Saturday, September 8, 2018

Drink the Rest of That: A Short Story Collection Paperback – January 30, 2015 by Guy J. Jackson (Roundfire Books / John Hunt Publishing)



Guy J. Jackson is a prolific writer of stories that combine dark comedy and tender beauty, populated by extraordinary characters rooted in the ordinary threats of the universe. Imagine if a Kurt Vonnegut/Richard Brautigan hybrid had written The Phantom Tollbooth and you are somewhat close to the uniqueness of this book. Drink The Rest of That is a dazzling, heartbreaking, laugh-a-loud collection that will leave you wanting more. Guy J Jackson's creaking mahogany voice resonates in every word of these absurd, dark, delightful, unexpected, abnormal, rich, indulgent, Beefheartean, nightmarish, suburban, Ionesco-esque stories, vignettes and things. He'd be a brilliant babysitter for children who'll never sleep again. "Read me another, Mr Jackson," they'd cry. 

In this collection of rare, hard-to-find, and often too-short short "stories", Guy J. Jackson wields his not particularly helpful but still relatively charming (at least compared to being chased) worldview in order to pretty much study and correct all of humanity's foibles, or at least the ones that need correcting by the end of this year. Also, if you read these "stories" at the rate of one per day, you'll feel Zen for however many days that there are "stories", or so claimed Roundfire Books' late editorial assistant, Nils Samuels Chastain, even though it wasn't his place to decide that.

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