Customer Reviews

It Came from Below the Belt

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Listen carefully and no one gets hurt.... I've always thought an oft-repeated phrase contains more power than an ordinary 'or I will hurt you'.... There is a gun aimed at your head, a gun that I purchased for the singular purpose of making you do exactly as I tell you.... Are you with me so far? Good." -- from It Came from Below the Belt

Contrary to what I had originally thought, reading a novel at gunpoint is not an entirely unpleasant experience. It Came from Below the Belt -- the debut novel of Bradley Sands, editor of "the journal of absurdist and surreal fiction," Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens -- is a fine example of the burgeoning genre known as bizarro. The writers known for this style embrace weirdness for its own sake, while still retaining the primary goal of telling an entertaining story (like David Lynch does for film). The relatively inexpensive Bizarro Starter Kit is available for those wishing to test this fascinating subgenre further.

It Came from Below the Belt is only the second bizarro novel I have read. The first was Gina Ranalli's Chemical Gardens and while it gave me a good taste of the genre, it by no means prepared me for the level of oddity I was to encounter in Bradley Sands' novel. (The two authors share a publisher, Afterbirth Books.)

Grover Goldstein is not a stalker! He's just misguided, literally misguided into the future after being eaten by a giraffe that turned out to be a time machine. There in the United States of Moonsylvania ("The name had to be changed due to a copyright infringement."), he meets his clone and, in a bizarre auto-fellatio accident, the clone's penis is severed, becomes sentient, gets irked at never having been named (an unforgivable slight, apparently) and having to go around as The Unnamable ... and then ... well, once The Unnamable expresses its newfound Hitlerian aspirations, it's kind of hard to summarize what happens after that. Sands throws every offbeat tangent possible at us -- It Came from Below the Belt contains enough weirdness and absurdity for six novels.

If the purpose of a bizarro novel is to make the reader go "WTF?" at least once a page, then Sands succeeds and then some because It Came from Below the Belt had me doing that about once a paragraph! The frequency of startling weirdness did hinder my getting caught up in the story, but it is definitely an ambitious choice that lends the book a certain indefinable charm. After all, if Sands wanted us to follow along easily, he would have written a different book.

Not surprisingly, it took me a while to get my head around what Sands was trying to accomplish. His particular style seemed, on the surface, to eschew the traditionally felt need for a coherent story in favor of pure strains of oddity. I see now, however, in hindsight, that there was a discernible narrative thread there all along that kept me reading in the face of interminable outlandishness -- it was just covered with every bit of strangeness that Sands could get to stick. You could maybe say that It Came from Below the Belt is the Airplane! of bizarro.

I originally thought it was going to be a horror novel due to the freaky cover art by Lucas Aguirre, but It Came from Below the Belt is probably more rightly termed science fiction due to its involvement with time travel. But there's not all that much of that going on and, in any case, any novel where the protagonist's penis gets severed is instantly branded horror in my book. And as if the narrative itself weren't bizarre enough, Sands also plays with the novel form, changing it to suit his needs. He makes the plot interactive by including a Choose Your Own Adventure-style chapter, a recipe, a TV sitcom pilot script (complete with laugh track), an actual drawing of The Unnamable working its way up the career ladder, and even a reference to a possible alternate-world audio version available on cassette. I can't wait to get to Moonsylvania for that one!

This one's exciting, fast-paced and steeped in the absurd. It reminds me in many ways of Flann Obrien's The Third Policeman, but updated and hardboiled for a new generation. I'd give it five stars, but I want Sands to have something to shoot for with his next one.

It Came from Below the Belt is a standout piece of absurdist comedy fiction; unlike many such works, the transitions with which Mr. Sands rearranges his world, phrase-by-phrase or chapter-by-chapter, are never forced or stultifying, but strangely refreshing. Cliches are routinely subverted in occupying a unique place in the reader's mind. A highly entertaining read. Also, Hitler comes back to life as a penis in high school and stuff.

agreed that there are some editorial oversights... nevertheless, this debut novel should be placed among the upper echelon of absurdist literature.

i won't regurgitate the synopsis, but i will say that the verbal exchanges alone are worth the price of admission. bradley demonstrates an extraordinary ability to contort a common dialogue into something so hilariously astounding... as an example:

"Okay, Mr. Goldstein. Everything seems to be in disorder." She handed me a laminated pass. "You will face two challenges to determine your voter eligibility."
"Don't challenges usually come in threes?"
"The second one is so ferocious that it devoured the third."
(p. 180)

... i laughed out loud...

with an imagination that seems to run rampant almost incessantly, bradley employs a rather whimsical plot, a vibrant cast of characters (keep your eyes peeled for a cameo by neal cassidy), and a modest prose to forge a comedic masterpiece.

i'm in awe that the underlying socio-political agenda neither overwhelms, nor yields to the fantastical imagery on display here; each element fuses comfortably together to form a very satisfying whole, and that speaks to bradley's maturity as a writer.

This book is gorgeously absurd. Nearly every paragraph is chock-full (and otherwise full) of wit, twisted reality, and a unique view of the world. Even if the world is the future, and the future is weirder than the past and present stuffed into a hyperspace blender and poured over ice, grass, and elephant memories into a sixty-four ounce chug-a-lug cup from the cosmic convenient store down the road. This book does not stop until it ends.

It Came From Below the Belt is about the things the back cover and the blurb up there says it's about. But it's also about stitching your sides from laughter and making you wonder just how in THE heck Bradley Sands came up with so many perfect twists of phrase that turn your view of reality on its side. Seriously, it's a wild, weird, amazing, SMART trip into Grover's future. Every page is filled with thinking things and brilliant humor.

I've had the pleasure of meeting Bradley Sands, and learning a thing or two from him. After reading this book, however, I see there's much more to learn. He's a master of the absurd, and a full-on bizarre bizarro. I love his style. Thank all the gawds he's got a new book written. Thank them all. Do it now. And then buy this book.

Imagine that you're out having drinks with David Lynch and David Cronenberg...and they get really, really messed up - drugs, alcohol, you name it. Then these two absurdists start telling you a story. Some of it makes sense, but under the veil of booze and crank you're getting a lot of things that don't seem to fit. You realize that these two are known for weird ideas and concepts. But this takes the cake.

If you can imagine that sort of setting, then you start to grasp what's going on with Bradley Sands' "It Came from Beneath the Belt".

Bradley Sands definitely gets the A+ for creativity and delivers the goods on humor. One thing that's ever present, is an outline of a story, though. It's like that drug addled Cronenberg and Lynch weaving a tale...the pieces don't always come together in coherent bridges. This is the downside to the book. I like my fiction weird, but I like the weirdness to come out of something. I like there to be enough infrastructure to ensure that I'll still get enough out of it. What's that they say? You have to have lines before you can color outside the lines?

But, don't let that deter you, loyal reader. What the story lacks in plot, it certainly makes up for in clever word usage, visual descriptions, hilarity from every corner, and creativity aplenty. Bradley Sands is a very good writer, and a very good storyteller.

In a really good way! You never know where this book will take you next. The surprises are imaginative and funny. There is so much creativity in this book, it may require a second read to savor the parts I already know I liked, and discover the gems I may have missed.

A highly entertaining novel.

The first thing you need to know about It Came From Below The Belt is that it is really, really bad. I bought it based mostly on the reviews, and because it's Bizarro. Some Bizarro authors create unusual characters in crazy situations or others give common place things bizarre twists. Then there are those like Sands, who try to make every sentence on every page as strange as possible. This is not a good idea and it makes for tedious reading.

I found myself looking ahead in the story, hoping it would get better, but it didn't. Even a bizarro book needs to be about something, and have a point. Anyone can put a bunch of strange and meaningless sentences together, it doesn't make it a book, and it definitely doesn't mean it should be published. A book this bad takes away from the whole Bizarro Idea. An underground press still needs quality control.

I don't usually like to write bad reviews for books because it's so subjective, but I just couldn't let this one get away. This book is so bad and yet has such good reviews it was just screaming out for another perspective. But if you don't want to believe me you should listen to Sands himself, who is kind enough to provide a review of his own book inside of his own book. A small sample of that review follows. "It is written in a manner that embraces style over substance, using an onslaught of wordplay, gimmicks, deconstructed cliches and lowbrow humor as a sleight of hand trick designed to take the readers attention off the nonexistent plot and the authors inability to write." I couldn't agree more.

Sands has a gift for juxtaposing images, combining familiar realities in a way that creates new, unfamiliar realities. Examples include cockroaches on wheels, giraffes doing ballet, nuclear lunchboxes and toupee-wearing orangutans on surfboards. One is reminded of Rene Magritte or Russell Edson.

But what really impressed me about this book was its clarity and craft. His diction is always simple and conversational. His rhythms steady and controlled. His plotting is profluent and convincing. His characters active and rounded. Everything is vivid, everything delightfully boisterous, like a deep, fascinating, unsettling dream that stays in your mind for days.

Imagine your crazy uncle picks you up from school and tells you he's taking you to the zoo. Now imagine he takes the scenic route. It takes three hours and you are subjected to the most absurd things you can imagine. Now, remember.. you REALLY want to go to the zoo. But everything outside the window is so COOL. Plus, your uncle is telling you some wild stories. You can either curse under your breath and complain about not getting to the zoo quick or you can sit back and enjoy the ride.

Once you read this book, you'll know what I mean.

Like I said "There's a plot in here somewhere." Well, that's not a bad thing, really. That is, having a plot that is so buried beneath random chaos, puns, and playful use of the English language that it makes the reader's eyes and head spin with wonder.

Basically the story is about a guy named Grover who travels to the future and meets himself. And then his, um, MEMBER is alive and is really the reincarnation of Hitler who then wants to run for president. In order to get access to the Nazi time travel technology, Grover must go back to high school and enroll as a student or something. It's weird. Trust me.

When you read this, you can practically see the author at his computer, pounding away at the keys, laughing hysterically at his wordplay. How can he resist? The humor is overwhelming. It borders on a work of comedic art. Some of it has echoes of the Marx Brothers. Quick witted and nonsensical in some places yet obviously written with care in order to extract the maximum amount of humor from each sentence and in some cases, each word.

I read this book in about a day. That says a lot about this book. It's fast-paced. It's absurd. It bludgeons the reader into submission with every page. It also injects itself directly into the reader's veins just like that popular energy drink. It will send you into a hyperspace realm of surrealism and social commentary. Yes, social commentary. It's somewhere in there, I'm sure. At the end of the book, things get a little clearer.. and you see what the author, perhaps, had to say by having The Unnamable run for president.

(To give an example of the utter wildness of this book...In the midst of it, the reader finds him or herself reading a "Choose your own adventure" book. Right in the middle of this book. Brilliant!)

Much of the imagery in this book is grotesque, dirty, vulgar, and (self-admittedly) low-brow. Still, it's a wild ride.

A downside to the book is the wild diversions that the author takes. Many readers, even if they like weird fiction, want a clear plot. IT CAME FROM BELOW THE BELT often deviates from the plot in amazing and entertaining ways.. but for some, I can imagine, this may cause them to lose sight and interest. The upside to this downside is that the book is short enough (190 pages) that for a fast reader (like myself) it makes for a quick and satisfying read.

Another downside is that there are paragraphs where SO MUCH happens that you have might have to reread it in order to get a grasp on what exactly is happening. And then you think to yourself "The author can't really mean that....Wait a minute.. Did that really happen?" For some this is great.. for others, annoying. I just immersed myself in the action and let myself forget about the overall plot of the book (basically I let my crazy uncle lull me into a hypnotic trance via his surreal story telling abilities).

For those interested in funny, "anything goes" (and I do mean ANYTHING) book.. this is for you. It's like a violent, obscene cartoon involving time travel, sex, nuclear explosions, self-discovery, politics, dance craze fads, and everything else you can think of.

IT CAME FROM BELOW THE BELT is a keeper. There's so much in here...WHEW.. I imagine some people, in the future, may even want to study it. I'd like to take that class.