Damascus

by Joshua Mohr

" Damascus succeeds in conveying a big-hearted vision." — The Wall Street Journal


"At once gripping, lucid and fierce, Damascus is the mature effort of an artist devoted to personal growth and as such contains the glints of real gold." - San Francisco Chronicle
It's 2003 and the country is divided evenly for and against the Iraq War. Damascus, a dive bar in San Francisco's Mission District, becomes the unlikely setting for a showdown between the opposing sides.
Tensions come to a boil when Owen, the bar's proprietor who has recently taken to wearing a Santa suit full-time, agrees to host the joint's first (and only) art show by Sylvia Suture, an ambitious young artist who longs to take her act to the dramatic precipice of the high-wire by nailing live fish to the walls as a political statement.
An incredibly creative and fully rendered cast of characters orbit the bar. There's No Eyebrows, a cancer patient who has come to the Mission to die anonymously; Shambles, the patron saint of the hand job; Revv, a lead singer who acts too much like a lead singer; and Owen, donning his Santa costume to mask the most unfortunate birthmark imaginable.
Damascus is the place where confusion and frustration run out of room to hide. By gracefully tackling such complicated topics as cancer, Iraq, and issues of self-esteem, Joshua Mohr has painted his most accomplished novel yet.
Joshua Mohr is the San Francisco Chronicle best-selling author of Some Things That Meant the World to Me and Termite Parade , a New York Times Book Review editors' choice selection.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Dark, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction

206 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2011

About the author

JOSHUA MOHR is the author of five novels, including “Damascus,” which The New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.” He’s also written “Fight Song” and “Some Things that Meant the World to Me,” one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as “Termite Parade,” an Editors’ Choice on The New York Times Best Seller List. His novel “All This Life” was recently published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

The Book Description: It's 2003 and the country is divided evenly for and against the Iraq War. Damascus, a dive bar in San Francisco's Mission District, becomes the unlikely setting for a showdown between the opposing sides.


Tensions come to a boil when Owen, the bar's proprietor who has recently taken to wearing a Santa suit full-time, agrees to host the joint's first (and only) art show by Sylvia Suture, an ambitious young artist who longs to take her act to the dramatic precipice of the high-wire by nailing live fish to the walls as a political statement.


An incredibly creative and fully rendered cast of characters orbit the bar. There's No Eyebrows, a cancer patient who has come to the Mission to die anonymously; Shambles, the patron saint of the hand job; Revv, a lead singer who acts too much like a lead singer; and Owen, donning his Santa costume to mask the most unfortunate birthmark imaginable.


Damascus is the place where confusion and frustration run out of room to hide. By gracefully tackling such complicated topics as cancer, Iraq, and issues of self-esteem, Joshua Mohr has painted his most accomplished novel yet.

My Review: Reasons I picked this novel up at the liberry:

1)The author's hot.
2)The cover image made me sniffle a little for San Francisco's Mission district...and those who've heard me holler about how much I dislike California will know what a tough sell that is.
3)The author's hot.
4)It's published by a company called “Two Dollar Radio,” which made me grin in recognition of the old phrase “loud/cheap/tinny as a two-dollar radio.”
5)The author's hot.

So I stand convicted as a shallow, (homo)sexist pig, who will adventure into any waters if lured there by a sufficiently attractive man. Guilty as charged, can I pay my fine in trade, please?

But then comes the reading of the book so cavalierly shelf-picked.

Joshua Mohr's the real deal, guys. He's up there with Bonnie Jo Campbell and Donald Ray Pollock in the modern landscape-noir masters. He needs a third name, I guess...maybe Joshua Duke Mohr, I dunno...but this San Francisco he's studying and reporting on resembles the Tales of the City city the way Disney resembles Tarantino.

Every character in this gut-punch of a book is an ambulatory disaster area. Not one of them has a grasp of what this thing called “making a life” is about. They are not, however, unsympathetic. They're completely unable to get a handle on life, yes; but going on living, even if it's largely by rote or sheer stubborn inability to lie down despite being dead, has a bleak and painful dignity, and a respect-worthy demonstration of strength.

It's a book of losers. It's like Cannery Row with bathroom hand-jobs and nauseating “art” installations. It's got more grit than a sandpaper factory, and yes, a lot of it's gonna get between your cheeks as the events of the book knock you flat on your ass. It is, as another reviewer said, the anti-Cheers and thank goodness for that. Unsentimental books about people who don't do sentimental are good reads. This book is a very very good read indeed. The last 30 pages will do you in.

Ignore the spurious Beat/Bukowski comparisons. This isn't derivative. Joshua Mohr is the real deal.

Did I mention he's hot?

[Jon Boulier · Rating 5 out of 5]

A shining and stellar achievement for the good guys of literature. I think a lot of immediate comparison for Mohr is going to be like, Bukowski-meets-whoever, or something - but I think any of those comparisons would be sadly miscalculated. Though maybe Bukowski on his better days, when he's put the bottle down for a minute to pet his cats. There's grit, and chemicals, and PETA might cringe, but all of it's done with care and love and some serious understanding about the way our hearts work. If you're looking to read a book and be moved; if you're looking to read something that will make you walk away feeling smarter and more hopeful about the world; if you want to giggle like a little girl, or have your eyes well-up in the very first chapter of your next book, read it. I recommend to anyone who wants to feel like somebody out there writing books still cares about something. And – I recommend it to people also, who are struggling with their own chemical and worldly prisons, who simply want to open their arms to the world and feel like it doesn't always have to slap them in the face.

Well worth it.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever read a book and gotten mad because you wish you'd written it?

[Jason Pettus · Rating 4 out of 5]

2024 reads, #12. I mentioned a few months ago how I had recently heard from writer Joshua Mohr, one of the indie-lit artists of the 2010s I championed back in my own indie-lit days. Of course, it's been a while since my own indie-lit days, and I learned then that Mohr has actually published an additional three books since I first lost track of him; so after first tackling his equal parts hilarious and harrowing memoir about being a reckless drug addict in 1990s San Francisco, 2021's Model Citizen (my review), I decided to go all the way back to the oldest book of his I missed the first time around, 2011's Damascus, put out by the admirable indie press Two Dollar Radio ("admirable" = "one of the only indie presses of the 2010s to have its shit together enough to still be open in the 2020s"), the first of Mohr's novels to start getting him press and notice from the mainstream world (I believe it's his first book to get reviewed by the New York Times, for example, who called it "Beat-poet cool"), eventually leading to his current position in the roster of the storied mainstream press Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Unfortunately for Mohr, the type of novel he's written here was to fall profoundly out of favor during the rise of the #MeToo movement just a few years after this was originally published; written in the style of Charles Bukowski, it's about a young straight white man who owns a dive bar in the early-2000s Mission District of San Francisco, mostly as an excuse to feed his alcoholism, with Mohr using the milieu to tell a series of interconnecting stories about the lumpen proletarians who count as the bar's barely surviving regulars, giving us moments of sublime poetry that shine through the endless pile of shit, grime and semen that mostly makes up the tales in this book.

Of course, as a fellow straight white male who spent a lot of his twenties exactly in these kinds of venues, I loved the book; and I'd also argue that this novel is actually much more similar to Eugene O'Neill than Bukowski, and in fact will strongly remind people who are familiar with it with the former's crowning achievement, 1946's The Iceman Cometh, in that this is not just stories about noble but terminal drunks (Bukowski's forte) but about terminal drunks who aspire for something more than this, but whose own moral cowardice gets in the way of them ever doing the right thing, a topic that O'Neill made an entire Putlizer- and Nobel-winning career out of.

That said, I understand why these kinds of "tortured straight white male alcoholic is actually the greatest hero in history" stories have fallen profoundly out of favor in the 13 years since Mohr first wrote this, and so I'm happy to acknowledge that this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, and can even partially agree when people react to books like these anymore with an angry sigh and a terse declaration that "that Bukowski shit" isn't for them. I get that, and I'm happy to wait patiently until the Woke Generation's kids are in their twenties, at which point they'll rebel against their own parents and suddenly these kinds of stories will be hot yet again, just in time for me to be a hip and wise grandpa; but until then, if you're ready to go against the grain and actually embrace a story about a bunch of white male assholes who should know better but simply don't, this is a great example of it to pick up, a book that many will find both deeply relatable and horrifically cringe-worthy in equal measures. If that sounds to you like the compliment I mean for it to be, then by all means pick this up; but if it simply sounds like an insult, probably best to stay far away from this short, delightfully nasty book.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

[This review originally ran at The Nervous Breakdown.]

Damascus (Two Dollar Radio) is a depressing, raw, and touching novel, the latest tale of lost misfits and depraved losers from Joshua Mohr. Here we find Owen, the owner of the bar Damascus, who dresses as Santa Claus, a man with a birthmark under his nose that makes him look like a modern day Hitler. There is a man dying of cancer, No Eyebrows, who simply wants to be touched. There is Shambles, the jerk-off queen, who is willing to do just that, her marriage recently ended in divorce, haunting the late night bars with no purpose or goal in mind. There is Revv, the bartender, a tattooed drunk whose last act may be one of cowardice. And there is Syl, a controversial artist who brings a wave of doom upon the bar, stirring up trouble from war veterans by depicting dead soldiers in her painting while nailing fish to the already stagnant walls of Damascus.

The competing story lines offer up several different characters to follow. One of the ways that Mohr grounds this story, however, is by repeating a chorus of what’s happening in the real world, beyond the closed door, dark room, and blackouts of the seedy bar, Damascus. Take this example:

“There were other things happening in the world, of course…Three more American soldiers were killed in Iraq; five in Afghanistan. There were severe floods in the Tabasco and Chiapas regions of Mexico, killing about 3,000, though that was a conservative estimate. Iran reiterated that it was cultivating a nuclear program solely for energy production.”

These moments that break with the narrative allow us to not only ground the novel in the reality of the time and place that was 2003, but to show that despite the enormity of the lives that are fracturing at Damascus, the world is still spinning, and there is more to life than one little bar full of problems. Mohr says essentially that, later in the novel:

“And there were other things happening in the world, of course, because our lives all spin on the same spit. Seconds and heartbeats don’t stop until the clockwork breaks and the arteries dam.”

But most of the time, we are trapped at Damascus, wallowing in the lives of the broken men and women that inhabit the dive bar. One of the ways that Mohr makes this story come to life is in the gritty depictions of his main characters. Take this introductory description of No Eyebrows from the first chapter of the book:

“Owen placed the huge shot down on the bar, and as No Eyebrows reached for it with a shaking hand, Shambles looked at his sallow skin, the way it clung to him like a layer of film on cold chicken broth. Most people were shocked by his appearance because he reinforced the fact that everyone was going to die. People pursed their lips and averted their eyes, shaming him into near invisibility with the verve of their avoidances, trying not to ogle the prowling dead.”

This is a brutal and honest illustration of No Eyebrows. But Mohr doesn’t stop there. Shambles makes her living jerking off men in the bathroom, earning forty dollars a pop. She’s no beauty queen either. Reminiscent of Charles Bukowksi and Barfly, here is a quick sketch of Shambles:

“There were a few female regulars, and one who haunted the place was Shambles. She had acne scars all over her cragged cheeks, pocked like the mirror-shards glued to the bar’s ceiling. Skin crimped. Her hair had been bleached too many times: tips brittle, broken, crooked. Frayed bangs that fell down to her eyebrows and pointed a million directions like tassels. Her eyes used to be blue, but they’d faded to matte gray.”

At least we know what we’re getting ourselves into with this story. The punches won’t be pulled. We’re given a sober description of the men and women of this run down drinking hole.

While the storyline about the politics of Syl’s art show, and Owen’s desire to make something of his life are interesting, the most compelling thread, in my opinion, is the relationship between Shambles and No Eyebrows. At first, No Eyebrows just wants to be touched, the disease eating away at him, forcing him to leave his wife and daughter so they don’t have to watch him wither away to nothing. Take this scene, the first time that Shambles jerks off No Eyebrows, in the bar’s tiny, run down bathroom in the back:

“‘Do you like that?’ she said, and he said, ‘Don’t stop touching me,” and someone knocked on the door again and No Eyebrows threw his head back: every disappearing detail of his disappearing life dwindled while Shambles touched his body, and he felt pleasure, actual pleasure, this was the first hand on him in months that didn’t belong to a doctor or nurse, and thirty seconds later he came, gasping for air and life and hope.”

At first, the hand jobs that happen in the back of the bar are just further depressing examples of how low Shambles has sunk. This is what her life has been reduced to—getting drunk in some crappy bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, making forty bucks at a time pleasuring lonely, ugly men. But as the story develops, we see that she wants more than that, and she starts to care for No Eyebrows, to have feelings for him. And that can only complicate things—how do you start a relationship with a man that you met performing sex acts in the back of a bar? And how does Shambles get over her own fears and insecurities?

This novel is not without humor though. The characters of Mohr’s narrative often laugh at themselves and the situations they have to endure in order to survive. Take this exchange between Maya, Shambles and Karla, three of the bar’s ladies of the night:

“‘I hate it when men try to be charming,’ Maya said. ‘Nothing weirder than getting a guy out of the bar and he turns into a philosopher.’

‘That’s why I keep them in Damascus’s bathroom,’ Shambles said. ‘No time to recite Shakespeare while my hand’s in their business.’

Karla snapped into the flow of the conversation: ‘I once took a guy home and while he came he shouted, “It was a dark and stormy night!”’

‘What did you do?’

‘What could I do? He’s a meteorologist.’”

Rim shot. Scattered throughout the novel there are bad jokes, and there are good jokes, but either way, they break up the tone and give the reader a moment to relax and take a breath, to understand that even in the depth of certain misery, these people often had a good time.

For a long time our world is only Damascus. But towards the end of the novel, when No Eyebrows goes home, we finally get his name, David, and the humanity of his need to be loved, his desire to leave and spare his family the pain of watching him die—it all slams back into focus, in a remarkably touching way. When we see Shambles meet up with her ex-husband in the final pages, and discover that she has a name too, Irene, we see that she is not done fighting, still trying to reach out and find a reason to keep on living, not just surviving. And these moments are rather fulfilling.

In Damascus, Joshua Mohr paints a picture that is thankfully not a romantic, nostalgic telling of what life is like as a barfly, sleeping on pool tables, waking up with illegible tattoos, lives and homes fractured, destroyed in the aftermath of selfish, ignorant behavior. He tells it how it is, in simple, graphic, raw words that leave no room for misinterpretation. If nothing else, you’ll emerge from Damascus thanking the stars that twinkle in broken shards of glass suspended over your head, that this is not your life.

[Darryl · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Mission District in San Francisco is one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in the city, and throughout its history it has served as one of the primary stepping stones for new immigrants to the Bay Area. Spanish missionaries and wealthy Mexican ranchers displaced the Native American population in the mid 19th century, and they were followed by immigrants from Ireland, Germany and Poland in the early 20th century, people from Mexico and Latin America in the middle of the century, and South Americans towards its end. The Mission has undergone extensive gentrification in the last 25 years, whose newest residents include a variety of artists, computer professionals left over from the dot-com boom, and young families and single professionals who desire affordable housing in the city and appreciate the vibrancy and diversity that exists there. The neighborhood does have its seamy side, with drunks, the mentally ill and homeless people on display, especially on Mission Street and close to San Francisco General Hospital on Potrero Avenue, and gangs that operate at its edges.

However, the Mission has much to offer to its residents and visitors, with superb ethnic restaurants and stores, numerous independent bookstores, small venues which house works by new and established artists, musicians and playwrights, and the murals that define the neighborhood.



When I saw the cover of Damascus, with its portrayal of the decaying New Mission Theater on Mission Street, I picked it up immediately, in the hope that the book would describe the Mission District and its people. Wrong. What I got instead was yet another Weird Americana novel, in which the author seemingly sought out the most eccentric people he could find in real life, throw them together haphazardly and thoughtlessly in a literary pot, and see if he could construct a coherent story out of it.

Damascus is a divey bar populated by shabby men and city workers whose primary goal is to get more drunk than its proprietor, Owen, a forgettable man whose primary feature is a birthmark beneath his nose that looks like Hitler's mustache, which earns him derision from his bartender and his customers. The bar is in poor condition and is barely profitable. Its most notable regular is Shambles, a divorced woman who earns her keep—which is mainly spent on drinks—by giving hand jobs to men in the bar's bathroom. She is befriended by No Eyebrows, a man with end stage cancer who abandons his loving wife and daughter in the North Bay, as he cannot bear to die in front of them.

Owen begins to wear a Santa Claus outfit purchased from a street vendor, in the hope that a change of appearance will improve his outlook on life and his perception by others. In an effort to change the bar's image he decides to host an exhibition by Syl, a local artist who happens to the best friend of his niece, Daphne. It is 2003, and the country is divided by the Iraq War. Syl uses her art to protest the War on Terror, and creates 12 portraits of young American soldiers killed in the line of duty. She emphasizes her work by having a member of the audience nail a live fish over the face of each soldier, in order to represent the stench of death that accompanies the immoral and illegitimate war. Her art earns her the ire of Byron, a former Marine and present drunkard and ne'er do well who served with Owen, who vows to shut down the exhibition by whatever means are necessary.

Other than the rare reference to a familiar street or location, Damascus has absolutely nothing to do with San Francisco, the Mission District or its diverse population, and it could have taken place in any medium- or large-sized American city. It is filled with bland, one dimensional characters who failed to capture my interest, and the stories about Shambles and No Eyebrows were completely irrelevant to the main story line. Not recommended.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

great little tale of san francisco bar owner owen and the world he has made. he feels himself a failure but survives his own bad decisions and tries to at least keep his compassion, which maybe is one redeeming factor for folks, to take an interest and try to be nice. the merry/miserable cast that inhabit owen's bar, damascus, are typical neh? drunk sad man dying of cancer, lovable irascible drunk lady, drunk slacker hero-in-waiting bartender, drunk bi painter, drunk insane war vets, drunk but normal lesbian niece, and assorted drunk customers pull together to fight a common enemy: hate. the steinbeckian fight is ferocious but ultimately at least half-hopeful: cancer guy dies, but sees the error of his ways, bi painter has triumph of art, but it is destroyed, but she is inspired to do more, insane vets spread hate and terror, but are jailed and rehabilitated, lovable lush demonstrates true compassion but is still a miserable drunk, bar is obliterated, but the owner gets another chance. i think this is Mohr's best book yet.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The myth of the non-dysfunctional family may be a relic of the past, but isn’t it interesting that when you take society’s least functional people and put them together, they act just like a family? That seems to be the premise behind Joshua Mohr’s Damascus. The novel, Mohr’s third, is set in San Francisco’s Mission District and takes its name from a dive bar owned by a man named Owen who brings cheer to his customers by wearing a Santa Claus suit to the bar every day.

Sadly, the only cheer Owen’s customers crave is the kind that comes in bottles. The motley crew includes a terminally ill cancer patient, a sadistically violent veteran and a woman who gives hand jobs in the bathroom for money.

Owen is only a bender away from becoming just like his customers, but he’s a good person at heart. His niece, Daph, recognizes this and tries to help him make Damascus a better place. But when she talks her uncle into letting her friend hang her controversial art on the walls, the consequences are disastrous.

Mohr writes as if he’s logged hours in places like Damascus: “… an old Tom Waits song seeped through the walls from the jukebox, the sink dripped, the toilet ran, the light flickered its paltry wattage like the gloomiest disco ball in the world.”

With a remarkably subtle hand, Mohr leads the reader through a minefield of explosive topics: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, living with cancer and dealing with addiction. Damascus transcends all that and is nothing less than a primer on how to love those incapable of loving themselves. And what family couldn’t use more of that?

[Andrew Dugas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mohr's third effort centers on the regulars of the bar first introduced in his startling debut, "Some Things That Meant the World to Me" but that doesn't mean Mohr is repeating himself. On the contrary. "Some Things..." features a first person narrator whose internal reality is depicted with a mastery rivaling Kesey's depiction of Chief Broom. Here, the author's eye pulls out and brings us into the lives of various sordid characters whose lives intersect at the bar, Damascus. When we first meet these characters, we do not think very much of them. We do not like them. They are not anyone you might want to find yourself sitting next to, should some grievous misfortune ever land you in such a dive. (Thank God they are at least entertaining in their pissy lives.) But then Mohr slowly and surely takes you into each life, eliciting from the reader a response so compassionate, you might think twice the next time you instinctively turn up your superior nose at the unbathed thug with the tattooed arms, the floozie who gets by on bathroom handjobs, or the kooky bartender who dresses like Santa year round. This is Mohr's master stroke: he lures you in with what tastes like a hip, urban novel about Bukowski-esque patrons in a dive bar straight out of "Bar Fly" or "Factotum," only Mohr skips the diatribe about the life of the romanticized outsider and instead shines a light on the internal life that brought the person (possibly someone like you right now) to their current predicament. When you get to the end, you won't believe that Mohr could fit so many lives into barely 200 pages.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is 2003 and tensions over the war with Iraq are bubbling over. In bar called Damascus, located in the Mission District in San Francisco, a desperate bar owner named Owen is cursed with an unfortunate birthmark that causes people to irritate him with the constant jokes until one day he dons a Santa suit and people love him again. There is Shambles, a middle-aged woman with a heartbreaking backstory who exorcises her damages in a unique way. There is No Eyebrows, a terminally ill cancer patient who arrives with very little to lose…there is Rev, a rock and roll singer living his very best rock and roll cliché… and then there is Owen’s niece, an artist whose controversial new show provides the catalyst for the action in this short but powerful story.

At just 206 pages in a story that mostly takes place in one setting, Joshua Mohr paces the action well. It is like Cheers without the laugh track; a good representation of the desperate characters that populate these places in the day time. At many points it is just very raw and not always easy to deal with. But it feels true. There is a conflict between artistic expression and those who would seek to stifle it. There are unexpected turns of heroism and cowardice, there is a conflicted bad guy who you can almost understand and maybe empathize with.

All in all, Damascus is very tight but not always easy. But it really sticks with you, and I think that is a testament to how well written it was.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mohr has a great affection for his characters. He gives them inner lives that resonate off the page, making the reader want to know what happens to them after the story is done. In particular, a terminal cancer sufferer's motivations are fully sympathetic even if his actions are somewhat incomprehensible, and the reader roots for this man in how he handles his affliction. Mohr's father evidently succumbed to cancer, providing him with the first hand empathy to create this wonderful character and honor his father. The politics of the novel are timely and the San Francisco setting accurate. He writes of what he knows and does it well.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

If ever there was a need for the 4.5 rating... this book was a pleasant surprise, I ended up really enjoying it a lot - there were just a few quibbles here and there that kept it from perfection. But, then again, maybe that's exactly the beauty of this book: it isn't quite perfect and that makes it all the more wonderful.

Raging Biblioholism review: http://bit.ly/jZwO6h

[David Pennington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite possibly the most perfect story I have ever read. I'm pretty sure this book was written for me and me alone - I found it to be that good.

Mohr paints a picture of gritty characters getting by in the Mission district of San Francisco. People are deranged, addicted, and drunk, but not without the craziest definitions of love between them.

Dirty, intense, awesome.

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mohr goes a little heavy on the Tom Waits, but it's difficult to complain. His writing is fluid, sensitive, and smart, and this is a really good book. Highly recommended. Excuse me, I must now read everything else he's done.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nasty review redacted. The one star stays like a hobo sign for my fellow readers.

[Mark Enderle · Rating 5 out of 5]

It had me at dive bar.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read 9/09/11 - 9/20/11
4 Stars - Strongly Recommended
Pgs: 208
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

*Damascus (noun): The “road to Damascus” is an image for a sudden turning point in a person's life.

I am no stranger to San Franciscan author Joshua Mohr. I read and adored his 2010 novel Termite Parade, dubbing it "The Next Best Book"; hosted a week-long interactive interview with him over at the TNBBC goodreads group; and was beyond thrilled to kick off a brand new monthly short story feature on this very blog by premiering his unpublished short story "Family"!

So it should come as no surprise when I tell you that his upcoming novel Damascus was at the tippity-top of my must-have list when I attended BEA this past May, and have it I did!

The book borrows its title from the little dive bar that serves as the epicenter of the novel... (and it's also quite the little play on words. Joshua is one of the few authors I've read who seems to take joy in aptly naming the people and places that populate his stories.)

In Damascus, we meet a rag-tag set of incredibly flawed and fantastic characters:

There's No Eyebrows, a stage four lung cancer patient who walks into Damascus after walking out on his family, sparing them the pain of watching him die. He seeks relief from his illness at the hands of Shambles, the patron saint of the hand job, who invites men into her "office" (aka the bathroom) to jerk them off for a living (Shambles is another play on words... the word, defined as "a confused mess", quite fittingly bestowed upon herself after leaving her boring marriage and accidently falling into her new line of work).

Owen, the bar's owner, attempts to hide his hideous Hitler birthmark beneath a grungy old Santa Suit after being humiliated by an 8 year old on the street. As a favor to his niece Daphne, Owen agrees to host Syl's art show in his bar, Damascus, who's upcoming project includes nailing live fish onto plywood paintings of soliders who've died during the War in Iraq. During this time, Syl becomes taken with Revv, a part time bartender who has a thing for self mutilation and art that stirs shit.

One night, after closing up the bar, Owen and Daphne bump into Byron - an ex-solider with a dark, personally shameful past - who lives the "rebellious and unconventional lifestyle" his name implies. Owen takes Byron in temporarily while he works things out with his wife after an all night binger. Already unstable and unable to fully assimilate back to civilian life, Byron learns of the art show and the feelings it triggers in him cause a chain reaction none of the Damascus patrons can see coming.

Brilliantly written, Mohr gracefully deals with the heavier issues - such as cancer and the War in Iraq - by dispersing them with moments of pure beauty: Shambles photographing the female cancer survivor and sharing the pictures with No Eyebrows in an attempt to show him how beautiful his disease can be; Owen and Byron camping out on top of the pool tables in Damascus, with the candlelight reflecting off of the shards of broken mirror Owen had glued to the ceiling of the bar, resembling stars...

Joshua has this uncanny knack of creating characters that reflect those personal, private pieces of us, and by doing that, he makes them live and breathe. They climb off the page and into our lives. Or rather, they reach out and pull you in... They are familiar to us, similar to us. They could be your friend or relative or neighbor. They could be you.

I dare you to show me someone who is baggage free, who is not hiding something, or hiding from something. Joshua knows the darkness that lurks within us, and like a good magician, he never fully shows his hand... he never stops weaving his magic spell on us.

*so says Dictionary.com

For the full links - visit the review on my blog: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.c...

[Manfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Edward Hopper painting or a David and David album transformed into novel form, with mixed results. This book is filled with the walking wounded, the doomed, the dying, the barflys, the artists, the night people; there is even the perfunctory whore with a heart of gold that reminds of Grandma Moses in "Barfly." Not much new can really be done with this subject matter, as the author as much as acknowledges in a nod to Bukowksi and Tom Waits. So you need to be a hell of a writer to pull it off, and Mohr doesn't quite get there. You don't really get any sense of place in this story - it takes place in San Francisco but could be anywhere at all, which is maybe the point. The author takes pains to illuminate the fact that billions of lives are being lived simultaneously and occasionally some of them collide.

The climax of the book is violent and seems out of synch with the rest of the narrative, it sort of comes out of nowhere (although it has been foreshadowed) and is more of a distraction than anything else. It distracts from some otherwise fine writing sprinkled throughout the book - the best moments are the quiet ones with two characters existing in the same space, trying to form a connection. The book could've done with a bit more of those.

[Andrew Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was enthralled by Mohr's book Termite Parade so I was looking forward to Damascus, and after a few slow opening pages, I quickly found myself equally taken by this book. In fact, I was so taken I finished it in one sitting. The book is a rollercoaster without the ridiculousness of a Dan Brown type piece. Damascus, the centerpiece dive-bar in this novel, works as a vessel for a diverse range of ideals and vices, functioning itself beyond place as a character all in its own. This is a place so many readers who fall in for this story will recognize, and I think its part of why I enjoyed the novel so much. Family is found in the strangest of places, and the turn toward enemy can be one drink away, so grab a sippy cup of mothers milk and enjoy yourself as the drama plays out, cause it might all burn down tomorrow.

[Eden Sharp · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the shock value opening, through the political centre, to the ending and cathartic climax, we travel on the road to Damascus witnessing each character's conversion, the microcosm of the dive bar standing in for the macrocosm of the wider world.

There is a lot of humanity in this story especially in the moving relationship between No Eyebrows and Shambles. Initially defined by the ugliness of their respective fates, ultimately they are reborn and renamed as they seek redemption.

With satirical humour, social commentary, absurdity and sleaze, what starts as a sad story, in the end, is an incredibly touching portrayal of human frailties and one that exits with a fresh sense of hope.

[Marissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mohr's latest book details the intersecting lives of a few rough-and-tumble characters whose paths converge at a dive bar in San Francisco’s Mission District. It’s a novel that embodies the grit, uncertainty, and strength of desire that line real life. Don’t let the dark nature of the story be an obstacle, Mohr has a way of illuminating the heart of outwardly unsavory characters. Just as his candid prose pulls readers into his writing, Mohr’s genuine, warm manner will draw you in if you have a chance to meet him in person.

Learn more about Joshua Mohr in his interview for Words With Writers: http://wordswithwriters.com/2011/10/1...

[jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 and 1/2! My pal Sara (and Goodreader) recommended this to me at a western Michigan whiskey distillery. It was a quick read, as promised, and full of fun, slightly characterized character (read: Santa Claus suit bartender hiding a Hitlerstache). My biggest problem with this little book is that it read more like a radio play, with the omniscient narrator constantly ushering in and out "scenes" and more dialogue than interior development. Or maybe a play done (duh) in a bar. Be a breeze to adapt!

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much grittier than his two prior books, I found myself immersed in the seediness. One thing that always stands out with Mohr's characters, they are flawed, scarred (physically, mentally), sometimes scary but somehow they always make sense to you. I also enjoyed the war of the everyday, in the midst of a real war. This isn't a glamorous, pretty read- but if it were, I wouldn't have rated it so highly. Different, seedy, gritty- wonderful...

[Marcos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful tale of the San Francisco dive bar culture and its circus of characters- their hopes, or lack there of. Yet, between the lines Mohr grabs your attention, showing the heart of these characters- most of whom live on the fringe of society. The last 60-70 pages are particularly moving, building up then winding in such a beautiful way. It’s a talented writer who can end a book like Mohr did here. Cheers to him.

[Lavinia Ludlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review here:

http://smallpressreviews.wordpress.co...

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

see my book review in lj

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Far and away his best book. It will crack you up, break your heart, and make you think.

[Brandon Petry · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars, I really enjoyed this.

[Tony Laplume · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading the book and watching the film version of A Monster Calls, I was swept up in the emotional journey of grappling with the realities of cancer. I lost my mom to cancer three years ago, and that certainly played a huge part in my reactions. I can't say I experienced the same with Damascus, which includes in its host of characters a guy who temporarily leaves his family because he doesn't want them to remember his deterioration from final stages lung cancer. The most successful thing Joshua Mohr does in the book is describe that deterioration. Everything else...

Recently I watched the first Star Trek: Discovery "Short Treks" installment, which ended up feeling like amateur theater. Amateur theater is where you'll find amateur, simplified storytelling. It'll give you a clear arc, but it'll feel completely artificial. It won't ring true. And for the second time in a few weeks, I had the feeling I was experiencing amateur theater again, this time in Mohr's book. Damascus isn't filled with characters so much as caricatures, with sometimes outlandish quirks (dude who sports a "Hitler mustache birthmark" subsequently begins wearing a Santa costume, for example). None of Mohr's ideas are particularly fleshed out. This book was published in 2011, takes place in 2003, and yet he wants us to believe would-be iconoclast artist Syl somehow invented the resistance to the Iraq War. Yeah. Listen, Joshua Mohr. I was alive in 2003. I was in college, chief residence of rebellious minds. Your fictional creation did not invent resistance to the Iraq War.

And you somehow don't seem to have ever heard that Hitler borrowed that mustache from Charlie Chaplin's beloved Little Tramp.

Yeah. That's the kind of tattered logic that permeates the book. It's not that Mohr can't write, but that he didn't think any of it through, and even when he has a big dramatic arc to follow (cancer patient "No Eyebrows"), he doesn't stick that landing, because the poor dude's wife ends up feeling like the bad person. Mohr never takes the time to figure out if any of these characters could pass for real people.

Maybe it's because he spends too much time among people he views as characters, or because he never looks beyond a certain view of the world, or because he only experiences bad writing himself. I don't know. I also have no clue how he got glowing reviews from anyone worth putting on the cover. Some people are so committed to certain views they'll like anything, I guess.

Bottom line is, I guess I'll cherish the small details he includes about cancer, for what that's worth, stuff I haven't really seen outside of watching my mom die, which is something I still struggle with, but the book itself is a sorry mess. Kind of appropriate, as Mohr apparently never met someone who wasn't a sorry mess, never conceived life being complicated beyond broad strokes and myopic views. Kind of fell off the high wire, buddy.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

For years the place’s floor, walls, and ceiling had been painted entirely black, but that afternoon the owner added a new element, smashing twenty mirrors and gluing the shards to the ceiling so the pieces shimmered like stars, transforming Damascus into a planetarium for drunkards: dejected men and women stargazing from barstools. When the first customer of the day walked in and witnessed the bar’s broken-mirror constellations, he said to the owner, “There must be 10,000 years of bad luck hanging here.

I was drawn to this book by its frequent comparisons, as a Bukowski and John Fante fan, and I wasn´t disappointed. Less the telling of a specific story Mohr´s Damascus captures a brief snapshot of a dingy San Francisco bar, the characters that occuppy its barstools day in and day out. The best stories are the ones of the fringes of society, the drunks, the drug addicts, the freaks, the uglies that ones that aren´t traditionally heroes but in the midst of their most sunken moments, as we the reader follow them along, we find ourselves peering at the whole of humanity.