Physical Culture: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Hillary Johnson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Johnson's disturbing first novel relies on language with a depth and intensity more commonly found in poetry than fiction. Though only in his mid-40s, John, an accountant at a mattress factory, approaches the eve of his retirement. At a picnic thrown in his honor, he glimpses Liann, the young alcoholic daughter of the woman he rides to work with each morning. She invites herself to his small, bleak, suburban house, where both are surprised to find Stephan, a young man from Physical Culture, a health club and bar in the city, who shares a part of John's secret life: John is in fact a masochist, with so many scars, cuts and bruises covering his torso that very few people have ever seen him with shirt off. Much of the action revolves around his abuse and subsequent efforts to conceal it. As in poetry, plot in this short, often overwritten book takes second place to language and imagery. The prose is spare and haunting, but the author strains for effect on nearly every page, leaving the reader acutely aware of the strings being pulled.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
In a deft first novel, Johnson takes us inside the "lonely, atomic brain" of a middle. aged masochist, walking us through his terrifying memories and dreams. John hides in the bushes at his retirement picnic - the catsup and hot-dog buns remind him of things that have gone bad. For 25 years, he has been a "Johnny-on-the-spot" accountant in a suburban mattress-factory, but no one at the company picnic really knows how John sees things - with the possible exception of Liann, an alcoholic machine-operator who drunkenly asks: "Do you know what it's like to feel your guts?" John knows. John once let a man wrap his upper body with barbed wire and take him dancing. Afterwards, the man rubbed John's wounds with a mixture of mustard and gunpowder. Thanks to Stephan, a handsome attendant at a gay city gym called Physical Culture, John has had hundreds of such dates. His body is an illegible mass of slashes, colors, and bumps, but John cherishes it as a forbidden text - a black psalm to his terrifying sense of total solitude: "I want to live as a warm pool for blood - a close, warm, unafraid darkness of blood." A legend at Physical Culture, John has withdrawn, but Stephan now seeks him out. Liann pursues him too. The grotesque high point of this lyrical nightmare comes when Liann finds that John has practically memorized the factory-manual description of her job, "Stuffing Machine Operator." ("It isn't you, Liann. It's the machine.") Liann leads John into the factory in the middle of the night (she thinks he wants to stuff a mattress). They knock out a security guard and lock him in John's office, and ultimately Liann is fired (after inventing a story that spares John and gets Stephan - whom John hands over to the police - out of jail). None of these people matter very much to John. He is buried deep in the black, self-absorbing pain of the body: Battered John can't bear to be touched. A darkly beautiful piece of writing that describes the secret taste and the heart of perversity. It is frightening, haunting, almost sickeningly acute - and impressive. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 140 pages
• Publisher: Poseidon Press (August 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671678183
• ISBN-13: 978-0671678180
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,193,268 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing but very difficult novel, January 2, 2001

By	Coco Pazzo (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews

An extraordinarily tense, strange novel about the extremes of hiding, both psychological and physical. Its strengths are the minimalist prose and imagery as well as its ability to portray the extremes of one person's pain.

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves recognition, November 17, 2001

By A Customer

Lovely prose, intriguing story--this book deserves a wider audience. Sample passage:
"But I am not what I seem. I am like the species of Amazon flower that has learned to bloom in the shape of a female dragonfly. The male insect doesn't know the difference, or pretends not to know, spending his passion without inuring to defeat. All my life I have believed myself an imposter, laboring the bring the shameful seed of deception to term--only to find that camoflague is the latest gene in all possible couplings."