Virtuosic stories by one of "the more interesting and ambitious prose
stylists of our time" (Los Angeles Times)
In this madcap, insatiably inventive, bravura story collection, Julián
Herbert brings to vivid life people who struggle to retain a measure of
sanity in an insane world. Here we become acquainted with a vengeful
"personal memories coach" who tries to get even with his delinquent
clients; a former journalist with a cocaine habit who travels through
northern Mexico impersonating a famous author of Westerns; the ghost of
Juan Rulfo; a man who discovers music in his teeth; and, in the
deliriously pulpy title story, a drug lord who looks just like Quentin
Tarantino, who kidnaps a mopey film critic to discuss Tarantino's films
while he sends his goons to find and kill the doppelgänger that has
colonized his consciousness. Herbert's astute observations about human
nature in extremis feel like the reader's own revelations.
The antic and often dire stories in Bring Me the Head of Quentin
Tarantino depict the violence and corruption that plague Mexico today,
but they are also deeply ruminative and layered explorations of the
narrative impulse and the ethics of art making. Herbert asks: Where are
the lines between fiction, memory, and reality? What is the relationship
between power, corruption, and survival? How much violence can a person
(and a country) take? The stories in this explosive collection showcase
the fevered imagination of a significant contemporary writer.
