Cottonmouth Kisses [Paperback]

Clint Catalyst (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2000

Edgy and ironic, Clint Catalyst exposes the underside of all his many subjects - gay relationships, backwater adolescence, and spiraling addiction. Whether he's writing about a chance sexual encounter at a Goth club called Lilith ("Some New Kind of Kick") or revealing the inner thoughts of young hustlers in Hollywood ("Metaphor, and Remorse"), Catalyst unearths the trashy truth in his characters' unconventional lives.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Catalyst is a master of language and metaphor: he slams you right into uncomfortable situations and doesn't let you out." -- San Francisco Bay Guardian

"Catalyst mixes delicious realism with velveteen imagery, a toxic cocktail which hits like a punch in a pumped-out stomach." -- Skin Two magazine

"Clint Catalyst has the magical knack for turning the most ethereal thoughts and feelings into tangible imagery." -- Anthony Kiedis, Red Hot Chili Peppers

"Clint Catalyst's Cottonmouth Kisses walks on the literary wild side. Well-tuned and surprisingly insightful... Recommended." -- Gay Times (UK)

"Complex, multiplex... it's got terrific octane... make no mistake about it: He's got talent in spades." -- Bellingham Herald

Product Details

• Paperback: 158 pages
• Publisher: Manic D Press, Inc.; 1st edition (2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0916397653
• ISBN-13: 978-0916397654
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.5 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,638,070 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #51 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Anthologies
  • #65 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Gay

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "So 15 minutes ahead it hurts!" October 17, 2000

By Ryan Wildstar

Format:Paperback

Mouth-watering! Catalyst lives up to his name, candidly plunging his reader/victim into lethal accounts of feverish boy lust, middle-Americana , gritty drug-sex, and the peril of Gen-X relationships with dragonfly-wit. For those initiates, Cottonmouth Kisses is an eye-opener- an absolute required text from a venerated voice of the San Francisco underground scene. For that "been-there, done-that" audience, this collection of poems and prose should resonate with genuine laughter and remorse, sighs of remembrance, and an unsynthetic frankness. Pieces like "Everbody's Big Exception," and "Panhandled Presence," (almost criminal without the inflection and intonation from Clint's live readings) are carefully intermingled with prose/poem passages whose allusions range from 70's sitcoms and K-tel to Jean Genet, from Coil and Siouxsie to Plato and Donatello's David. The result is a humorous, insighftul, and well-crafted collection of work from a brother who survived to tell the tale. A millennial tour de force!

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Snake Charmer September 2, 2000

By Just Jean

Format:Paperback

I was introduced to Clint Catalyst's work when I saw him read at Tonic during the Fringe Ink/FringeFest. Astounding. _Cottonmouth Kisses_ is a remarkable, varied work with an array of voices. Catalyst's prose is not unlike the (cottonmouth) snake from the book's title: it is rapid, seductive, a force with which to be reconed. Furthermore, each piece has its own "turn," so to speak-- its own venomous lifebite.

The story "Metaphor and Remorse" is one of the most remarkable works I've read in my life, a frightening tale of artifice and addiction told through a complex narration: the words of the narrator interspersed with the narrator's thoughts, memories of his lover's words. What they reveal, as well as what the narrator doesn't reveal, is both poignant and haunting.

And the final piece, "The Dreaming Real," is one of the bravest and most beautiful things I've ever read in my life. Through contemporary, whip-smart diction in the form of a letter, we learn about the death of a chemical romance and the rebirth into clear-thinking, cloudless emotions, a new life.

Clint Catalyst has a wickedly beautiful new voice. This book is both queer and universal, gritty and gorgeous....a must read & must re-read.

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars kodak moments from hell August 28, 2000

By Lynda Licina

Format:Paperback

I've been reading Clint since he was an imprisoned resident of a small Arkansas town and admired every word he put down on paper - or whatever it was he wrote on. I only say prisoner because I've heard the horror stories a small religious/KKK town can produce. Fortunately for us, he escaped.

Clint can take a mundane situation, (though in his world the mundanes are few and far between) and using his powerfully artistic words, turn even the simplest event into a kodak moment from hell. The book's range of emotions, sheer boredom to absolute terror, innocent love to brutally ecstatic rape, uncertainty, yet cocky as all hell attitude allow the person reading his individual pieces to be right there beside him at every incident, observing and feeling. Clint scrutinizes unnoticed and sees all the absurdities in life that most people wouldn't give a second thought to. He has a unique way of seeing the glass neither half full nor half empty but either overflowing with some seedy liquid or dry as a bone, shattering at any moment into itchy sand particles.

I don't know where he finds his words or exactly how he puts them together to create such (well, I won't say beautiful although beauty IS in the eye...) narratives but I hope his fairy tales never go away. I recommend this book to all of you who have survived, or are still trying hard to. And I look forward to what this brutally honest writer has for us in his future never-never land.

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh Wound July 15, 2000

By Lakey Story

Format:Paperback

This book is a fresh wound bleeding with raw emotion.Clint takes a lower dive into the abyss of desire.His desire to see more, feel more, be more, live more, fuels him through the white heat delerium buzz of chemical euphoria and ultimatley into the depths of delusion. This book is a must read for anyone who is driven by the sacred and profane, the demonic and the divine.The quest for beauty and truth takes us to our darkest urges as sweet and evil as "cotton mouth kisses" as Clint's stories are proof.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy This Book! October 22, 2000

By sam hunt

Format:Paperback

After reading Cottonmouth Kisses I found myself in awe of the sheer richness of Clint's language. His command of both poetry and prose is astounding and refreshing indeed. His honesty and unpretentious approach to the recording of his own experiences is a gift to his reader. Whether Clint is writing about drug addiction, sex, friendship, or love, the sheer energy of his personality shines through in every piece. The combination of rage, passion, sorrow, and humor that animates this book is something to behold and reading it was like being taken on a ride where every turn promised something new. A truly wonderful collection of writing. Moving, engaging, and always on the mark.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A glass gothly September 4, 2000

By "blissengine"

Format:Paperback

Catalyst's fiction, poetry, and biographical wisps are full of bright honesty and toxic rides. Using threads from such writers as Poppy Z. Brite and Dennis Cooper, he weaves through a bevy of subjects, mostly dark and possibly degenerate. I thoroughly loved his story "Taking Care of", and was entertained by most of the book. I felt he sometimes succumbed to mediocrity, but it's evident the potency he has which struggles to be realized in this burgeoning collection.