals with each of these (sometimes hostile) characters, either reacting with amusement or getting punched in the face. Ellis writes each short chapter in a breezy lowbrow style. Between each chapter Waylon Thornton gives the reader a little illustration. The style reminded me of Duckman, the 90s-era cartoon with Jason Alexander voicing the misanthropic duck.

The revival of the novella has been one of the fascinating phenomena associated with bizarro literature. Browsing through the back catalog of Eraserhead Press, one sees many offerings below the 200-page range and some even down below one hundred pages. Bizarro literature seems to favor the short and shocking and King Shit is both. Despite accusations that the novella is slight, King Shit offers a perfectly constructed world with a limited setting. It only covers one night and some characters seem so outlandish that they probably wouldn't exist beyond the page, but Ellis's "Sick-Sad" world shouldn't be taken literally. One of my favorite novellas is Daisy Miller by Henry James, but both novellas are similar only in their length.

On the other hand, with doorstopper series like The Song of Ice and Fire and Outlander, it is nice to read a book that can be finished in one sitting. We always assume The Great American Novel will be something epic and magisterial, littered with thoughtful nuanced characters and furrowed brows. The names Norman Mailer and Jonathan Franzen get thrown around and then assumptions are made. I choose to go in the opposite direction. Not Franzen's Freedom but Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. And despite their notoriety for outrageousness, perversity, and offensiveness, why not include bizarro literature in what we consider The Great American Novel? King Shit is about two men's journey during a particularly eventful bar crawl, but it also says a lot about class and culture in America. It is a finely wrought gobbet of sputum lobbed at the American middle class proprieties.

Out of 10/8.5; higher for fans of bizarro lit.

http://www.cclapcenter.com/2014/07/book_review_king_shit_by_brian.html… (más)