Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite - Ratz is rhythmic rather than lyrical, but undeniably musical – call it performance fiction, sound fiction – and difficult to read sitting down. Its closest literary relative is not the conventional novel, but the dub poem

 

Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite, Ratz Are Nice,

Alyson Books, 2000

"Ratz are Nice." What the hell? "

Rats survive and adapt; they run together in the lower parts where nobody wants to go, eat what nobody else wants to eat. Like the poor and lower classes, like Edison and the other characters in the book. Since that's the way things are, I say rats are nice.

"Your first book, "Wigger, "was about co-opting someone else's culture, but the characters in "Ratz" seem more directed toward their own. "

"Ratz" starts the way "Wigger" did. But this time Edison is deciding on stuff about his life with the "Dumbdumz." He realizes you can be a part of something without it stealing parts of yourself to be there. So it's about kids deciding to make this decision in life. They want to make that adult decision, right or wrong, and deal with the consequences.

"Tell us about the world your characters inhabit. "

We are in another failed "Reconstruction Period." There was the Civil War and the exploitation and lost hope of civility and equality. Then we had the overhyped civil rights movement followed by the big '80s Pomo divisive cultural revolution. The people in "Ratz" are the bastard children of all this. The have-nots are the only ones who've never gotten a voice, and everyone keeps saying they're speaking for them. What else could we get from the kids who grew up during this period, but them running a power move on things?

"Some of them are pretty evil in a lot of ways. "

I do think there is evil out there. They say that Victoria is the occult capital of North America, that it's the center of the pentagram and that there are places here which are right on the crossroads. You can call up evil or goodness in the middle of a crossroads. I think people have called up some wickedness. It's the underlying theme in the novel. The "Dumbdumz" reflect that. How distorted and twisted they have become. Edison knows that we don't have a "Buffy" to slay baddies nor do we have "Hellboy" or a John Constantine. Todd McFarlane is from around here. He created Spawn to fight that stuff but really it's up to an in

In Vancouver’s street punk culture, West Coast writer and performer Lawrence Braithwaite has found both the subject and the esthetic with which to further exploit the stylistic territory he began exploring in his 1994 novella Wigger. Ratz Are Nice speaks with the unmistakable rhythms of reggae, ska, and punk; the backslashes and other typographical symbols that Braithwaite used in Wigger to disrupt the text here become visual signs for the slash of hardcore guitars, the tumbling loop of reggae bass, the pumping of fists in the air. Ratz is rhythmic rather than lyrical, but undeniably musical – call it performance fiction, sound fiction – and difficult to read sitting down. Its closest literary relative is not the conventional novel, but the dub poem.

The book’s plot is negligible; what matters here are the repeated patterns of language and behaviour. They are not, it must be said, particularly lovely patterns. White supremacists, gang-rapists, drug dealers, and junkies – Braithwaite’s characters aren’t exactly endearing, or even really interesting in their own right. What makes them interesting – riveting, in fact – is the voice that describes them. It is often incoherent, occasionally tender, and frequently desperate as it tries to make sense through a fog of drugs, alcohol, exhaustion, and fear.

Braithwaite’s narrator, a black skinhead named Edison, is trying to retain his humanity in a clockwork orange world where straight society’s rules don’t apply. Like the world it is part of, Edison’s narrative is chaotic and improvisational, both highly creative and highly self-destructive. But Ratz Are Nice is also self-consciously literary. Substantial endnotes emphasize the research and theory behind the apparent chaos of the text. The language feels grittily real precisely because, like the language of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, it suits the purposes of a specific fiction. Don’t let the disorderly appearance of Ratz fool you; Braithwaite is a fine craftsman, and Ratz Are Nice is punk in the tradition of Tristan Tzara, Johnny Rotten, and Heiner Müller. - Hugh Hodges

https://quillandquire.com/review/ratz-are-nice-psp/

Spotlight on … Lawrence Yitzhak Braithwaite Ratz Are Nice ...

Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite, Wigger, 

Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995

I'll stick with Burroughs. It seems that the author (who obviously a fan of Burroughs) tried to write his own version of 'Queer' just after he stayed up all night reading 'Naked Lunch' and 'Nova Express'. The mood of the book is self deprecating, pretentious, and hatefully hip. It is a short read and can easily be finished in a day which is good because if I had put the book down I would never have picked it back up. The only good thing I will say is that Braithwaite definitely doesnt deviate and is true to his character and self deprecation. Reading about his life from Wikipedia or wherever will give you a better idea of what I'm saying. supposedly he wasn't the best of people. He ultimately committed suicide which is sad but didn't surprise me. I can see this book best in the hands of a post adolescent or high school suburban rebel who has just started to cut his teeth on anarchy and nihilism and 6 months into his new pot binge. I see it sitting beside their unfinished copy of notes from the underground and the obligatory Nietzsche. - Jeremy Southern

Quick read, doesn't overstay its welcome. Very unusual but creative and effective metaphors ("he had the face of a repeatedly defeated boxer and walk of a lazy metronome", "[a drag queen] pulls her purse open like Tarzan breaking the jaws of a crocodile"). Experimental-ish, but not distractingly so. Nonchalantly transgressive in parts, but without the in-your-face obviousness that makes it seem contrived. Drugged out prose, almost spacey language. Very ambiguously voiced-- it is often difficult. - Vampire Who Baked

“There was something gorgeous about Andrew. He had the face of a repeatedly defeated boxer and the walk of a lazy metronome. Andrew was tall and always wore a flight jacket, his head bobbing this way and the other. He let Jerry photograph him on two occasions, but still paid little mind to him in public…. Andrew would allow him, after having a hand placed on his shoulder and something whispered in his ear, to take photos of him and touch him naked.”

That’s the opening of Lawrence Braithwaite’s debut 1995 novel, Wigger, which is really a collection of connected short stories. It soon hots up.

“I should turn you over and f-ck fifty bucks up your ass.”

Wigger (a term for a white guy who acts black) is a fractured chronicle of 24 hours in the lives of a disparate (and desperate) bunch of violent, sexual, drug-taking urban youths. The book’s apparently scatter-gun approach combines a keen eye and a fresh way with metaphor: a drag queen opening her purse is “like Tarzan breaking the jaws of a crocodile.”

“Anti-romantic,” says Arsenal Pulp Press’s cover blurb, which is putting it mildly. Novelist Kevin Killian said he hadn’t been so excited about — or frightened by — a new writer in many years.

The author of this unprecedented foray into narrative mayhem was Lawrence Ytzhak Braithwaite, a 32-year-old queer, black, ex-army guy on permanent disability, living in, of all places, Victoria, BC. He broke into print in Dennis Denisoff’s anthology Queeries: An Anthology of Gay Male Prose, seeming to come out of nowhere to create some of the most daring experimental writing in Canada, a mixture of profanity, street slang, song lyrics, dub poetry, porn (gay and straight) and typographical tricks that masked a ferocious intellect.

Braithwaite was by all accounts a difficult customer. A little guy with a patch over one eye (“Lord Patch” was one of his nicknames), he could be disruptive, abusive and annoying, all the while quoting Joyce and Kafka and speaking in “complete paragraphs — with footnotes.” Unfortunately, his drug-fuelled paranoia got in the way of his life. One friend said he had “problems with just about everybody.” This included literary contacts, a violent ex-boyfriend and various drug dealers.

In spite of the difficulties of both Braithwaite and his prose style, he published in several anthologies and gained the respect and friendship of various writers, particularly those associated with the San Francisco-based New Narrative school. Poet Dennis Cooper described his writing as “gorgeous, propulsive,” seeming to “reinvent fiction before your eyes.”

Two later books, Speed, Thrash, Death: Alamo, BC (1998) and Ratz Are Nice (PSP) (2000), show no falling-off of abilities. Some of the dialogue in Ratz Are Nice (PSP) gives the effect of being shouted over loud music — not an easy trick to pull off. The cover photo shows the author in a combative stance, holding a walking stick and accompanied by a skinhead and some other tough-looking characters.

For all his talent and originality, Braithwaite was obviously a troubled soul. His life on the margins (one acquaintance called him a “fringe-dweller”) came to an abrupt end in July 2008 when he was found hanged in his Victoria apartment — a murder victim or a suicide.

Canada has produced too few wholly original talents and certainly none remotely like Lawrence Braithwaite. I found my copy of Wigger at a lawn sale for 25 cents. If you come across one, don’t let it get away. - Ian Young

https://xtramagazine.com/culture/suggestive-reading-lawrence-ytzhak-braithwaites-wigger-8970

Lawrence Christopher Patrick (aka Ytzhak) Braithwaite (March 17, 1963 – July 14, 2008) was a Canadian novelist, spoken-word artist, dub poet, essayist, digital drummer and short fiction writer.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, he has been called "one of the outstanding Canadian prose writers alive" (Gail Scott) and linked to the "New Narrative" movement, a term coined by Steve Abbott. He was the author of the legendary cult novel Wigger.

Braithwaite's work has been praised by Dodie Bellamy for its "sublime impenetrability".[5] and is fueled by a modernist and Fredric Jameson-influenced late modernist approach to writing and recording. His work is influenced by the musical and social realism of punk rock, opera, musique concrète, noise, hip hop, rap, industrial, black metal, country music and dub.

Braithwaite utilized the intensity of the New York City No Wave scene and the Los Angeles and Montreal hardcore punk music subcultures to compose his narrative. His family has laid him to rest in Notre-Dames-des-Neiges Cemetery, Montreal, Quebec.

Braithwaite was openly gay. He was a vocal critic of the LGBT community's sometimes inadequate response to issues of racism. - wikipedia