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xterminal's review
1.0
Noah Cicero, Burning Babies (A-Head Publishing, 2003)
I first heard about this book back in 2005. It first popped up on a blog I am quite fond of called Grumpy Old Bookman; soon after, Tao Lin started championing Cicero's work (in 2006, he called Burning Babies “a beautifully-written novel”). And then...nothing. The book didn't actually show up anywhere until 2008. Cicero, from his own blog, in February 2007: “Once upon a time, there was a book called Burning Babies by Noah Cicero, that was going to come out, but the book did not come out.//He got reviews for this book that did not exist.//People said positive things concerning the non-existent book....” I'm still trying to figure out whether he's just noting the facts or making digs at the bloggers who talked the book up, not that it really matters. Burning Babies does exist. I own a copy of it. And now I have read it.
It's fucking terrible.
Imagine a bastard child of all the worst traints, and none of the best, of Allen Ginsberg and Todd Moore (Carlos Castaneda may have also been involved, in some kind of unholy threesome), a child whose...mother?...drank prodigiously and steadily throughout pregnancy and may have smoked some sort of meth/crack freebase as well, a child as relentlessly, horrifically abused as all those kids who it actually turned out weren't as relentlessly, horrifically abused as we were told they were (JT Leroy, Dave Pelzer, Augusten Burroughs...), a child who lacks any sort of formal education in the English language whatsoever, has never read a novel and thus had no chance to have picked up even the basics of plot, characterization, or theme. That child is Monco, the narrator of this plotless morass of language that may be an attempt at a novel, may be some sort of loosely-linked story cycle (the product description at Amazon points to this interpretation, though loosely), may even be some sort of tremendouly incompetent attempt at poetry; the only way I could give the book more than zero stars, though, was to block that possiblity out of my head entirely. (Note written after the review was finished: it still didn't work.)
The book is written—perhaps consciously, but whether it was the author's intent to come off this way or not, the effect is the same—in an aggressively anti-literate style. Other reviewers who are not as familiar with the world of vanity publishing as I am may not be as familiar with this style of writing as I am, but rest assured, there is nothing “bold” or “new” or “avant-garde” or (fill in the superlative of your choice) about it. Pick up half a dozen random novels, the more grammatically awkward the titles the better, from self-, vanity-, or POD-publishing houses (Dorrance, XLibris, PublishAmerica, AuthorHouse, CreateSpace...) and I'd almost guarantee you will find at least one written in exactly this style. (Pro tip: choose books written by authors with outlandish pseudonyms.) Well, let me revise this paragraph a tad: the word “style” has implications I don't mean to impart. There is a style to this book in the way there is a style to the scattering of mutilated bodies after a particularly nasty train derailment. There is no artfulness to be found here, any more than there is artfulness in the ravings of the unmedicated schizophrenic haranguing you from the streecorner. Come to think of it, I'd rather listen to the schizophrenic. I had originally given this half a star because, despite hating myself every time I turned a page, I finished the book rather than abandoning (or burning) it. But the more I think about it, the more I realize it doesn't deserve even that. To quote a wiser (and much more succinct) colleague of mine (reviewing a different book), “I kept thinking 'Why am I reading this?', but that put all the responsibility on me. Why is this a book?” (zero)
I first heard about this book back in 2005. It first popped up on a blog I am quite fond of called Grumpy Old Bookman; soon after, Tao Lin started championing Cicero's work (in 2006, he called Burning Babies “a beautifully-written novel”). And then...nothing. The book didn't actually show up anywhere until 2008. Cicero, from his own blog, in February 2007: “Once upon a time, there was a book called Burning Babies by Noah Cicero, that was going to come out, but the book did not come out.//He got reviews for this book that did not exist.//People said positive things concerning the non-existent book....” I'm still trying to figure out whether he's just noting the facts or making digs at the bloggers who talked the book up, not that it really matters. Burning Babies does exist. I own a copy of it. And now I have read it.
It's fucking terrible.
Imagine a bastard child of all the worst traints, and none of the best, of Allen Ginsberg and Todd Moore (Carlos Castaneda may have also been involved, in some kind of unholy threesome), a child whose...mother?...drank prodigiously and steadily throughout pregnancy and may have smoked some sort of meth/crack freebase as well, a child as relentlessly, horrifically abused as all those kids who it actually turned out weren't as relentlessly, horrifically abused as we were told they were (JT Leroy, Dave Pelzer, Augusten Burroughs...), a child who lacks any sort of formal education in the English language whatsoever, has never read a novel and thus had no chance to have picked up even the basics of plot, characterization, or theme. That child is Monco, the narrator of this plotless morass of language that may be an attempt at a novel, may be some sort of loosely-linked story cycle (the product description at Amazon points to this interpretation, though loosely), may even be some sort of tremendouly incompetent attempt at poetry; the only way I could give the book more than zero stars, though, was to block that possiblity out of my head entirely. (Note written after the review was finished: it still didn't work.)
The book is written—perhaps consciously, but whether it was the author's intent to come off this way or not, the effect is the same—in an aggressively anti-literate style. Other reviewers who are not as familiar with the world of vanity publishing as I am may not be as familiar with this style of writing as I am, but rest assured, there is nothing “bold” or “new” or “avant-garde” or (fill in the superlative of your choice) about it. Pick up half a dozen random novels, the more grammatically awkward the titles the better, from self-, vanity-, or POD-publishing houses (Dorrance, XLibris, PublishAmerica, AuthorHouse, CreateSpace...) and I'd almost guarantee you will find at least one written in exactly this style. (Pro tip: choose books written by authors with outlandish pseudonyms.) Well, let me revise this paragraph a tad: the word “style” has implications I don't mean to impart. There is a style to this book in the way there is a style to the scattering of mutilated bodies after a particularly nasty train derailment. There is no artfulness to be found here, any more than there is artfulness in the ravings of the unmedicated schizophrenic haranguing you from the streecorner. Come to think of it, I'd rather listen to the schizophrenic. I had originally given this half a star because, despite hating myself every time I turned a page, I finished the book rather than abandoning (or burning) it. But the more I think about it, the more I realize it doesn't deserve even that. To quote a wiser (and much more succinct) colleague of mine (reviewing a different book), “I kept thinking 'Why am I reading this?', but that put all the responsibility on me. Why is this a book?” (zero)
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