{"id":3163,"date":"2010-11-01T17:20:15","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T00:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/?p=3163"},"modified":"2010-11-06T13:17:12","modified_gmt":"2010-11-06T20:17:12","slug":"finally-a-funny-and-intelligent-book-worth-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2010\/11\/01\/finally-a-funny-and-intelligent-book-worth-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally – a funny AND intelligent book worth reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed<\/em>
\nA Novel by Lance Carbuncle
\n(Self-published, \u00a92007)
\nReviewed by Kent Manthie<\/strong>

\"\"<\/a>
Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\n 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 reviewed Lance Carbuncle\u2019s latest, most recent novel, Grundish and Askew<\/em> a year or so back; then shortly after that he sent me his first novel to check out and write up something on it if I could. After finishing off the few books I was reading, juggling, so to speak, through them, usually parts of one in the daytime, another one in the evening and then some more of the third right before I go to sleep on a regular evening.
\n Reading Lance\u2019s first novel, with the extraordinarily verbose title: Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed<\/em>, I didn\u2019t have a chance to let any other books get in the way because it was so compelling – well, that and it wasn\u2019t too long either: it runs an easy 266 pages.
\n So, I saw it sitting there one early evening, then I picked it up to, at the very least, skim through it and see if anything interesting popped out at me, not really knowing what I was going to do with it. What happened instead was, I ended up liking what I was reading so I just kept on going to find out what happens next – and, then the next thing and the next thing and so on, et cetera, and the next thing I notice, I\u2019m already past page 179 and I was still going and kept at it for a while longer until I finished it and it was worth it.
\n Just as in his latest work, Grundish and Askew it is loaded with hilarious descriptions, observances and also I found so many little lines of dialogue – snippets, if you will – taken from Blue Velvet<\/em> (\u201cDon\u2019t you fuckin\u2019 look at me\u2026\u201d \u201cHeineken?! Fuck that shit, PABST BLUE RIBBON!\u201d and \u201cone thing I can\u2019t stand is warm fuckin\u2019 beer\u201d); having seen that film about 20 times I instantly recognized it the first time he used one of them, the \u201cHeineken-Pabst\u201d thing. That was pretty cool, I thought. I wonder if anyone else will recognize those lines too. Anyway a little later into the book, he does some more of that kind of thing – I guess you could think of it as \u201csampling\u201d – like they do in hip-hop\/rap and so on. It\u2019d be the same thing, but it\u2019d be silent and used as a literary device not a rap song. There were little snippets of song lyrics and lots and lots of American pop-culture \u201cstuff\u201d throughout.
\n The main gist of the story is that the first-person style gives us a personal narration of what\u2019s going on, blow-by-blow\u2026account of what\u2019s going on and adds a personal touch to the story and its action. Incidentally – and I had to go back and flip through the book again to double-check, but\u2026- we never do find out the name of the protagonist, since, for one thing, it\u2019s written in first-person narrative style, as I mentioned. Besides the unnamed narrator, though, there is a cavalcade of characters throughout the book where one pops up here, another one pops up there and so forth, which is normal, since the main characters are basically on the road or on the run for the duration of the book. It all takes place between a small town in Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida and he, at least – the narrator – has to get back to some small town to \u201cget his soul back\u201d – that he sold, a la Bart Simpson, by writing \u201cso-and so\u2019s soul\u201d on it in exchange for getting laid. But, it turns out that he actually did lose his soul and his beloved dog, Idjit Galoot, a 15-year old Bassett Hound, a breed that, according to our narrator, normally live until about age 12, so this dog\u2019s pretty old. The way Idjit is described doesn\u2019t make him sound all that endearing, but I guess it was still a loyal and good dog to have, plus he\u2019d had it all his life anyway, so it was like his best friend almost. Anyway his mom was rushing him to get the rented moving van that was packed with stuff (including their dead stuffed dad, but you\u2019ll have to read the book for more on that) and when he couldn\u2019t find the dog his mom said she\u2019d get him and bring him down with her. But – oops! – Idjit never does come back or make it back or whatever, but he and the guy\u2019s dead dad both keep appearing in dreams of his, guiding him on his \u201cjourney\u201d which ends up being a wild, almost Blues-Brothers-ish wild ride that includes all sorts of interesting people – and featured a lot of greats in cameos, but the similarity ends in that want they\u2019re wanted for is something that was a totally freak accident but made worse by the discovery of what the hitchhiker left in his car when our narrator got a little spooked and ditched the guy at some rest stop but forgot his backpack – uh-oh\u2026but, again, for more you\u2019ll just have to buy the book!
\n S.S.S.C.C.&S<\/em> is, bottom line, a very funny \u201croad\u201d book – a de facto adventure, an accidental joyride up through a hurricane in South Florida back up north to first get his \u201csoul\u201d back from the girl he \u201csold\u201d it to because, his dog was such a loyal pet that it even let his master use his own \u201cchi\u201d to live on until he could get his own soul back and all that was spending up his good dog. Then he had to back and get his dog. Throughout all of it there is a whole hell of a lot more going on in between; it\u2019s a series of veritable freakshows, one after the other, that sidetrack or distract our hero from his mission. He manages to be lucky in that he has some good friends and relatives who help him out and he manages to beat the hurricane out of South Florida, just barely eking out of there on a now-banned all-terrain-cycle (ATC), a three wheeled monster with big behemoth-like tires that got him through a lot of stuff that a regular car wouldn\u2019t have been able to do – drive through ditches, off-roading, et cetera.
\n It certainly is a great escape for a day or day & \u00bd, depending on how long you spend reading at any given time. As mentioned, it is a very funny book; an irreverent trek through a storm-ravaged (and beyond) wilderness of rednecks and white trash that turn out to be friend and sometimes kin and the people he seems to be with all the time like to party. A lot. So the escapades and the incidents and trips, stops and starts all make for a great plot and it is filled in with lots of interesting ways of looking at things and there are even footnotes, lining the bottom of some pages; they\u2019re not documenting anything or using it to give credit for a quote, like a typical academic text; instead they are there to supplement certain ideas or to buttress arguments, show precedents for certain odd things and other colorful, fun factoids that were not all that important to go into the main text itself, but yet, they\u2019re a unique thing for fiction, a cool literary device and, as the author mentions in his foreword, one can either get into the notes or, if they get in the way of the continuity of the story, you can skip them altogether. Don\u2019t skip this book, though – it is truly a delight and would probably make a good comedy flick -there are plenty of walk on \u201cscenes\u201d that would be perfect for lots of cameo appearances by all kinds of celebrities.
\n -KM <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 reviewed Lance Carbuncle\u2019s latest, most recent novel, Grundish and Askew […]<\/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":[598],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":424,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2008\/01\/17\/smashed-squashed-splattered-chewed-chunked-and-spewed-book-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":3163,"position":0},"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.) Review by Celeste Hollenbeck This lengthily-titled book, being self-published (with a bold admittance to it as the first task in its Foreword), has surprisingly fewer blatant grammatical errors than one would expect from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "archive"","block_context":{"text":"archive","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1914,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2010\/02\/05\/read-this-book\/","url_meta":{"origin":3163,"position":1},"title":"book review: Grundish and Askew","author":"Kent","date":"February 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Ugly Tales and ParablesGrundish 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.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "archive"","block_context":{"text":"archive","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1289,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2009\/09\/07\/book-review-caitlin-rothers-naked-addiction\/","url_meta":{"origin":3163,"position":2},"title":"Book Review: Caitlin Rother’s Naked Addiction","author":"admin","date":"September 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"[New Books]Caitlin Rother Review Excerpt Leisure Books, New York 2007 Reviewed by Kent Manthie ... After filtering all that reporting into a very readable and compelling book, Ms Rother next turned herself to writing a novel. In this case a novel called Naked Addiction, which was a real page-turner. Naked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "archive"","block_context":{"text":"archive","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/archive\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12377,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2015\/10\/05\/3-book-reviews\/","url_meta":{"origin":3163,"position":3},"title":"three new book reviews","author":"Reviewer Rob","date":"October 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"[Books and other printed matter]Actually two graphic book reviews from one artist\/author, a novel from a San Diego writer, and a self-published book of short stories from Australia, but also a high-priced quarterly mainstream periodical and a xeroxed folded handout from VegasNot Really Just Three Book Reviews by Reviewer Rob\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "books"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover of Cochlea & Eustachia by Hans Rickheit.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/reviewermag.com\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Cochlea-Eustachia-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":15620,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2018\/11\/10\/15620\/","url_meta":{"origin":3163,"position":4},"title":"Book for sale: SUCKDOG — A RUCKUS, by Lisa Carver, signed","author":"Reviewer Rob","date":"November 10, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"[Bookcabal] punk rock history \u00a0 Book for sale: Lisa Cerver's SUCKDOG -- A RUCKUS, signed and in like new condition, $15.99 plus postage and handling Brand new, shiny, unread and signed copies of SUCKDOG -- A RUCKUS by Lisa Carber are for sale here. Email me, robertrowsey@gmail.com, or send $15.99\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "book cabal"","block_context":{"text":"book cabal","link":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/category\/book-cabal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/www.paypalobjects.com\/en_US\/i\/scr\/pixel.gif","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14630,"url":"http:\/\/reviewermag.com\/press\/2017\/11\/20\/rare-books-jimbo-in-purgatory\/","url_meta":{"origin":3163,"position":5},"title":"Rare Books: Jimbo In Purgatory","author":"Reviewer Rob","date":"November 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"[Rare Books 4 Sale] Jimbo In Purgatory Jimbo In Purgatory, by Gary Panter, in FINE condition, for $79.95, shipping included, email Robert@RareAndStrange.com ~ currently on Ebay HERE. \"FOUNDER OF \"PUNK\" ART REINVENTS DANTE THROUGH HIS CHARACTER JIMBO IN THIS LANDMARK GRAPHIC NOVEL. 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