Burning Babies (Flemish Edition) [Paperback]

Noah Cicero (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 8, 2005

Ignore these searing, naked tales of a lost America at your own risk. These are the brutal images of Her discarded children - the marginalized lives they lead and the desperate adults they become. They are a warning, a protest, a scream from the darkness by one of the country's boldest, most original young writers - Youngstown, Ohio's Noah Cicero.

Michael Allen, Grumpy Old Bookman: "The subject matter is dark and might be depressing but for the author's sense of humour. Which is dry, droll, and succeeded in making me laugh. A lot more than many books do."

Harvey Pekar, author of American Splendor and The Quitter: "This is a very good, homemade book about White Trash America. It's full of angry, humorous and intelligent insights. I read it in one sitting."

Reader of Depressing Books: "Here's why I liked your novel Burning Babies. Because the voice. Because of who you are, I guess. If I like someone's voice, then I'll read anything they write, because I trust them. Subject matter doesn't matter to me. I like your voice because you do not explain things that are obvious."

About the Author

Noah Cicero was born in 1980 in Youngstown, Ohio, where he still lives. His first book, The Human War, was published in 2003 by Fugue State Press.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Noah Cicero is 24 years old and lives in Youngstown, Ohio.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Undie Press (October 8, 2005)
• Language: Flemish
• ISBN-10: 0976346028
• ISBN-13: 978-0976346029
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,594,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for everybody else., November 18, 2005

By 

J. Chapman (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Burning Babies (Flemish Edition) (Paperback)

We keep hearing that people don't read. Certainly the average person doesn't read literary fiction. What if it turned out that this was the fault of literary fiction? Because when certain rare writers come along, suddenly LOTS of people want to read.

Kerouac, Bukowski, and in fact Hemingway before them, were writers who spoke clearly, with unpretentious vocabularies and with no interest in mannerism or fog. And they created readerships that vastly transcend the group of five thousand, or however many it is, who still read good books as a hobby. These writers also continue to change lives and perceptions on a mass basis.

Noah Cicero, with this book and with his previous novel "The Human War," is speaking in the language of poor people, the people who "don't read," people in crummy towns sitting in strip clubs and laundromats, people who deliver pizzas for a living, people who aren't cool, don't remotely think of being cool, and don't read books in order to become cool. Potentially almost anybody could read and understand these books. And yet this isn't because his prose is simplified, but because he describes the world as it actually is, without using the language of concealment. We recognize what he's talking about. And we also notice that nobody else writes like this.

He is actually more ambitious than most literary writers, because he seems to want to revolutionize the way people perceive the world. He does this by just telling the truth. This is rare, as it turns out. His brutally funny, direct descriptions of how life is really lived in Youngstown, Ohio constitute a kind of benchmark for the reader, and for other writers. Are literary writers accustomed to telling the truth, or are they more interested in impressing people? Noah Cicero talks about the details and contradictions of American life here, and if not for the fact that it's funny as hell, it would be almost too painful to take. After reading him, other writing seems flowery, indirect, and inadequate to the job of describing how life really works.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Fine and Pleasant Panic Attack, November 21, 2005

By 

liza newsome - See all my reviews

This review is from: Burning Babies (Flemish Edition) (Paperback)

I've read interviews with this author in which he says that the downfall of literature is that it's getting pushed out by movies and television. I agree and I think the reason is that it takes too damn long to read a book. This one is different though. Like a movie, it takes about two hours to finish. Similarly, you'll want to make sure you have the full two hours at your disposal, because once you start it, you'll not want to quit until it stops. The undie press site calls it a novel I think, but it really isn't one. It's more a collection of random scenes, ranging from darkly funny to moderately disturbing to outright grotesque. Like a well-made film, though, it somehow manages to be always entertaining. Don't think that it's going to read like a script just because I'm comparing it to film; the comparison is solely based on the amount of time it takes to enjoy. It reads like it was ranted into a mini-tape recorder at 4 in the morning. Because it is written in such a fast voice, a raving panic attack, you feel like you need to read it that fast The sentences are short, and there's usually only one per paragraph so the book looks almost like poetry--poetry that's been gutted and hung out to dry--or maybe it's the guts that were cut out, I don't know. But it kicks ass.