Riley Michael Parker - Our Beloved 26th Parker

Riley Michael Parker is a funny corporation outlaw. In a Bookmunch review of his chapbook Our Beloved 26th Nathan Tyree said it all:

"Our Beloved 26th, is a dark, offensive, violent little book. This chapbook clocks in at a mere thirty-six pages, but in those pages almost every boundary is crossed; almost every more is destroyed.
Our Beloved 26th is a series of interconnected, very short stories that all take place on the 26th floor of a big office building owned by an unnamed corporation. The tales are told from the point of view of middle management types as they go about their day-to-day lives. As you read these stories you begin to suspect that this is what could have happened in the film Office Space had it gone terribly wrong.
In these stories people murder their co-workers. A man poisons the bottles in his liquor cabinet to stop theft. Various minorities are belittled and pushed down. Women are objectified, used and hated for being women. Young boys are starved and kept on leashes as pets. The corporate world is turned on its head and becomes a twisted version of the wild west. Many of these stories would be offensive were it not for the mordant humor and matter of fact minimalism with which they are told.
Parker clearly knows (and hates) the corporate world. Some of the stories inject a strange homoeroticism into a world where homosexuality is obviously out of bounds. He bends the average, and transforms it into a Takashi Miike view of the American west.
These are stories meant to shock, to terrify, and to amuse. Parker has created a book that is certainly not for a mass audience, but which will delight the select few who are prepared for his sick style of wit.»


But at the heart level of all that shocks you will find their Doppelgängers - nostalgic-emotional spree. Friendship candy wrapped in horror.

Like Parker himself said in an interview:

«It's satire, but I wanted there to be real emotion slipping out from these dreadful, over the top characters. I wanted them to love each other, to be willing to die for each other. I may be overselling it, but I just wanted to write a little book about men who want nothing more than to be men, in any way they can; men who romanticize the their fathers, and the old west, and the so-called glory of the white male world. I wanted to write about the worst that men can do in a place that felt familiar, even comfortable, and I feel like I did what I set out to accomplish.

...There is a part of me that likes to poke fun at things. To focus on the absurd, to blow things out of proportion, but it is just a part of me. I tend to focus on families in most of my writing, or failed romance. A lot of friendships in various stages. I write about incest kind of a lot. More than most, for sure. I think it is one of the only real taboos left, sleeping with your relations, and so it intrigues me. Writing about incest allows me to shape familiar tragedies in different ways, giving me the option to reexamine the different roles people play in romantic relationships.»