Alexander J. Allison, The Prodigal, Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2013.
Extract
alexanderallison.blogspot.com/
Martin is twenty-one, an age not worth lying about. He’s been happily doing nothing, claiming to be a professional online Poker player. But now, he’s facing a life away from the corrupting influence of overwhelming privilege.
In lean, distinct prose, punctuated with unpredictable typography, Alexander J. Allison’s first novel is a humorous, sharp and fresh look at the things that make living better than dying. Or not, whatever.
“Strange and stark and nakedly truthful. Painful as losing money; funny as realizing it wasn’t yours.”
–Jonathan Trigell
- Frank Hinton
“Alexander J. Allison is yet another example of why The American Revolution was a stupid ass idea. Who would ever want to break away from a country with writers like this? Allison’s The Prodigal is the type of book that makes you want to pick your own porn star name as long as your porn star name is HELL YEAH. Allison is the type of guy who understands we’re all snakes with alligators inside of us. We bust and burst and blow apart. We eat ourselves to death.” –Scott McClanahan
Alexander Allison shows up in all the right places. Timing appears to
be a certain knack of Alexander’s. Maybe it is an English thing the
dedication to punctuality. I’m not sure. 2011 changed a lot in Mr.
Allison’s life. Whatever ball started rolling regarding writing,
editing, submitting poetry in 2010 gained traction this year.
For in 2011 everything changed for Mr. Allison. The Lemon Press
continued to be diligently edited by him but new things appeared over
the horizon. Suddenly he began to show up in more and more reputable
online literary magazines. Or however repute is calculated online. All
of these submissions were leading up to something truly amazing. I read
this amazing thing.
“The Prodigal” is Alexander
Allison’s amazing thing. When I read it I felt strange. Martin (the
main character) grew on me. Each character in the story got fleshed out.
Instead of it being merely a story, I felt I was spying. Perhaps that
was the omniscient narrator. You get to know everything. Honestly you
end up knowing more about Martin than you’d really care to at times. The
extremely voyeuristic nature appealed to me. Authors tend to edit out
the more extreme details about a character leaving only the basic parts
of the story. Extreme details are all over “The Prodigal”. You use these
tidbits to form the portrait of Martin the main character.
It is a full book. There
are no gimmicks. Rather he manages to bring together multiple addictions
and compulsions into a single character. Compulsive behaviors do not
necessarily mean the person is ill. Usually it means there is a certain
vacuum, emptiness within that person. Alexander leaks details throughout
the book through Martin’s thoughts slowly describing what lead to this
eventual attitude, position, event, etc.
Once it ended I felt a bit
sad. This is a dark book. Humor shines through occasionally usually of
the dark variety. Alexander makes the dark humor work in conjunction
with the story. Every line relates to another line. In a world where I
often read random cheap gags in literature and television it is
refreshing to see a writer (particularly one so young) creating a story I
can care about.
Going through Alexander’s simply named blog “So It Goes”
I see he’s been working on this type of writing for a while. Since 2009
he’s been updating his blog on a fairly regular basis. For the more
recent posts I see the updates have grown smaller and smaller. Yet that
focus away from the blog lead him towards more productive pursuits. Now
he has more time to spend on poems and books.
A New Person
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