Customer Reviews

Ratz Are Nice (PSP): A Novel

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I started reading "Ratz Are Nice (PCP)" with an open mind right after finishing a great novel entitled "American Skin." That was my biggest mistake. Whereas Don De Grazia's "American Skin" was a cohesive, inventive narrative revolving around finely developed and believable characters within an admittably "fringe" subculture, "Ratz Are Nice" immediately climbs uphill with a narrative style that is incomprehensible, gimmicky and just plain boring. Quite frankly, Braithwaite's writing here is pure gibberish. Often it wasn't even clear to me who was who or why certain "characters" (for lack of a better word) were included in his story at all. The best three things about "Ratz Are Nice (PCP)" are (i) the front cover photo of a group of interacial skins and streetpunks, (ii) the entertaining (although sometimes inaccurate) "Author Notes" and (iii) the fact that the thing is short. Avoid at ALL costs!

In Ratz are Nice (PSP) Braithwaite exposes a generally little known and entirely misunderstood culture existing not in London or Toronto but in Victoria, B.C. Until now best known as the land of the newly wed and nearly dead, one feels as though a rock has been overturned in the pristine rain forest; underneath, a seething, alarming and complex world draws one downward for a closer look, triggering feelings which range from dismay to utter fascination.

Ratz are nice(PSP) is an intelligent, wild and at times unbelievable commentary on sub-society deserving of attention and understanding. Cheers to Braithwaite for taking on such a monumental project and for completing it.

I've been in distress ever since hearing abut the death of Lawrence Braithwaite last month. Here's what I wrote way back when, in 2000, before Amazon allowed me to be myself and I was just "A customer." Or maybe I hid my own identity since, at the time, I had written one of the blurbs on the book and maybe I wanted it to seem as though his fans were pouring out in multitude. But anyhow I stand by my words,

RATZ ARE NICE (PSP) = THE NOVEL OF THE YEAR

Once you've got your mind around "Wigger," the previous novel by Lawrence Y. Braithwaite, you're spoiled for other books, other writers. That's how good he is. Now the new book is one I've been looking forward to for a long time, and it's finally here. Warning! The book contains some scenes of extreme violence and brutality, and it's not for everyone. That said, I don't hesitate to recommend it to everyone. Braithwaite's got a magic touch when it comes to telling a story, and gets so deeply into the minds of his tormented characters you feel you are slipping directly into their skins. Some people like to pigeonhole Braithwaite into a convenient niche: "he's a gay writer," "he's a black writer," "he's a punk writer," but on the evidence of WIGGER and RATZ ARE NICE that doesn't make much sense. Think of him instead as a grand novelist with the sweep and techincal bravura of Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Gunter Grass, the Joyce of "Dubliners," or someone like Don DeLillo. That's how good he is. Rarely have I read a modern novel with as much depth perception as RATZ ARE NICE. At first it's a bit confusing, but happily Braithwaite has provided a glossary of unfamiliar terms at the back of the book that helps to ground the reader (and all by itself it's a marvelous document, funny and ironic and touching by turns). He comes armed with madness! Get on the bandwagon, it's Braithwaite's world and we just rent space on his far corners!

Those who read Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite's first novel, the inexplicably overlooked Wigger, will recognize the Victoria writer's performative prose and irascible voice in his latest work. Ratz Are Nice (PSP) is the story of Edison, a black skinhead navigating the mean streets and meaner syntax of the skinhead/rudeboy scene (PSP stands for "pure street punk"). Braithwaite's narrative oscillates between first and third person, sometimes directing Edison's I outward, and at other times presenting us with an omniscient eye watching the various skinhead gangsters scheming and thugging 24/7. The narrative strategy works because the characters themselves exist in a continually shifting subcultural terrain: white skinheads who flirt with neo-Nazism but recognize that the culture they love is derived from Caribbean ska; black skinheads who are surrounded by what have become, to the dominant culture, symbols of white power; militaristic machismo fused with gay male erotics. The effect is something like S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders shoved head-first through the identity politics looking glass; we come out the other side with a text whose hot-blooded postmodernism depicts a violence without the pretense of heroism, and a celebration of disenfranchisement without the clichés of identity-mongering (Braithwaite depicts Edison as shining shoes for a living without once playing the image for pathos). In Braithwaite's hands, skinhead/rudeboy culture becomes an exemplar of the psychic balkanization that comes with being black in British Columbia, a place that bars easy appropriations of Afrocentrism. Braithwaite does with the subculture what Attila Richard Lukacs, a visual artist who also eroticizes skinhead imagery, fails to do: Ratz Are Nice (PSP) offers more than a voyeuristic gaze, but takes seriously the realpolitik of the subculture, including what is at stake culturally, racially and sexually. The comparison to visual art is apt, partly because of the way Ratz Are Nice (PSP) is narrated typographically. Braithwaite's English is not only given to the reclamation of hip-hop phonetics, but font-play, idiosyncratic punctuation, and a layout that tells as much of the story as the words themselves. And like a literary Jean-Michel Basquiat, Braithwaite succeeds in mashing up our too-settled categories of prose and identity.

What can I say? As a book, this is awful. The "startling multiethnic lyrical phrasing" that the jacket praises, just doesn't do the trick. And unless you're a glutton for wading through experimental writing, and annoying typography (hey, I used to be a book typesetter, I love innovate type work, this is just lame) it's boring. Somehow, I get the impression I might have actually enjoyed it if it had been a movie. There, I could have gotten into the rythym of the language and the lives a bit more, but on print it's a dud. And the story of two rival skinhead crews is fairly banal. I've yet to read any book about the skinhead subculture that rises above cliche or pulp fiction, and this is certainly no exception. The author's notes are sort of interesting, except that there are some errors and typos throughout (for example, the 2-Tone band is The Selecter, not The Selecters, the famous rocksteady producer is Sonia Pottinger, not Portinger), and the bit about hardcore is seriously flawed. I dunno, maybe Canadians, or homosexuals will get more out of it than I did. I'd be interested in seeing a movie of it though.

Short and sour. "Ratz Are Nice: (Psp)" is a small book that pushes big buttons. Author Braithwaite obviously knows what he is about and tells a story from the intra-abdominal site. Characters are believeable and he makes us care about them. But the problem with wading through the hieroglyphics and lingo, page layout and punctuation oddities in the end detracts from the idea of the novel. It just becomes kitsch. If you feel you must read this book, I suggest you start with the Author's Notes: this reads with great ease and wit and venom. For the rest, the work involved in getting there doesn't seem to justify the payoff.....at least to this reader.

At last Lawrence Braithwaite has put out something more substantial than his first work, Wigger, and it's good to see that he hasn't lost his edge. Ratz Are Nice is even more violent than Wigger, which is no mean feat. However, although the characters do not have the most economically stable lives, unlike most books about the supposed Gen X generation, they don't spend their time whining, but rather get on with living their lives, trying to squeeze as much sex and beer out of it as they can. As usual Braithwaite avoids gender classification. Some men sleep with men, other men sleep with women but there's no simple labelling as gay or het, not everybody is living the disco queen life. Braithwaite's dialogue is as sharp as ever, and reminds me of what Dave Sim does with Cerebus where he writes the dialogue so that you hear the speaker's accent in your head. After reading Braithwaite I wish that Ratz could be made into a film, it flows so well. An added bonus is the glossary which helps smooth over the rough spots and is better than having characters give detailed explanations of what they're saying which always looks forced and artifical. Unfortunately, it will probably be used by wankers to give theselves instant street cred. My only complaint is the price.What marketing genius dreamed up the $17.95 Canadian cover price? I highly doubt that this book appeals to day traders or dot.com owners, the kind of people that could afford this price. Do you know how much beer that is? Looking forward to see the next twisted bit of fun that emerges from Braithwaite's mind.

Once you've got your mind around "Wigger," the previous novel by Lawrence Y. Braithwaite, you're spoiled for other books, other writers. That's how good he is. Now the new book is one I've been looking forward to for a long time, and it's finally here. Warning! The book contains some scenes of extreme violence and brutality, and it's not for everyone. That said, I don't hesitate to recommend it to everyone. Braithwaite's got a magic touch when it comes to telling a story, and gets so deeply into the minds of his tormented characters you feel you are slipping directly into their skins. Some people like to pigeonhole Braithwaite into a convenient niche: "he's a gay writer," "he's a black writer," "he's a punk writer," but on the evidence of WIGGER and RATZ ARE NICE that doesn't make much sense. Think of him instead as a grand novelist with the sweep and techincal bravura of Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Gunter Grass, the Joyce of "Dubliners," or someone like Don DeLillo. That's how good he is. Rarely have I read a modern novel with as much depth perception as RATZ ARE NICE. At first it's a bit confusing, but happily Braithwaite has provided a glossary of unfamiliar terms at the back of the book that helps to ground the reader (and all by itself it's a marvelous document, funny and ironic and touching by turns). He comes armed with madness! Get on the bandwagon, it's Braithwaite's world and we just rent space on his far corners!

"This is not a generational novel, and these boys are not typical. But their stories have very definite, if inchoate, things to say. In Braithwaite's remarkable hands, [sex] becomes the connective tissue, as often tender as it is rough, that binds the entire social world he's concerned with, transcending even the boundaries of music."