American Victim

Meg McCarville American Victim (2023)
There was a bit of a commotion on social media when Amphetamine Sulphate published Four Circles, McCarville's previous volcanic eruption of righteous bile. I couldn't tell what had happened and felt disinclined to ask nosey questions, but the fallout seemed to be that Amphetamine Sulphate weren't going to be publishing this one which, as it so happens, provides substantial insight into the shit show which ultimately led to its publication by someone else, namely Ric Royer's Model City Books.

By her own testimony, Meg McCarville is a woman with issues who tends to find herself in unfortunate situations. The unfortunate situation was, in this instance, finding herself stalked by a nutcase who, amongst other things, dibbed her in to the FBI for alleged acts of terrorism which were obviously nothing of the sort, and all because he cared. He's identified in American Victim as Max Cady on Wheels, which seems fair, and whilst many of us will have met people like him, this goes a lot further than some disgruntled twat making a few prank phone calls. In fact it's terrifying, and even more terrifying than the aggressive-aggressive acts of sabotage dispensed by our boy is the fact that he gets to keep on keeping on, because while American law enforcement agencies excel in certain areas, not least of these being the dispensation of traffic citations, they're mostly fucking useless unless you're being menaced by an African-American with one of those candy bars that looks a bit like a firearm. If law enforcement did the job it purports to do, American Victim would have been a five-page pamphlet.

As ever, it's both a fucking tough read, and yet one which gets its hooks into you almost immediately because even at her absolute lowest ebb, Meg McCarville is very, very funny, wielding the kind of sarcasm which could have an eye out. It's Bukowksi with tits jammed on eleven, Lydia Lunch admitting she digs Kiss and rocking out, all directed by John Waters at his furthest remove from polite society and the closest I've come to writing with the face-punching intensity of an MOP album; and these aren't even necessarily its greatest strength, that being the words of truth spoken in dark, dark jest - truths that leave bruises.

I've gone through phases of surrounding myself with junkies and nobodies and ex-cons, but never in my life had I felt like I really fell in with the worst crowd until I found myself surrounded by phony progressive anarcho-feminist cunts and dopey woke boys (who really just pounded their politics so they can pound some psycho feminist pussy) who got into more of an uproar about someone getting misgendered even though they changed their pronoun every other week.

Honestly, this is one of the most powerful extended rants I've read in a long time, and anyone whose gag response has started kicking off would do well to remember that Voltaire, Swift, Rabelais and all those other sarcastic fuckers of yesteryear likewise delivered their testimonials with lashings of piss, vinegar, and castor oil. If you really want to understand the modern world, it's all here.

DON'T PISS ME OFF!!!

Meg McCarville DON'T PISS ME OFF!!! (2022)
I've come across this sort of thing before, even done it myself to a certain extent - self-published collections of emails and the like which you really felt were worth preserving for the benefit of future generations. However, this is different because we're talking Meg McCarville, with what she describes as a collection of my most violent, viral, and vicious emails, text messages, and Yelp! reviews. This isn't one of those things where some web designer you've never heard of passive-aggressively corrects plebeian clients who have failed to comprehend the basic principles of design.

The next day it was 90 degrees outside and I slowly started to realize that my room had no air conditioning. Besides that, it had black mold in the bathroom, no remote control, a bizarre closet with no bar with a door that might only barely fit a human carcass inside, with a wooden desk pushed up against the door. The desk had a drawer that had FUCK OFF carved into it. This drawer also had creepily opened and closed of its own will, but I have two dealbreakers. Bed bugs and no AC.

The first message kicks off on the very first page, no foreplay, no preamble, just straight into are we LONELY on thanksgiving you dumb fucking crackhead CUNT? There's no title page, no fancy shit, a freewheeling approach to punctuation, a ton of the angriest CAPSLOCK you ever did see, and what amounts to Meg backing an eighteen wheeler dump truck up to the reader and unloading a megaton of weapons grade sarcasm and wrath, the kind which reduces the harshest, blackest metal band you've ever heard to Daniel O'Donnell; and she's very, very funny because these are mostly righteous sermons which really needed to be made; and they're massively satisfying because most of us have been on the same end of at least one of the shitty sticks described herein, or at least I have. That said, some of the fury tips over into the sort of disturbing territory which means you're probably not going to find copies of this on sale at the counter of your local bookstore next to Who Farted? She reaches such a peak of anger during the final ten page tirade against an unidentified party that she's hitting the wrong keys half the time, leaving us to unscramble the RESULTIDGN cASPLOK CHOAS, which actually sort of works, weirdly enough. If I had any complaint, I suppose it could have been longer, but being as the existing sixty-nine pages read like a continuous rocket blast in the face of everyone who ever said something stupid, it's probably the length it needs to be.

Buy as many copies as you need here, then also pick up American Victim which is incredible and for which I'll get around to posting a review at some point.

If You Have Ghosts

Douglas Payne If You Have Ghosts (2019)
Here's another coming of age narrative - as I'm sure some idiot will eventually call it - from Amphetamine Sulphate - very much its own thing, but likely to strike chords with anyone who enjoyed their books from Meg McCarville or Josh Peterson; so we're dealing with childhood, memory, emerging sexuality, and often in terms of the details most writers tend to excise, the parts which don't fit. Despite any reputations which may still be lingering, I'd say Philip Best is right to harbour a certain ambivalence regarding the transgressive tag. If You Have Ghosts isn't the Waltons, and Hollywood would leave out all the elements which make the story what it is, but this is only outsider when you consider that most of us are outsiders by some definition, at least anyone worth talking to. We all have ghosts.

This one had me hooked from the first page, upon which I read.

Aside from Barney and his space exploration, I loved a Sesame Street video where Big Bird and Snuffleupagus are in ancient Egypt. Big Bird dies and he is judged by Osiris in preparation for the afterlife, his heart weighed against one of his own plucked feathers.

As with the best of the imprint, Ghosts keeps hold of its sense of humour without feeling the need to crack jokes and renders emotion without resorting to sentiment, limiting itself to just the stuff you need. Weirdly, and it may be due simply to the amber tint of south-west geography, Payne's writing reminds me of Ray Bradbury of all people, except where Dandelion Wine all but chokes on its own syrup, this one is clear, uncongested, and rich in flavour. It may even be the most powerful, convincing and confident piece of writing that Amphetamine Sulphate have published since the New Juche books.

I know literature is supposedly a dying art, but it doesn't much look like it from here.

Four Circles

Meg McCarville Four Circles (2019)
I assume these would be four circles of hell, or thereabouts. This is the first Amphetamine Sulphate title to be issued with the warning that some of the content may upset readers of a nervous disposition. It didn't particularly upset me but then maybe it wouldn't being as I've only ever had consensual sex, and that's a bit of an unfortunately grey area within these pages. I was bothered by something which happened to a cat, not least because this is the third book in a row to go there - excepting the recent Niven and Pournelle yawnfest - but Meg was clearly unhappy about the occurrence, so at least we're on the same team. Otherwise, it's a ninety page dirty bomb of terrible sex, grinding poverty, disease, meth, crack, sweat, and arseholes detonating over and over right into your face like a sort of explosive diarrhoea singularity, and I don't get the impression she made any of it up, because had she done it probably wouldn't have been quite so relentless. Some of it may upset you, or it will hopefully upset you and thus serve as an indication that regardless of whatever else you may have going on, you're approximately sane; but as for trigger warnings, what little I've read of de Sade was worse, and somewhere there will be someone who was once traumatised in such a way that digestive biscuits now send them into a psychological tailspin.

Meg McCarville gets through this nightmare whilst somehow managing to retain a sense of humour and providing the rest of us with one hell of an education. Weirdly, it reminds me of nothing so much as a real life Johnny Ryan cartoon. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but given that she's written it all down, I'm glad that it's been published.

I knew there was a reason why I've never been drawn to crystal meth, and Meg McCarville articulates it quite well.