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Hurt Others
Oh man, it just had to happen. Someone had to be a bagger at a grocery store and fantasize about hitting children in the head with wine bottles. Someone had to fear a puddle floating at him from across the street. Someone had to celebrate beating up a pregnant woman. Someone just HAD to be a nanny, and stare at giant motorized spiders.
Jeez oh man!
Don't ask why a teenager in a Chicago Bulls overcoat is feeding baby rabbits to a toad. Don't ask why someone had to run around the backyard with a bedsheet cape after drinking moonshine. And don't ask why jumping down stairs feels like success.
Just sit back, drink a piss-infused Bloody Mary, and learn to hurt others.
112 pages, Paperback
First published August 16, 2011
8 people are currently reading
928 people want to read
About the author
Sam Pink
63 books824 followersSam Pink is the author of The No Hellos Diet, Hurt Others, I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It, Frowns Need Friends Too, and the cult hit Person. His writing has been published widely in print and on the internet, and also in other languages. He lives in Chicago, where he plays in the band Depressed Woman.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
October 8, 2011
I don't think the title of this book is an instruction to go out and cause pain to people. I think it is a description of the characters within. They are hurt and they are others.
I read the stories out of order, starting with the short ones which I read out loud. I related to Juliana hugely. It reminded me of a part of my life. I felt uncomfortable reading the second thing about Living In Romeoville, Illinois.
I would say that this is Sam's least extreme/absurd/whatever book yet and it works. These are everyday moments lived by real characters. Jokes where the punchline never arrives. I felt while reading that maybe he had been influenced by Scott Mcclanahan in some ways. Sam's dialogue is stronger than ever, which is really saying something. He has also begun spelling words as they are said, making the language even more real
I read the stories out of order, starting with the short ones which I read out loud. I related to Juliana hugely. It reminded me of a part of my life. I felt uncomfortable reading the second thing about Living In Romeoville, Illinois.
I would say that this is Sam's least extreme/absurd/whatever book yet and it works. These are everyday moments lived by real characters. Jokes where the punchline never arrives. I felt while reading that maybe he had been influenced by Scott Mcclanahan in some ways. Sam's dialogue is stronger than ever, which is really saying something. He has also begun spelling words as they are said, making the language even more real
January 23, 2014
I'm not 100% sure what I just read, but I do know it was amazing. Pink invited me into his Chicago and entertained the crap out of me. The stories were mostly funny but had a twist of real human moments. I found myself relating to him in a way that no other author has really done with the exception of Ben John Smith. Recommended for everybody.
December 27, 2015
read through all of sam pink's kindle unlimited stuff and although i hate spending 11 dollars for 104 actual pages of writing i did it anyway and it was really really good, which is what i've come to expect from sam pink. i laughed out loud a good half dozen times and although i put it down once to try to get some work done i found myself putting off the work like 10 minutes later, picking the book back up and finishing it. very easy 5 star rating.
Read
July 10, 2025There's some excellent stuff in here. As a collection of short works, it's also kind of a mixed bag, maybe a little uneven as such collections tend to be. Not as exciting as one of Pink's novella-length works, but certainly good. The longer stories in the collection are the better ones. Interestingly, even when his longer works sometimes appear as series of vignettes, they have enough continuity and drive to build stronger interest.
It's notable that Sam Pink shows a genuine understanding of what childcare is like. Witness:
I was given a doll
I was told what to do.
I did what I was told.
The dollhouse was big and we played an extremely vague game with the dolls that involved a lot of walking around and not understanding what was going on.
and...
I got to be a rhino and I made up a voice for it that Juliana really liked.
She kept laughing.
Which meant that I had to keep doing it.
Yup... playing with kids.
And here's another notable quotable for ya':
Honestly, though, I always liked watching tv because it was a good way to silently panic while making it look like you're not.
Books work too.
The end.
It's notable that Sam Pink shows a genuine understanding of what childcare is like. Witness:
I was given a doll
I was told what to do.
I did what I was told.
The dollhouse was big and we played an extremely vague game with the dolls that involved a lot of walking around and not understanding what was going on.
and...
I got to be a rhino and I made up a voice for it that Juliana really liked.
She kept laughing.
Which meant that I had to keep doing it.
Yup... playing with kids.
And here's another notable quotable for ya':
Honestly, though, I always liked watching tv because it was a good way to silently panic while making it look like you're not.
Books work too.
The end.
July 30, 2012
Sam Pink is one of the best writers living today, in my opinion. The mixture of absolute hilarity and absolute beauty in his work has never ceased to astound me. Pink himself has described HURT OTHERS as a collection of "anti-stories," which seems accurate in the context of some of the stories in the book. "Bees" and "Crackheads," for example, read more as informal anecdotes than full-fledged short stories, whereas "Love" and "Juliana," for instance, are much more narrative and seem to contain more thematic significance. Every piece is memorable, however, regardless of whether its style or content resembles something that you would read on Twitter or something that you would read in a literary journal. "Fun" may be one of the greatest stories I have ever read, if only for its incredible ending. Sam Pink is a master of observation and of presenting those observations with his own brand of absurdity, humor, and sadness. I cannot recommend this book (or any of his other books) enough.
May 25, 2014
I’d read Person a few years ago and ended up selling it at my garage sale before moving to Istanbul. Someone did buy it for 1$, but my dislike of it seems baffling in hindsight after reading this magnificent collection of anti-stories entitled Hurt Others.
The style is deceptively simple; at first, it seems slightly juvenile–but then, every so often, Pink will dash off a line that is casually brilliant, cryptic, or a sentence that contains a circular thought…forever spiraling and leaving unanswered what was never in fact a question in the first place.
Sam Pink is the kind of writer–like Bukowski, Fante, Moravia, Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Frederick Exley–that takes you into their personal life, but the crystal waters of reality at first depicted are soon sullied and blurred as the painter goes to work with his bloody brush.
The style is deceptively simple; at first, it seems slightly juvenile–but then, every so often, Pink will dash off a line that is casually brilliant, cryptic, or a sentence that contains a circular thought…forever spiraling and leaving unanswered what was never in fact a question in the first place.
Sam Pink is the kind of writer–like Bukowski, Fante, Moravia, Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Frederick Exley–that takes you into their personal life, but the crystal waters of reality at first depicted are soon sullied and blurred as the painter goes to work with his bloody brush.
November 27, 2011
Character I connected with the most: The acne kid with tricks under coat.
Character I connected with the least: the manager who had beef.
This is a reflective piece. Most of Sam's stuff is trying to look sideways or forward but this was written from the perspective of someone looking back.
I read it all in one bath. I got out to pee one time and I thought I'd stop tub time but then I realized I was just uncomfortable having to pee. So I got back in. By the time I finished I was shaking, freezing my ass off. I don't know why I did that.
Read this book. This is a good book.
Character I connected with the least: the manager who had beef.
This is a reflective piece. Most of Sam's stuff is trying to look sideways or forward but this was written from the perspective of someone looking back.
I read it all in one bath. I got out to pee one time and I thought I'd stop tub time but then I realized I was just uncomfortable having to pee. So I got back in. By the time I finished I was shaking, freezing my ass off. I don't know why I did that.
Read this book. This is a good book.
October 4, 2016
This is the second book I've read by Sam Pink. With his books I always get this dazed feeling. It's not bad, I just never expect it. It puts me in a very sedated mood. It also makes me feel not so alone with my weird thoughts and jumpy thinking patterns.
July 23, 2013
This collection of stories was not nearly as good as Sam Pink's other collection, I Am Going To Clone Myself And Then Kill The Clone And Eat It. However, that collection was so damn good that this one does not need to be in the same ballpark to still be awesome. The stories in Hurt Others are definitely less bizarre than any of Pink's other work. Here the characters felt more real, which for Pink, is not always a good thing. With that said, the realness of the characters definitely worked for some of the stories, especially "Juliana," which was my favorite from this collection. If you are a fan of Pink or are looking for a new, original author, then buy this book. Not his best, but a good intro into the world of Sam Pink.
Overall, I would probably give this book a 4.5 if I could.
Overall, I would probably give this book a 4.5 if I could.
November 28, 2015
WTF. This book. I could eat this book, I could make love to this book and I could make it the first thing I see every morning. I think I liked it more than PERSON.
July 13, 2014
Isn't Sam Pink fascinating? I mean, what are his stories in Hurt Others about, really? Do they have plots? I don't think so. But could they be called "slice of life" stories? Maybe, but these are some very odd and specific slices. What is with the narrator that seems similar in each story but always a little different? Is he Sam? Does that matter? And what is with the spontaneous, shocking violence? Like:
"At one point today I was putting a wine bottle in a customer's bag and I had an almost unstoppable urge to hit the customer's child with the wine bottle, for no detectable reason.
I wanted to just take the wine bottle by the neck, then windmill it downward onto the top of the child's head, circle of glass at the bottom of the bottle landing hard.
A sound no one would want to hear.
Then blood." p. 18.
And like:
"...he stomped down hard, missing the bulk of the toad, but snapping both its hind-legs under his Velcro boot.
And the hind-legs hung there, stripped and broken.
Soft-looking bones came out of the skin.
Trying to move, the toad could only circle." p. 111.
Sam Pink's fictions (and his plays and his poems) are raw presentations of living. It's the kind of living that gets done behind broken doors with shiny padlocks in run-down neighbourhoods. The kind of living that gets done on the street, but that doesn't get noticed because it makes people like you and me turn away until we've walked past. The kind of living that makes you uncomfortable, so when you hear about it, you pay a few seconds of attention to it in your mind and then you push it away, focusing on other things, on other kinds of living. But Sam Pink is not turning away. In fact, he's crashing on the couches of the people who do this kind of living. He's going to the parties, drinking the moonshine, talking to the "crackheads" and feeling positive sometimes. He's getting the jobs no one else wants and talking to the co-workers who seem a bit too strange.
There are plenty of writers who write well about living on the wrong side of the tracks (Denis Johnson just came to my mind) but the unique thing about Sam Pink's writing is his narrator. The narrator here is not entirely passive, but he is quiet. He observes, but he doesn't think much. We as readers get a keen-eyed glimpse into some pretty ugly places, but it's the narrator's occasional participation that pushes us into Sam Pink-land. The things the narrator does are not wrong or evil, in fact they seem to take place outside of a moral sphere, or at least in a brand-new one that I don't understand yet. There's just no concern with wrong or right here, it seems. Just concern with living. Living wherever and whenever possible. And maybe getting a laugh out of it, a smile, even. Or just a good story. Or a hug.
"Alright, I'm late," she said. "Bye sweetie."
She turned toward the store.
"Wait, let's get a hug," I said.
She looked at me.
"Come here," I said, with my arms out.
She said, "Yeah, alright."
We hugged.
I had to bend down a little to properly hug her.
My right ear touched her right ear.
We let go of each other and she walked towards the store.
The front door opened out towards her and almost hit her.
She sidestepped it, coughing into her hand, her other arm holding down her purse." p. 27.
"At one point today I was putting a wine bottle in a customer's bag and I had an almost unstoppable urge to hit the customer's child with the wine bottle, for no detectable reason.
I wanted to just take the wine bottle by the neck, then windmill it downward onto the top of the child's head, circle of glass at the bottom of the bottle landing hard.
A sound no one would want to hear.
Then blood." p. 18.
And like:
"...he stomped down hard, missing the bulk of the toad, but snapping both its hind-legs under his Velcro boot.
And the hind-legs hung there, stripped and broken.
Soft-looking bones came out of the skin.
Trying to move, the toad could only circle." p. 111.
Sam Pink's fictions (and his plays and his poems) are raw presentations of living. It's the kind of living that gets done behind broken doors with shiny padlocks in run-down neighbourhoods. The kind of living that gets done on the street, but that doesn't get noticed because it makes people like you and me turn away until we've walked past. The kind of living that makes you uncomfortable, so when you hear about it, you pay a few seconds of attention to it in your mind and then you push it away, focusing on other things, on other kinds of living. But Sam Pink is not turning away. In fact, he's crashing on the couches of the people who do this kind of living. He's going to the parties, drinking the moonshine, talking to the "crackheads" and feeling positive sometimes. He's getting the jobs no one else wants and talking to the co-workers who seem a bit too strange.
There are plenty of writers who write well about living on the wrong side of the tracks (Denis Johnson just came to my mind) but the unique thing about Sam Pink's writing is his narrator. The narrator here is not entirely passive, but he is quiet. He observes, but he doesn't think much. We as readers get a keen-eyed glimpse into some pretty ugly places, but it's the narrator's occasional participation that pushes us into Sam Pink-land. The things the narrator does are not wrong or evil, in fact they seem to take place outside of a moral sphere, or at least in a brand-new one that I don't understand yet. There's just no concern with wrong or right here, it seems. Just concern with living. Living wherever and whenever possible. And maybe getting a laugh out of it, a smile, even. Or just a good story. Or a hug.
"Alright, I'm late," she said. "Bye sweetie."
She turned toward the store.
"Wait, let's get a hug," I said.
She looked at me.
"Come here," I said, with my arms out.
She said, "Yeah, alright."
We hugged.
I had to bend down a little to properly hug her.
My right ear touched her right ear.
We let go of each other and she walked towards the store.
The front door opened out towards her and almost hit her.
She sidestepped it, coughing into her hand, her other arm holding down her purse." p. 27.
February 7, 2014
Hurt Others is my first foray into the world of Sam Pink. The first thought that sprang to mind whilst reading it was Sam Pink would be in great danger if an alien race in search for atypical humans stumbled upon this book.
The author has a very unique way of telling stories. His clean prose is very refreshing and engrossing, his tales are very true to life, sometimes compelling; and most characters are fairly interesting.
The only problem with Hurt Others is its unevenness. My favorite story off the collection is Fun; a very relatable, funny and thought-provoking piece. Two Things About Living in Romeoville, Illinois, Juliana and Love also left me smiling and wanting more.
I felt somewhat underwhelmed by the other stories, but the ones I liked had me excited enough to continue trekking across the Sam Pink universe.
The author has a very unique way of telling stories. His clean prose is very refreshing and engrossing, his tales are very true to life, sometimes compelling; and most characters are fairly interesting.
The only problem with Hurt Others is its unevenness. My favorite story off the collection is Fun; a very relatable, funny and thought-provoking piece. Two Things About Living in Romeoville, Illinois, Juliana and Love also left me smiling and wanting more.
I felt somewhat underwhelmed by the other stories, but the ones I liked had me excited enough to continue trekking across the Sam Pink universe.
June 4, 2013
Sam Pink succeeds at being humorous with minimal effort. In fact, I don't really think Sam Pink even sits down, thinking he's writing a short story or a novel. I'm not even sure if his aim is to get published. It's just something that happens to him, because one day, he wrote something down and it spread like a fungus. Plus, there is this indelible Zen presence in his writing. Sam Pink is like a Zen Fungus, spreading over you to make you think and not think about things all at once. Try it, you'll see what I mean. Or don't try it. My neighbors won't try it. They just put up new underpinning every summer and burn trash in their front yard. They live on a hill. Several of the stray cats we feed go missing, and we always attribute the loss to those neighbors who won't read Sam Pink's work.
December 26, 2015
This was great. While I was somewhat neutral in my opinion of Person, I am so glad that I read this one. Much of the book consists of the random thoughts of the narrator as he goes through everyday situations. Somehow, the author turns what could be mundane into something totally different altogether. The great thing is that this happens with seemingly no effort. His observations were hilarious in a way that some may not appreciate. I personally enjoyed them a lot. More Sam Pink for me please.
June 3, 2012
My paraphrased review of Men In Black 3: "Will Smith sucked. Tommy Lee Jones sucked. Josh Brolin played a sucky character and the jokes sucked. It sucked." My review of Hurt Others: "This is great." Special super-thnax to Rachna Goswami for giving me this as a birthday present! It's like she KNOWS me.
June 29, 2015
Some of Pink's older work. Very enjoyable.
Favorite pieces:
-Love
-Thing About When I Worked At a 'Treasure Island' Grocery Store in Chicago, Illinois
-Juliana
-Fun
-Two Things About Living in Romeoville, Illinois
Favorite pieces:
-Love
-Thing About When I Worked At a 'Treasure Island' Grocery Store in Chicago, Illinois
-Juliana
-Fun
-Two Things About Living in Romeoville, Illinois
November 27, 2015
I hated it, just kidding.
August 3, 2021
This is about alienation. Like everyone is so disconnected from everyone else. It's uncomfortable and you feel like shit. You feel bad reading it. It's good. Also, i love stream of consciousness so this is right up my alley.
My big issue is that it sometimes veers into edgy territory with the way the author writes dialog of non white people. It's kind of a problem actually, bordering on minstrel. Overall pretty good but that part made me feel bad for other reasons and they're not uh, good.
My big issue is that it sometimes veers into edgy territory with the way the author writes dialog of non white people. It's kind of a problem actually, bordering on minstrel. Overall pretty good but that part made me feel bad for other reasons and they're not uh, good.
May 28, 2017
I don't know what I just read. The author himself described it well enough: "It was a very confusing, unsettling mix of adult content, violence, childishness, and innocence." This book was crude and kinda disturbing in some places, but pretty deep in others. The last story ('Two Things About Living') is a perfect example of this, where a retarded(?) boy fed a baby rabbit to a toad and subsequently stomped on the toad, crippling its two hind legs, which is the weird and disturbing part, but I liked how the author ended the story. He wrote "only the toad remained, circling pathetic... and I thought about how someone seeing all of this from very high above sees something with its legs stripped and broken. Just circling. And I thought about how it would be hard to tell who's who." This sentence, I believe, means that the author feels like the toad, broken and circling, getting nowhere, and I found it a very clever allegory. However, I read the other reviews and apparently it is supposed to be funny? I didn't find it amusing in the slightest though. Maybe I have a skewed sense of humour. Either way, all in all it was a short read and interesting enough.
April 6, 2022
Hurt Others
is just fucking fantastic. Such a great mix-tape of short stories that scream and pulse with an honest voice of dirty realism and imagination. I absolutely love how Sam Pink thinks, and writes, in such a deft and scattershot way; roiling in the mundane, with the heart and voice of a poet. I often laughed out loud, or shook my head in disbelief, as I burned through this great (too short) book. I'm just thankful that this is the mind he has, and the will to share it in writing with us other lucky suckers.
Highlights include: "Twizzlers", "Thing That Lists The Scars I Have", and "Fun".
⭐⭐⭐⭐!
(*Note: The ONLY reason I didn't rate this 5 stars is because I have the Thumbs Down Press edition (the one with the drawing of the cross-legged character on the cover; which I'm guessing is self-published) and it is not formatted properly for this print size -- obviously done for 6x9, and then printed at 5x8. Doesn't effect the writing but it's aesthetically displeasing, and just lazy. But then I was gifted this copy, so I'm out nothing.)
Highlights include: "Twizzlers", "Thing That Lists The Scars I Have", and "Fun".
⭐⭐⭐⭐!
(*Note: The ONLY reason I didn't rate this 5 stars is because I have the Thumbs Down Press edition (the one with the drawing of the cross-legged character on the cover; which I'm guessing is self-published) and it is not formatted properly for this print size -- obviously done for 6x9, and then printed at 5x8. Doesn't effect the writing but it's aesthetically displeasing, and just lazy. But then I was gifted this copy, so I'm out nothing.)
January 30, 2015
the stories started out pretty strong, but kind of devolved toward the end of the collection. sam pink has such a strong voice. he's so hard to get a firm grip on. half the time i find him repulsive, the other half i just want to cuddle up and call him beautiful. i agree with another review here that this collection becomes much more poignant if you interpret hurt others not as a command, but as hurt (the adjective) others (the subject). this is a world that i want to be so alien to me, but all of these people are familiar, and their being here in this book and being beautiful and individual makes me feel guilty. and that's the story of how i alternated between giving this book 2 or 3 stars and ultimately settled on 3.
January 21, 2014
Not what I expected at all. Very blunt. Very stream-of-consciousness. Fun. Unsettling. The more time I spend away from it the more I think I liked it. I would maybe prefer this guy doing some more genre stuff though.
December 7, 2014
Probably my favorite of his books. A good balance between his novels and his prose poems. I especially enjoyed his story about drinking moonshine. Classic Pink!
February 21, 2021
Pretty funny/sad, like the mumble core of books. His voice reminds me of a friend of mine, so that made it more enjoyable for me. Pink is at least better than tao Lin at this sort of thing.
May 8, 2016
I really like what's going on in Sam Pink's head.
the characters felt so real and the stories flowed so easily.
huge sense of humor, just amazing!
the characters felt so real and the stories flowed so easily.
huge sense of humor, just amazing!
March 17, 2020
Hurt Others is 112 pages of deliciously wack social commentary.
December 29, 2017
A short collection of short stories, of briefly held jobs and brief relationships. Short, poetic statement. I appreciate people who write short books. This is the second Sam Pink I've read. Although somewhat similar in style to Rontel, I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. There is still some of the dirty charm, dreamlike (or reality-like) odd transitions (work -> roommate showing homemade porn -> fantasy of mowing lawn -> disabled kid with baby rabbits and toad), obscure details, and incongruous thoughts I enjoyed in Rontel, but less of the humor. Some stories (especially the last) are deliberately unpleasant -- though perhaps in pursuit of the same transcendence -- I don't know exactly what Pink was in pursuit of here: a sort of hyper-realism?
July 22, 2020
Yeah, this was really good, reminded me a ton of Jesus's Son with just the shear amount of humanity seeping from it. The main character is incredibly relatable (at least to me) in their sheer feeling of how life overwhelms. The supporting cast mostly (not all) suck, but hey, so do most people's. It's a quick read and supports a good small publishing company. Definitely recommend
February 11, 2022
18 short stories by Sam Pink. Some great, some pointless, all weird. If you enjoy Sam Pink it's for sure worth the read but if you are not familiar with the author it's probably not the best starting point.
September 23, 2017
I'm not going to review this book. What's the point?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews