threemonkeys | Free to a good home (Reply)

I like to buy small press speculative fiction. The rewards are many but there is a downside. From time to time you end up with something like Splitting by Brian Charles Clark (published by Wordcraft of Oregon). I should have read the back page and I would have stayed clear. Here are some excerpts from the reviews which would have clued me in to the incomprehensible stream of consciousness inside:

"Wild ideas, word devilry", "fever dream", "Splitting is a state of mind", "a bricolage* of prose, philosophy and poetry" and my particular favourite "I took the book and I took the acid and I cleaned the house and I watched the ship of narrative tossed on the giant rocks and I heard the decadent breakdown of the paragraph...".

I got to page 28 before I gave up.

*OK, so I didn't know what it meant, but I do now (from Websters)...
bri·co·lage
Pronunciation: "brE-kO-'läzh, "bri-
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from bricoler to putter about
: construction (as of a sculpture or a structure of ideas) achieved by using whatever comes to hand; also something constructed in this way