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Your Next-Door Neighbor is a Dragon Paperback – August 1, 2009


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Product Details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Citadel Press; First Edition edition (August 1, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0806527595
  • ISBN-13: 978-0806527598
  • Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.8 x 9.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews

Must be a pretty good book, because he kept reading it while silently screaming.
Andrea
Zack Parsons shows once again his endless wit and brings us the classic comedy Something Awful is known for.
MedecoKiller
Mr. Parsons's Something Awful articles range from the utterly bizarre to the understated and wry.
Adam Bulizak

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 34 people found the following review helpful By Adam Bulizak on July 31, 2009
Format: Paperback
Zack Parsons, longtime writer for humor website Something Awful and the author of My Tank is Fight, casts his second book, Your Next-Door Neighbor is a Dragon, as a travelogue/novel mash-up - or, perhaps more accurately, a self-insertion travelogue fanfic - that explores some of the most popular subcultures developing on the Internet. Rather than study the subcultures in their online iterations, Mr. Parsons (or, that is, the character based on the author) travels through several states to interview the strange characters hiding behind their furry avatars.

Mr. Parsons's Something Awful articles range from the utterly bizarre to the understated and wry. Perhaps his funniest work lands somewhere in the middle; for example, his caricature of Levi Johnston, the father of former Gov. Sarah Palin's grandchild, constructs the teenage father's online persona as a hilariously half-informed, yet sympathetic, rambunctious redneck. Your Next-Door Neighbor is a Dragon tends toward the subdued, which, despite its odd episodes, allows the narrative a sense of truth. A grotesque prologue depicts a distracted Zack sustaining an intense injury to his hand while discussing the genesis of his book with his publisher; this injury, and his medical treatment, straddles the line between the improbable and the normal. Mr. Parsons maintains this level of uncertainty over the veracity of the narrative throughout much of the book, which highlights the discussion of bizarre Internet subcultures at the expense of really hilarious commentary.
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful By Oecobius on January 16, 2012
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
While portions of this book feature some great descriptive prose familiar to those who have read Parson's articles, it still doesn't satisfyingly deliver on the premise that the book is selling--namely, an exploration of bizarre internet subcultures. The only chapter that fully delivered in this vein was the chapter on vores, as it thoughtfully analyzes and provides interesting insights about individuals from that subculture. Most chapters lack this insight and merely describe Zack visiting and aimlessly observing his intended subjects.
The entire final portion, in which Zack visits a cult, is not at all entertaining yet is so obviously fictional that it throws all of Zack's other accounts into doubt. Zack's reports cannot provoke thought because it's very likely a lot of them were exaggerated or made up. In the end, Zack manages to make some good jokes but frustratingly deprives his book of any statement or meaning.
Unlike Zack's articles, the book is also peppered with juvenile jokes and a "wacky" running gag about "Super God" in order to appeal to teens who prefer unsubtle and obvious humor. Feh.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful By Max A. Wiener on August 25, 2009
Format: Paperback
Being a long time fan of Something Awful and Zack Parsons I was quick to pick up this book, expecting a solid coffee table time killer.
What I found was a book that was both wildly entertaining but also has depth.
Zack describes his adventure researching various internet personality disorders and while it is a hoot to read, you actually find yourself stepping back and realizing that this isn't just about isolated quacks. This book outlines through examples how the internet has helped foster and bring together subcultures that in the past would have been extinguished through isolation.

The book is a quick entertaining read and I was pleased to get more out of it then I had expected. Zack Parsons ability as a writer is fleshing itself out and I look forward to his next outing.
M
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11 of 16 people found the following review helpful By Aaron Sornson on August 4, 2009
Format: Paperback
Even on the wings of "My Tank is Fight!", "Your Next Door Neighbor is a Dragon" comes as a surprise. Being a long time reader of Mr. Parson's articles online, I expected a satirical, yet frank and honest, look at internet subcultures. Which it is, of course. What I didn't expected was that the book was, in fact, a piece of Gonzo Journalism in the vein of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". And it succeeds spectacularly in this regard.

Parsons blends fact and fiction in such a way that everything in the book seems true, even the most insane and egregious imaginings that appear in it. No doubt this stems from the subject. Like Hunter S. Thompson's work, the subject of "Dragon" is already steeped in madness, yet it's real madness. It's easy to imagine men and women dressed in animal costumes and under the idea that they are inhabited by the spirits of dragons and elves fitting right in with Thompson's fever dream Vegas. All of this is linked together by an underlying narrative that strikes true, even if there's no way to tell where reality and fiction meet.

Especially given the subject matter, Parson's approach is even more unexpected. His writing humanizes (most of) his interviewees, yet never once forgets the fact that they are bouys in a sea of insanity and depravity, the best example being the chapter on Voraphilia. But it's not so heavy handed as to relent to pathos. The combination of Parson's frank but light-hearted tone, off-kilter associates and the increasingly insane scenarios in which he finds himself kept me in stitches from the first paragraph all the way to the end of what is possibly the longest acknowledgment section ever published. It's honestly one of the funniest books I've ever read, made more so by the fact that every bit of it is true, even the lies. Especially the lies.
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