The Price of the Ticket

by Jim Nisbet

Fiction; bleak noir; mystery

Hardcover

First published July 13, 2005

About the author

San Francisco writer Jim Nisbet has published eleven novels, including the acclaimed Lethal Injection. He has also published five volumes of poetry. His novel, Dark Companion, was shorted-listed for the 2006 Hammett Prize. Various of his works have been translated into French, German, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Hungarian, Greek, Russian and Romanian.

Aside from reading and performing his own work for some forty-five years, Nisbet has written and seen produced a modest handful of one-act plays and monologues, including Valentine, Note from Earth, WonderEndz™ SmackVision™ and Alas, Poor Yorick, and himself directed the original productions of most of these works.

Reviews

[Still · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished reading this novel two nights ago.

As usual with Nisbet novels it took about 9-10 pages before I could understand what the hell was going on.
Takes about 10 pages before the reader can fall into cadence and finally get into the rhythm peculiar (at first pass) to this novel.
Brilliant payoff in Chapter 2 for the events set off in the rather arduous-to-read first chapter.
By the third chapter -if you can hang on- a superb character driven narrative emerges.

The Price Of The Ticket is populated with memorable characters -almost all of them saints between spheres and mostly hardboiled and inclined toward criminalities minor and otherwise.

This novel's primary character is Mark Paulos aka "Pauley".
After spending much of his life in prison Pauley obtains a legitimate gig building torture racks for a Gay S&M establishment in San Francisco.

He also has a devoted girlfriend, Celeste, who sports many, many piercings and a “glow-in-the-dark mood bone in her nose”.

Adversity arrives on his doorstep when his formerly reliable Econoline van used to transport the torture racks from his workshop to his employers’ S&M establishment dies on him.

Conflict develops when he purchases a used Toyota pickup truck from a scurvy little fashion plate/pseudo-hipster named Martin Seam. The Toyota turns out to be a lemon with a partially patched up engine.

Retribution is called for in response to this assault upon Pauley’s sense of decency, honor, and fair play but God is a cruel Mistress with perverted notions of justice.

The entire book reads like a jam session by two Chucks: Bukowski and Willeford.

Highest Possible Recommendation!


Special Note: front & back dustjacket, title page, and endsheet foil stamps are by the legendary genius & Underground Comix artist S. Clay Wilson

My edition is autographed by the author.

[Richard]

Just started, but if the choice of S. Clay Wilson to do the DJ art was any indication it will be a beautiful, seamy mess of a novel...

[Katherine Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nisbet captures the cadence and landscape of the Bay Area during a critical time of alternative culture and anticipates the rise of the Graphic Novel.

S. Clay Wilson illustrated “ The Price of the Ticket” … a testament to his respect for the writer.

Joycian references and a touch of Philip K. Dick … populate each page… (yes, I have dictionary at the ready ok and Ipad)
Nisbet’s work is a 3 dimensional wordcraft of unproportional dimensions …. read him “high” or read him “ low”…. it’s a Mr. Toad’s wild ride

[Karl]

This copy is signed by the author.