Sophisticated Devices/Make No Mistake by Jesse Michaels

by Jesse Michaels

This, the first of the Barnacle Split Editions, features two stories, one by Jesse Michaels, one by Sam McPheeters. Jesse Michaels' "Make No Mistake" revolves around the story of a young man whose chance encounter with a woman in a therapist's office tips off an unhinged adventure that completely changes his perspective on life. Sam McPheeters' "Sophisticated Devices" takes on the prison system, following a man released from prison navigating a world that is hostile to him and his past.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Contemporary

Paperback

First published October 13, 2015

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

The McPheeters side of this split fiction release, the story titled 'Sophisticated Devides', is a solid piece of satire that is both compelling and open-ended enough to warrant expansion to a larger work. McPheeters excels at parody, subtle absurdity, and deadpan humor, all of which I greatly appreciate. The Michaels story, 'Make No Mistake', had its moments, but overall I thought it was uneven. Mostly it's the beginning that kind of stutters. Eventually, the narrative unfurls into a mockery of new age cults, which was pretty spot-on and amusing. The story has an aimless feel to it that doesn't serve the plot, but it's short enough that it can be overlooked. Michaels was a little too heavy-handed with the exclamation points, but that is a pet peeve of mine in dialogue.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A week before I wrote this I bought the book.

It was a Friday. While I was on break from work I went and tried to buy tickets for the 30th Anniversary show in NYC of Screeching Weasel (I didn't think of this at the time, but another link, Sam McPheeters was obviously in Born Against (I say obvious because if you aren't one of my friends who is reading this out of some obligation and you stumbled across this you probably already know this (and also the next part)) and Born Against had a split 7" with Screeching Weasel back in the early 90's (which was interesting although not my favorite work by either band, but it was fun to hear Born Against singing a silly song about girls while Screeching Weasel whined about the atrocities in El Salvador). The box office to buy the tickets was closed for the holiday weekend. So I failed to buy any tickets.

Walking back to work I realized that this day in early Septemeber 2016 would have been the most amazing day of my life if it was happening in September 1996. 22 year old Greg would have loved to have had the chance to see Screeching Weasel and to have a book with a story from the dude from Born Against (and less excited but also still somewhat happy to have a story from the guy from Operation Ivy also (but he would have been thinking, why can't the other Jesse from the early Lookout! Records / East Bay scene have written a story instead because he found Blatz way more amusing than Op Ivy)).

2016 Greg just felt kind of old because of these thoughts and then started to wonder about how stunted and ungrown up he actually was, that he was still happy about these things even though he no longer really identifies at all with punk shit, but also that he identifies even less with 'grown up' shit and then started to picture what it would have been like if when he was 16 if his dad had come home one day all excited because some semi-obscure band the vocalist of an even more obscure band from his younger days had just released stuff and that had made his day. I would have thought he was fucking insane.

This surprisingly didn't depress the shit out of me.

Anyway.....

Two short stories. One my Sam McPheeters and one from Jesse Michaels.

The Sam McPheeters story is kind of what you might expect if you read his first novel. Kind of an absurd take on the darker sides of modern society. It's about a dude who was some kind of child molester is let out of prison. Part of his parole is he has to always wear a t-shirt that lights up and flashes messages like "Protect your children from me". He gets a job at the pretzel booth at a gigantic New Jersey mall. Stuff happens.

The Jesse Michaels story is a boy meets girl, girl joins a new agey type cult and tries to get the boy to join, too, story.

They were both good, I would have liked more from each story, but they are just two short stories in a little 90 page book so I knew what I was getting into.

And that's my self-centered review for this book.

*To add to 'nostalogia' week, I also picked up the latest issue of Cometbus a few days earlier. 1996's Greg's head would have exploded.

**Universe, if you'd like to give me another day like this could I suggest a Jawbreaker reunion and a novel from Steve Ignorant that both become available to me on the same day?

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Checked this out after reading Jesse Michael’s full length novel Whispering Bodies which I thought was really funny and well written. I thought the idea of a split book like a split record from two punk rockers was a pretty cool idea as well. Both stories are short.

Sophisticated Devices was definitely pretty interesting. I enjoyed it enough to be interested in McPheeter’s others work.

Make No Mistake didn’t disappoint and was funny and had a nice ending. I wish Jesse would write more fiction!

[Dave]

I liked everything about this except the stories.

[Melissa]

Both essays brought up some interesting points, but were so short I'm not sure I would have called this a book.

[Greg Soden · Rating 5 out of 5]

WEIRD/FANTASTIC