Customer Reviews

The Overwhelming Urge

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Overwhelming Urge has a certain underlying rhythm to it, like the dots and dashes of an SOS distress call. These shorts roll over the reader, wave upon wave, drawing a haplessly logical audience further from shore or any other recognizable reference point. Is it reasonable to wake up with laser beam eyes? Perhaps. Does it follow that if everyone in a village was named Johnson, and they didn't have first names, then you'd have to refer to them by their house numbers? Well that does seem logical, doesn't it?

Andersen's style is spare, almost apologetically polite. However his topics are often violent, perverse or gross creating a perpetual awkward moment that can only be relieved with behind-the-hand giggling. The best thing about this collection is that you absolutely never know what's going to be around the next period. I just dare you to guess! There are lots of surprises and, though the stories are short, there's a lot to think about. For instance the titles often seem unobtrusive but once you've read the story they take on new and surprising meaning.

The Overwhelming Urge is a must-read for anyone who enjoys the work of D. Harlan Wilson or absurdist fiction in general. However people who like intricate or predictable plotting and complex characters will not find much to sustain them.

Had Richard Brautigan lived to experience the nineties, he might have written The Overwhelming Urge. Like the best of Brautigan, these stories explode the painful inanity of the commonplace into vibrant, surreal comedies that intensify the everyday world as they distort it. The collection is even more impressive because Andersen Prunty deftly executes this feat in nearly all 66 stories, truly an accomplishment for any collection, let alone a first. Among my favorite tales are "The Joke," in which a man's wife serves him divorce papers, "The Bright Side," where the narrator's father turns into an antelope, and "Breakfast," but every story in here deserves to be read numerous times. And considering that many of them are only one page long, it's easy to pick up anytime and fall back into old favorites or discover stories that may have been missed the first time. Recommended to everyone who has ever felt urgently overwhelmed.

The Overwhelming Urge is bursting with stories but stories that are fast, fun, and awesome. You will laugh, cry, cringe, and a bunch of other things as you read through this offering from Mr. Prunty.
I have yet to read anything by this author that has disappointed me! Pick this one up today! Like me you won't be able to stop once you start!

This is a collection of very short (flash) fiction from a writer at the absurd end of the bizarro spectrum. This book is a smashed funfair mirror, fragments reflecting our world, though in a grotesque, distorted way. Paint huffers abound, misunderstanderings are the norm, people shrug in the face of the impossible.
What struck me reading this was how much it reminded me of reading Kafka in a good, clean translation, perhaps Michael Hofmann's versions. This is two fold; superficially the length of the stories is comprable to the work in "Contemplation", but the subject matter is distinctly late Kafka, circa "A Country Doctor: Short Prose for my Father".
Hopefully I've sketched a picture, and need only add a quick dash of colour by noting this; when Kafka's work was read aloud it was common for people (including the man himself) to fall about in hysterical laughter. This detail is often overlooked... and I dare anyone not to pick up "The Overwhelming Urge", find a story at random, and break up like a kicked in funfair mirror.

Boring zen koans. The worst joke's you ever heard. Brief and not tantalizing snippets into postzombie landscapes. This is flashfiction at its worst. While I will not say that The Overwhelming Urge is 100 percent flash fiction at its best, I will say there's a ton of fun stuff that will remind the reader of great moments in Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show and The Upright Citizen's Brigade. That's enough for me. The Overwhelming Urge gives you a ton of very short frequently very funny stories, each one its own little experience. More than worth your money, though I've seen Prunty do better.

Andersen Prunty is one of the writers at the forefront of the second wave of bizarro. "The Overwhelming Urge" is his first book from Eraserhead Press and is a collection of much of Prunty's short fiction. The book compiles sixty-six stories of various lengths; the longest being a few pages, the shortest is shorter than this review. The topic matter varies greatly but a cursory glance at the table of contents will give you an idea of the topics Prunty is dealing with. "The Wise Man," "Drugs," "Vagina," and "Vampire" are just a few of the twisted tales within.

Prunty is already developing a reputation as a talented horror writer, but this collection shows different side to his genre writing. While elements of horror do frequently appear in the stories, the general tone of the book is of humor and philosophy rather than scares. Prunty writes with a thoughtful smirk but does not forget entertain, titillate, and thrill.

It has already been suggested that the bizarro genre works best in the short form and "The Overwhelming Urge" is a convincing argument. This balance of the weird, dark, and funny is difficult to sustain for long works but succeeds wonderfully in this more limited medium. Each story quickly jumps into the reader's head, scrambles things around a bit, and then leaves before the reader has the chance to put it down with rationality.

With books coming out later this year and the next on Eraserhead Press and Cargo Cult Press, Andersen Prunty is set to make a big splash. "The Overwhelming Urge" is a perfect introduction to those curious about this exciting new talent. What the stories lack in word-count they more than make up for in pure literary impact.

I confess that I'm really not a big fan of what you call "flash fiction". Generally I like to read longer works and if I had to read a short story, the longer the better. I like to see a developed plot and characters. Plus, many short stories tend to be extended jokes or just something to hang a clever ending on. THE OVERWHELMING URGE, though, was an entertaining and extremely bizarro collection that will definitely impress readers.

There're more than 60 stories in 126pgs so you can tell that many of them are very short. There are titles like "Vagina" and "Cowboy" as well as "Mobile Desk".

If you are looking for outright weirdness and stories that are sometimes in very bad taste, this is for you. And there were a few that were pretty creepy but not in the horror way (more in the uncomfortable sex way like in the story "Pimp"). I believe this book is quite disarming.. I didn't expect a lot of the explicit material for some reason. It hits you in the face like one of those appendages that grace the cover.

One thing I liked was the appearance of Wilfred Brimley as a character not to mention Craig T. Nelson and a poster of Kirk Cameron. Very creative use of pop culture (b-list pop culture?) figures. Another favorite is the "The Plath Maneuver". I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud from a story, especially one as short as that one.

The writing itself is smooth and you could tell that the author took time developing his rhythm.

The downside to this collection is one that I find in many short story collections. There are really great pieces in here which only make the mediocre ones more visible. Also, there are a few really short "flash" pieces that seemed so nonsensical that I felt that they could've been left out and not really affected my enjoyment of the book. However, I did notice that quite a few of the really really short ones were VERY entertaining and creative. Overall, though, I enjoyed the longer pieces.

For those who do enjoy flash (really short) fiction, I'd say this book will probably be a favorite on the bookshelf. As for me, I enjoyed it but am eagerly waiting for a full-length work by Prunty. I just don't think flash fiction is my thing. That doesn't affect the merit of this book, though.

If you like weird stories, you'll have fun with this.

Sixty-six bite-size bits of bizarro, and great stuff at that. Practically a class in weird short fiction, this one is packed with wild ideas and amazing visuals, and it wants to be on your bookshelf.

Prunty is good at what he does. I've tried to write short bizarro stories like this, but mine always suck. Prunty gets down to business with every flash piece in this anthology and most of them are very short indeed. There's a great variety of tales here. You got a dad turning into an antelope, a teen that glues his balls to his head and commits suicide, a lousy chancellor who forces his assistant into uncomfortable situations, and so much more. There's one longer short story here, and it's funny how long it really feels after reading all the flash fiction that fills most of this piece.

I bought this when I found out it was full of flash fiction, and I thought that sounded awesome because I could learn to write in that style. Wrong! If I want to learn to write bizarro, one flash fiction anthology won't help me. This stuff is too imaginative to be traced back to some kind of "style" or "pattern" that I can easily replicate. Still, you can learn a lot about the way to end bizarro stories from this collection, and it's worth a read simple because Prunty is awesome and so is his flash fiction!

Enjoy, guys! I'm sure you will!

While his colleague Bradley Sands tends to remind me of Mark Leyner's long-form work, in this collection Andersen Prunty reminds me of Leyner's shorter, more surreal stuff. This is an excellent comparison, and an excellent collection, but it does suffer from some of the same problems as "My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist": namely, that it would be nice to see more connection between the tales to provide some continuity. After all, the description does mention "A world where laser beams etc. etc." Small quibble, I suppose, but I did thoroughly enjoy this book and still have hopes of adapting one of the pieces into a short film.