Customer Reviews

During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present

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

 

 

Brandon's book, much like the work of Tao Lin, works with elements of youthful (or perhaps not-so-youthful) elements of loneliness and a kind of genuine angst that I find myself all too familiar with--what I tend to call 'existential futility'. I can't help but think there's a definitive aspect of generationism here, as this book to me captures feelings of melancholy boredom I encounter not only personally but in my interactions and conversatios with many of my peers. This, at times, feels simply like a 'blankness', out of which stems a kind of inaction often labeled as laziness which is in truth something much more complicated and not as easily 'dealt with'. This book is trying to 'deal with it'. Reading this book made me feel like I was 'dealing with it'.

brandon mixes autobiographical and surreal images to create a surprisingly fun commentary on depression, anxiety, boredom, and other sad sorts of topics. this is a great book

So let's get this out of the way now. I didn't realize I was reading a book of poetry until I got to about page 12. I say this because whenever I read 'normal' poems, I feel like it's a chore, like my brain is becoming numb. Metaphor this, metaphor that; am I really supposed to know what you (the author) mean when you say 'sasquatian interpolation'? With Brandon Scott Gorrell's DURING MY NERVOUS BREAKDOWN I WANT TO HAVE A BIOGRAPHER PRESENT, it felt like I was reading some intense inner-poetry... wrapped in bacon.

The book, DURING MY NERVOUS BREAKDOWN I WANT TO HAVE A BIOGRAPHER PRESENT (just so I know we're both talking about the same book here,) goes beyond 'normal' poetry since it is sincere and most certainly, to the point, I kid you not about this. The book is so 'to-the-point' that I cannot believe an absurdist poet actually wrote this. Trust me when I say that the nonsense actually makes too much sense. The table of contents itself reads like a poem. Now, have I said 'poem' enough times yet? No? Okay. You also won't find many upper-case letters here so if you're into that old-time 'let's all follow the rules of grammar' crap, you won't appreciate this book. Yeah, it's sometimes cool to be lazy like that, it is 2010 after all. And oh yeah, everything is also double-spaced so uh, go crazy with your margin comments and class-discussion-type notes... It's actually encouraged, I think. Or not.

A rambling mess of nothing of importance...sorry I wasted my money and sorry you're not more interesting...

Brandon Scott Gorrell, a director of an advertising agency, captures the girl he loves. His book is a literary novel.