Book Review: Fistful of Feet by Jordan Krall
(Note: I know, I’ve never put a book review up here before, but this book was my introduction to the genre known as Bizarro Fiction, and I suspect at least some of you regular FBC readers are as twisted as I am and might appreciate it. It originally appeared on my spaghetti western website, Fistful of Pasta – enjoy!)
Until I received an e-mail from author Jordan Krall asking if I were interested in reviewing his new bizarro novel that is a tribute to the spaghetti western, I hadn’t even heard of the blossoming genre known as bizarro fiction. What’s bizzaro? According to the things listed in Bizzaro Central‘s (the go-to hub on the web for all things bizzaro) What is Bizzaro? page:
- Bizarro, simply put, is the genre of the weird.
- Bizarro is literature’s equivalent to the cult section at the video store.
- Like cult movies, Bizarro is sometimes surreal, sometimes avant-garde, sometimes goofy, sometimes bloody, sometimes borderline pornographic, and almost always completely out there.
- Bizarro strives not only to be strange, but fascinating, thought-provoking, and, above all, fun to read.
- Bizarro often contains a certain cartoon logic that, when applied to the real world, creates an unstable universe where the bizarre becomes the norm and absurdities are made flesh.
- Bizarro was created by a group of small press publishers in response to the increasing demand for (good) weird fiction and the increasing number of authors who specialize in it.
- Bizarro is like:
- Franz Kafka meets John Waters
- Dr. Suess of the post-apocalypse
- Takashi Miike meets William S. Burroughs
- Alice in Wonderland for adults
- Japanese animation directed by David Lynch
Got that? Now, take all that, and apply it to your spaghetti western with all of the conventions and archetypes we’re accustomed to in the genre, and that’s Jordan Krall’s Fistful of Feet. Krall had sent me his other works, Piecemeal June and Squid Pulp Blues as well, to give me a familiarization with the genre (a genre that contains titles such as The Haunted Vagina, Ass Goblins of Auschwitz, and Meat Puppet Cabaret) After reading the seriously depraved Piecemeal June, I felt like I needed to take a very long shower, but I found it a rather twisted, entertaining read, as did I with Squid Pulp Blues. After those assaults on my senses and boundaries of taste, I was looking forward to Fistful of Feet, Krall’s first full-length novel.
