What I’ve Been Reading This Week: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Two books that, again, paired shockingly well. I mean really went together like buttered popcorn and cherry coke spiked with a little cherry limeade THC syrup. Do you ever feel not quite right in the world? Do you ever feel out of step, like a bit of a weirdo? Is it sometimes horrifying? Does it sometimes make you laugh a whole lot? Well, you need to go read Jesus\u2019 Son<\/em> by Denis Johnson and Disintegration Made Plain And Easy<\/em> by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus\u2019 Son<\/em> by Denis Johnson:<\/strong> somewhat miraculously, this is only the second time I\u2019ve ever read this book. I read \u201cCar Crash While Hitchhiking\u201d in my first undergrad fiction workshop in 2008 and then the whole book I believe in 2010. Even though I wanted to read basically nothing else ever again, I waited 15 years. I think I was afraid of it having too much influence on me. There is a certain type of white guy who gets really into Denis Johnson, and those dudes can be bleak clich\u00e9s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This book, however, remains a singular work. What he does with prose\u2014leaping from thought to thought, event to event, negating the previous or paragraph (\u201cor maybe that wasn\u2019t what happened\u201d is a frequent sentiment)\u2014nothing I\u2019ve ever read moves like these stories. Yes, that\u2019s partially because these are alcoholic\/drug addict stories. The narrator is a man who has hit bottom and then let his addictions drag him lower, and we get to read about it. Yet there\u2019s enough yearning for something\u2014beauty and truth? Good sex? A good high?\u2014that you always feel like the narrator sees life clearly for what it is. Or maybe one version of what life is. In the very last story, \u201cBeverly Home,\u201d he sees a different vision of a humbler, more righteous approach to life. It’s kind of remarkable, the turn his outlook takes in “Steady Hands At Seattle General” and “Beverly Home.” Of course, this life-affirming revelation in “Beverly Home” comes because the narrator, newly sober, is now a Peeping Tom. Nothing\u2019s ever uncomplicated with this asshole! If you can stomach some pretty appalling behavior (sometimes very funny appalling behavior, but always appalling), these are some of the very best short stories ever written. If you think you know what the form can do? Read this collection and have your world flipped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Disintegration Made Plain And Easy <\/em>by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi:<\/strong> what to think, when you\u2019re in the process of making a new friend\u2014a new poet friend\u2014who tells you, \u201cyeah I started a press because my friend\u2019s book was so good and it wasn\u2019t getting picked up and he was gonna abandon it so I published it.\u201d I have to confess, talking to Ben Nespodziany on the L&E podcast<\/a>, that I approached this book cautiously. Not that starting a press to publish a book you believe in is a bad thing\u2014Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant did that with Small Beer Press, and what a success story that is. Ben is not only someone I like, but someone I admire. He’s a great poet himself, for one, and his tireless work as a Poet In A Scene, both online and irl, more than establishes the dude’s bonfides. Plus, this book\u2019s sold out. Still, the thought nagged at me: what if this book is so obviously a vanity thing\/one person\u2019s obsession that it ends up being sad? Pathetic, even? It\u2019s an irrational fear, yes, but I never wanna be saying nice things just to say nice things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of that throat-clearing is to say: I was absolutely blown away by this book. I started reading it at 5 a.m. one morning and was laughing so hard, just my cat and me on the couch with one light on and a cup of coffee cooling. WHAT ARE YOU DOING, MORE ESTABLISHED PRESSES, NOT PUBLISHING THIS? These poems are vulnerable, funny, irreverent, surprising, sad, sometimes about X-Men, sometimes asking what Elmer Fudd would feel like if he ate Bugs Bunny. These poems are full of nudity, these poems are like sitting at the lunch table with the funniest kid in school and realizing how profoundly sad they are. We\u2019re in the Mathias Svalina\/Heather Cristle\/Julie Doxsee\/Adrian Sobol range of surreal poetry. Not as whimsical as Zachary Schomburg, although he blurbs the book and it feels appropriate. This is an incredible book of poems. I will be close-reading one on the blog soon, I will be re-reading this book many many times. Ben should do 100 runs on this book and it should sell out every time and Kiik should get live the lavish life of a jewel thief based on his poetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Something to listen to while you browse? Have we done Cloakroom? I really like Cloakroom. Especially the shimmery, quasi-50s melody, quasi-Nirvana guitar effects on this song. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Jesus\u2019](\"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_6715-1024x740.jpg\")