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Kathe Koja

Bad Brains Mass Market Paperback – March 2, 1992

by Kathe Koja (Author)

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Still reeling from his divorce, would-be painter Austen takes a fall in a 7-Eleven parking lot that leaves him with brain damage and strange visions, a madness that sends him on a cross-country odyssey of debauchery and pain. Original.

Language

English
Publisher

Dell
Publication date

March 2, 1992
Dimensions

4.25 x 1 x 6.75 inches
ISBN-10

044021114X
ISBN-13

978-0440211143
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dell (March 2, 1992)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 044021114X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0440211143
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 1 x 6.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,650,714 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #57,142 in Horror Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
22 ratings

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Kathe Koja
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I’m a writer, director and independent producer of immersive events. DARK FACTORY is my newest book, joining THE CIPHER, VELOCITIES, SKIN, BUDDHA BOY, the UNDER THE POPPY trilogy, and others. My work crosses and combine genres, from historical to contemporary to YA to horror, and has won awards, been multiply translated, and optioned for film and performance. I drink a lot of coffee, I love cats, I'm globally-minded and based in Detroit, USA.
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Kathe Koja
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Customer reviews

5 star		43%
4 star		22%
3 star		14%
2 star		8%
1 star		13%

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A. Urbanek

This is an unusual and beautiful book.

Reviewed in the United States on August 14, 2019

Verified Purchase

I was impressed with Cipher and Bad Brains does not disappoint. The book focuses on lost love, the drive that compels the artist/duende, and the borders between states of consciousness and being... The limbic areas. Exquisite and intelligent horror.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Clarence Felder

confusing

Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2019

confusing

The best novel to date dealing with the artistic process

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2001

Bad Brains, which I was moved to purchase after reading a rave review by Linda Marotta, was the first book of Koja's that I ever read. I read it as slowly as possible, dreading the conclusion because it was so beautiful.
This isn't a novel for people seeking a good horror tale for two reasons. First, Koja is not a horror novelist, but because her books contain violent and often fantastic elements not seen in non-genre fiction, she is frequently referred to as one. Second, her books are powered by her magnificent prose, rather than by the usual story telling devices employed by Stephen King and Dean R. Koontz. With Koja, finding out what happens to the characters is less important than accompanying them on the journey. Her novels all deal with artists and their relationship with their art: her first novel, The Cipher, was about a poet; Bad Brains was about a painter; Skin was about a sculptor turned performance artist and Strange Angels was about a photographer.
Bad Brains tells the story of an artist named Austen Bandy who, after a nasty fall in a parking lot, suffers strange and powerful hallucinations and seizures, during which he sees and tastes a silvers sheen over everything. However, the book is mostly about the demands of art on its creator and how far he's willing to go for it.
It's a shame that it's out of print, but don't let that deterr you, look for it at auction sites and online used book sellers. It's worth it. Give Koja a few hours of your time and she'll change the way you view art.

16 people found this helpful

Helpful

Mazurec

I don't understand people who don't like this book unless they want something generic!

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2020

This is a provocatively imagined suspenseful horror story. An instant classic when it came out. I loved it! If you love HP Lovecraft or any psychological horror you will love this book!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

ed cowell

Incredible

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2003

I just finished rereading BAD BRAINS...it still speaks to me,
as an artist. The process of creation is often difficult,and
sometimes,as Austen,Koja's protagonist finds out,the artist
must travel through Hell to find inspiration. BAD BRAINS is
Koja's second book; there are no wasted words in Koja's
surreal prose. The characters are memorable and I am haunted
by the images she evokes. This book is both beautiful and
grotesque and very much worth reading...

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

anderson1@sprynet.com

See the early development of the best author about obsession

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 1997

Starting from Cipher, Koja begins the journey that takes her further from extrinsic abnormality into the most intrinsic sicknesses of the sole. Kathy Koja is the best expressor of the postmodern equivalent of Sartre's Nausea - this book is essential to understanding how Koja came to write Skin, which is the ultimate prose poetry novel of angst.

4 people found this helpful

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Val Hawk

Haven't read this book? You've missed a lot!

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2005

I can't believe while looking at the sales rank of this book. I have read it three times and I intend to do it again. This book is steeped in love. And love in this book is a devastating, tremendous feeling that won't keep you in peace. Well, you have heard this - Till Death Do Us Apart. Well, actually there's more than that...

4 people found this helpful

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Angel

The Same As Before....

Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2003

This book could have been the story of my life. Still could be. I reviewed it four years ago -- and my review still stands, right there where I said it's probably the best book I've ever read. Buy it. It'll do you good.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Matt Neil Hill

A visionary (road) trip.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

It's almost 25 years since I first read this book, but it hasn't lost any of its power in that time. The second of Kathe Koja's early novels, this one is less straight-ahead horror than her debut The Cipher, and treads a more deliberately teasing line between real world trauma and the supernatural. Like much of her early work, the plot revolves around a small cast of characters. The main character is Austen - an artist who is going through the motions after a self-imposed sabbatical brought on by a messy divorce that wasn't his idea - who after a moment's stupidity ends up with a traumatic brain injury, leaving him with seizures and headaches, but also terrifying hallucinations that he refuses to disclose for fear of being branded insane.

The main cast is fleshed out by Russell - a chance drinking buddy who sees in Austen echoes of his father, a man with similar afflictions to Austen that Russell has turned into a kind of messiah figure - and Emily, Austen's ex-wife, who is drawn back into Austen's chaotic orbit by Russell, and who reluctantly sticks around when she sees the extent of his decline.

Decline and disintegration are often Koja's themes - as well as the redemptive and self-destructive duality of art - and they play out here with a slow patience, each episode of Austen's descent into a hell he fights initially to control steadily more terrifying and apocalyptic. This is a road trip novel where the characters grasp at increasingly unorthodox methods of treatment, and where you feel the final destination is likely to be just that. The bonds that tie us to people we know are bad for us (and themselves) is also unflinchingly explored here, along with the perils of tangling with things beyond our understanding - or indeed the understanding of those who profess to understand.

As always, the language the author employs is beautiful and hard-edged, and sucks you into the narrative and holds you there till the end. Re-reading it 25 years on provided a combination of familiarity at the parts I'd remembered, but also frequent surprises at things I thought I'd forgotten but which had clearly taken root in my brain long ago and surfaced from time to time without my knowing.

If this book was by another writer I may have given it 5 stars, but as this falls between The Cipher and her third novel Skin (one of my favourite ever novels, horror or otherwise) I felt like it had to be 4., but this is no less of a recommendation to read it.

KevinF

Disturbing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 20, 2015

Verified Purchase

Be warned; this isn’t the book for you if you’re feeling depressed. It’s a disquieting, uncomfortable read that captures very keenly the isolation and fear of a suffering soul, and even though the ending wraps things up nicely I can’t guarantee that the reader will put it aside feeling warmly satisfied - but at least they’ll do so knowing that this book stands head and shoulders above a lot of your regular horror fiction.

This is the second Kathe Koja book I’ve read recently and the other one, The Cipher, was a pitch dark, straightforward horror story. Bad Brains is a lot more ambiguous insofar as it straddles a line between genuine human drama and maybe…perhaps…supernatural horror.

The plot is straightforward. Austen Bandy falls in a parking lot and ends up hospitalised with minor brain damage. There we go; that’s the happy part out of the way. As a result of his injury he suffers frequent seizures during which he’s haunted by an hallucination that terrifies him, yet he keeps this secret in case his doctors think him insane – a state he fears he’s genuinely teetering towards, but pathologically unable to admit to or discuss. Austen feels utterly isolated and eventually, as his terror overwhelms him, he impetuously quits his job and takes to the road in a bid to cure himself.

So, should I rate this book for the deft skill with which it was written and for my appreciation of this skill, or should I rate it for its entertainment value only? This depends. Is horror fiction designed to thrill and entertain, or is it actually meant to truly horrify the reader? Well, I have to say I experienced both while reading this novel.
I must also admit that I’m still not sure if I even liked it or not, but I do know that I’ve just read something that has power, and that I won’t be giving up on Kathe Koja’s further work just yet.

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Bad Brains Mass Market Paperback – March 2, 1992

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