Run Over While Staring At A Woman’s Legs
by ANTONY MANN
My previous reviews of this author: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tag/antony-mann/
Also the story ‘Mighty Fine Days’ in NEMONYMOUS TWO (2002)
Whenever I read this book, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…
PS: Another of my previous reviews of this author: https://nullimmortalis.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/the-alsiso-project/
(Seemingly first published in the 1990s)
“Feel like verbally abusing someone with little or no chance of a comeback? Need someone to blame for your own pathetic neuroses? Why not hire an Old Person? Old Person, for phone or face-to-face chat. Old Person. Comes in all nine genders.”
POSSIBLE SPOILERS. I am one such old person. Up for sale. Even this story’s legs had a price tag on them, but that may be a spoiler. This story is simply off-the-wall hilarious and a historical document. A younger man, with whom we identify, is selling a Positive Impaction Device for a tabula rasa at a house party where a few of the women are younger, too, and “unremittingly attractive and viperous.” Many of the others seem to be men, of various dotages with timeless avuncular inter-relationships, all these men selling something useless. Except possibly the one, who was selling the get-confidence book about who really killed JFK. But the Positive Impaction Device may also be useful if the tabula rasa is one of the ‘nowhere, nobody and nothing’ gaps in this story called THE FATE OF THE WORLD, REDUCED TO A TEN-SECOND PISSING CONTEST, a story that I remarkably happened to gestalt-read only just a few minutes ago. It tells you – assuming my senile memory can be depended upon – who killed Trump. Or, at least, who WILL do so. Read it and see, assuming you can excuse this selling of it here by an old man like me, before “…a pair of women in their fifties sidled up and grabbed him by the arms, dragging him away amidst mock protestations.”
This is the first story in the book, so no jumping to conclusions.
“Then there’s this little picture of a lower case ‘i’ which has been dotted above and below.”
An inversible exclamation-mark seems to be the ideal emblem for this book! And this second story features again Bulkowkovich the narrator in his thirties and his unsidekick Mike Donner in his sixties. I am growing to know these people and also to like them. Here they have dealings with writing up a firm exploiting the skills of the feistily cynical character embodied in the above title. A firm selling the ability to believe one’s own publicity. And if you are reading this on-line, you will know what I mean.
“It appears that a percentage of any occupation will start spouting self-obsessed twaddle if asked enough times about what they do.”
Some most remarkable scenes here that will have you in creases as well ‘Dead as Dada.’ No wonder Mathew already called this writer ‘genius’ in this thread. And Mathew, of all people, should know! Why is this book not more well known? It needs its own goat to give it its own mind, its false analogy, thus risking social justice warriors arriving to prevent cruelty to any thinking tomatoes that empathise with consumers’ taste buds,
“For instance, you could read the minds of the world’s leaders, then let Joe Average know when they’re concealing the truth. You could be like that Julian Assange guy, only not so weird.”
The fact that one character here has “orangey skin” might be a premonition as well as a telepathy? A story first published in 1998.
“Hey, wait a second!” I said. “If Mike Donner says he’s credible, then I believe him!”
Hey, wait a second, this is not what it seems. And if I told you why it is or is not what it seems, that would spoil it. Just love these two characters Donner and me/ Bulkowkovich — whatever their or our motive!
A new erratica of satire. A gift that keeps on giving. Declining donner for every I, you, he, she, it, us and them. Not forgetting the tu and vous distinction,
“You’re using dud actors to play good actors?”
“Bulkowkovich?” he said. “Did you know that you put on more weight drinking beer while watching sport than you do while watching a documentary about modern art?”
This is a story you can use. One of those useful things it is often useful to think of owning. The gift that keeps on giving. To do justice to this (what I take to be a classic Donner-Bulkowkovich) story, I would need to reproduce the whole story here. Just to give you a clue, it is about a novel and film frights for not only the generic embodiment in the above title but also its particularity when straight from Donner’s fridge. This story is a prologue to that project I guess, except it somehow loops back illogically to its own demonic destruction of the very idea that set it in motion. A metaphor for creative writing, if not life itself. And so on, ad infinitum or ad absurdum. Reminds me of Danielewski who is currently writing 28 massive volumes (each roughly the textual size of his own HOUSE Of Leaves) written about a girl and her kitten. I think 3 volumes have already been published. Honestly. No joke. Check and see. I own them.
“Donner was in his mid-sixties, thirty years my elder. He was thinner, too, and shorter, and substantially hairier. We’re both on staff at The Pleasantville Echo. Do you know the term ‘ace reporters’? Neither do we.”
I have Memory Loss Anxiety. Good job each story reminds me about the two main characters, Donner and me. Donner has this condition, too, but calls it Attention Span Syndrome, or something else if I have gotten it wrong. I do these real-time reviews to counter my phobia of losing the plot before I do my review, but the danger comes when I lose the plot a split second before real-time expires. As I did (here) a few minutes ago in a concurrent review of a Mathew work about bowling lanes.*
The above Mann title is basically about Queue Anxiety and I have that, too. A morbid belief that they have forgotten me or my order, in a waiting room or busy shop or fast food delivery.
This is another story that you can’t stifle. Particularly hilarious is the sort of busy pub / restaurant / fast food scenario that deals with anxieties and selling a huge mix of therapies and pills in various sizes and strengths for such anxieties.
Some coincidences –
*”You still want to go bowling?” (A quote from this Mann!)
“‘Call me Al,’ I murmured.” (Another quote from this Mann coincidentally relating to another concurrent real-time review of a Hook story earlier today that majored on ‘Al’ as a code (here), plus Crimewave’s matching green cover and its woman’s face matching this Mann’s greenness environment trope and her green panties!)
This Mann story also deals with “Critic Influence Disorder” whereby one has the anxiety about being unduly affected in one’s opinion by reviews. My own Critic Influence Disorder is a phobia about the influence of coincidences on my reviews.
“I really think that if Mini-Chocolate Beer Cans are going to take off the way chocolate cigarettes did, the cans should be hollow, and maybe filled…”
This book’s pair take on another story. No personal coincidences for me this time, other than, just before starting to read it, I nicked my big toe with the scissors when cutting its nail and I had to dab blood away from this part of my foot. In fact, I now have a small Peppa Pig plaster on it.
Also, perhaps, my Attention Span Syndrome, mentioned above, is relevant to Donner’s stealing his own thawing Donuts in the night but not remembering this come morning…so he blames an unknown thief.
The main thrust of this work is to tell of us of an eco-warrior called Bridges who is “Exuding the creepy self-righteousness of the activist,” and is not really sincere with all manner of paradoxes and problems in achieving purism in one’s social justice beliefs and actions. The stripped wallpaper, notwithstanding.
Balance is the only way to do good and to right wrongs, as any other approach may be counter-productive to humanity’s ultimate gestalt in hindsight.
“Did you know that people can be depressed without even knowing it?”
Well this story will help cure you of it.
“‘Is it just me, or do pro anglers remind you of gun lobby crazies?’ mused Donner.”
The next Donner and Bulkowkovich story takes place in 2022. And I wonder if Trump has by now opened up that large envelope prop he was given by visiting aliens last week, although he claimed to have read it without opening it…
The visiting alien here is lime green and orange, a most distasteful fashion combination. But the exchange of messages with D and B were equally mishandled, I guess. A real hoot.
And this Mann alien is called Gar-al. The Mathew SICK DICE story (‘Strokes’) that I happen to be currently real-time reviewing today (just now) has a main character called Gary aka Gal. You got to believe it and how larger than life he is.
“‘That’s the way they fall,’ I agreed.”
It is a shame that this was the last and possibly the longest story in this book. I love Donner and Bulkowkovich, and I still do, but this X Files type shenanigan got out of hand and over head, or at least over my head. This PORN murder business was a caricature of a caricature, a satire of a satire, a gate of a gate, indeed, Gategategate. Never mind. The book up to this point was absolutely perfect and unmissable.
end