HONKY
BY BENJAMIN DREVLOW
COWBOY JAMBOREE PRESS, 2024
195 pages, $14.99
Benjamin Drevlow’s rude and pissy collection of short stories Honky is divided into II PARTS, NORTHERNASS WISCONSIN and SOUTHERNASS GEORGIA, and begins, ‘I was born in a doublewide out near the barrens.’ I do not know where these particular barrens are, but the last time I was in a bar in Barron County, Wisconsin I had to fight my way out. Me, a white man. We were city slickers, foreigners, the other, and not just not welcome in northernass redneck shitcreek Wisconsin, but promptly expelled under threat of violence.
Now imagine being a black man up there. I for one can not, but Drevlow’s obsession with white privilege, and his white characters’ clumsy behavior around all of the black people they meet, which he pushes to Gods Must Be Crazy levels of hysterical slapstick, is central to the collection. I do not think there is any big moral or even driving point to these tales, except just things be effed up racially in northernass, southernass America.
This is now my favorite book of Rusty: highly readable, accessible story by story, these are tales worth pondering, funny and slightly tragic, a maturer version of the Drevlow we know and love, insofar as that is possible.
Here is the beginning of a chapter titled KELLYKELLYKELLY:
THERE’S THAT ONE EPISODE of Cheers where Woody tries to woo a young woman named Kelly to be his girlfriend.
The whole song is: KellyKellyKellyKellyKellyKellyKelly /
KellyKellyKellyKellyKelly / K-E-L-L-Y / Why? / Because you’re my
KellyKellyKellyKellyKelly…
People sometimes say I look like Woody Harrelson. Not the Cheers Woody Harrelson with the mullet fresh off the bus from Indiana.
More like the White Man Can’t Jump Woody.
–HONKY, 39
GET IT HERE: HONKY
IN PRAISE OF THE SWAYZE
BY BENJAMIN DREVLOW
ALIEN BUDDHA PRESS, 2024
69 pages, $11.99 paperback
Drevlow would do Patrick Swayze, no doubt about it, and in this beautiful tribute to the man and artist he marshals all his arguments pro-do-Patrick. I loved this book, and I know why! It is because the meat, so to speak, is Drevlow taking us step by step through the business in the front, party in the back highlights of Red Harvest, Dirty Dancing, Roadhouse, Ghost, and one of my FOATs if not the GOAT, Point Break, with tasty quotes, trivia, and of course lavish Praise of the Swayze, woven adroitly into one handheld beauty. Check it out now, stuff it in a mailbox, stuff it in ten mailboxes! You know you want it, so give the gift that keeps on Swayzein.
Growing up all Patrick Swayze wanted to do was be a world-class horse wrangler to
please his dad.
And a world-class ballet dancer to please his mom.
Patrick Swayze might be the only motherfucker in the history of earth to do both.
While also being a world-class actor.
While also having a world-class man mane.
–In Praise of the Swayze, 5
Get it here: IN PRAISE OF THE SWAYZE
WHAT IS WE IS SERIES?
We Is Series is the new Gorko Club of Books Series of serious book reviews. We plan to review a new indie book a month, or per year, or maybe once a decade.
NO BUT WHAT IS IT
It is series, we are not joking around. The concept is to review new indie books, and to just give you the most honest impression we have got of them.
WHO WRITES IT
Me, Raddy. But if you want to, if you think you have a real honest take on a new indie book, and can write words in a row, send queries raddywise to thegorkogazette@gmail.com
Cover image generated on Magic Studio
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