Originally published by Mainstreet/Doubleday in 1998, this debut novel
from an underground filmmaker uses print, photographs, drawings, news
clippings, handwriting, a poem, attempted diagrams, and clip art to
enhance the text, which primarily tells of a race war that happens in
Florida, where the Jewish people sit in trees, the black people are run
by MC Hammer, and the white people are run by Vanilla Ice. Or as the
author himself described it front of a national television audience, I
wanted to write the Great American Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Novel. In
actuality, it is a collection of hard-luck stories, off-and-on-color
jokes, script scraps, found letters, free rhymes, drug flashbacks, and
other missing scenes, all exploring the world of show business with
fingers prying in the cracks and feet set lightly in the black humors of
the real world. With chapters about books found in Monty Clift's
basement and Tupac Shakur's 10 favorite novels, and a set of 11 suicide
notes with room included for the reader's signature, the book is a
one-of-a-kind post-postmodern examination of the dangers of public life
from a unique voice in independent culture, one that might make William
S. Burroughs sigh and turn the page at least.
