Customer Reviews

Cottonmouth Kisses

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

What an amazing tome: a collection of short stories, prose-poems & letters that deals with the venomous lifebite of living & loving with too much feeling in a world that doesn't have enough. Each of these works is viciously brilliant & diverse, acerbic wit coupled with the despair of longing, dark subject matter illuminated by intelligent humor & observation. The short story "Allegory," for example, is clearly a first-person hallucinogenic tale of drug addiction, yet Catalyst never mentions a substance once. Instead, the bottom of his narrator's day-to-day "drops out"; that is, he finds himself in a dank cathedral, transmogrified to another nameless, faceless being stripped of everything but an insane longing.

The prose-poem "Everybody's Big Exception" is a razor-sharp account of love disguised through the shallow validation of being sexually attractive to unavailable, terminally unconcerned straight men. And the pieces "Pained and Painted" and "Flouncing About" are the most concise and telling accounts of clubland's lip-glossy veneer I've ever read.

Furthermore, most of these works are fraught with a turbo-charged sexuality like no other. There is no meaningless orgasmic encounter in these pieces, not even the ones that are presented as such. _Cottonmouth Kisses_ is a collection that is exactly that: Venomous, Predatory, & Protective in its vulnerability. All the pieces have their own cracking of the rattled-tip, their own turns.

Most importantly, the collection as a whole is a contemporary account of experiencing extremes & coming full circle. I love & treasure this book.

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.

having know clint since his high school days and living in the same arkansas town as he did-i have to say i really enjoyed his book--it brought back a lot of memories-and i think, helped me to understand why i've chose some of the paths i've taken in life-i always knew clint would end up with some really bizarre stories-like we say in jonesboro-only clint!!

This is a great selection of essays and poetry from Clint Catalyst. They deal with gay relationships, adolescence, and out of control drug addiction. These subjects are dealt with in such an honest, clear and edgy way. The lives of these unconventional characters are brought to the page so intensely with all their flaws clearly exposed. You'll feel their thoughts and feelings. The artistic language used in this book make it a pleasure to read right through to the last page. No matter how dark and trashy these characters get you'll want to read more.

This was my first introduction to the author's writings (thanks,Sheldon) and I truly enjoyed this book. I think what really made this book special was the poetry in-between the essays and fiction. These poems were so easy to read and what I mean by that is they were very understandable. You don't have to spend all day figuring out what the author is trying to say. They are a joy to read. I look forward to this author's future work. Highly recommended.

which I deem:

1) "What is Goth?" by Voltaire
For spelling out the basics to looky-loos, kinderbats, or insiders who aren't afraid to laugh at themselves (for fear of exposing the adhesive-stripes along the gumline of their fake fangs)...

2) "Cottonmouth Kisses" by Clint Catalyst
For its sinister and gorgeous first-person account of life within the nightclub netherworlds. I've known many a Goth girl over the years who's had her share of Clint "pin-ups" and "shrines," and the fact that he's lived a life so far beyond the margins of Hot Topic and mainstream acceptability (and SURVIVED it) is more "Goth" (i.e., barbaric -- i.e., AUTHENTIC) than any paint-by-numbers impostors out there...

3) "21st Century Goth" by Mick Mercer
For its role as an informative compendium of the international scene in all its varied shades of shadow. There is no easy answer, no singular attempt in this book to pigeonhole Goths -- in fact, it does the opposite. Plus, I mean, it's MICK MERCER, who's been reporting on the scene longer than most batpackers these days have been alive. Pay your respects to the grandaddy of Goth!

And ALL HAIL THE TRIUMVIRATE!