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A review by modernzorker
Genital Grinder by Ryan Harding
3.0
I’ve reviewed some extreme horror before, but today is when the kid gloves come off for a bare-knuckle throwdown. Before you dive into Ryan Harding’s short story compilation, make sure you haven’t eaten for the past twelve hours and there’s plenty of hot water, because you’re going to need a long shower after this literary torture session. Edward Lee wrote the introduction, and he has nothing but praise for both author and text.
Let that sink in for a moment. Edward "I Write Books About Bestiality-Practicing, Inbred, Scat-Loving Hillbillies" Lee throws his doe eyes at Harding the way my dog does when he wants a treat for going outside and crapping in the yard like a good boy. I can excuse my dog on the basis I like to call 'because he's a dog'. Lee's excuse? I'm not going there. One encounter with The Pig was about fifty too many for me, thankyouverymuch.
Horror is filled with books that make you think, “Man, they couldn't put that on screen if they tried!” Then you realize Lee’s Header was filmed in 2006, A Serbian Film crossed the ocean in 2010, and Tom Six has been paid to write and direct three, three, movies since 2009 with the sole selling point being an ever-increasing number of peoples' mouths sewn to other people’s anuses. Surely we have, by now, reached not just the bottom of the barrel, but the bottom of the goddamn septic tank, right? Genital Grinder is 168 pages of Ryan Harding proving we were not even close.
"Genital Grinder" isn’t one novel, but rather a collection of short stories sharing a loose affiliation with one another by virtue of taking place in the same town and featuring several of the same characters, and you will not want to attempt it unless you have a cast-iron stomach. I cannot stress this enough: if any of the previous books I've reviewed were difficult for you to navigate, give this one a pass.
There...there are an awful lot of you still reading this. Are you sure you want--
What's that?
You are?
Sigh.
Oooookay, then. (FML...)
Harding is a splatterpunk’s splatterpunk, unafraid to throw every bodily fluid imaginable and then some right in your face, but if you dig below all the blood and puke, there’s competent writing and a feverishly diseased imagination awaiting. The stories all deal with different subject matters, each being its own self-contained nightmare. The book’s title comes from two of the most revolting pieces within, ‘Genital Grinder: A Snuff Film in 5 Acts’ and ‘Genital Grinder II: Dis-Membered’. No hyperbole, the first ‘Genital Grinder’ story with Von and Greg is the only thing I’ve ever read in my life that damn near made my stomach scream in terror and escape my abdomen by way of my esophagus. The second, while disturbing, is played much more for laughs, as is ‘Damaged Goods’ (which also features the idiotic duo perpetrating the most deplorable 'get rich quick' scheme imaginable). Other stories include ‘Bottom Feeder’ where a guy visiting a bar at last call goes home with the wrong gal, ‘Development’ where a kid working the local film department finds himself printing off an unimaginable series of photographs, ‘Emissary’ which is a love(?) letter to those shockumentaries like "Faces of Death" and "Banned In America", and ‘Sharing Needles’ which sees either the return of a serial killer from two decades earlier or the rise of a copycat who knows everything the original would have and then some.
None of this would work if Harding wasn’t such a competent storyteller, and it’s tempting to claim this is the first case of a writer using his gift for evil I’ve ever come across. What makes it so impressive is hard to put into words, but if I may digress into Dungeons & Dragons terms: if Edward Lee is Chaotic Evil (brutalizing the reader for sheer shock value) and Wrath James White is Lawful Evil (brutalizing the reader for the sake of making him ponder something important), then Ryan Harding is Neutral Evil (brutalizing the reader due to the demands of the story). Harding’s a slave to narrative here--he will capitulate to any demand it makes of him, a fact which renders his type of writing the most horrifying of all, in my opinion.
Most disturbing scene:
Screw you for making me remember.
It happens in ‘Genital Grinder: A Snuff Act in 5 Acts’. Von and Greg have kidnapped beautiful local news anchor Geisha Hammond and porn actress Lolita Ream with plans to create the first honest-to-gawd legit snuff film released for public consumption. Hammond has the most legitimate reason imaginable for why she’s not ready for her close-up, but as far as the two would-be gore-nographers are concerned, it’s no excuse to waste a perfectly good tub of bath water. I’m not saying any more because I paid ten bucks for my lunch earlier today, and as generous as you all are, I'd prefer not to get reacquainted with it.
Besides, it'll make you hate me even more to stumble across it yourselves with no warning the same way I did. And that thought makes me smile.
Damn it, Harding's rubbing off on me, and I hate all of you for it.
Let that sink in for a moment. Edward "I Write Books About Bestiality-Practicing, Inbred, Scat-Loving Hillbillies" Lee throws his doe eyes at Harding the way my dog does when he wants a treat for going outside and crapping in the yard like a good boy. I can excuse my dog on the basis I like to call 'because he's a dog'. Lee's excuse? I'm not going there. One encounter with The Pig was about fifty too many for me, thankyouverymuch.
Horror is filled with books that make you think, “Man, they couldn't put that on screen if they tried!” Then you realize Lee’s Header was filmed in 2006, A Serbian Film crossed the ocean in 2010, and Tom Six has been paid to write and direct three, three, movies since 2009 with the sole selling point being an ever-increasing number of peoples' mouths sewn to other people’s anuses. Surely we have, by now, reached not just the bottom of the barrel, but the bottom of the goddamn septic tank, right? Genital Grinder is 168 pages of Ryan Harding proving we were not even close.
"Genital Grinder" isn’t one novel, but rather a collection of short stories sharing a loose affiliation with one another by virtue of taking place in the same town and featuring several of the same characters, and you will not want to attempt it unless you have a cast-iron stomach. I cannot stress this enough: if any of the previous books I've reviewed were difficult for you to navigate, give this one a pass.
There...there are an awful lot of you still reading this. Are you sure you want--
What's that?
You are?
Sigh.
Oooookay, then. (FML...)
Harding is a splatterpunk’s splatterpunk, unafraid to throw every bodily fluid imaginable and then some right in your face, but if you dig below all the blood and puke, there’s competent writing and a feverishly diseased imagination awaiting. The stories all deal with different subject matters, each being its own self-contained nightmare. The book’s title comes from two of the most revolting pieces within, ‘Genital Grinder: A Snuff Film in 5 Acts’ and ‘Genital Grinder II: Dis-Membered’. No hyperbole, the first ‘Genital Grinder’ story with Von and Greg is the only thing I’ve ever read in my life that damn near made my stomach scream in terror and escape my abdomen by way of my esophagus. The second, while disturbing, is played much more for laughs, as is ‘Damaged Goods’ (which also features the idiotic duo perpetrating the most deplorable 'get rich quick' scheme imaginable). Other stories include ‘Bottom Feeder’ where a guy visiting a bar at last call goes home with the wrong gal, ‘Development’ where a kid working the local film department finds himself printing off an unimaginable series of photographs, ‘Emissary’ which is a love(?) letter to those shockumentaries like "Faces of Death" and "Banned In America", and ‘Sharing Needles’ which sees either the return of a serial killer from two decades earlier or the rise of a copycat who knows everything the original would have and then some.
None of this would work if Harding wasn’t such a competent storyteller, and it’s tempting to claim this is the first case of a writer using his gift for evil I’ve ever come across. What makes it so impressive is hard to put into words, but if I may digress into Dungeons & Dragons terms: if Edward Lee is Chaotic Evil (brutalizing the reader for sheer shock value) and Wrath James White is Lawful Evil (brutalizing the reader for the sake of making him ponder something important), then Ryan Harding is Neutral Evil (brutalizing the reader due to the demands of the story). Harding’s a slave to narrative here--he will capitulate to any demand it makes of him, a fact which renders his type of writing the most horrifying of all, in my opinion.
Most disturbing scene:
Screw you for making me remember.
It happens in ‘Genital Grinder: A Snuff Act in 5 Acts’. Von and Greg have kidnapped beautiful local news anchor Geisha Hammond and porn actress Lolita Ream with plans to create the first honest-to-gawd legit snuff film released for public consumption. Hammond has the most legitimate reason imaginable for why she’s not ready for her close-up, but as far as the two would-be gore-nographers are concerned, it’s no excuse to waste a perfectly good tub of bath water. I’m not saying any more because I paid ten bucks for my lunch earlier today, and as generous as you all are, I'd prefer not to get reacquainted with it.
Besides, it'll make you hate me even more to stumble across it yourselves with no warning the same way I did. And that thought makes me smile.
Damn it, Harding's rubbing off on me, and I hate all of you for it.