Golden Rod

by Bram Riddlebarger

What we seek is a return to the pagan--to the hills--to a life without cars.

"Bram Riddlebarger's Golden Rod is one of the wildest books around. I don't think I've read anything like it. It's full of talking guns and ghost dogs and revolutionaries and hippie girls who talk to Merle Haggard. It's funny and tough and tender and has a wonderful logic all its own... apocalyptic, beautifully strange, and free."
-Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book

"Bram Riddlebarger besides having one of the most marvelous names in contemporary literature can also write like the wind."
-Poe Ballantine, author of Love and Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere

250 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2018

About the author

Bram Riddlebarger writes, plays music, and lives in Southeastern Ohio.

Reviews

[Danger · Rating 4 out of 5]

An abstract, drunken, scatalogical, anti-capitalist, Appalachian mashup between Richard Brautigan’s ‘In Watermelon Sugar’ and Thoreau’s ‘Walden.’ If it sounds weird from that description, in execution it gets even weirder.

[Kelby Losack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starts off like a raw, grungy country song and slips into surreal territory, images of decaying machinery in giant green fields, a hauntingly beautiful surface with endless layers underneath. The prose is sharp and direct and intoxicating. Bram Riddlebarger is a name to pay attention to.

[Ben Arzate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full Review

Golden Rod is a funny, unique, and insightful read. Riddlebarger’s prose is simple but poetic. He paints vivid and surreal pictures of the woods and the strange cast of characters reside in it. He shows both the appeal and the downsides of returning to a simpler life and how the modern world simply won’t allow it either way anymore. I highly recommend this novel.

[S.T. Cartledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Golden Rod is a strange and mystical thing. It's a story obsessed with the underdog, and yet it's not about finding a sense of victory as it is about finding acceptance for who you are. I love how it just tumbles through the motions and builds upon itself into something much greater than you'd initially expect.

[Seb · Rating 5 out of 5]

While many authors push their mainstream darlings in order to get a piggy ride on their commercial shoulders, I want to give a huge shout-out to one of the best books I have read this year, namely "Golden Rod" by Bram Riddlebarger. It is a Surrealist-inspired novel (Others would say Bizarro or Weird, but whatever) centered around a unstable man, Jack, and his retreat from the world in a cave, where he is joined by equally strange characters. A beautiful and rough poetic style, both hilarious and deeply moving, that really shows that real literature experimentation can only be found today in "genre" and other subcultures. I loved this book, it's on my top 10 forever now (which, of course, rooms more than a 100). Think Brautigan meets Black Moth Super Rainbow, or Tom Robbins meets the Butthole Surfers, and you'll get the idea. Absolutely a must-read.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a fan of Tom Robbins, this novel will be right up your alley. Whimsical with suitably whimsical characters and metaphors. And oh yes, a talking gun, squirrel and assorted other Robbins-esque oddities. Riddlebarger has a streamlining flair of his own, to be sure.

[Bart Schaneman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A funny, strange, chaotic, and ultimately entertaining read.

[Bud Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wild book. Like a planet that throws itself out of its orbit and goes off exploring the rest of whatever. Tosses off most conventions of what a novel is supposed to be. For fans of Brautigan's Hawkline Monster, and Christopher Boucher's Golden Delicious.

[Esther Crocombe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Golden Rod is a highly original and surreal novel, incomparable to anything I’ve ever read before (and I read a fair bit).
Putting all the weirdness to one side, beginning the book, I found myself quickly caught up in the ideology of it all. I recognised a relatable yearning, the desire to free oneself from the constraints of society, from commercialism, from politics, work, daily routine and expectations. ‘What we seek is a return to the pagan-to the hills-to a life without cars.’ And as chaotic and anarchist as that sounds, the characters within this book make it work, with beautiful civility. That’s the dream right? Or so one would hope; but progressing through the pages, it’s clear how powerless we are, how bound by rules and constrictions we find ourselves to be, as we amble through our worker-bee lives. To fight it is fruitless, no matter how punk rock we believe ourselves to be. Or is it?
Anyway, it’s not all doom and gloom. I adored all the characters, even though they are stinking filthy, or deluded or stoned or inanimate or silent. You’ll just have to read it to know what I’m talking about (for a taster though, gay gun, ghost dog, yellow guy...just to tease and entice you).
Finally, seldom does a novels last sentence seem satisfactory. Even my most favourite books of all time rarely completely nail it with a perfect finisher, but this one truly does. And seriously, that never happens, just think about it. One of the most remarkable things about this novel is that faultless final pronouncement.
The best book I’ve read this year, by a mile.

[Michael Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Golden Rod is simply an extraordinary work of literary fiction. We have here a writer who gives us a world that is both realistic and hallucinatory -- though this story will never lose you. It is not so much driven by some contrived plot mechanism as it is driven by Riddlebarger's colorful and peculiar characters. These players are brought together, in the middle of the woods, the middle of nowhere, as a collection of misfits to civilization. And their feeble, sometimes hapless attempts to survive through a summer and into cold, cruel winter are well-drawn and compelling. Riddlebarger's facility with language is astonishing. He informs the novel with natural detail the likes of which we haven't witnessed since, perhaps, Annie Dillard or Annie Proulx. And his "performance" here of a kind of sunny madness is quite fun and funny to read. This writer is authentic in each succeeding line of his unique prose. I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone who wants a rollicking good time with a book.

[Alan ten-Hoeve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first became aware of Bram Riddlebarger's writing during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. His beautiful prose, laced with equal parts desperation and hilarity, was like a literary LSD that freed my anguished mind from the endless stream of bad news, and made me laugh when it felt impossible to do so. Reading Golden Rod I was blissfully reminded of writers like Charles Bukowski, Poe Ballantine, Richard Brautigan, John Kennedy Toole, Charles Portis, and Jesse Michaels, yet, every time I found myself falling into the trap of comparison, Bram would clobber me with a left hook I never saw coming. Perhaps what Riddlebarger has most in common with the previously mentioned writers is that he inhabits a realm all his own.

[Ted Prokash · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book, but if you don't believe me here, believe me here: https://www.joylesshousepublishing.co...
Also, cheers to Athens, Ohio. My mates and I once watched the Packers beat the Vikings on Monday Night Football at a bar in Athens and our cheering drown out the crappy noise band that was playing. Anyway, their set consisted mostly of running a smoke machine and walking around in Scream masks. Fuck them. Go Pack go.

[Jo Quenell · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a charming, strange book. I haven't read something this weird in a long time, and if it had been written by anybody else, I'm not sure it would have worked. But it worked very well. My favorite type of bizarro or weird fiction is the type that is rooted in our real world and riffs on the absurdity of modern life. I feel like Bram Riddlebarger succeeded in doing just that with this novel. I dug this.

[Amy Vaughn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Golden Rod is a delight for those of us fed up with the same old stale stories. It’s absurd without feeling directionless. It’s impossible to predict without feeling chaotic or random. It’s the best novel about a man and his penis I’ve read this year, and I’m writing this in December.

[AutomaticSlim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can't really say why or how or give a description or any of that regular book stuff, but somehow, I can say that I enjoyed this.

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