The Malady of the Century

by Jon Leon

"Jon Leon has crafted a cold and funny porno-dystopia that 'sends up' poetry while also behaving like a strict modernist manifesto–a Stein or Pound reveille, with P.T. Barnum bravado, making it new. Reading THE MALADY OF THE CENTURY, I think of the dungeon (Marquis de Sade and Dennis Cooper); I also think of the penthouse (Joan Didion and Frederick Seidel). Leon's voice—if it is indeed a voice, or his— is charmingly post-sentiment; he evacuates poetry's resources in order to stage, with hilarious, memorable, deadpan showmanship, a bildungsroman of the artist-as-void. Leon's subject is the rôle of the 'poet,' a Rimbaud with the resumé of a Russ Meyer."—Wayne Koestenbaum

"This thick work is so blindingly over-the-top in how it hits on all the stuff the kids love these days, stuff that comes from a real place of daring integrity but can also land like callowness taken as a drug. Either way it's great, I inject it. Porn-intellect-fashion-longing and I heart flat-affect. Easy to imitate, hard to aspire to, and I'm trying it now."—Rebecca Wolff

"Crossing platforms, from mirror to various pulsing LED screens and back, Jon Leon taps sublimity, rousing our daily patois to orgasm without interruption. THE MALADY OF THE CENTURY is a portrait of the artist as a young verb. Like R. Kelly covering Les Chants de Maldoror."--Bruce Hainley

Poetry. THE MALADY OF THE CENTURY is written as a swansong to a generation that has lost the will to perceive the linear progression of time; a generation that is a collapse of occasions, wherein no discernible or dominant motif is present because Now is the mixture of all times, when every trend that ever was is the current mode.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2012

Reviews

[Peter Landau]

I'm writing this review in bed, my daughter is wearing a knit cap we won at a silent auction yesterday. She's babbling about what I don't know because I'm trying to write this review. I'm in my underwear. I had a cake (also won at the fundraiser) for breakfast. I didn't bother slicing it. My kids and I ate it "Little Rascals"-style, ripping into it with our hands. That's not entirely true. We used forks. This is the poetry that I invent to bring about my life, which it inspires. We all have such poetics, if we chose to reign them in and cage the beasts on the page, but few are as entertaining and erudite as those composed by Jon Leon. This collection of some obscure chapbooks are periodic flashes of light that capture fragments of the author's life, imagined or real, it doesn't matter to me. He creates a grandiose world where poetry is king, and the royalty ride in private jets, buy real estate, make fortunes in the market, or whatever other business ventures they dip their capital in, and fuck models who come at the turn of a phrase. It's gross and totally seductive. It's the bohemianism of the 21st century. It's poetry. The dogs are barking, and I have to bathe. There are dishes to wash, and miles to go before I sleep.

[Brianna]

Jon Leon is the greatest living poet

[Chris]

Leon here goes after the same themes as many of the other poet I've been reading in recent times- the cult of fame, the meaninglessness of sex in the face of porn culture, the obsession with wealth, and obsession with consumerism. He is doing a similar thing to Tao Lin but is more visceral, amusingly disgusting, and generally engaging.
The segments "Hit Wave" and "White Girls" are particularly bleak (and seem less like exercises than the other segments). Invented self-history, degredation to bizarre levels- it's both funny and horrifying the way that he mirrors certain parts of society and how they connect with the aforementioned themes.

[95barnacle]

This is the poetry book that ingratiates the reader to the close knit circles of untethered party freaks of the late 2000s where everything looks like a fast movie and moves you closer to end of a golden era. It promises a too-big-to-fail beat like you hit someone with your BMW M3 on a sharp turn in the valley and just pull into the nearest bar with a twitching neon sign and a low ball immediately slides into your palm. It's fast and fun as it revels in fashionable detachment and the void. Jon Leon is a master of photogenic scenes with a gnarly twist. We're not sure of the speaker's place in the scene but he can't be anywhere else.

[Mike Kleine]

I say I've never finished this book because each time I come back to it, I know I've already read the line I am reading but it still feels like it is the first time (all over again). And to me, that's wonderful.

[Jared Joseph]

fucking unstoppable.

[Vogisland]

throwed into the voids of artist-ego, market forces and male desire. in "The Hot Tub" this felt more like fun escapism. this book is closer to flashy nausea and terror.