Welcome to Litsy!

"Two jokes written on the bathroom wall at Pages: How do you get a nun pregnant? Fuck her. What‘s the difference between a J.A.P. and a bowl of spaghetti? Spaghetti moves when you eat it. And below the jokes: "Julian gives great head. And is dead.""

""I think I would rather die in a plane crash than any other way," my father said after some time. "I think it would be dreadful." "But it would be nothing. You get bombed on the plane, take a Librium, and the plane takes off and crashes and you never know what hit you." My father crossed his legs."

"Someone named Angel was supposed to go with us tonight, but earlier today she got caught in the drain of her jacuzzi and almost drowned."

"I can also hear the dog barking out in back and KROQ is playing old Doors songs and War of the Worlds is on channel thirteen and I switch it to some religious program where this preacher is yelling "Let God use you. God wants to use you. Lie back and let him use you, use you." "Lie back," he keeps chanting. "Use you, use you.""

"There's an old, expensively framed poster of The Beach Boys hanging over Rip's bed and I stare at it trying to remember which one died, while Rip does three more lines."

This is a good book to alternate with Wyrm, because it makes me feel nothing, while each chapter of Wyrm guts me in a different way.

"My father looks pretty healthy if you don't look at him for too long."

I can see that this was probably a big deal when it was published in the 80s, but when you get down to it, nothing much happens. Rich, jaded teens in LA taking/dealing drugs, doing very little else, not even having real conversations with each other. Basically there‘s no plot and the characters are all flat. And this is written in stream of consciousness, which I didn‘t know, and which I very much loathe.

#bookspinbingo

I loved The Bonfire of the Vanities, but straight people don't write about themselves nearly as well as gay men write about them.

This is such a bleak, nihilistic novel & I think when it arrived on the scene in 1985 it would have caused shock waves. The 80s I recall as a toddler was full of campy excess; this is resoundingly minimalist, with a young narrator already jaded beyond imagination. The events & actions around him are horrifying as hell; sex & drugs are mainly means of enacting violence or avoiding life. A good, scary read. #TitlesAndTunes #SexDrugsAndRockandRoll