Corey Frost - a series of stories in which the main character, Corey Frost, is left to his own devices in Japan, St. Petersburg, Sumatra, Macau, Montreal, and other locations. His devices include various telephones, cameras, tiny Japanese cars and mini-disc recorders, as well as a backpack full of witty, occasionally satirical literary gimmicks

 

Corey Frost, The Worthwhile Flux, Conundrum

Press, 2004

THE WORTHWHILE FLUX collects Frost's dynamic performance pieces, including the texts from some of his beautifully designed chapbooks self-published over the last decade. "Tonight you'll have a filthy dream" was a collection of stories first performed in Montreal from 1994 to 1999, accompanied by the images used in performance. It included the surreal pedagogy of "5 minutes with the Communist Manifesto" (the digitally remastered version) and "5 minutes with/without the ground," a story about airplanes and war that proved to be creepily prescient in September 2001. "I feel perfectly fine" was the third volume in the Backwards Versions trilogy of chapbooks. THE WORTHWHILE FLUX collects the best of the author's chapbooks along with newer performance pieces and some never-before-seen writing. And, although the stories and photographs will now be forever fixed on the page, the experience is still definitely worthwhile. Corey Frost has received wide acclaim for his self-published chapbooks and his multi-media performances that reverberate with surrealist wit and proletarian pop. He has travelled extensively, including two tours of duty on the unique Perpetual Motion Roadshow in Canada and the US, and performance tours of Europe and Australia. Currently he is pursuing a PhD and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Corey Frost, a veteran of Montreal’s spoken word scene, spent a decade writing, performing, and collecting the bits and pieces that make up The Worthwhile Flux, his second book. The book encompasses prose, photos, and poetry, but most of its 15 pieces lie halfway between story and poem, and all resist definition.

These are stories for the altered attention spans of the modern world: experimental meditations on everything from the way North Americans vacillate between happiness and unhappiness in “A Few Advanced Yo-Yo Tricks” to underused letters of the alphabet in “A Farewell to Q.” The book is also highly visually oriented, with graphics on almost every page.

Dreamy and erudite, silly and profound, The Worthwhile Flux is an exercise in contradictions that lingers in the memory. Frost cites Louis Althusser and Karl Marx as influences alongside Xena, Warrior Princess. Occasionally, the postmodern juxtapositions can leave the reader wondering whether Frost is merely serving up a selection of literary gimmicks, but he consistently pulls the most delicate nuances of meaning out of the familiar or mundane. Such show-stopping lines as “Every quotation must be taken out of context, or it’s not a quotation” make every moment of ambiguity worth savouring.

In “Summer Plum (Winter Version),” an exploration of the implications of eating a plum months past the growing season, he asks, “Am I living in some fantastical 21st-century golden age, when I can just buy a plum that is nearly as big as my fist and as purple as heck?” The answer that naturally follows is, “Yes, I am.” Though some readers may lose patience with The Worthwhile Flux’s non-linear ways, the more adventurous are sure to dig it. - Cheryl Taylor

https://quillandquire.com/review/the-worthwhile-flux/

This is in no way a review of Corey Frost’s second book of fiction, The Worthwhile Flux. I was sitting in my local pub last night, a Sunday, reading his remarkable book of stories. I was in the mood for a drink, and in the mood for some reading, so grabbed it off my shelf. You have to admire any book of stories that includes the line, “Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?” Or what about the line, “I broke my leg in two places so the doctor told me to stop going to those places.” There are parts of this book that make me laugh out loud, and other parts that make me wish there was more, so I could continue reading. Here is a section from the story “Summer Plum (Winter Version)” that begins:

I was about seven years old, and it was summer. Our rabbits had miraculously survived another winter. I gave them some carrots to munch on, and then I went back inside. My mother was making squares for fellowship group at the church. On the table there was an open bag of shredded coconut, which I had never seen before. What’s this? I asked. It’s coconut, she said. Can I have some? Yes, she said, but it won’t make you fly. Apparently when she was a kid her older sister had convinced her that if you ate enough coconut you would be able to fly, but it hadn’t worked. She had eaten so much she got sick, and then she got her head stuck in a milkcan. Her skepticism didn’t deter me from trying, though, so I took the bag out on the front steps and started eating it. I can’t believe how lucky I am, I thought to myself. Soon I’ll be flying.

Corey Frost used to live in Montreal but then he moved to New York, but he claims he goes back and forth. For a while, he was touring, but you probably didn’t see him. Do you remember when he used to be a creative writing student at Concordia University? Do you remember when he and Colin Christie used to publish items as Ga Press? Do you remember when he and Anne Stone used to take turns doing the layout for Matrix?

Right after they called last call and gave me another drink, being the only one left in the pub, they shut everything down. They turned lights off, and locked the doors. I was still reading the book. I don’t know why they even gave me the other drink. I couldn’t stop reading. I don’t know why I had to pay for that other drink, if I couldn’t sit there and enjoy it, reading Frost’s remarkable stories. The last time I saw Corey Frost he bought me the drink he owed me from the time before, when he forgot to pay for that other one. Is there a connection? - Rob McLennan

http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2005/07/corey-frost-this-is-in-no-way-review.html

Corey Frost, My Own Devices, Conundrum

Press, 2002

My Own Devices is a concept book: a series of stories in which the main character, Corey Frost, is left to his own devices in Japan, St. Petersburg, Sumatra, Macau, Montreal, and other locations. His devices include various telephones, cameras, tiny Japanese cars and mini-disc recorders, as well as a backpack full of witty, occasionally satirical literary gimmicks. It's a fun, irreverent take on the first-collection cliché, full of post-colonial unpredictability and tinged with début-de-siècle angst.

"If this book disappoints, it's 'cause you're just not trying hard enough." -- Broken Pencil

"Irony, metanarrative, and levels upon levels of meaning. The feeling I get is oddly life-affirming." -- McGill Daily