Larissa Shmailo's Blog, page 4
November 19, 2019
My Writing Day - Entry at robmclennan's Blog
https://mysmallpresswritingday.blogsp...
Larissa Shmailo’s Writing Day:
5:00 am: I love it when I wake up early in the morning; this time seems more mine than any other. I weigh myself—the scale hasn’t moved but I am patient. I am obese, but less so by some 30 pounds now, and every day is a new adventure. This week I broke out of my couch-to -computer life to walk in the park and along Broadway for several miles. I am abstaining from my binge foods, sugar and flour, and every day I bend and turn my big body in joyful remembrance of motion. I am coming out of food fog and experiencing the pink cloud of addictive withdrawal.
Next, I do what I have always done – check my analytics. Did someone look at my blog? My Wikipedia page? My Facebook? My Twitter? Did something pending get published? Like Roland Barthes, who once wrote to me (yes, truly) J'écris pour être aimé de loin, I also write to be loved from afar, and to be read.
5:30, thereabouts: I meditate on positive affirmations as I have done for years. Mixed in there are my literary ambitions—I visualize reading at the 92nd Street Y, of being published in The Paris Review. I also remember David Foster Wallace who had every award and pub I could ever covet and who killed himself, and I affirm for less glittering but more durable qualities like gratitude, joy, humility, and love.
7:00 am: My poetry partner likes my new poem, “Over 35.” It is an interleaving of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXXV with answering lines about infidelity. This is a gut poem; it proceeded from an ache in my body that could not be denied. Lying on the couch, I asked, “Can I write this later?” No, my gut replied, now. I decide I will send it to Poetry; I have received my last rejection and it is time again. I bundle my Submittable, write my cover letter with my too-long bio, and send. It is done; I can forget about it for another six months.
9:00 am: What has Trump done now? I watch the news addictively. A child of parents persecuted by Stalin and interned in concentration camps by Hitler, I see the rise of fascism in the United States, of shameless, Goebbels-style propaganda – make the lie big, keep it simple enough for your stupidest follower, repeat it often, get others to repeat it. Sinclair has eaten Tribune and tells people on local news between the sports and the weather that Obama was funded by Hamas . . . this is the time writers earn their keep, as Toni Morrison said, these are the times we go to work.
11:00 am: My side hustle – I am a freelancer, write, ghost, do social media, edit, whatever I can to support my literary jones. For the past year, I have gotten work as a terminologist, a creative namer for advertising—I come up with names like Xarelto and Aviator for products, organizations, and services. This is one corporate gig where being a poet is not cause to be thrown out of the interviewer’s office—creativity with language is prized and paid astonishingly well. Today, I name a banking data platform; they want names that connote reliability, innovation, flexibility, data science. I knock out 100 names according to their parameters, real words lightly coined, and feel gratitude for the easy money.
3:00 pm: My current project is a screenplay adaptation of my autobiographical hard-knocks novel, Patient Women. I am becoming acutely aware that I know very little about this genre, but for now, am trying to get the recovery from alcoholism, bipolar disorder, sex addiction and second-generation Holocaust survival all into 110 loosely packed pages in something that resembles the conventional format of a writing discipline that values conventional structures. To my surprise, I am succeeding and have gotten the war story all in with plenty of room for the recovery, although several chapters, characters, and subplots have had to be jettisoned or conflated. I am halfway through the roughest of rough drafts, and know I will have to go back to set up each shot visually, not verbally, and to edit mercilessly. How the hell am I going to sell this? I haven’t the foggiest; I am banking on, if I write it, the agent will come.
Evening. I didn’t procrastinate or binge today, a good day. More news, friends, sleep at a decent hour. Something to do, to look forward to; work and love, Freud said. It is a good life and I, woman of a thousand diagnoses, do not take a second of it for granted.
Bio:
Larissa Shmailo is a poet, novelist, translator, editor, curator, and critic. Her new novel is Sly Bang; her first novel is Patient Women. Her poetry collections are Medusa’s Country, #specialcharacters, In Paran, A Cure for Suicide, and Fib Sequence. Her poetry albums are The No-Net World and Exorcism, for which she won the New Century Best Spoken Word Album award. Shmailo is the original English-language translator of the first Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun by Alexei Kruchenych, performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Garage Museum of Moscow, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and theaters and universities worldwide. Shmailo also edited the online anthologies Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry and From Pushkin to Pussy Riot: Russian Political Poetry and Prose. Her work is included in the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian. Please see more about Shmailo at www.larissashmailo.com
Larissa Shmailo’s Writing Day:
5:00 am: I love it when I wake up early in the morning; this time seems more mine than any other. I weigh myself—the scale hasn’t moved but I am patient. I am obese, but less so by some 30 pounds now, and every day is a new adventure. This week I broke out of my couch-to -computer life to walk in the park and along Broadway for several miles. I am abstaining from my binge foods, sugar and flour, and every day I bend and turn my big body in joyful remembrance of motion. I am coming out of food fog and experiencing the pink cloud of addictive withdrawal.
Next, I do what I have always done – check my analytics. Did someone look at my blog? My Wikipedia page? My Facebook? My Twitter? Did something pending get published? Like Roland Barthes, who once wrote to me (yes, truly) J'écris pour être aimé de loin, I also write to be loved from afar, and to be read.
5:30, thereabouts: I meditate on positive affirmations as I have done for years. Mixed in there are my literary ambitions—I visualize reading at the 92nd Street Y, of being published in The Paris Review. I also remember David Foster Wallace who had every award and pub I could ever covet and who killed himself, and I affirm for less glittering but more durable qualities like gratitude, joy, humility, and love.
7:00 am: My poetry partner likes my new poem, “Over 35.” It is an interleaving of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXXV with answering lines about infidelity. This is a gut poem; it proceeded from an ache in my body that could not be denied. Lying on the couch, I asked, “Can I write this later?” No, my gut replied, now. I decide I will send it to Poetry; I have received my last rejection and it is time again. I bundle my Submittable, write my cover letter with my too-long bio, and send. It is done; I can forget about it for another six months.
9:00 am: What has Trump done now? I watch the news addictively. A child of parents persecuted by Stalin and interned in concentration camps by Hitler, I see the rise of fascism in the United States, of shameless, Goebbels-style propaganda – make the lie big, keep it simple enough for your stupidest follower, repeat it often, get others to repeat it. Sinclair has eaten Tribune and tells people on local news between the sports and the weather that Obama was funded by Hamas . . . this is the time writers earn their keep, as Toni Morrison said, these are the times we go to work.
11:00 am: My side hustle – I am a freelancer, write, ghost, do social media, edit, whatever I can to support my literary jones. For the past year, I have gotten work as a terminologist, a creative namer for advertising—I come up with names like Xarelto and Aviator for products, organizations, and services. This is one corporate gig where being a poet is not cause to be thrown out of the interviewer’s office—creativity with language is prized and paid astonishingly well. Today, I name a banking data platform; they want names that connote reliability, innovation, flexibility, data science. I knock out 100 names according to their parameters, real words lightly coined, and feel gratitude for the easy money.
3:00 pm: My current project is a screenplay adaptation of my autobiographical hard-knocks novel, Patient Women. I am becoming acutely aware that I know very little about this genre, but for now, am trying to get the recovery from alcoholism, bipolar disorder, sex addiction and second-generation Holocaust survival all into 110 loosely packed pages in something that resembles the conventional format of a writing discipline that values conventional structures. To my surprise, I am succeeding and have gotten the war story all in with plenty of room for the recovery, although several chapters, characters, and subplots have had to be jettisoned or conflated. I am halfway through the roughest of rough drafts, and know I will have to go back to set up each shot visually, not verbally, and to edit mercilessly. How the hell am I going to sell this? I haven’t the foggiest; I am banking on, if I write it, the agent will come.
Evening. I didn’t procrastinate or binge today, a good day. More news, friends, sleep at a decent hour. Something to do, to look forward to; work and love, Freud said. It is a good life and I, woman of a thousand diagnoses, do not take a second of it for granted.
Bio:
Larissa Shmailo is a poet, novelist, translator, editor, curator, and critic. Her new novel is Sly Bang; her first novel is Patient Women. Her poetry collections are Medusa’s Country, #specialcharacters, In Paran, A Cure for Suicide, and Fib Sequence. Her poetry albums are The No-Net World and Exorcism, for which she won the New Century Best Spoken Word Album award. Shmailo is the original English-language translator of the first Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun by Alexei Kruchenych, performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Garage Museum of Moscow, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and theaters and universities worldwide. Shmailo also edited the online anthologies Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry and From Pushkin to Pussy Riot: Russian Political Poetry and Prose. Her work is included in the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian. Please see more about Shmailo at www.larissashmailo.com
November 1, 2019
MODERN RUSSIAN POETRY IN TRANSLATION 11/2
Saturday, November 2, 2019 @ 2 - 5pm
Larissa Shmailo with Anna Halberstadt, Philip Nikolayev, Anton Yakovlev
Modern Russian Poetry in Translation (the Cafe Review)
Tomkins Square Library
331 East 10th Street, NYC
Free
https://www.facebook.com/events/51635...
Contact 212 712 9865
Larissa Shmailo with Anna Halberstadt, Philip Nikolayev, Anton Yakovlev
Modern Russian Poetry in Translation (the Cafe Review)
Tomkins Square Library
331 East 10th Street, NYC
Free
https://www.facebook.com/events/51635...
Contact 212 712 9865
October 31, 2019
AWP SAN ANTONIO EVENT SCHEDULE
The AWP 2020 event schedule is out! Please include our panels in your planning. See you in San Antonio!
Event Title: Translating the Untranslatable: A Reading of International Experimental Poetry with Helene Cardona, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Michele Gil-Montero, and Marc Vincenz, moderated by Larissa Shmailo
Scheduled Day: Thursday, 3/5/20
Scheduled Time: 09:00:AM–10:15:AM
Scheduled Room: Room 211, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Event Title: What Kind of Times Are These? Immigrant Poets and the New Politics of Resistance with Valzhyna Mort, Anna Halberstadt, Larissa Shmailo, and Mariya Deykute, moderated by Olga Livshin.
Scheduled Day: Thursday, 3/5/20
Scheduled Time: 03:20:PM–04:35:PM
Scheduled Room: Room 214B, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Event Title: Translating the Untranslatable: A Reading of International Experimental Poetry with Helene Cardona, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Michele Gil-Montero, and Marc Vincenz, moderated by Larissa Shmailo
Scheduled Day: Thursday, 3/5/20
Scheduled Time: 09:00:AM–10:15:AM
Scheduled Room: Room 211, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Event Title: What Kind of Times Are These? Immigrant Poets and the New Politics of Resistance with Valzhyna Mort, Anna Halberstadt, Larissa Shmailo, and Mariya Deykute, moderated by Olga Livshin.
Scheduled Day: Thursday, 3/5/20
Scheduled Time: 03:20:PM–04:35:PM
Scheduled Room: Room 214B, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
October 27, 2019
NEWSLETTER: READINGS, REVIEWS, ANTHOLOGIES, AND MORE!
Dear friends:
A sad time as we say goodbye to two beloved Steves, steve dalachinsky and Steve Cannon. Vechnaia pamiat’, eternal memory for these remarkable poets, whose inspiration and support for my work was incalculable.
• I am reading my translations of Maria Galina on November 2 at the Tompkins Square Library, 331 E 10th St, New York at 2:00 pm, for the special Russia issue of The Café Review with editor Anna Halberstadt, Philip Nikolayev, Anton Yakovlev and others.
• My essay, “I Blame Louise Hay for Trump” is included in the anthology Sensitive Skin Selected Writings 2016-2018 edited by Bernard Meisler. Read it here: https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/i-b...
• You can read the great Rain Taxi review by Jefferson Hansen of my new novel, Sly Bang, here: http://www.raintaxi.com/sly-bang/
• I am delighted to be on two panels for AWP20 in San Antonio next year. I will be moderating a reading of international experimental poetry, “Translating the Untranslatable,” with Hélène Cardona, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Michele Gil-Montero, and Marc Vincenz; I’ll be a participant on “What Kind of Times Are These: Immigrant Poetry and the New Politics of Resistance” moderated by Olga Livshin, with Mariya Deykute, Anna Halberstadt, and Valzhyna Mort. Detailed outlines of these events are now available on the AWP website, so please check them out and include us in your AWP planning.
• If you missed it, read over 30 contemporary and historic voices in From Pushkin to Pussy Riot: Russian Political Poetry and Prose at www.mattermonthly.com in this timely anthology co-edited by Philip Nikolayev and me. Don’t leave the colluding to the Trumps and Putins!
Hope to see you all soon!
Love,
Larissa
www.larissashmailo.com
A sad time as we say goodbye to two beloved Steves, steve dalachinsky and Steve Cannon. Vechnaia pamiat’, eternal memory for these remarkable poets, whose inspiration and support for my work was incalculable.
• I am reading my translations of Maria Galina on November 2 at the Tompkins Square Library, 331 E 10th St, New York at 2:00 pm, for the special Russia issue of The Café Review with editor Anna Halberstadt, Philip Nikolayev, Anton Yakovlev and others.
• My essay, “I Blame Louise Hay for Trump” is included in the anthology Sensitive Skin Selected Writings 2016-2018 edited by Bernard Meisler. Read it here: https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/i-b...
• You can read the great Rain Taxi review by Jefferson Hansen of my new novel, Sly Bang, here: http://www.raintaxi.com/sly-bang/
• I am delighted to be on two panels for AWP20 in San Antonio next year. I will be moderating a reading of international experimental poetry, “Translating the Untranslatable,” with Hélène Cardona, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Michele Gil-Montero, and Marc Vincenz; I’ll be a participant on “What Kind of Times Are These: Immigrant Poetry and the New Politics of Resistance” moderated by Olga Livshin, with Mariya Deykute, Anna Halberstadt, and Valzhyna Mort. Detailed outlines of these events are now available on the AWP website, so please check them out and include us in your AWP planning.
• If you missed it, read over 30 contemporary and historic voices in From Pushkin to Pussy Riot: Russian Political Poetry and Prose at www.mattermonthly.com in this timely anthology co-edited by Philip Nikolayev and me. Don’t leave the colluding to the Trumps and Putins!
Hope to see you all soon!
Love,
Larissa
www.larissashmailo.com
October 19, 2019
In with SENSITIVE SKIN
It's out! The Sensitive Skin Anthology of writings 2016-2018 featuring the likes of Chavisa Woods, Bob Holman, the late great steve dalachinsky and yours truly plus a cast of thousands is here - my essay "I Blame Louise Hay for Trump" is included. Thanks to editor/publisher Bernard Meisler for assembling this fab work!
https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/boo...
https://sensitiveskinmagazine.com/boo...
October 14, 2019
GREAT REVIEW OF SLY BANG IN BOOKS FOR READERS!
Read Meredith Sue Willis's great review of SLY BANG in Books for Readers #204!
And now for something completely different-- a new novel by Larissa Shmailo, continuing her themes that include feminism, female sexuality, power struggles, and a family that may have collaborated with the Nazis, but also suffered hugely themselves. She writes again about a powerful, debilitating combination of sex addiction and sexual abuse. This time she does it with a rollicking, often comic (and comic book style) fantasy/science fiction story.
Her main character is Nora, a psychologically damaged but uber-resilient hero who spends a lot of time in a coma, drugged, or otherwise disabled-- because the bad guys and the good guys are all and constantly aware of her power and trying to channel it, or kill it, for their own purposes..
The neat psycho-spiritual trip here is that Nora remains through all the abuse and danger and rising one more time to rejoin the battle--a deeply Christian character--that is, not that she particularly practices Christianity or even believes in God, but she is committed to forgiving and loving. Her special bailiwick is vicious serial killers like her sometimes charming. occasional savior Michael, whose idea of a special treat is sex with dead, young vaginas. But he is NOT, he insists, a pedophile. Michael is, like Nora, a multiple personality.
This novel, not surprisingly, has some of the quality of a fever dream, and one could imagine at any moment being awakened and told it was, indeed, all a nightmare, but that is never the point. The point is the ride, the changes, the themes played and dropped and played again. It picks up momentum throughout, and the final section moves into even faster changes, ending with short dispatches from an action packed summary, with more flips and twists. Nora triumphs in the end, offering us a poem in which she entertains Satan himself.
https://www.amazon.com/Sly-Bang-Laris...?
And now for something completely different-- a new novel by Larissa Shmailo, continuing her themes that include feminism, female sexuality, power struggles, and a family that may have collaborated with the Nazis, but also suffered hugely themselves. She writes again about a powerful, debilitating combination of sex addiction and sexual abuse. This time she does it with a rollicking, often comic (and comic book style) fantasy/science fiction story.
Her main character is Nora, a psychologically damaged but uber-resilient hero who spends a lot of time in a coma, drugged, or otherwise disabled-- because the bad guys and the good guys are all and constantly aware of her power and trying to channel it, or kill it, for their own purposes..
The neat psycho-spiritual trip here is that Nora remains through all the abuse and danger and rising one more time to rejoin the battle--a deeply Christian character--that is, not that she particularly practices Christianity or even believes in God, but she is committed to forgiving and loving. Her special bailiwick is vicious serial killers like her sometimes charming. occasional savior Michael, whose idea of a special treat is sex with dead, young vaginas. But he is NOT, he insists, a pedophile. Michael is, like Nora, a multiple personality.
This novel, not surprisingly, has some of the quality of a fever dream, and one could imagine at any moment being awakened and told it was, indeed, all a nightmare, but that is never the point. The point is the ride, the changes, the themes played and dropped and played again. It picks up momentum throughout, and the final section moves into even faster changes, ending with short dispatches from an action packed summary, with more flips and twists. Nora triumphs in the end, offering us a poem in which she entertains Satan himself.
https://www.amazon.com/Sly-Bang-Laris...?
October 10, 2019
My review of Nabokov's Speak, Memory
Speak, Memory
by Vladimir Nabokov
1287873
Larissa Shmailo's review
Oct 10, 2019 · edit
Brilliant prose stylist, obnoxious human. Nabokov devotes two sentences to the concentration camp death of his brother (is this the one he confesses to have repeatedly bullied and kicked as a youngster?) A vain, self-centered man born in extreme privilege (50 servants) - he claims he does not resent the Communists for taking his wealth, only his (pampered) childhood. A large, scientific vocabulary that glistens on the page, almost meretricious in its appeal ( although I admit I was so rapt reading Lolita that I called in sick and didn't sleep to read). And I did like Ada and will read Dar (The Gift) and Luzhin's Defense, and every other damn thing this irritating writer has written.
by Vladimir Nabokov
1287873
Larissa Shmailo's review
Oct 10, 2019 · edit
Brilliant prose stylist, obnoxious human. Nabokov devotes two sentences to the concentration camp death of his brother (is this the one he confesses to have repeatedly bullied and kicked as a youngster?) A vain, self-centered man born in extreme privilege (50 servants) - he claims he does not resent the Communists for taking his wealth, only his (pampered) childhood. A large, scientific vocabulary that glistens on the page, almost meretricious in its appeal ( although I admit I was so rapt reading Lolita that I called in sick and didn't sleep to read). And I did like Ada and will read Dar (The Gift) and Luzhin's Defense, and every other damn thing this irritating writer has written.
October 8, 2019
Guggenheim Fellowship-Moved Up in the Competition!
The Guggenheim Fellowship has requested work samples and letters of support - I am moved up in the competition! Wish me luck on my dream project!
October 3, 2019
ON NOT YOUR MOTHER'S POETRY SAT NOON
I am delighted to be featured on the radio this Saturday with Mary Pinkoski and Leighton Watts on
NOT YOUR MOTHER'S POETRY
www.ckxu.com
Saturday 12 PM EST, 10 AM Mountain Time
Thanks to host and producer Blaine Greenwood!
NOT YOUR MOTHER'S POETRY
www.ckxu.com
Saturday 12 PM EST, 10 AM Mountain Time
Thanks to host and producer Blaine Greenwood!
August 20, 2019
JEFF HANSEN'S REVIEW OF SLY BANG
SLY BANG
Larissa Shmailo
Spuyten Duyvil ($18)
by Jefferson Hansen
Larissa Shmailo’s Sly Bang is written with tremendous energy and moves at an exhilarating pace, yet it dwells on depraved characters and actions. Almost nobody is nice in this novel about serial killers, mad scientists, FBI agents and evildoers.
The plot centers around Nora, an FBI agent with telepathic and scientifically grounded superpowers, who is hunted by Ouspensky, a scientist, satanist, and Nazi who wants to destroy the world using nuclear colliders. Among Nora’s defenders are Michael, a serial killer, and Andrew and Aubrey, fellow FBI agents who seem to be the only characters without obsessions, perversities, and obscene desires.
Indeed, the book reads like a psychotic episode. People die and come back to life. The line between dream and reality is not entirely clear. Mind-reading is possible. Strange, advanced technologies propel the action at times. Some characters have superhuman abilities: Most of the men have extraordinary strength and beat up a slew of other people to prove it. They can even break their way out of manacles.
And that is where the satire lies. The book, while it portrays horrific actions, makes fun of superhuman male figures and the traditional ideal man. Their activities are so outlandish that readers may find themselves laughing out loud and cheering as Nora outlasts most of them through her grit, pluck, and resilience. As she contemplates being saved by a man, she writes “hey, this damsel in distress thing really turns them on . . . subconscious hostility that they want me to be harmed?” The book takes direct aim at the fantasies of some males, making them so extreme that their absurdity becomes crystal clear.
Sly Bang’s satire on the whole is extreme—it begins with a scene of Nora masturbating under command while being remotely surveilled. She is alone, sleep deprived, and very scared. Serial killers lurk blocks away, pretending to be friends, and attempt to confuse her through remote communications. She needs to fight the depravities of the males, who are lampooned in their aggressiveness and inability to treat Nora straight. And Nora has her own issues. She treats men badly by manipulating their feelings, loving them and leaving them, cheating on them, and so forth. It may be a kind of visceral revenge.
To top it all off, Nora and her “friends”—neither she nor we are entirely sure who is or isn’t on her side—need to save the world from Ouspensky’s attempt to destroy it just for kicks. The comic book element makes war itself seem cartoonishly absurd, driven not by a desire for territory or money or power, but to dominate women in a psycho-sexual manner.
This is a hilarious and horrifying novel. It depicts the worst humanity is capable of, but what keeps Sly Bang from becoming overwhelmed by the depravity it describes is the writerly energy of Shmailo. Wise cracks and madcap scenes burst one after another in a buoyant fashion—so it goes down easy in spite of the horrors it describes.
Click here to purchase this book
at your local independent bookstore
indiebound
Larissa Shmailo
Spuyten Duyvil ($18)
by Jefferson Hansen
Larissa Shmailo’s Sly Bang is written with tremendous energy and moves at an exhilarating pace, yet it dwells on depraved characters and actions. Almost nobody is nice in this novel about serial killers, mad scientists, FBI agents and evildoers.
The plot centers around Nora, an FBI agent with telepathic and scientifically grounded superpowers, who is hunted by Ouspensky, a scientist, satanist, and Nazi who wants to destroy the world using nuclear colliders. Among Nora’s defenders are Michael, a serial killer, and Andrew and Aubrey, fellow FBI agents who seem to be the only characters without obsessions, perversities, and obscene desires.
Indeed, the book reads like a psychotic episode. People die and come back to life. The line between dream and reality is not entirely clear. Mind-reading is possible. Strange, advanced technologies propel the action at times. Some characters have superhuman abilities: Most of the men have extraordinary strength and beat up a slew of other people to prove it. They can even break their way out of manacles.
And that is where the satire lies. The book, while it portrays horrific actions, makes fun of superhuman male figures and the traditional ideal man. Their activities are so outlandish that readers may find themselves laughing out loud and cheering as Nora outlasts most of them through her grit, pluck, and resilience. As she contemplates being saved by a man, she writes “hey, this damsel in distress thing really turns them on . . . subconscious hostility that they want me to be harmed?” The book takes direct aim at the fantasies of some males, making them so extreme that their absurdity becomes crystal clear.
Sly Bang’s satire on the whole is extreme—it begins with a scene of Nora masturbating under command while being remotely surveilled. She is alone, sleep deprived, and very scared. Serial killers lurk blocks away, pretending to be friends, and attempt to confuse her through remote communications. She needs to fight the depravities of the males, who are lampooned in their aggressiveness and inability to treat Nora straight. And Nora has her own issues. She treats men badly by manipulating their feelings, loving them and leaving them, cheating on them, and so forth. It may be a kind of visceral revenge.
To top it all off, Nora and her “friends”—neither she nor we are entirely sure who is or isn’t on her side—need to save the world from Ouspensky’s attempt to destroy it just for kicks. The comic book element makes war itself seem cartoonishly absurd, driven not by a desire for territory or money or power, but to dominate women in a psycho-sexual manner.
This is a hilarious and horrifying novel. It depicts the worst humanity is capable of, but what keeps Sly Bang from becoming overwhelmed by the depravity it describes is the writerly energy of Shmailo. Wise cracks and madcap scenes burst one after another in a buoyant fashion—so it goes down easy in spite of the horrors it describes.
Click here to purchase this book
at your local independent bookstore
indiebound
