Some Things That Meant the World to Me [Paperback]

Joshua Mohr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2009

#8 of 10 Terrific Reads of 2009. "Charles Bukowski will dig the grit in this seedy novel, a poetic rendering of postmodern San Francisco." -O, The Oprah Magazine

A Best Book of the Year -The Nervous Breakdown

"Where Michel Gondry would go if he went down a few too many miles of bad desert road." -The Collagist

"Mohr's prose roams with chimerical liquidity. The magic of this book is a disturbing, hallucinogenic magic." -Boston's Weekly Dig

Following a 30-year-old man named Rhonda suffering from depersonalization, Some Things That Meant the World to Me is a gritty and beautiful work that is creative and hypnotic, and should stand as an introduction of an original new voice to American literature.

When Rhonda was a child — abandoned and ignored by his mother; abused and misguided by his mother's boyfriend — he imagined the rooms of his home drifting apart from one another like separating continents. Years later, after an embarassing episode as an adult, Rhonda's inner-child appears, leading him to a trapdoor in the bottom of a dumpster behind a taqueria that will force him to finally confront his troubled past.

In the spirit of Cruddy and Hairstyles of the Damned, Joshua Mohr has created a remarkable and unforgettable character in this charmingly poetic and maturely crafted first novel.

Joshua Mohr has been published in Other Voices, The Cimarron Review, Pleiades, and Gulf Coast, among others. He lives in San Francisco and teaches at a halfway house.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Mohr's first novel is biting and heartbreaking, a piercing look at the indelible scars a violent past has left on a young man named Rhonda. In the mental hospital where Rhonda spent his teenage years, a doctor he refers to as Angel-Hair diagnoses him with depersonalization, a disorder he uses to reconfigure the traumatic events of his life and render them in vividly surreal terms. To withstand the frequent absences of his alcoholic mother and her boyfriend's abuse, Rhonda imagines his childhood home in Arizona as a living thing, where rooms stretch and move, and desert wildlife wanders the halls. The disturbing narrative engine—Rhonda's renaming and reimagining of the world around him to fit into his damaged logic—keeps the story creepily moving as it touches on homebrew prison wine and Rhonda's friendship with his childhood self, little-Rhonda. Mohr uses punchy, tightly wound prose to pull readers into a nightmarish landscape, but he never loses the heart of his story; it's as touching as it is shocking, even if the ending's a smidge sappy. (June)
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About the Author

Joshua Mohr has been published in Other Voices, The Cimarron Review, Pleiades, and Gulf Coast, among others. He sings in the band Damn Handsome & The Birthday Suits.

Product Details

• Paperback: 205 pages
• Publisher: Two Dollar Radio (June 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0982015119
• ISBN-13: 978-0982015117
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,471 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

JOSHUA MOHR is the author of the novels "Termite Parade," an Editors' Choice on The New York Times Best Seller List, and "Some Things that Meant the World to Me," one of O Magazine's Top 10 reads of 2009 and a SF Chronicle best-seller. His most recent novel is "Damascus" about which the New York Times said:

"The author's jaunty voice [is] Beat-poet cool...Mohr nails the atmosphere of a San Francisco still breathing in the smoke that lingers from the days of Jim Jones and Dan White, a time when passionate ideologies and personal dysfunction intermingled and combusted."

Mohr teaches in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco and has published numerous short stories and essays in publications such as The New York Times Book Review, 7×7, the Bay Guardian, ZYZZYVA, The Rumpus, among many others. Please visit him at joshuamohr.net.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much More than I expected, August 20, 2009

By 

Bonnie Brody "Book Lover and Knitter" (Port St. Lucie, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Some Things That Meant the World to Me (Paperback)

What a wonderful book this is. Additionally, as a clinical social worker and marriage and family therapist I was very impressed with the clinically accurate portrayal of Rhonda, the protagonist. Rhonda is a 30 year old man who suffers from 'depersonalization' which is one of the more severe symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. When someone suffers from depersonalization they can go into what is considered a fugue state or see themselves or parts of their body as 'other'. As part of his disorder, and also as an homage to his resiliency, Rhonda has an inner child that accompanies him from time to time. He calls this child 'Little Rhonda'. He also has an older Rhonda as a friend, nurturing and loving towards him, who he calls 'Old Lady Rhonda'. Both of these Rhondas help him to come to terms with his present life in relation to the trauma he suffered in the past.

One of the ways that Little Rhonda shows Rhonda his past life, is through a glass-bottomed dumpster with a trap door. Rhonda can climb out of the dumpster into his past and is able to see and question what occurred when he was a child. Little Rhonda also travels with Rhonda back to Arizona where he grew up. Rhonda is searching for his home which he believes is the source of evil. Little Rhonda challenges Rhonda's beliefs and tries to help him with his reality-checking. Old Lady Rhonda doesn't ask questions. She nurtures Rhonda unconditionally. She gives him food, love and money and, together, they relax and watch Wheel of Fortune. She is the nurturing mother he never had.

Rhonda's background is horrendous. His mother is an alcoholic who drinks 'Tcha-bliss' (Chablis) all day when she is at home. However, she often disappears for days or weeks at a time, leaving Rhonda with her horriby abusive boyfriend, Letch. Letch physically and sexually abuses Rhonda in their home and in order to integrate what is happening in his life, Rhonda blames the home for what is occurring. He sees his house as a desert landscape, stretching and filled with animals. In his own words, "I couldn't concentrate on anything except their warfare in our stretched, sandy house, as they screamed throughout the desert that was everywhere: a cactus had sprouted next to the TV, a dove perched on it; animals flying, slithering, crawling, running all around our desert; animals, livid and terrtorial". (p. 85)

The book goes back and forth in time and place, from Rhonda's childhood to adulthood. It starts off in the present with Rhonda saving a hooker who is being beaten in San Francisco. Rhonda spends the night with the hooker and something occurs so that the hooker mocks and humiliates Rhonda rather than being thankful that Rhonda is her savior. The book then takes the reader to Rhonda's childhood in Arizona and to his time as a teen-ager in a psychiatric hospital where he meets with a supportive psychiatrist over time. The psychiatrist does his best to challenge Rhonda's belief that his house is the source of all the bad things that happened to him.

I can't say enough positive things about this gem of writing. It takes the reader on a flight so dark and frightening that it could have been to difficult to make the journey. However, the author puts in just the right amount of humor and enough soothing so that we can take the journey with Rhonda.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I've read in ages, May 18, 2009

By 

Stingo (San Francisco, cA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Some Things That Meant the World to Me (Paperback)

I loved this book! An amazing, wild, and humorous ride through the streets of San Francisco's Mission District. The book is filled with brilliantly illuminated imagery as we see the world through the main character's eyes. Following Rhonda, a 30 year old man who is trying to find a life far away from the craziness of his youth in Phoenix, we watch him learn how to make friends and let himself be loved by a tough man who drinks warm beer and a dreaming old woman who yearns to leave her husband and be on Wheel of Fortune.

Rhonda's view of the world is unique and definitely different from ours; he remembers his childhood house as a symbolic object with drifting rooms that stretch farther apart the rougher his home life got. And he sees a dirty dumpster as a portal into which he can dive down to view his past life. These images are used intelligently and sparingly and are balanced by Rhonda's wild life of saving prostitutes from being beaten up and trying to date beautiful women. And also by his unflinching honesty into all parts of his life.

I couldn't help but fall for the fragility of Rhonda, a young man who has a humor and intelligence that is all his own. An astonishing book and especially since it's Mohr's debut.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous writing, unforgettable characters, May 13, 2009

By 

O. O'Dwyer (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Some Things That Meant the World to Me (Paperback)

I absolutely loved this book. Lost a full night of sleep reading it as it simply could not be put down. The warped world of the hero (a debatable title), Rhonda, starts out comfortably and safely enough, but veers sharply into very, very unfamiliar - and unstable - territory. Gorgeous, surefooted prose provides necessary ballast for Rhonda's quickly disintegrating perspective, letting you see far more than the first person narrative lets on. A very cool trick that brings to mind the protagonists in The Butcher Boy and even A Clockwork Orange - totally off-kilter yet somehow fully relatable and sympathetic. The fact that this writer manages to pull off a character so desperate to verify his own identity that he literally digs through a dumpster for a magic trapdoor into his memories, all without losing a moment's plausibility, is flat out amazing.

Ultimately this is a redemption story, a man coming to terms with his fractured past while doggedly attempting to build a future. One of the fun things that separates this book from so many other stories and novels with similar themes is the flat-out unique world Mr. Mohr drops his Rhonda into, a nightmarish Mission district in San Francisco peopled by characters you'd love to see yourself...from across a street. Rhonda's Bloomsian tour of that part of the city, the bars and taquerias, back alleys and thundering gentrification efforts, is simply a blast to read. Gush, gush, I can't wait to read the next thing from this clever writer though it'll surely entail another night of lost sleep.