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The Origins of Disgust, Self-Hatred, and Hostility
Set in the underbellies of Southern California during the 1980s, this shocking story focuses on the life of a young runaway named Mike Hollister, the criminal-minded surrogate family who molds him, and the lucrative, illegal operations he accepts as the norm. At seventeen years old, Mike abandons his cohorts of crime in the suburbs for the drug infested canyons and urine drenched underpasses of downtown. In the filth and disparity of the homeless, intravenous drug addicts, prostitutes, and the mentally ill, he devises one of the most original, and highly profitable, illegal money making schemes ever. Even though Mike may be the most street-wise kid around, he can't predict the unforeseen disasters his operation will produce in the most brutal of manners.
- GenresFiction
146 pages, Paperback
First published April 12, 2012
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253 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 17, 2013
I was attracted to the book initially, as an earlier review that I had seen on Amazon had compared this work to that of Chuck Palahniuk, and whilst I can see why that reviewer felt moved to compare to such illustrious talent, I don't entirely agree. Sure, a lot of the apparently well researched information is delivered in the assured and confident manner of a narrator that knows exactly what they are talking about, but my view on it is that where Palahniuk takes a small idea or concept and stretches it out of all plausible shape, the story that Leek is telling is still far-fetched, but remains plausible. It's a credit to Leek himself, that whilst he cites Chuck P as an influence, he also manages to retain his own voice in his storytelling.
Let me tell you now then, that the book itself is not for the faint hearted. It is, however, a funny, sickeningly violent, and brutally honest account of a young man in the eighties who makes various transitions from curious witness of uncompromising criminal activities, through small time drug dealer and canyon dwelling runaway, to a hardcore drug addict and willing result of an unorthodox upbringing. It starts out slightly unfocussed, as a series of loose vignettes, with the last sentence of each one acting as an introduction to the next. But, as the tale goes on, and begins to concentrate a lot more on the evolving anti-hero Mike, you realise that they are all well placed pieces of the back story jigsaw. Leek describes his world in such vivid and fantastic detail (he even goes so far as to include floor plans and school reports for added colour) that you know exactly who is where and what they're doing. Some of the more violent passages are told with great humour, and whilst the subject matter is grim, and gut-wrenching, Leek continues to keep his tongue firmly in cheek.
My advice is to enter this book with a completely open mind, and, once you've overcome an initial frustration with the vignette device and the story settles down, let Mike take you on a filthy and violent trip into the darkest depths of the human condition, and make sure you have plenty of soap to hand because you're going to need a shower afterwards. I understand that a sequel is in the pipeline, and I will personally be seeking it out. A very good read indeed.
**Originally reviewed for Books and Pals Blog. May have received a free review copy**
Let me tell you now then, that the book itself is not for the faint hearted. It is, however, a funny, sickeningly violent, and brutally honest account of a young man in the eighties who makes various transitions from curious witness of uncompromising criminal activities, through small time drug dealer and canyon dwelling runaway, to a hardcore drug addict and willing result of an unorthodox upbringing. It starts out slightly unfocussed, as a series of loose vignettes, with the last sentence of each one acting as an introduction to the next. But, as the tale goes on, and begins to concentrate a lot more on the evolving anti-hero Mike, you realise that they are all well placed pieces of the back story jigsaw. Leek describes his world in such vivid and fantastic detail (he even goes so far as to include floor plans and school reports for added colour) that you know exactly who is where and what they're doing. Some of the more violent passages are told with great humour, and whilst the subject matter is grim, and gut-wrenching, Leek continues to keep his tongue firmly in cheek.
My advice is to enter this book with a completely open mind, and, once you've overcome an initial frustration with the vignette device and the story settles down, let Mike take you on a filthy and violent trip into the darkest depths of the human condition, and make sure you have plenty of soap to hand because you're going to need a shower afterwards. I understand that a sequel is in the pipeline, and I will personally be seeking it out. A very good read indeed.
**Originally reviewed for Books and Pals Blog. May have received a free review copy**
February 16, 2016
An unflinching fictional account of growing up in the suburbs, canyons, and finally streets of San Diego. A large portion of the beginning is spent telling the stories of ancillary characters that provide context to the main character's fucked-up life path and current situation. However, this does not detract from the overall story and keeps you reading at an enjoyable clip, despite the gruesome details. Engaging & tightly-written, this book will keep you invested until the last page and leave you wanting more. Keep an eye out for the sequel, which I'm sure will be just as good.
October 3, 2012
If you're interested in learning about how NOT to go about life, this is the book for you. Very well-written and full of characters you can't shake off.
October 23, 2020
Wow. Let me start off by saying.. I have never read anything more obscene in my entire life.
Looking at the title of the book, I assumed this was going to be a formal/ informative read about crime anthropology. I have lots of things to say about it since it's quite gruesome and will remain in my memory forever.
The narrative is absolutely suspenseful yet slightly unfeasible. Character development (especially remorse) is very rare. It felt like shifting from one horrible experience to another that's even more grisly and disturbing. What was particularly difficult was distinguishing between the characters since they all seem to share one quality: lack of conscience. Genuine sympathy seems to be a psychological aspect of insignificant/ secondary characters only. Additionally, the main character gets involved in extremely graphic incidents during the entire plot and narrates them in a matter-of-fact tone that only emphasizes his lack of empathy and moral sense. We only experience such humane emotions when he encounters Charlene and finds out about her suicide.
What I can extract from this work socioeconomically, (underneath all infernally vivid images and chapters) is that hostility, crime, self-hatred, and violence originate from privileges, poverty, and damaged mental health. They are also consequences of a corrupt system that pays no effort in eliminating such biased injustice. Most of the atrocities mentioned (including the chapters about wwii and marines) are merely for profit and domination, or to compensate for the lack of it. *of course there are more possible reasons but these are most prevalent*
Overall, I personally believe it would be naive to judge this book only as morbid and dismiss the general message the author MIGHT be trying to convey. However, if this book was not intended to be didactic in any way, it is still a lasting read for the abhorrent and repulsive feelings it gave me.
Looking at the title of the book, I assumed this was going to be a formal/ informative read about crime anthropology. I have lots of things to say about it since it's quite gruesome and will remain in my memory forever.
The narrative is absolutely suspenseful yet slightly unfeasible. Character development (especially remorse) is very rare. It felt like shifting from one horrible experience to another that's even more grisly and disturbing. What was particularly difficult was distinguishing between the characters since they all seem to share one quality: lack of conscience. Genuine sympathy seems to be a psychological aspect of insignificant/ secondary characters only. Additionally, the main character gets involved in extremely graphic incidents during the entire plot and narrates them in a matter-of-fact tone that only emphasizes his lack of empathy and moral sense. We only experience such humane emotions when he encounters Charlene and finds out about her suicide.
What I can extract from this work socioeconomically, (underneath all infernally vivid images and chapters) is that hostility, crime, self-hatred, and violence originate from privileges, poverty, and damaged mental health. They are also consequences of a corrupt system that pays no effort in eliminating such biased injustice. Most of the atrocities mentioned (including the chapters about wwii and marines) are merely for profit and domination, or to compensate for the lack of it. *of course there are more possible reasons but these are most prevalent*
Overall, I personally believe it would be naive to judge this book only as morbid and dismiss the general message the author MIGHT be trying to convey. However, if this book was not intended to be didactic in any way, it is still a lasting read for the abhorrent and repulsive feelings it gave me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 3, 2013
I know Ken Leek from playing gigs in Mariposa, and I had no idea he's a writer. I play in a band from Oakdale called The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, and he's come to see us play in Mariposa and Sonora. I was surprised to see him a few weeks ago at a Thursday night gig in Laguna Beach. I was a little weary after driving 5 1/2 hours doing 85 the whole way from my driveway in Oakdale to Laguna Beach, so I was a little out of it when I talked to him. Being that I'm used to seeing him in the Sierra Nevada foothills, it threw me off a bit to see him in Southern California. That night, he gave the boys in the band a copy of "The Origins of Disgust, Self-Hatred, and Hostility," and the next morning, they gave me the job of reading it, probably because my day job is high school English teacher. I just finished, and it was a lot of fun. I've never written a Goodreads review, so I figured I'd start here since I know Ken and had no idea he is such a gorehound! First of all, second to "American Psycho," this is the most disgusting book I've ever read. I don't want to give any spoilers, but there's a scene at a zoo in "AP" that's too unsettling for even a dedicated horror fan as myself. Therefore, Ken's book has to come in second. For all of its transgressive content, there's one line it doesn't cross, which Ellis did in "AP," leaving me feeling dirty for having read it. Still, this book has some incredibly sickening descriptions of horrifying events that happen to the narrator on his path from being a wounded runaway to a self loathing monster.
The first things I noticed about the book when the boys handed it to me were the cover and the glossary. The back cover of the book is completely glossed over with shocking passages from the novel, but my favorite two weren't included (SPOILER ALERT?): "There's something about a dead body that makes you want to poke at it" (90) and "Both of her guardian angels were suffering from debilitating mental illnesses" (113). I thought the glossary was kind of funny because it defined words and expressions that I didn't think anyone reading this book would need defined for them. Reading Ken's definitions and examples, however, is pretty funny. I don't want to give any of them away, but there are a few gems in there.
The thing I liked most about this book is Ken's vision of the 80s, or for me at least, having come of age in the 90s, the world before the Internet, DVDs, cell phones and the like. This might sound goofy, but the book made me really nostalgic for the world of underground zines and bootleg VHS tapes. First of all, I don't read much independent or self published literature, so this book, with all of its brutality and edge, makes me feel as if I'm reading the underground fiction I used to find in obscure, disgusting zines that would advertise themselves in Fangoria's classified section. On the VHS note, the narrator Mikey spends hours and hours dubbing movies on to VHS, which I misspent a lot of my youth doing, as well. I wasn't high, though. Also, the millennials have no idea what it was like to not have instant access to anything and everything. I used to buy bootleg VHS tapes by mail of films you either couldn't find anywhere or that were cut to pieces in order to meet MPAA's standards. Usually, they'd be dubs of Japanese laser discs, and they'd have a little break in the middle where the video pirate had to flip the disc. What thirteen year old would insist on having to see an unedited bootleg of Troma's ridiculous "Rabid Grannies" or scoff at anything but a pristine, letterboxed print of Argento's "Suspiria"? Me! Little greasy headed chubby horror fans were out there, and we wouldn't settle for the inferior crap our local video stores had to offer! For example, you could find a movie in the video stores called "The Seven Doors of Death," but that was a heavily edited version of a great movie called "The Beyond"; scenes were cut and rearranged with a different soundtrack. That wouldn't do for me! If you were a young kid interested in Lucio Fulci, John Woo, Jesus Franco, Peter Jackson (before LOTR), or Pier Paolo Pasolini, you weren't going to find the movies you wanted to see unless you had a very special pre-Blockbuster-corporate-takeover -video store, and even then you were usually shit out of luck. Shit, it used to be hard to find "Heavy Metal" anywhere! Anyway, Ken's book takes me back to that pre-Internet world where discovering "The Story of Ricky Oh" was a life changing event, not just another YouTube video to be clicked over or torrented onto a terabyte worth of thousands of other films on an external hard drive, never to be watched. Ken's novel, with it's independent attitude and unflinching horror, takes me back to a world that was much different than the present, when I was an early teen with peculiar tastes. Yeah, none of this had anything to do with the book; I guess you could say the novel brought me back to a special, weird little milieu. Is that the right word?
As a novel, I'm not sure it came together the way I usually expect of a novel. Up until the final chapters, new characters with new back stories show up and earlier characters with major roles and elaborate back stories are abandoned. I guess that doesn't matter much since it is about the narrator Mikey and his lifestyle, which involves deep connections with people that are cut off entirely within moments. Still, I keep expecting a few of the main characters to come back into the picture and resolve the novel in some whiz-bang way I've come to expect from novels, but no, that doesn't happen. There was a moment in the final chapter, or maybe the penultimate chapter, where I was certain one character would show up in a crazy resolution and tie it all together. Nope, but then again, that would have been a great move for a traditional novel and not something consistent with the gritty, no--horrifying realism Ken Leek shows us. Still, it's amazing how the story goes from bad to worse to disgusting to repulsive to nauseating to . . . you get the idea. This book never lets up. Mikey sees enough horror in his young life to warp the minds of twenty teens and keep dozens of therapists in business, and when the final blow comes, the novel ends. We don't get to know what happens to him exactly, but from earlier clues in the narration, we know he made it through to some degree. Is that a spoiler? Sorry.
Anyway, I enjoyed this sickening rag thoroughly, and I'm impressed that Ken had this one in him. I don't know him very well, but he's certainly a nice guy. Apparently he's inspired by Chuck Palaniuk, but I wouldn't know anything about that. The extent of my CP knowledge is having seen "Fight Club" a couple of times. You should read it, especially if your curiosity is as morbid as mine and you like supporting independent authors. Check it out!
The first things I noticed about the book when the boys handed it to me were the cover and the glossary. The back cover of the book is completely glossed over with shocking passages from the novel, but my favorite two weren't included (SPOILER ALERT?): "There's something about a dead body that makes you want to poke at it" (90) and "Both of her guardian angels were suffering from debilitating mental illnesses" (113). I thought the glossary was kind of funny because it defined words and expressions that I didn't think anyone reading this book would need defined for them. Reading Ken's definitions and examples, however, is pretty funny. I don't want to give any of them away, but there are a few gems in there.
The thing I liked most about this book is Ken's vision of the 80s, or for me at least, having come of age in the 90s, the world before the Internet, DVDs, cell phones and the like. This might sound goofy, but the book made me really nostalgic for the world of underground zines and bootleg VHS tapes. First of all, I don't read much independent or self published literature, so this book, with all of its brutality and edge, makes me feel as if I'm reading the underground fiction I used to find in obscure, disgusting zines that would advertise themselves in Fangoria's classified section. On the VHS note, the narrator Mikey spends hours and hours dubbing movies on to VHS, which I misspent a lot of my youth doing, as well. I wasn't high, though. Also, the millennials have no idea what it was like to not have instant access to anything and everything. I used to buy bootleg VHS tapes by mail of films you either couldn't find anywhere or that were cut to pieces in order to meet MPAA's standards. Usually, they'd be dubs of Japanese laser discs, and they'd have a little break in the middle where the video pirate had to flip the disc. What thirteen year old would insist on having to see an unedited bootleg of Troma's ridiculous "Rabid Grannies" or scoff at anything but a pristine, letterboxed print of Argento's "Suspiria"? Me! Little greasy headed chubby horror fans were out there, and we wouldn't settle for the inferior crap our local video stores had to offer! For example, you could find a movie in the video stores called "The Seven Doors of Death," but that was a heavily edited version of a great movie called "The Beyond"; scenes were cut and rearranged with a different soundtrack. That wouldn't do for me! If you were a young kid interested in Lucio Fulci, John Woo, Jesus Franco, Peter Jackson (before LOTR), or Pier Paolo Pasolini, you weren't going to find the movies you wanted to see unless you had a very special pre-Blockbuster-corporate-takeover -video store, and even then you were usually shit out of luck. Shit, it used to be hard to find "Heavy Metal" anywhere! Anyway, Ken's book takes me back to that pre-Internet world where discovering "The Story of Ricky Oh" was a life changing event, not just another YouTube video to be clicked over or torrented onto a terabyte worth of thousands of other films on an external hard drive, never to be watched. Ken's novel, with it's independent attitude and unflinching horror, takes me back to a world that was much different than the present, when I was an early teen with peculiar tastes. Yeah, none of this had anything to do with the book; I guess you could say the novel brought me back to a special, weird little milieu. Is that the right word?
As a novel, I'm not sure it came together the way I usually expect of a novel. Up until the final chapters, new characters with new back stories show up and earlier characters with major roles and elaborate back stories are abandoned. I guess that doesn't matter much since it is about the narrator Mikey and his lifestyle, which involves deep connections with people that are cut off entirely within moments. Still, I keep expecting a few of the main characters to come back into the picture and resolve the novel in some whiz-bang way I've come to expect from novels, but no, that doesn't happen. There was a moment in the final chapter, or maybe the penultimate chapter, where I was certain one character would show up in a crazy resolution and tie it all together. Nope, but then again, that would have been a great move for a traditional novel and not something consistent with the gritty, no--horrifying realism Ken Leek shows us. Still, it's amazing how the story goes from bad to worse to disgusting to repulsive to nauseating to . . . you get the idea. This book never lets up. Mikey sees enough horror in his young life to warp the minds of twenty teens and keep dozens of therapists in business, and when the final blow comes, the novel ends. We don't get to know what happens to him exactly, but from earlier clues in the narration, we know he made it through to some degree. Is that a spoiler? Sorry.
Anyway, I enjoyed this sickening rag thoroughly, and I'm impressed that Ken had this one in him. I don't know him very well, but he's certainly a nice guy. Apparently he's inspired by Chuck Palaniuk, but I wouldn't know anything about that. The extent of my CP knowledge is having seen "Fight Club" a couple of times. You should read it, especially if your curiosity is as morbid as mine and you like supporting independent authors. Check it out!
May 17, 2024
Great story. It is a brilliant work of fiction but is the real story of so many.
July 1, 2021
I don’t know what I found on here that led me to this book, but it did. Reading this book and thinking about it literally felt like it my brain was poisoned; it’s a filthy fucking book. It’s very very Chuck Palahniuk and upsetting. The “gags” in book were kinda cartoony.
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