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The Talkative Corpse: A Love Letter Paperback – November 11, 2013

by Ann K. Sterzinger (Author), Michael Browarski (Illustrator)

5 customer reviews

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Another comedy of the damned, from the author of GIRL DETECTIVES and NVSQVAM (NOWHERE). John Jaggo is a 40-year-old former veteran of the dying newspaper industry, currently stuck slinging pizza part-time for minimum wage with snotty kids half his age. As he chokes on hopelessness, rage, and half-rotten pepperoni, the only things he can find that give his existence a scrap of meaning are moping over his traitorous ex-girlfriend and wondering how and if the future will remember what used to be called the American Dream. Thousands of years later, archaeologists are puzzled by the diary he decides to spend his free time writing, laminating, and burying in the dirt courtyard of his apartment building—especially when they get to the part where he summons a minor demon in a black-out drunk on Halloween. And then he meets a girl.

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Gods of bitter laughter, accept my sacrifice.

Product details

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (November 11, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1493741373
ISBN-13: 978-1493741373
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.4 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 5 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #951,956 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10374 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Humor & Satire > Humorous

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Death and Taxes

January 31, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

There's a dearth of female authors in my library but Ann Sterzinger stands out. I never got into Poppy Z. Brite and only read a page or two of Kaitlin Kiernan so far, so the closest inside-culture analogue to this I know of is Amy Tan. But Tan tends to write about different stages of womanhood within the Chinese-American experience, so it's really not fair to present this as an objective review at all.

My metaphors are kinda whack because I am at a IRS workshop so my attention is on my budget and reflecting on my folly therein. (I feel exactly like John Jaggo, not even joking.)

Maybe also because it's only about the tenth electronic novel I've read, the format to me is like talking to a friend via email or text messages. Maybe it wouldn't work well on paper for reasons of ephemerality too. I don't know. I truly do not know what the future of the book is going to be, more about this later.

All I know is that in keeping with this fictional account that seems like the writing of a writing of a friend the author tends toward the perfect filters. Void of politics and very much showing off, except in the fugue state of venting, this story of protagonist John Jaggo was the perfect medicine for me at the moment. So Sterzinger, who I am pretty sure edits the Taki magazine web site at present, seems to prove that editing is a craft that improves the art of writing, fiction or otherwise.

Of course that theory is untrue if she hired an outside editor, and what I apprehended through extrapolation/fancy is wrong. The problem with the future of the book isn't anything new. I think, Knut Hamsun laid it all out with his "Hunger" (published 125 years ago), yet there's something about the ephemerality and the desperation of these astoundingly funny and wry.

Maybe it's the level of precision with the author's music tastes matched mine, and why I never got into Poppy Z. Brite and only read a page or two of Kaitlin Kiernan so far, not really into her either. (Which is weird because it was never a thing with Clive Barker or Philip K. Dick but I never claimed to be objective. Anyway the last time I laughed at a book like this was when I read Semiotext(e)'s Science Fiction "Unbearables" thirteen years ago.

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The Forgotten Folks

August 1, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Lurking in the shadows of the seedy underbelly of the American heartland are the kinds of people you're probably scared of. The kinds of people you, perhaps, don't think of often. The kinds of people who just scrape by, praying for lottery-ticket miracles, and Heavenly rewards, and three consecutive days of tranquility and security. People like John Jaggo.

John Jaggo, of course, is long dead. He did, however, come up with an ingenious way to preserve his thoughts about his rough daily life circa 2011-2012--an electronic diary, unearthed by future geologists-cum-psychologists, which becomes the narrative of this intriguing novel by Ann Sterzinger.

We peek in on John's life as he directly addresses future generations (often as "Future" or "You Bastards in Futureland," and the like) with his missives on everything from love to politics to insane amounts of beer consumption. Jaggo struggles and whines (and whines) mightily through his minimum-wage existence until a projection of his bitterness and anger--is it real? A ghost? A delusion of his beleaguered mind?--appears on the scene in the form of a disgusting animani named Bertram. (An "animani" being loosely defined as a ghost-like demon, sort of.) Bertram haunts the second half of the novel until the explosive and surprising conclusion to the narrative.

Sterzinger's ability to stretch out the tension of the drama in the novel's second half is impressive--almost as much as her ability to capture the essence of the minimum-wage life, in all of its frustrating nuances, in the first half of the book. Her ability to capture realistic dialogue is equally impressive. And when the action gets going, you realize she has a keen ability to plot like a devil as well.

All in all, a compelling, quick, and page-flipping read, with deep insights into the mind of a kind of character most often forgotten, or tripped over, in our bling-worshipping society.

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Even better than NVSQVAM

February 1, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Sterzinger is a top-notch novelist with a piercing insight into the nature of the human animal - delivered superbly through her pitch-black sense of humor.

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June 10, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This new marketing for books is great! Publishing Houses who live off authors beware!

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