Customer Reviews

Blood of Mugwump: A Tiresian Tale of Incest (Black Ice Books)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

if he knew what Rice was doing with his "Cady," the family, and the literary legacy. He'd probbaly turn in his grave with delight. Rice says this book was almost impossible to write -- maybe he shouldn't have written it. It's pretty unreadable, like language poetry, but I give him three stars for some damn fine images and perverse sexual longings.

This isn't a novel. It's more like a prose poem. I've read some other works by Rice in literary zines and he's getting more and more obscure, and writing about the same characters in this book.

The photos are a nice touch.

Whatever this thing is, it's worth a try.

Look... read it if you love literature. Rice is a secret cartographer, a cave painter. In response to an earlier review, I would say he is bold enough excavate to depths most writers wouldn't even dare, nor know how to dig that far. If you are afraid of language, or don't have the courage to look inside it, quite frankly, you will hate this book and call it stupid. If you are patient enough to hunt the white whale, to see the beauty of a terrible transmorgriphication, brave enough to swim to the bottom of the pool that Faulkner's characters swam in... then read it.

But... if you don't understand it, please don't run around bashing it. Remember, Faulkner told his students to read "The Sound and the Fury" multiple times to understand it. Sometimes you have to learn to re-read. They couldn't read Joyce, they couldn't read Faulkner. Rice will challenge the hell out of you and your ability to think, to feel, to be honest, and to listen. Shhhh.

Based on the technique alone, this novel is a feast for the brain. Most if not all of the text was appropriated from various sources and is seemlessly woven together in bizarre patterns. The narrator is pulled along, forced to discover and re-discover him/herself and the family background as s/he continually switches from male to female and back again. It is disturbing, funny and touching, and often all at the same time. I read this over a month ago and I still find myself asking questions and re-investigating this work. A must-read for anyone interested in the avant garde side of contemporary american fiction.

This author came into my english class and talked about the books he has and will write. The books are an exact replication of himself. He is just as weird and strange and creative and confused as his texts. He is not trying to BE anything through his writing, that just how he is, he told us he doesn't even realize what he is writing until he is finnished he just starts typing and this whole load of (...) goes pouring across the page. He may be strange, and write strange warped things, but that is just how he really is. It's not his fault... :)

_Blood_of_Mugwump_ is not for the weak of heart or mind. It will leave you rethinking who, what, and even where you are.

Doug is a true master of the avante-pop- even Kathy Acker gives praise:

"The most gorgeous sentences and rhythms... I'm drooling and I bet that even Faulkner, though dead, is taking notice. ... What emerges is a poetry as analysis grounded in what must be called 'the real'." (From the back cover)

A must read for anyone who has ever sought their 'true self' and was scared by what they found!

_Blood Of Mugwump_ is unreadable twaddle. That's the real definition of anything "avant garde" anyway. Isn't it? This little project of Doug Rice's certainly would qualify.

Rice tries to be shocking, instead he's just stupidly vulgar. He tries to be brutal, but only manages to be clumsy and self-aware. He tries to be intellectual, instead he's entirely incoherent. I guess that's really the problem with this book; it tries to be something when, in reality, it's a big fat nothing.

Perfect reading for all those goths who want to impress their ersatz vampire friends with some obscure scribbler's forced attempt at something bizarre. For anyone with any taste in craftsmanship and art, leave this one to die a lonely, unread death on the clearance table. I certainly wish I had.