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Novel by Lance Carbuncle\nVicious and Galoot Publishing, Tampa, FL, 2009<\/p>\n
Novel by Lance Carbuncle
\nVicious and Galoot Publishing, Tampa, FL, 2009<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Kent Manthie<\/b><\/p>\n
So many fans, a real \u201ccult-following\u201d, if you will, loved Lance Carbuncle\u2019s first novel, Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed<\/em> that he was motivated enough to write a follow-up. This came out in the form of the brand new Grundish and Askew<\/em>, a strange and twisted tale of two life-long friends, Grundish (that\u2019s all we know him by, never getting a first name) and Leroy Askew, scion of a long line of convicted criminals and prison fodder. But Askew hates to be called Leroy so most everyone calls him Askew. Everyone, that is, except his \u201cgreat-aunt\u201d Turleen, who only has one lung left and is under doctor\u2019s orders not to smoke, so takes great enjoyment out of the secondhand smoke of someone else. \u201cBlue Llama\u201d is the fictitious name of the cigarettes that the duo smoke.<\/p>\n Anyway, Askew has one main goal in life and it is to not end up like his father, uncles, grandfather and great-grandfather all the way down the line, who\u2019ve all been locked up in Eastern State Penitentiary, which closed for good in 1971, just after Askew\u2019s father had been paroled from there. Darrell Askew\u2019s one goal for his son was that he not follow the family tradition and get locked up like the last three generations of Askew males. So, according to Askew, \u201che put the fear of the hoosegow in me\u2026\u201d, telling him all kinds of ugly tales and parables just scary enough to make one want to never get in trouble.<\/p>\n Grundish, on the other hand, was a big guy, for one. When he was 16 he was already six-foot-three and 220 pounds and so was not one to get picked on or take any crap from anyone. Grundish, unlike his best friend, had been locked up – several times, going back to his juvenile days. He\u2019d been locked up in and out of \u201cjuvee\u201d many times. It seemed that Grundish had a liking for getting stuff, it\u2019s just that he didn\u2019t cotton to the \u201cpaying-for-them\u201d part of it, which is what got him into so much trouble.<\/p>\n When Grundish was 16 his mother sent him to a drug rehab program that he initially thought would be better than going back to juvenile detention. But, man, was he wrong. So wrong that he escaped from there just to finish his time in juvee. [there really is a cult-like drug-rehab program called “The Straights” -and Carbuncle’s description of what he referred to in the book as “Straight, Inc.” is straight out of what is on freedomofmind.com, an anti-cult website, just type in “The Straights” in the search box and you’ll be able to read almost the exact same conditions that former members describe.\u00a0 According to Steve Hassan, the founder of Freedom Of Mind, “The Straights are indeed a cult”; they fill all the criteria of a brainwashing, individual-separating, dogma-spouting organization – a cult in the worst sense of the word-KM] From there on the pair live together in a trailer park, Askew delivering pizzas and Grundish would get by by breaking into a house where the occupants were out of town and basically stay there, eating their food, drinking their expensive liquor and wearing their expensive clothes, then stealing all the good stuff he could find and come home with tons of expensive meats, clothes, electronics, etc.<\/p>\n The two lived happily like this and then one day, after getting thrown out of the nursing home she was in for killing the home\u2019s dog, Stubs, who she thought was an \u201cangel of death\u201d, because so many old folks seemed to die soon after Stubs was around them. A kind of \u201ccanine grim reaper\u201d you could call him, Turleen, Askew\u2019s \u201cgreat-aunt\u201d or some distant relative – neither were quite sure what else to call each other – moved in with the two because she didn\u2019t really have anywhere else to go, no other family to take care of her. They didn\u2019t really mind and she wasn\u2019t much of a bother anyway.<\/p>\n Their adventure really begins when Askew suddenly starts to unravel and starts going psychotic, killing and maiming people who\u2019ve done him wrong, and on and on.<\/p>\n One day, after Grundish goes a little nuts himself, throwing frozen stolen hot dogs at all the child molester-neighbors at the trailer park (they didn\u2019t really have anywhere else to live, you wouldn\u2019t want one as your neighbor, would you?) and then when one of them, known as \u201cBumpy D\u201d comes at the pair, as if to fight back, but instead pulls his pants down and \u201cka-plooey\u201d – all over Askew\u2019s face, he goes into a blind rage and beats Bumpy D so savagely until his face looked like hamburger and he\u2019s dead, they have to get the hell out of the trailer park ASAP and so, they take all they can, load up Askew\u2019s beloved El Camino and take Aunt Turleen with them and hit the road. Going on an adventurous road trip that involves killing a couple other people, including Mr. Buttwynn, at whose house the trio was staying at because they knew the family was out of town. What they didn\u2019t expect was for Mr. Buttwynn to sneak out of the vacation, leaving on the pretext of having to go back to work and instead heading home for some hot sex with this little teen-aged prostitute named Dora. Long story short, Buttwynn surprises the two drunken guys while playing pool on his pool table and it ends with Askew beating Buttwynn to death. They don\u2019t kill Dora or hurt her, but end up taking her with, which is what she wants.<\/p>\n So now there\u2019s four of them.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve probably told you too much here anyway, so I\u2019m just going to say that the book is very funny. In fact, I haven\u2019t read a book where I\u2019ve laughed out loud since I read (and reviewed) Watch Out!<\/em> By Joseph Suglia.<\/p>\n Carbuncle is a very stylish writer, who is also very clever in his prose. He drops bits of song lyrics from Frank Zappa, (\u201cIs that a real poncho, I mean, a Mexican poncho, or is that a Sears poncho?\u201d) to Bob Dylan (\u201cYour long-time curse hurts, but what\u2019s worse is this pain in here\/Ain\u2019t it clear\u2026\u201d) Carbuncle\u2019s writing style is a very enthralling one, the book is a veritable page turner, all the way to the end, which I am not going to spoil by giving it away, just that there includes two dogs (one is the ghost of Stubs) from another dimension and Alf, the Sacred Burro and an 89 year-old lover of Turleen\u2019s who happens to be named Jerry Mathers.<\/p>\n The best part of the whole story is that it is not a predictable trashy, Danielle Steele-style kindling paper, but an imaginative, almost hallucinatory tale of madness, traveling and free spirits doing what they want.<\/p>\n So, to get to the heart of the matter, pick up Grundish and Askew <\/em>at your local book dealer or, probably more easily, on Amazon.com. <\/p>\n – KM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ugly Tales and Parables Grundish and Askew, Novel by Lance Carbuncle Vicious and Galoot Publishing, Tampa, FL, 2009 Reviewed by Kent Manthie So many fans, a real \u201ccult-following\u201d, if you will, loved Lance Carbuncle\u2019s first novel, Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed that he was motivated enough to write a follow-up. This came out in the form of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,574],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-art"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3163,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2010\/11\/01\/finally-a-funny-and-intelligent-book-worth-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":1914,"position":0},"title":"Finally – a funny AND intelligent book worth reading","author":"Kent","date":"November 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed A Novel by Lance Carbuncle (Self-published, \u00a92007) Reviewed by Kent Manthie For those of you who\u2019ve been keeping up on the world of hip, urbane and witty \u201cunderground\u201d novels and the people who write them, you are right, I am going backwards: I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/smashed-squashed1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":424,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2008\/01\/17\/smashed-squashed-splattered-chewed-chunked-and-spewed-book-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":1914,"position":1},"title":"Smashed Squashed Splattered Chewed Chunked and Spewed book review","author":"admin","date":"January 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"[book review]Smashed Squashed Splattered Chewed Chunked and Speweda new novel by Lance Carbuncle (VBW Publishing, 267 pgs.) 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\nTime passes, the two grow up, Askew manages to stay out of prison, but Grundish, on the other hand, does a few more stints in real prison, until, after his last lockup he vowed not to let himself get caught anymore.<\/p>\n