Atmospheres

by Jon Konrath

No plot summary can suggest the mesmerizing texture of this caustically hilarious, aggressively mordant, constantly surprising and terrifyingly fun summation of the death-by-choking-on-hubris of the American dream in the 21st Century.

An unconventional abstract experiment depicting the elusive search for meaning within a chaotic world on the verge of collapse, this challenge to readers presents a mosaic of nightmarish, post-modern prose in the form of a non-linear novel exploring the existential definition of life. Quickly unfolding into a wildly imaginative world of death metal, serial killers, absurd cultural references, and sketches involving cough syrup abuse, post-apocalyptic chaos, and self-fulfillment through drone warfare, the book explores a descent into chemical imbalance and sexual horror.

Rendered in several narrative forms, the 101 disconnected pieces within this three-act novel forms a psychedelic story arc spanning the journey of the narrator to find the meaning of life within a near-future filled with chaos and destruction, to mine the depths of his nostalgia and explore the far reaches of the imagination to find satiation and serenity that no amount of sex, drugs, money, power, fame, therapy, or consumer electronics could touch. Dodging from past to present to future, Konrath's writing often goes meta and breaks the fourth wall, varying from between painfully honest personal narrative and grotesque dark fiction.

Atmospheres is as unnerving as it is enthralling, and is more disturbing than a cutthroat gang of genetically engineered Franz Kafka clones who've been spawned in petri dishes filled with PCP and fecal matter showing up at your door wearing Reagan masks and polyester leisure suits, wrestling in a wading pool filled with viscera and tapioca pudding.

Genres: Bizarro Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks

242 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2014

About the author

Jon Konrath is an American author born in 1971. He grew up in Indiana and studied computer science and English at Indiana University. After college, he worked as a software developer and technical writer, but eventually turned his attention to writing fiction.

Konrath is the author of several books, including "Rumored to Exist," "Thunderbird," and "The Earworm Inception." His writing is known for its unique blend of humor, absurdism, and surrealism, often blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.

In addition to writing, Konrath is also an accomplished photographer. He currently resides in California.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kon·ra·thi·an adjective \ˈkän-rath-ēən\

: a sentence or phrase used, in caustic hyperbole, to describe the complete meaninglessness of American culture and its icons

I stumbled to Wendy's on a hate bender to fuck sluts and eat chili. I saw Judge Ito, now bald with a huge ZZ Top beard, shoveling in baked potatoes covered in bacon bits and frosty ice cream.

Konra·thian noun \ˈkōnrä-thē-ən\

: Overlord of lower-middle class America. Shrines include mega-malls, dilapidated little league stadiums and the Coney Island midway.

"Hail the dark lord of killer processed cheese food product, motherfuckers!" he yelled, before blacking out in an epileptic seizure.

Kon·rath·ian synecdoche \kin-ˈrath-ēn\

: figure of speech that stands as the final word on a particular metaphor; no better allusion can be made
: the same goes for similes

The blob of a kid looked like pure 99-cent McDonald's hamburgers and high-fructose syrup, the punchline to a joke about the failure of corn subsidies.

[Arthur Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

We sat at one of the two-top tables in the corner, the pages of my book spread across every horizontal surface, the routines making no sense. “Your train needs tracks,” he kept saying, over and over, as if this meant something to me. “You have an unspoken contract to the reader, and you owe them a structured plot to drag them from one end to the other. This book is all train. You need tracks.”

Says Eddie, the author's writing buddy and occasional partner in crime. He has a point, and I'm sure there are many readers who'd probably agree with him, but then there are many readers who probably have no business reading Konrath in the first place, and if they ever had the misfortune of encountering one of his characters on the street, they would probably do well to cross to the other side. Of course, over there they'd only find something equally terrible and horrifying, perhaps even worse, but the irony would be utterly lost on them. If fiction is your escape, then the last place you'd ever want to be is in a Konrath book, because no one and nothing escapes his eye for the blackest of comedy and the banally absurd.

By removing the tracks of linear narrative and allowing the totality of his twisted visions to coalesce into a more appropriate form, Konrath does not merely dump a clusterfuck of unrelated awfulness into a book, just because he's too lazy to glue it all together in an orderly fashion, or just because he's more interested in pissing off the average reader (although he may be up to a bit of the latter). Rather, by eschewing the traditional tracks in favor of more train, what paradoxically emerges are the tracks of a form reinforced by its own chaotic content, and let me tell you: Konrath's train is in a perpetual state of wreck.

The author could be viewed as a depressive nihilist if he didn't obviously believe in what he's doing and enjoy doing it, even if half of what he does is more like a hopelessly insane nightmare than anything a normal person would want to read. He crosses the line and then he crosses it again a few more times, and the end result is usually nothing short of genius and hilarity.

They say practice mindfulness, practice meditation, practice kindness, practice breathing. I found no answers and wanted to practice driving a tank through a department store.

Brother, some days I know just how ya feel.

For more Konrath:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Nefariousbig · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s no secret I’m a huge Konrath fan. I can’t tell you why. Not because I don’t WANT to tell you. I can’t, because I have no idea. He’s that something special that helps me feel better about myself. Not in a “Yay, you’re a winner!” sorta way, but in a “Well, at least you’re not as bad as those people on the Jerry Springer Show” sorta way. Konrath has a way of making common, everyday occurrences seem like a recipe for a secret life. Example? After reading Atmospheres I came up with this fantastic recipe:

Cram seven Mother’s Taffy cookies into your favorite mug, pour hot goat’s milk over the cookies, count to 72, spoon feed yourself approx. 3lbs of pasty, beige, sugary deliciousness until you slip silently into a sugar coma, and dream you’re skipping through the black forest, with a naked James Franco, carrying a paper bag full of three-day old Long John Silver’s hushpuppies, and chugging a 64 oz. slush puppy spiked with mescaline from your Dora the Explorer sippy cup.

There’s just something about Konrath’s writing. He is the master of product placement. He is that ridiculously embarrassing impulse buy. He is the end cap of the junk food isle at the inconvenience store. He’s out there. But, just like you and me, he longs for something more, or something less, or something you can’t buy at Sigmor Station.

He wants to buy you road trip food. He wants to take you for a ride. He wants to teach you something you already knew, but in a different way. He wants to cram your head full of cookies and mescaline and make you head bang to Slayer until you puke perfect little cupcake shaped mounds of brain matter. Then he will wrap them in cellophane and sell them to the niños at the Mexican flea market for a peso. Don’t worry, it’s mostly the stuff you don’t need anyway. You don’t need all that shit clogging up your brain lobes. Trust me. Someday, you will thank Konrath. It may not be today. It may not be tomorrow. But, one day. You will.

Uh-oh, gotta get back to work now, we got a spill on isle 69. It's Raining Blood!

Now for a totally gratuitous picture of my dirty little James Franco. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

[Danger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jon Konrath should be his own genre.

What could we call it? Konrathian? Konrathesque? Post-Konrathalyptic? Whatever. How about YOU come up with the term, you judgmental prick. My point is this: Jon Konrath's stuff reads like nothing else.

Atmospheres, at first glance, is seemingly innocuous. The cover is rather benign and the synopsis hints at almost nothing contained within. Well...to summarize what you should expect from this novel, I will say this - IT'S FREAKING CRAZY! The book is a stream-of-consciousness-techno-cough-syrup-nightmare as dreamed up by the bastard child of Warren Ellis's Spider Jerusalem and the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson. The 'story' is told through a series of vignette-style media-saturated rants that are equal parts pop-culture deconstructionism and a sorta slice-of-life color commentary that was sliced out of a life so bizarre that it teeters like a seesaw on the fulcrum of realism and absurdity.

As you can maybe tell from that last paragraph, it's kind of hard to describe.

My suggestion to you would be this: read a sample chapter, because the whole book has a very clear sense of purpose and sense of tone throughout. It is largely plotless, although I believe the main character is some kind of frustrated writer who is having a difficult time navigating his alien life. But even without much over-arching narrative, the story is unified and moved forward by the humor. And it is funny. Like, REALLY funny. And really dark. It's just a funny, dark tale that could only be told in that Konrathian/Konrathesque/Post-Konrathalyptic kind of way. Good times.

[Auntie Raye-Raye · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Jon Konrath gifted me with a copy for review purposes. He's gifted me a couple of his books. (Besides, I'm usually doped up on vistaril and/or off brand NyQuil. I can't remember anymore)

ANYHOW...

I also have this on audiobook. As usual, I would recommend you also buy that. I like the narrator. He sounds like an all American type, then he has to say really f'ed up, ridiculous things. I listen to the audiobook A LOT. It's one of the handful that I sleep to, cause I like the demented dreams it gives me.

ANYHOW AGAIN....

This is my favorite Bizarro book of 2014. One of the reasons I liked it was that every demented thing that happens in the book, could possibly happen in real life. That makes me all hilarious. I especially enjoy some of the lines and have quoted them to my cats during the day.

My favorite line is DON'T DO LUNCHMEAT, KIDS. BOLOGNA. NOT EVEN ONCE.

ANYHOW LASTLY...

Go buy this book. It would make you and your Auntie Raye-Raye really happy.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is like nothing I've ever read (listened to) before, and I don't think I'll be looking into bizarro fiction again. I have no idea what I listened to, no idea what the story was, and no idea what the purpose was. I do appreciate the free copy, but I don't think I'll look for anymore bizarro fiction.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Stunning' is simply the best word to describe this book. It's been since "Rumored to Exist" that Konrath has gone through the kind of monstrous effort it takes to do this kind of thing in full length form, usually doing collections of shorter pieces, and I think this one actually tops the previous achievement (though it's always possible that I just understand and appreciate it more now). It's an impressionistic depiction of what it is to try to live a human life amidst the insanity and absurdity that is modern existence.

I mean, to any objective party, we're completely jacked up. We're jacked up, possibly beyond repair, and we're trying to constantly deal with an information flow of impossible speed and incomprehensible disparateness. This book reads like running a packet sniffer on a computer with a 1600 bps modem that's monitoring a Gigabit speed transmission line running the entire modern collective unconscious.

It seems like Konrath cuts up the whole of modern culture, reconnects it all in a stream of consciousness manner that it utterly wrong yet still makes perfect sense, and blasts it from the page. It's an amazing thing to read. Whether or not you're already a Konrath fan, you've got to check this one out.

[Keith Buckley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jon Konrath’s Ballardian dedication of Atmospheres “to the insane” should be a warning to those courageous enough to pick up this febrile seizure of a book— everyone you are about to meet in this absurd descent into post-modern brutalism is suffering from massive impairment of the prefrontal cortex … and then some. In Atmospheres’ near-future dystopia, which is essentially the same reality of Cops, Breaking Bad, Grand Theft Auto, and a vast American wasteland whose cultural zenith is a Taco Bell on every corner, the 24/7 soundtrack is death metal punctuated by heavy artillery barrages and the screams of meth addicts locked into an automotive amok trip. This is a world through which the frequently invoked GG Allin would pass otherwise unnoticed, and it is in this world the anonymous narrator attempts to “satiate that deep hole in his soul that no amount of sex, drugs, money, power, fame, therapy or consumer electronics could touch,” try as he might across 233 pages of the funniest, most terrifying and fecund piece of seriously weird social commentary I have read in a very long time. Atmospheres is a 21st century Bosch canvas, and the 101 segments, pungently reminiscent of Burroughs routines, remind us that Bosch’s decorticated moralism was founded in the same miniaturized detail in which Konrath explores and explodes each wretched deal gone wrong in a land devoid of impulse control. Towards the end of Atmospheres, the narrator’s foil, fellow writer Eddie Bulgar, complains that the text is all train and no tracks, but Eddie is missing the point (along with large chunks of his limbic system)-- the tracks are painfully visible and we are all traveling upon them: this war will never end and we will never find any answers to life as we lurch along with the narrator in a desperate search for edible fast food sludge or another doomed sexual connection. A vicious train ride to be sure, Atmospheres is also relentlessly and savagely hysterical. I laughed until I hemorrhaged and you will too. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

[Rodney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reflecting on this book, I see visions of Konrath running through a metropolis, using his mechanical 3rd arm to throw copies of this book rapid fire like grenades, as the other two arms are consistently flipping middle fingers at all of the pointless, laughable things we do as modern humans.
I was easily pulled in by the hilarious, sarcastic anarchy going on. There is an uncanny wit apparent in the way the author pokes fun at what really does deserve some ridicule, in my opinion. This was my go-to book that would guarantee laughs at times when life got too mundane. It also had many references to the death metal music I grew up on and still love, always a plus.
During a conversation near the end of the book, the author is told that the book is too much train and not enough track, track being some kind of structure. While this could be a legitimate critique, it is clearly the intention and that is what made the book special and unique to me. 4.5 stars.

[G. Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Konnie has done it again. I haven't read all 8 million of his books yet, but I've read a bit of his stuff, and the thing you notice is that he plays a lot with the same elements, same scenarios, similar techniques. This leads to the fear that maybe he'll start repeating himself. With Atmospheres he proves that fear to be unfounded. It's Konrath, through and through, with all the obligatory nods to Bukowski, Thompson, Burroughs, and Leyner, as well as modern weapons manufacturers, pharmaceutical co.'s and fast food culture.

If you like extreme absurdity, indulgent transgression, and open-ended narrative - this is the book for you.

[Marc Uterus · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Atmospheres" is my favorite so far. Jon Konrath is the only writer that has made me laugh out loud. I've always ran to the films of Todd Solondz to laugh because it's the only thing I could find to amuse myself and escape the mainstream humor that annoys me. Konrath has affected me the same way. I've read "Atmospheres" 3 times now. I love it.

[Donald Armfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

This man brings laughter to every page. Long sentences structure of pure madness. I actually had no idea what was going on but every page has some kind of pop culture reference, or just something over the top weird but high laugh content.

Fans of Mark Leyner will did this book.

[Pedro Proença · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's like Bukowski, only better. And never boring.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't help thinking that if Jon Konrath had decided to become a stand-up comic, instead of an indie writer, he'd be famous by now. He's absolutely perfected his warped and hilarious writing style in Atmospheres, but it's unlikely to garner him the attention he deserves. It's a problem of the times we live in: few books can compete, in terms of sheer raw entertainment value, against the latest iteration of Grand Theft Auto or the porn ingénue Stoya experiencing an under-the-table orgasm while reading aloud from Supervert's Necrophilia Variations (30 million+ views and counting...). However, it's a testament to Konrath's genius that his latest book comes close to those two cultural high water marks. His prose is the literary equivalent of the closing montage running beneath the credits of Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers." In a world of Norwegian black metal bands, Taco Bell drive-thrus, and rampant cough syrup abuse, Jon Konrath should be considered our generation's Hemingway.

[Douglas Hackle · Rating 5 out of 5]

cuz every once in a while you just gotta read konrath

[Brett Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book takes the postmodern novel in a noir direction, calling to mind the intersection of Don Delilo, Thomas Pynchon, William Gibson, and William S. Burroughs: a dark journey into the dystopian texture of a society which has lost sight of reality, and consequently spirals around the spindle of its own lack of coherence. Heavy on exotic juxtapositions of contrary directions within the details of everyday lives, the book pulls a "reverse Houellebecq" and zooms outward from the mundane to the epic. For those who aspire to an understanding of where this world went wrong, and how our spirits broke, this book edges open the door with a battered leather shoe and says, "It's Chinatown, Jake" not as a coda but an introduction.

[Autumn Moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perfectly absurd and wildly fun. Intriguing characters and scenarios will leave you thinking. It's a great book for people with busy schedules as it's broken into short stories that only take minutes to read.

[Shay Leszinske · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was cleverly charming with a jaded sense of society today. This book was interesting to read. I recieved this book through goodreads

[Jackie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I could not get into it I guess this was not a book for me....sorry!