The Show That Smells. Derek McCormack
MORE CRITICAL PRAISE FOR DEREK MCCORMACK
for The Show that Smells
“It’s immediately apparent that McCormack has created something innovative, entertaining, and quite possibly (dare we say it) groundbreaking. With its biting beats of refined prose and inventive story line, it would certainly be easy to label this release as one of the best books of the year … It’s a pleasurable mash-up of high experimental literature and low Hollywood pulp, packed with the kind of crooked humor, wit, and style that invites readers in rather than confusing and excluding them. Beyond that, the book is a hell of a lot of fun. The Show that Smells is a showcase for an innovative writer who has perfected his technique, and there is no denying that McCormack is an extraordinary talent.”
—Torontoist
“What would you get if you put high fashion, old Hollywood, Tod Browning’s bearded lady, a few drops of Chanel N°5, Lon Chaney, Guy Maddin—type melodrama, and the Carter Family into a blender and pressed pulse? Th is freakygorgeous concoction. McCormack’s deft wordplay sometimes reads more like poetry than prose. Sublime.”
—CBC/Radio-Canada
“Th is charged novel is given pace by McCormack’s tightly honed style … there’s humor, too, in his clipped delivery … McCormack knows how to mine his obsessions to create truly unusual—and memorable—works of art.”
—Quill & Quire (Canada)
“A staccato epic with punch and verve.”
—January Magazine
for Grab Bag and The Haunted Hillbilly
“Weird, inventive, magical, the omnibus Grab Bag features a lonely closeted teenager named Derek McCormack and a grotesque fascination with carnivals, drifters, and disease … With a morbid comic vision and a delightfully twisted imagination, McCormack delivers a one-two knockout punch that establishes him as one of the best new voices of the year.”
—Village Voice
“McCormack’s Depression-era characters are broke, sick, and in love with the wrong people; to get by they scheme and dream, using their imaginations and their hands to craft escape routes, skirting shame and disaster along the way … It makes for a kaleidoscopic look at a world of cheap furbelows and carnival flash, a place where childlike wonder goes hand in hand with cruel cynicism, and where even the promise of heaven appears as tawdry as an eye-shadow case.”
—Chicago Reader
“Grab Bag is a devious delight … McCormack’s sparse prose is darkly comedic and unsettling, like circus clowns are to little children. And yet it is so oddly fascinating that you can’t bear to turn away.”
—Tablet Magazine
“Th at McCormack works his magic in such a singular fashion is admirable. He’s not banking on courting a large audience, but rather, off ering a small, beautifully wrapped gift to those who know where to look.”
—Frontiers News Magazine
“Every once in a while, however, I’ll find a novel—a ‘modern’ novel, if you will—which serves as a reminder that there is relevance and substance out there. Derek McCormack’s Grab Bag is one of these rare gems … McCormack knows how it’s done.”
—Punk Planet
“McCormack is an incredible stylist who uses minimalist prose and non-sequiturs to great eff ect, kind of like what A.M. Homes might write if she were a gay man … McCormack is clearly trying to break the mold here, and he should be commended for that.”
—PopMatters
“Grab Bag grabs you in its steely grip almost without you noticing, and the hard, plain language delivers the stories straight to the core of your being.”
—Gay Times (UK)
“McCormack’s prose eff ectively transports you to distant autumn nights where shivers, beer breath, and the smoke of burning leaves linger on forever … Grab Bag manages at once to intrigue, horrify, and entice without being offff-putting or annoying.”
—Portland Mercury
“McCormack’s anarchic and macabre imagination carries this book. There are passages that hit the senses (and the subconscious) like weird waking dreams. Visually, Grab Bag is cinematic—it’s like Hitchcock meets John Waters.”
—Xtra (Canada)
Also from Dennis Cooper’s
Little House on the Bowery Series
Grab Bag by Derek McCormack
High Life by Matthew Stokoe
Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground edited by Dennis Cooper
Artificial Light by James Greer
Wide Eyed by Trinie Dalton
Godlike by Richard Hell
Th e Fall of Heartless Horse by Martha Kinney
Headless by Benjamin Weissman
Victims by Travis Jeppesen
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2009 Derek McCormack
eISBN-13: 978-1-617750-93-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-71-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008930974
All rights reserved
First printing
Little House on the Bowery c/o Akashic Books PO Box 1456 New York, NY 10009 [email protected] www.akashicbooks.com
Contents
3
This book is a work of fiction. It is a parody. It is a phantasmagoria. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Elsa Schiaparelli was never a vampire. Shocking! by Schiaparelli never contained blood. Chanel and Chanel N°5 are trademarks of Chanel, and their use here is in no way authorized by, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owner.
The author thanks Howard Akler, Nathalie Atkinson, Tony Burgess, Joey Comeau, Kevin Connolly, Dennis Cooper, Trinie Dalton, Jack David, Hadley Dyer, Vincent Fecteau, Grant Heaps, Michael Holmes, Johanna Ingalls, Meaghan Kent, Susan Kernohan, Kevin Killian, David Livingstone, Guy Maddin, Jason McBride, Cynthia McCormack, Melissa McCormack, Murray McCormack, Casey McKinney, Hilary McMahon, Richard Eoin Nash, Christopher Paulin, Ian Phillips, Nen Reyes, Andrea Rosen, Daniel Sinker,