Nice Little Stories Jam-Packed With Depraved Sex & Violence [Paperback]

Michael Hemmingson (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 74 pages
• Publisher: Jasmine Sailing (May 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886988005
• ISBN-13: 978-1886988002
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,681,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Hemmingson lives in southern California and Baja California. Michael Hemmingson writes and publishes books, stories, essays, and ethnographic research projects. Michael Hemmingson writes and sells screenplays and film treatments. Michael Hemmingson has been pegged as a novelist, playwright, cultural anthropologist, sociologist in the symbolic interactionism school, auto-ethnographer and criminal scalawag. Michael Hemmingson has been associated with the minimalist Gordon Lish School of Writing. Michael Hemmingson has been accused of being a writer of crime noir literature. Michael Hemmingson has been labeled an author of literary erotica. Michael Hemmingson has been cast into the waters of the AvantPop School of Prose Writing. Michael Hemmingson has edited anthologies, zines, and newspapers. Michael Hemmingson has composed literary criticism and collected ethnographic data in the qualitative inquiry school of social science research. Michael Hemmingson has written speculative fiction and weird westerns. Michael Hemmingson sometimes dashes off a poem. Michael Hemmingson is not Michael Hemmingson. Michael Hemmingson is Michael Hawthorne.

Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The title says it all., June 26, 2006

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This review is from: Nice Little Stories Jam-Packed With Depraved Sex & Violence (Paperback)

This early, slim story collection predates Hemmingson's brilliant "My Dream Date (Rape) with Kathy Acker" by about seven years. Its style and tone differs greatly from the later collection and, for the most part, it's not nearly as graphic. The stories range from noir to satire. The central theme is obsession -- obsession with a fetish, with books, with revenge, with one's own urges.

There are six stories here (and a purportedly "real" intro by a "soul-dead psychopath"). "Skull-F" is about a man whose fetish involves doing something rather messy with a woman's eye socket (and what a fellow sex-therapy patient drags him into when he acts on the fetish). "The Bibliophile" is the hilarious tale, told in overcooked prose, of a woman who's devoted to books (let's just say she takes a love of books to a new level) and the lengths she'll go to protect them. "Beguiling Malady" is a sci-fi-ish story about an odd future world where an STD causes people to become sadistic murderers. "Bird," the longest story in the book, is a weird mashup of the '70s exploitation flick "Thriller - A Cruel Picture" (a.k.a. "They Call Her One-Eye"). As in that flick, you get a revenge theme and a subplot about a man who kidnaps young girls, addicts them to heroin, and forces them into prostitution. "Pain" is another noirish revenge story with a little "Chinatown" in it. The last story, "A Nice Little Story Jam-Packed with Depraved Sex and Violence," is the most disturbing description of rape I've read since Kosinski's "Blind Date." That it's written with a kind of lusty eroticism makes it even more gruesome.

While I enjoyed "Nice Little Stories...," it's not nearly as inventive, original and shocking as "My Dream (Date) Rape" was. I suppose you can chalk it up to Hemmingson not yet fully finding his voice as a writer.

Still, though, if you like your fiction a little demented, Hemmingson will fulfil all your sick desires. This collection isn't his best, but there's more than enough here to keep you entertained.