Person
Person (Sam Pink, Lazy Fascist Press 2010, 87 pages)
A Smalldoggies book review by Rick Klaras
Person grabbed me from the first time I saw the cover. It is a gurglingly grotesque caricature of what I'm assuming is Pink's concept of what it feels like to walk around in the protagonist's skin. What is that vertical mustache where the nose should be? What's going on with its teeth? What is it trying to say? These questions flashed through my headhole in neon letters (I know, I know. Cheap? Yes.)
Pink's latest novel is a slow, chilly drift through slackerdom. A reflection on what it is to be a jobless, anonymous, lonely and depressed smart-ass in America. It feels, in a way, like floating through a kind of stasis. Like setting mainly ridiculous goals because the apparently attainable ones entail commitment, or the risk of failing at something that should be foolproof, or the queasy feeling of preparing to pretend really hard to care about succeeding at something you just can't reasonably bring yourself to give a shit about (bagging groceries), and trading in dignity for ironic pride, in order to (sort of) pay the bills. And then, after all, deciding that the put-on isn't worth the payout. Sound familiar? If you and I have a little in common, then perhaps you've lived some of this. Maybe a lot.
Sam Pink's conversational style feels to me like listening to a long-lost friend tell stories at 3 AM while sitting together at a chipped formica table in a dimly fluorescent-lit linoleum-floored kitchen, over a broken and gingerly fixed, shared, generic cigarette. The precious last of a tattered soft-pack, purchased with couch change. Carefully flicking ashes into the black aluminum cap of a bum-jug of cheap wine, so as not to dislodge the paper cylinder of tobacco from the slightly stiffer paper socket of the filter. By that, I mean I enjoyed this book immensely.
From Chapter 4 (other version of 3):
“My roommate walks over to me, rotating an orange in his hand.
“Do you want to split an orange again,” he says.
“You mean, do I want to split one of my oranges again,” I say.
He looks at the orange.
“That's what you're asking, right,” I say.
He spins the orange in his hand and he says, “Yeah did you want
to split this orange. It's the last one.”
“Ok so you did mean: Did I want to have only part of something
that is entirely mine. You did ask me that, about wanting to only get
part of the thing that is mine and is the last I have of its kind.”
“Yes.”
“Ok. Yeah that's fine.”
We split the orange, sitting very still on different couches while
we eat.
I detect some new kind of ouch in my headhole and it feels permanent.
The word “ouch” scrolls across my headhole in big neon letters.
My roommate says, “For some reason I expected there to be like,
a little giraffe inside the orange when I peeled it.”
“I am glad there wasn't,” I say.
We laugh.”
The stark humor of Sam Pink's “Person” felt comfortable to me. The platonic warmth that person shared with his roommate was both tender and sharp in a sudden elbow-to-the-ribs kind of way, and their banter pulled me in. It made me want to ask the nameless lead to split that last orange three ways, made me want to toss out a wry quip maybe, or just sit there quietly eating my four segments of orange, not wanting to spoil the rhythm of the repartee. I wanted to sign the worldwide friendship mandate. I wanted to crank-call Jimbo's.
Person is highly recommended.
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Purchase Person from Amazon now.
Find out more information about Person on Goodreads now.
Learn more about Sam Pink at his blog.