Shamp of the City Solo

by Jaimy Gordon

Book by Gordon, Jaimy (1944-)

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

133 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Jaimy Gordon's third novel, Bogeywoman was on the Los Angeles Times list of Best Books for 2000. Her second novel, She Drove Without Stopping, brought her an Academy-Institute Award for her fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Gordon's short story, "A Night's Work," which shares a number of characters with Lord of Misrule, appeared in Best American Short Stories 1995. She is also the author of a novella, Circumspections from an Equestrian Statue, and the fantasy classic novel Shamp of the City-Solo. Gordon teaches at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and in the Prague Summer Program for Writers.

Reviews

[Chuck LoPresti · Rating 5 out of 5]

The closest comparison I can make is the music of Caroliner because this is a fully realized hyper detailed portrait of an imaginary reality so vivid that you're almost sad you can't jump into the book. Unique, creative, wise, entertaining, important and offensive to anyone that doesn't appreciate such things - I'm amazed this book has so few reviews here. This is not an easy read, but sharing absurdist and vivacious tones similar to Rabelais - it's an important read. The Amazon review references Sir Thomas Browne - the only justification for that comparison, that I see so far, is Browne's consideration of diuturnity that Gordon references in her afterthoughts included with the text and the general love of word-play. What makes this work shine for me is that it was written to be pleasing - it's not just self-absorbed absurdity - like Jarry (non-symbolist Jarry at least) - there is a will to entertain. It's almost too earth-bound to be dismissed as mere fantasy and I love the fact that it seems to have been born out of a need to expunge a dream more than create any magic. I really appreciate the creative depth and verbal playfulness of this book. Never boring, never academic and never self-satisfied. This book will never leave your imagination. Freak and psych folk lovers will appreciate what's offered here. More psilocybin than LSD - this is a tickling and hallucinatory joy. I throw around five perhaps too easily - and if I had a 4.5 to give - this book would still rate a 5.

[Jeff Lewonczyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a weird freaking book! I found this at a stoop sale a few years ago and knew nothing about it even when I finally picked it up to read it last week. I don't know much more about it now, other than that it's a completely unique reading experience - a moonshine fable, a skyline of bullshit, a deep well of words and images from the bottom of which you can see a freshly-colored sun. Yeah, it's the kind of book that has you doing bad imitations of its prose when you have to summarize it.

It all comes from the point of view of a lad named Shamp who is whisked away for a life as a celebrity orator in the Big Yolk by an enigmatic, exasperating yet irresistible mentor named Shipoff. Shamp's trials and tribulations through a series of masters on his road to self-discovery comprise the "plot," but honestly, this book is all about word and image - Gordon is obviously influenced by Joyce and Beckett, but also Walt Whitman, burlesque comedy, advertising slogans, Thomas Browne's "Urne Buriall" and a thousand other things I'm not even recognizing.

The result is one of those one-of-a-kind reading experiences that's not for everyone, but which will make an indelible mark on people who are looking for, well, one-of-a-kind reading experiences. In an afterword, Gordon hints that the book surprised her as much as it's likely to surprise you, which gives a hint of the unexpected pleasures you can find within it.

[José Pereira · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m very suspicious of difficulty. But every time I reread a sentence or a paragraph there was a payoff. There was always some brilliant intellectual image, some hit of pointed humor, a provocative play on words.
The book’s all about style and fancy, but it never rings showy. It always seems that, at base, there is enjoyment and fun. Every simile seems unheard of, yet unpretentious; the spectacular turns of phrase are uncountable, but I never rolled my eyes.
And then, there are no holds barred. You can expect crass salaciousness to follow dreamy wistfulness. You’re kept off balance but fascinated.

[hank · Rating 3 out of 5]

I honestly had no clue what was going on in this book. However, this is probably one of the most uniquely written books I have ever read.

[Jordan West · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5; probably the most bewildering thing I've read in some time, from out of the same singularly indefinable region that gave us Elmslie's Orchid Stories, Ohle's Motorman, and Crawford's Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine, although for my money this is easily the most inscrutable of the bunch - couldn't tell you what this is ultimately all about, or even the main thrust of events from page to page, but all the same I was never bored. Set in some ambiguously dystopian (possibly post-apocalyptic?), vaguely steampunkish universe at several removes from our own, Shamp is arguably an academic satire/comedy of manners by way of the Horatio Alger 'boy makes good' narrative, but rendered via the post-Burroughsian updating of the eccentric 'camp' fiction of Rolfe and Firbank, and the polyglot, yiddish-heavy zaniness of Krazy Kat; the worldbuilding is rich but the explanations almost wholly absent, so everything has to be inferred piecemeal from context - it's exhausting, and this 130 page novel took me almost a week at 30 page intervals, but if one holds out, it's also far from unrewarding.

[Melanie Page · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bogeywoman is about as experimental as I can go. DNF almost immediately.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

?!

[Jessie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable. Barely got started.