Sam Pink

Back when I bought a copy of Shoplifting from American Apparel, I also bought a copy of Person by Sam Pink. Since my first exposure to alt lit resulted in what can only be called a complete nervous book-down, I was understandably reluctant to read Pink. Lin’s SfAA filled me with such disgust that had I read anything similar immediately afterward and then discussed it I would have needed a new anus.

But a few years have passed, and the fire of my hatred has dimmed. Also, Person is a slim show more volume and tempted me after I had finished The Goldfinch, which, as much as I love Donna Tartt, was a brick, and a very tiresome brick at around page 550. I needed something easy and something quick and there Person was, in my nightstand cupboard, nestled in with far longer and more outrageous fare. So I decided to just hold my nose and jump into Person and see what happened.

Person and SfAA are very similar books. Both feature disaffected, grubby young protagonists. Both books mine the same disenchanted hipster veins. The very structures of the books down to the sentence formations are similar. So how come I really like Person?

It’s difficult to explain, and because I recently got my winter clothes out (Jesus, I began this discussion back in mid-November – ugh!), I think I have a decent enough explanation. You know how it is that one red sweater can make you look like a porcelain-skinned angel and another red sweater can make you look like a chapped potato? They’re both red, just different reds. But you know, that analogy is a bad one because the red that makes me look like someone’s ruddy Irish nanna isn’t innately a shitty color and the one that makes me look like I’ve never once had a sunburn isn’t innately a heavenly color. By any sane standard, SfAA is a terrible book. I guess what I am saying here is that for the most part I hate most alt lit (and increasingly the writers behind the genre), but you can’t judge a book by its color just because some colors look better than others. And if it seems like I am being completely incoherent so that pompous tenured professors working in the Corn Belt can insult me because every extemporaneous book discussion needs to be indistinguishable from a doctoral thesis, that isn’t what’s happening. Nope. Not at all.

Still, I think I can make a case for why it is that Person is such a better book. Or at least a book worth reading.

The Person in Person is a grubby young man who is living a grubby, tiresome life. He has very little money. He has a roommate for whom he feels a lot of enmity but whom he treats reasonably politely. Sometimes he tries to get a job. Sometimes he sleeps with a girl who lives in his apartment complex. Mostly he wanders the cold, horrible streets of a city, any city, realizing how bleak things are and how little will he possesses to change. He is a complete misanthrope, which is nice because in alt lit one gets very overwhelmed by Lin-esque writers who don’t even have the depth of humanity to hate – they just mock and hope we feel really bad when they are finished.

You can read my entire discussion here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/person-by-sam-pink/ show less

"I decide to play the disappearing game, where I try to see how completely I can be gone from any interaction.
The problem with this game is that with victory comes no recognition."

A bizarre self-narration and introspection of a "person" who's overcome with alienation and social ineptitude. I really enjoyed it; but, clearly, it's not for everyone. If you happen to enjoy reading absurd and depressing inner monologues that stem from spotting ordinary things in life, i.e. a roommate sleeping, show more 7-11 brand pens, a good slice of tomato in a sandwich, and sharing oranges that were originally wholly yours with your roommate, then I guess you will love this. show less

I picked this up in Powell's. It was an impulse purchase, really. I was standing in that little corner of the Blue Room, where they have assorted "Bizarro" books (but Powell's doesn't use the word "Bizarro"; I think they call them "Independent/Small Press" but they're all bizarro). The title caught my eye, naturally. The title really sold me, I guess.

Each story is between one and three pages, and I wouldn't quite call them "stories". They're free-form musings and snippets of dialogue. As show more luck would have it, the first thing I read was the interaction Sam had with a stranger on a bus. A beautiful woman walks by on the street outside, and the stranger nudges Sam and points her out. Kind of a "Hubba hubba, get a load of her" kind of thing. Sam responds loudly "I acknowledge your nudge, and I also see that beautiful woman outside. I take your nudge to mean you'd like to have sexual intercourse with her, and if you're asking me if I would too, then yes- yes, I would also like to have sexual intercourse with her." The stranger, quite uncomfortable by this, withdraws and does not interact with Sam the rest of the ride.

Haha. My first impression is the author is a smartass, and also pretty funny. So I flip through a few more stories, and decide to buy the book.



I get home, and read some more.

The guy has an odd obsession with bones in his hand, and bones in other people's hands. He has dreams about breaking the bones in his hands. When he meets people, as he's shaking their hands, he tries (how, I'm not sure) to assess how strong the bones in their hands are, in case he should ever need to meet them in hand-to-hand combat. Some of it is funny, like the bit the title is derrived from, where he discusses cannibalizing himself by eating his clone. But some of it.. especially the hand bones stuff- gets tedious. At this point, I'm thinking the guy is nuts.



Finishing the book, I hear about these weird dreams where Sam wants to cut his fingers off and sew different fingers on his hand (from where?), a bunch of stuff about wishing he was never born, etc. And then I come across the part, which I really should have seen earlier, if I had been reading more carefully, because it's stated on the back of the book- that Sam Pink is bipolar. So, yeah, he's not "nuts" because I use that term in a comical way to describe somebody who is outside the norm, but I don't really use that term to describe somebody who has a recognized psychiatric condition. He's got a (treatable) disease, so I'm uneasy reading this, because even though some of it really is very funny, I feel like I'm laughing at this:



and that's not fucking funny.

But wait.

Sam Pink wrote this, and he got it published. He knew this book would be interesting, and some of it would be funny. And it is. (some of it) I'm not sure whether I'm reading the product of his disease, or the product of a vivid imagination, of somebody who has just seen the world (especially before his diagnosis and treatment) from a very different angle than I have. Now I'm confused... am I exploiting Sam and making fun of his condition, or am I laughing along with him at some stuff he himself chuckles at and admits is kind of "out there"? Or am I taking part in his therapy because he somehow needs to share his experiences?

Or all of the above?

Or none of the above?

To tell the truth, I think this book has made me a little crazy. show less

A slightly expanded version of this originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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A little housekeeping to start: That title is just too long to keep using, you know? I thought about using 99PtCWWwYoCTPYN, but that's almost as bad—actually, it's probably worse aesthetically speaking. So, I'm going to go with 99 Poems.

WHY DID I WANT TO READ 99 POEMS...?
I've mentioned around here before that I'm not much of a poetry reader. In fact, I think I've only posted about one other poetry show more collection. I think this the fourth poetry collection I've read since I graduated from college in the mid-90s.

So what possessed me to pick this up? Well, despite what it may look like around here (and certainly how it feels sometimes), I do want to keep trying new/less familiar things. What got this to my attention was that someone on my Twitter feed posted a picture of one of the poems from this book a couple of months ago—I believe it was "The Woodchuck"—it made me smile, and it seemed like a good idea to try some more.

Which is how I got here. Trying to figure out how to talk about poems.

COMIC POEMS
Like the poem that got my attention, many of these poems fall under the heading of "comic." They all won't make you laugh—but you'll probably grin a bit. The construction is similar to a joke, but I think it's a disservice, even for the comic poems to treat them as simply that.

THE NON-COMIC POEMS
Then there are the poems on the other end of the spectrum, moving, poignant—even uplifting.

I think most readers will find themselves in some/many of these. Which is both comforting and unnerving.

APPROACHABLE
None of these are difficult to read (some may be challenging to chew on)—a few are two or three lines, a few are about 2 pages long. Most are 6-ish lines long.

Really, I've read tweets that contain as many characters as some of these poems. I guess I'm saying, there's no reason for non-poetry readers like me to feel intimidated by these.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT 99 POEMS...?
How do you not like something with that title? That's practically an instant 3-Stars right there.

But more than that, I liked this collection. Reading a couple of these is a good break from everything else going on in the world around you. A simple way to look at things in a different way. I'm likely to keep an eye out for more by Pink, and I think you should, too. show less