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Library | Item Barcode | Call Number | Material Type | Item Category 1 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... | 30000010345069 | PS3610.E67 S85 2013 | Open Access Book | Creative Book | Searching... |
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Summary
Summary
Seven friends in a continuous loop of eternal exile and youth embark on a road trip to the end of the world. My friends are merely effigies I keep to remind me of the animal inside my mind.
-from The Suiciders
During the first decade of the second millennium, a group of seven friends-Zach, Lukas, Adam, Matthew, Peter, Arnold, and Taylor-occupy an indeterminate house in an unidentified American suburb and replay a continuous loop of eternal exile and youth. Permanently in their late teens, the seven young men are as fluid and mutable ciphers, although endowed with highly reflexive, and wholly generic, internal lives. "Once you learn how to love, you will also learn how to mutilate it... I want to feel so free you can't even imagine... Let's get out there and eat some popsicles. There is work to be done." Eventually, the group decides to remove themselves from the safe confines of the house and to embark upon a road trip to the end of the world with their friend, the Whore, and their pet parrot, Jesus H. Christ. The Suiciders is their legacy.
Chronicling the last days of a religious cult in rural America, Jeppesen's debut novel Victims was praised by the Village Voice for its "artfully fractured vision of memory and escape," and by Punk Planet for its masterful balance of "the laconic speech of teenagers with philosophical density." In T he Suiciders , Jeppesen ventures beyond any notion of fixed identity. The result is a dazzling, perversely accurate portrait of American life in the new century, conveyed as a post-punk nouveau roman.
Author Notes
Travis Jeppesen (born 1979) is an American novelist, poet, artist, and art critic currently based in Berlin. He is the author of The Suiciders (Semiotext(e)), Poems I Wrote while Watching TV , See You Again in Pyongyang , and other books.
Reviews 1
Publisher's Weekly Review
Jeppeson's (Wolf at the Door) sometimes murky, and often loopy, third novel manages to entertain even when the reader may be having a hard time figuring out exactly what's happening. His special talent is for vivid, uncommon images or observations: "Sometimes at the root of exhaustion we find something worth preserving." There's also consistently uncommon imagery with a visceral, if not a literal, coherence: "The snow is holy, a farce. Why am I sad it snows... The White Nothing." The barebones plot: a group of seven friends live together in a house "on a journey to remain teens forever." Outrageous episodes (real or imagined) ensue, with everyone from Grandma to a parrot named Jesus H. Christ to a Whore with no name (note the capital "W") to the Pope. The option of suicide underlies all that they do, or don't do. Jeppeson has even turned the word into a verb. "Will Rand suicide one day like me and my friends?" Often the activities of the housemates are arrestingly coarse, and most are unprintable here. Like the best experimental writing, Jeppeson's prose impacts in ways that conventional narrative can't and, by virtue of its insights and audacity, consistently delights. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
