Portable Altamont

by Brian Joseph Davis

Deliciously wicked satires about local and international celebrities, the poems in Portable Altamont evince an irrepressible grasp of the zeitgeist, its machinations and manipulations, its possibilities and puerility. Who other than artist and raconteur Brian Joseph Davis could have imagined Margaret Atwood as a human beatbox, Jessica Simpson applying for arts grants or the Swedish Chef reciting T. S. Eliot? Davis uses every literary form available to revel in and rearrange pop culture. Even the index turns into a short story about Luke Perry’s descent into a shadowy underworld of Parisian intellectuals and terrorists. A word of this book is a complete and utter fiction. Philip Roth is not David Lee Roth’s brother. Reese Witherspoon is not a Communist cell leader, and Don Knotts has never been a New Age guru. The stuff about Nicole Richie, however, is absolutely true. Portable Altamont is that rare book that is both incendiary and compulsively readable. Get to it before the lawyers do!

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 19, 2001

Reviews

[Emma Cranby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally so distressingly bizarre I want to cry but at other times superbly funny. Although the commentors who've said that this one is held back by it's cultural immediacy are correct, the parts I did have any kind of comprehension of were alright, and I genuinely appreciate... whatever it is.

[Sal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny little chapbook

[Jeffrey Greening · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poetry this dated can’t survive .

[DeadWeight · Rating 4 out of 5]

By virtue of its cultural immediacy, ages like milk*. Read immediately.

BEST BEFORE 05/11/2020

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*Conversely, it might just become something else entirely. The references that no longer hold up at times comes off as absurd by nature - maybe it's worth it to consider Portable Altamont a live, decomposing dext; a marker of mass pop decay (further compliments the book's recurring end note eulogies to the celebrity of 90210's Luke Perry). Once-topical SNL sketches shall peak, and then devolve into gorgeously absurd nonsense.

[Jack Daniel Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

By virtue of its cultural immediacy, ages like milk*. Read immediately.

BEST BEFORE 05/11/2020

___

*Conversely, it might just become something else entirely. The references that no longer hold up at times comes off as absurd by nature - maybe it's worth it to consider Portable Altamont a live, decomposing dext; a marker of mass pop decay (further compliments the book's recurring end note eulogies to the celebrity of 90210's Luke Perry). Once-topical SNL sketches shall peak, and then devolve into gorgeously absurd nonsense.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely one of the quirkiest books I've ever read. Sometimes hilarious, but sometimes a bit dull -- a mixed bag but worth the read for the really great laughs.

[Taylor]

I did not "get" this book.