Flotsam

Dark mind-benders and psychosexual compulsion

We sent a copy of GAHA: BABES OF THE ABYSS to our friend at Biblioklept, whose taste is singularly exquisite, and who peels the layers of great literature better than just about anyone else on the internet. Read all of those, and you won’t be sorry. But first read his initial thoughts on GAHA. From Biblioklept:

Jon Frankel’s Gaha: Babes of the Abyss is simultaneously familiar and estranging, a bizarre California crime-noir-dystopian shot through a druggy haze. It’s funny and weird, part caper, part adventure story, where everything’s just a little off (and more than a little sleazy). The easy comparison to Philip K. Dick is not unwarranted: Frankel’s satire is a dark mind-bender and a propulsive page-turner.

Check out the rest. I couldn’t be more pleased, given the company we keep over there.
And visit their website for more details about drug treatment.

While Biblioklept’s Edwin Turner was looking at Jon Frankel’s book, I asked Jon Frankel to take a look at Whiskey Tit’s second book, a reprint of Jim Strahs’ QUEER AND ALONE. He’s the one guy I’ve trusted with it so far, and for good reason. Jon is also a brilliant critic, and I believe gets more out of Queer and Alone more than any other published review to-date. Here are his thoughts (and again, read everything I’ve linked. When you’re done):

It is part of the dark underpinnings of what is generally a very funny bit of oddball improvisation. Like all journeys this one needs no plot. It goes forth with the wind of psychosexual compulsion in its sails. Strah’s style and perspective remind me of Robert Walser. He intentionally uses the words Gay and Queer in their old accepted sense and does so with almost every other figure of speech, real and invented that peppers his text, caged by «double brackets». Innocent words and phrases become obscene through a process of inversion.

Read the whole thing here.

If I were about half my age, my response to all this would be something akin to “I win at publishing.” Or some extemporaneous acronym too long by half and punctuated with steaming poo emoji. But, darling readers of the Internet, Whiskey Tit is far more sophisticated.

Queer and Alone will be published by Whiskey Tit in paperback and electronically next month.

Header image: close-up of Queer and Alone cover art by Ken Kobland.

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