Some say a hero will come to save the world from destruction, hopelessness and haywire weather; from powerful forces of evil -- political, spiritual, or perhaps personal. Is The Pisco Kid that hero, or merely a literary instrument satirically skewering rapture-theorist conservatives, libidinous liberals, and many groups in between? In a surreal post-flood fantasy-scape, maybe it'ss all a wash.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Standaert's unconventional first novel follows Pisco, a disillusioned rodent exterminator and taxidermy enthusiast. The main thrust of Pisco's life is spent killing bats and rats, attempting to coexist with a ragtag assembly of neighbors and lamenting the tragic death of his apartment building's handyman Paul Putty. Pisco's unhinged, naturally suspicious mother (who calls him by his given name, "Moses") is a black Jamaican woman who adopted him; she and her much younger boyfriend, "Fly Boy," add little to his life of joyless annoyances, the zaniness of which is mind-bogglingly excessive: Pisco is bitten by a bat and develops rabies-like symptoms, he's fired then beaten down after vomiting on his boss' shoes, he wrestles emotionally with being an adoptee, then finds his friend Father John dead after a night of drinking and winds up in jail accused of murder (and is then rescued by a great flood)-all while corresponding with a gal named Sarah Ellen Roberts who may or may not be his niece. The author of Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire (Soft Skull) and a blogger at the Huffington Post, Standaert targets the soulless options for 21st century living in this frenetic, bitterly funny paean to defeat.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
gutsy satire for gutsy readers,
By
This review is from: The Adventures of the Pisco Kid (Paperback)
Standaert revives a now sadly neglected genre: the picaresque novel. Full of savage humor a la Burroughs and Celine, there are few subjects that Standaert's acid does not rain upon. If you're sick of wimpy contemporary satires, you'll be delighted with the downright dangerous Adventures of the Pisco Kid.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
XT 188,
This review is from: The Adventures of the Pisco Kid (Paperback)
Mr. Standaert has created a whole new writing style with his effort, The Adventures of the Pisco Kid. Clearly a disciple of Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Bukowski, with maybe a hint of Robert Hunter mixed in, Standaert's first novel is a good one. When I grow up I know for sure.....the rodent business is not for me. Long live Pisco!!!!
4.0 out of 5 stars
The arrival of a young Burroughs or Thompson,
By Wayne (N/A) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Adventures of the Pisco Kid (Paperback)
Michael Standaert makes his bid to be the next William Burroughs or Hunter Thompson. Pisco Kid is a ribald, tumbling, sometimes sprawling, always biting novel, which skewers every important canard of the last decade. Pisco is the self-picked name of an exterminator who forsakes his "given name"of Moses for his more cowboy-sounding nom de plume, despite the protestations of the Jamaican mother who "found" him in a mall.
While Pisco Kid does not always keep the clear trajectory of a novel like Fear and Loathing, it makes up for its occasional wanderings with great intensity. (Interestingly, the drawings that illustrate Pisco seem in the style of Ralph Steadman's artwork for Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.) This novel announces the arrival of an important satirist on the American fiction scene.
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