Fun Camp

by Gabe Durham

Told in monologues, speeches, soliloquies, sermons, letters, cards, and lists, FUN CAMP is a freewheelin’ summer camp novel smashed to bits. Spend a week with the young inhabitants of a camp bent on molding campers into fun and interesting people via pranks, food fights, greased watermelon relays. Along the way, you’ll meet Dave and Holly, totalitarian head counselors who may be getting too old for this, Bernadette, a Luddite chaplain with some kids to convert, Billy, a first-timer tasting freedom, and Tad, a shaggy dude with a Jesus complex.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Humor

166 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 31, 2013

About the author

Gabe Durham is the author of a novel, FUN CAMP, and a book about 90s Christian Nintendo games, BIBLE ADVENTURES. He is the editor of Boss Fight Books. He lives in Los Angeles.

http://www.bossfightbooks.com

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is great. But I wanted to give it fewer stars than the author did. It's definitely at least a 2.5 star book.

[Gabe Durham · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wrote this! Ask anybody.

http://publishinggenius.com/?p=2033

Here's a piece from the book called "Apology + Opportunity":

Tommy, Janna, I’m going to stop you right there. Now when I say the feelings you’re describing are exceptional, I mean nuke the moon. Your account of the time spent between Tuesday’s kickball game and this evening when I happened upon you in each other—all I can say is wow and God bless and cherish it because for some of us, this has never happened. Have I been in love? I would hesitate and then say yes. But there is love and there is the ineffable mountain you’re scaling. To review: you two share the same favorite show, favorite movie, favorite band, favorite song, you both run track, and you both find camp a little immature. What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my misinformed intrusion dampen your beginnings. There’s an expression for the look you two are giving each other: Married in our Hearts. And when such looks are exchanged between two consenters age fifteen and up, the Lord winks and turns away. So too shall I. What happens next is: I’m going for a forty-minute nature walk. You will find my cabin unlocked.

[Peter Tieryas]

Adding a video review to the original review with archival footage from a 1950s YMCA camp commercial:

http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/video-re...

Review from HTMLGiant:

"Summer camp as microcosm for society. Fun Camp by Gabe Durham acts as a strange microscope for the cabin of our lives. I used to go to summer camp and write journal entries every night detailing my experiences. Nostalgia overwhelmed me as I read through the letters, entries, stories, and logs that comprise Fun Camp. The bitterness and joy of the Bildungsroman is rendered as multiple epistolary works, the contrasts between the counselors and the students divvied up by metaphysical musings on camp life. The miracle is how much gets packed into that short period of time; falling in and out of love, friendships born and betrayed, philosophical schisms formed and patched."

http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/fun-camp...

[Joe Sacksteder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's my review on Tarpaulin Sky: http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/2013/05/g...

Basically, I've been teaching excerpts of this book in my Intro Creative Writing class for two years and hope to soon teach the whole thing. If you're a teacher or a former/current camper or camp counselor or if you like funny things or if you have a pulse, please buy this book. You will smile the whole time you're reading it.

[Mel Bosworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readers who never went to summer camp needn’t worry. The characters in this vibrant novel-in-shorts (swim trunks?), from campers to counselors to Grogg the cook, are the perfect guides to a weeklong, wooded adventure away from the lazy comforts of home. Fun Camp moves linearly from Monday to Sunday, covering nervous arrival to wrenching departure and all the accelerated, hot-house growth most conducive to youth in between. By using a range of recurring characters, varying voices, and formal shifts (lists, monologues, questions, etc.), Durham keeps the reader engaged and laughing and often surprised. Despite their brevity (or perhaps because of it), the shorts are bursting with movement. It’s no easy feat, and Durham makes it look easy throughout, particularly with letters, suggestions, and, here, a “Question”: “What’s the rule on campers soliciting curly locks from loved counselors?” Whether stargazing, pining, preaching, or struggling, each character is growing and learning lessons which are implicitly imparted to the reader. From “Everything I Know About Music”: “My friends: If I ever kiss all of you, you’ll know I’ve just made a terrible mistake.” There’s a level of sophistication here—the gut punch while you’re laughing—and it’s so subtle as to be stealthily disarming. Autumn comes and then winter, though in the summer it’s easy to live fast and maintain a kind of temporary short-sightedness that comes with warm water and soft skin. Life’s disappointments, however, and the inevitability of change, are right around the corner, and where this book succeeds so well is in its ability to stir the reader’s sense of nostalgia and the impermanence of youth. It conjures precious feelings that haunt both the head and the heart, and solidifies the notion that, due in large part to their sheer speed and amplification, our younger years are (or can be) the best years of our lives, and certainly the most pure and honest. Above all, this lovely and warming work is a celebration of the best kind of experience: shared.

[Ryan Bradford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will give 5 stars to anything that makes me lol. So many lols in this book.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Multiple voices achieve harmony. And they're all singing that, "The Ants go marching one by one," camp song. Really great, really resonant work about childhood, exploring in miniature the way we learn independence from our families, fond our own voices, and become responsible for the way we end up presenting ourselves to the world.

[Devon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for everyone. However, because I have such fond memories of camp, I enjoyed it. It's funny how seemingly unique experiences are really a part of the greater "camp" one. It's a truly universal appreciation, no matter which camp you are at.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty spiky little book. Good for those who have attended any kind of camp, but especially Christian ones. Enjoyable otherwise, too, but so many of these slices do speak directly to my time in that world. In my blood always but good to see it in a book. :)

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review forthcoming somewhere.

[Tim Paggi · Rating 5 out of 5]

funny and exacting novel of monologue-esque vignettes, all swirling around the theme of a week at FUN CAMP. the world should enroll, see the world through these innocent and all-knowing eyes.

[J.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I ran an indie press I'd totally have published this book. It is fucking rad as all get out.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huh. That was interesting...

[Michael Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fucking Tad Gunnick.

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't get it.

[Kalina Nissen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an experience. I liked Billy’s letters. I found the experimental lack of solid definable characters (especially narrators) to be difficult to enjoy.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://nanofiction.org/weekly-feature...

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review from Book Giveaway
I am a sucker for multimedia, postmodern, epistolary, multiple narrator fiction--House of Leaves, John Barth's Letters, Nick Bantock's artsy postcard correspondences--so the description given for Durham's little novel had me intrigued. Sad to say, the end product was not quite what I was hoping for.
The novel is brief little speeches, letters, manifestos, etc. , as written..or proclaimed by a variety of characters at a typical American summer camp...or I am guessing a Christian youth retreat. I attended one summer camp as a youth, but that was a music camp and I doubt my experience is not at all to what Durham has had, and both are nothing compared to summer camp movies that I grew up watching during The 80s--Meatballs, Little Foxes and the like. My main frustration with the novel is that with each little vignette, you are expected to guess who is speaking, and to whom. I got the fact there were multiple characters, but most of them were blank spaces to me, so I really could not get all that invested in the book personally. Certainly many if the vignettes were cute and interesting. But the only clear character "voice" if you will, was the crazed ramblings of the cook (not counting the minimalist letters from Billy, which is the parts of the book that actually are epistolary). It was hard to discern just who was speaking at other times, because all of the characters seemed to have the same capacity of a weird, quirky way of speaking and philosophising,,,very much like a Wes Anderson movie.
An interesting concept that I wish Durham could have really expanded upon...with form letters , in different typsets to distinguish from speeches and notes, perhaps schedules or maps of the campsite could have brought me into this world a bit deeper.
I see Durham rated his own work 2 stars. I wholeheartedly agree. I hope Durham can be even more imaginative in his next project.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hated camp, all camps, but especially sleepaway camp. Of course mine was all summer and not the week-long adventure in freedom and romance and violence and mystery that is depicted in FUN CAMP. Also, mine was secular and not religious. That would have been worse. So, I came to this book through a backdoor. I met the author at a reading and feel it's important to support writers that I know. I'm glad I did.

Gabe Durham is a good writer. He knows how to create stories. He knows how to make form serve as function for those stories. I believe all literature is experimental, but some literature is more experimental than others. This collection of super-short stories or monologues or letters or announcements or what have you creates a montage that manages to work individually and collectively. By the end of the week, as parents disrupt shangri la, I felt the same nostalgia as the campers, the same pull to keep the ties formed over the seven days tight.

Guess I've gotten over my memories of Brant Lake Camp only 40 years too late.

[Rupert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Publishing Genius rarely disappoints ( except for I Don't Know I Said which I thought was not commentary or exploration of nothingness but nothingness itself. I only mention that to add seeming objectivity to my love of most everything else they publish.). And Fun Camp is, as my Aunt Yadja used to say, a real firecracker. Epistolary in form, it reminds me of one of my favorites of that form, Letters To Wendy. Momentum and emotional complexity build with each fragment and the funny parts are often the laugh out loud while alone kind.

[Matt Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of dispatches reads like the Murphy's law of summer camps: anything that can happen, in the context of weirdness, hilarity, or fear, will happen. Even people who have never been to summer camp as a child can appreciate the satire of the subject. The process of growth an adolescent can take in the course of one summer is illustrated here in all of it's glorious awkwardness.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good stuff all around; I interviewed Durham here: http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2013/06/1...

[jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to confess, I initially bought this because Gabe Durham is my friend's friend, and I thought it might be gimmicky hipster nonsense. If it is, it is at least brilliant gimmicky hipster nonsense, and you should buy it and read it and let its comic genius just wash the hell over you.

[Beatrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

So wonderfully original, poignant and fun. This book is quite the accomplishment.

"We'd chased and caught the ecstatic moment, mistook it for a house to live in."

You'll never have a better time than when you're reading this book.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clever little book riffing on the clean-cut summer camp experience. Though I am biased as I loved going to summer camp every August, I've memorized the whole dialogue of Heavyweights, and never missed an episode of Disney's Bug Juice and Nickelodeon's Salute Your Shorts.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I admit to not getting very far in this as it annoyed the hell out of me. The 'voice' of the story kept changing and all the chapters I read, were either written as journal entries or letters home from camp. It wasn't clever or funny in any way. I found it disjointed and gave up at about 25%.

[Erica M · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great collection of comical short stories/experiences from the campers and counselors at Fun Camp! I suggest it if you are looking for something different than your normal novels. Think outside the box.

[Josephine Ensign · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this was like escaping back in time to summer camp for a few days (and nights) full of quirky people, skits, pranks, and laughs. The mosaic structure of the small book added to the fun. This was a great escape from much headier and more ponderous reading.

[Tyler Crumrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hey hey I loved this book and wrote a full review for the Sundog Lit Blog: wp.me/p2PWXg-ew

[Jamie Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't plow through it. Take a break between the days. Find your favorites. Enjoy.