Enjoy Me

by Logan Ryan Smith

Enjoy Me, a collection of stories by Logan Ryan Smith, tells the tales of unreliable narrator, Luke-a down and out, sometimes unemployed writer living in San Francisco among zombies, monsters, and cricket-people. He navigates this world in search of love, respect, drugs, booze, and satisfaction, often seeking others through a haze of fantasy, despite his evident misanthropy. But fantasy and reality mix, leaving everyone involved with questions of which is which, and whether it even matters. Sometimes likable, more often despicable, Luke relates his narratives with lyrical urgency and a healthy dose of fear, anxiety, and the inevitable apathy. These are stories of dark comedy and just plain darkness taking cue from writers the likes of Brett Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and Joyce Carol Oates, but with a little less than one foot on the ground and more than a couple twitching antennae in the clouds.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction

234 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 2015

About the author

Logan Ryan Smith writes dark, imaginative fiction with a unique sense of humor and madness. His work appeals to fans of authors such as J.G. Ballard, Chuck Palahniuk, Michel Faber, Bret Easton Ellis, Shirley Jackson, and Hunter S. Thompson. The God of Salt & Light, released early 2020, is a fast-paced, disorienting, yet poetic foray into the mind of a messianic madman that worships the Salton Sea and seeks to spread his faith. The Sun My Destiny, his previous book, is a psychological sci-fi drama that uses the dystopian landscape of a massive garbage dump as the background for familial relationships and grave, internal struggles. His book previous to that, Y is for Fidelity, is a disturbingly comedic tale of friendship and self-discovery that takes twists and turns opposite of every expectation. Western Palaces is the follow-up to 2015’s Enjoy Me. Each are collections of interlinked stories telling the bizarre, fantastical, and often hilarious tales of Luke, a down-and-out writer living in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin where zombies, bipedal crickets, ghosts, and monsters always linger in the peripherals. My Eyes Are Black Holes, released between Enjoy Me and Western Palaces, is a twisted novella of false memory, madness, and violence that pays homage to haunted house stories while never actually slipping into the genre. Logan describes it as his "unhaunted haunted house story."

Though primarily focusing on fiction now, his poetry books include The Singers & The Notes (Dusie Press, 2007), Stupid Birds (Transmission Press, 2007), Bug House (Mission Cleaners Books, 2013), and Humans & Horses (Transmission Press, 2018). Logan’s work has appeared in, among others, Hobart Journal, The New York Times, New American Writing, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, and Great Lakes Review, which nominated his story “Bret Easton Ellis” for a Pushcart Prize. He has lived in San Francisco, Boulder, and Chicago, and now lives in Sacramento.

Reviews

[Logan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I worked hard on this fucker. Read it.

[Ezra Lambert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devoured this over a span of a little over 6 hours. Occasional typo was distracting but was easy enough to ignore with the brilliant imagination Logan Ryan Smith has. Demented, chaotic, and deliciously twisted, Enjoy Me gives the concept of an unreliable narrator a new face. An acid trip gone horribly wrong, and I loved every page of it.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exactly what I needed. A nice fucked up book to counter balance the classic I've been reading. With title and all, i knew, obviously, I was going to enjoy it.

A few qualms: some very few typos, but - hey!- it's an indie book. But STILL, grammar saves lives man. Go eat a grammar book....or better yet a grammar teacher... The only other issue I had was these random sentences that would pop up that didn't fit Luke at all. They sounded more like Logan couldn't let go...so they were a little distracting.

Now the good stuff: dude, I had visually stimulated dreams by what came out of the mind of this dude. I LOVE the creativity and the fucking word choice. Damn, it melted my face off. I don't know and don't care about what he's on. I love his interpretation of the side characters and their relationships with him. This author has successfully conveyed terror.

Final note: Blue Monster is my favorite chapter

[C.R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third book I’ve read by Logan Ryan Smith this year, and he has fast become one of my favourite authors. He is a master of stream of consciousness prose, unreliable narrators, and vivid dream logic. Enjoy Me is no exception.

This is presented as a collection of short stories, but feels more like a stash of vignettes from a scrapbook of Luke’s life. Some are close to making sense, some are not. Some inform the context of others, some obliterate what you had taken as truth. It has all the confusion, hilarity and despair of an unhinged mind if it could be recorded directly on paper. At first I thought of it like the thoughts of a writer, where his obsessions over characters and narratives are mixing in with reality, but it could just as easily be the ramblings of a madman or drug user. Whatever interpretation you choose, this is a skilful study of the way reality seems to warp when unconscious associations are not quite in check, and because it's all through the eyes of the protagonist, this makes for an intense, immediate and uncensored experience.

Another highly recommended title. I can’t wait to read its sequel.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Without a doubt one of the strangest things I've ever read. However, I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to catching up with Luke in Western Palaces!

[JillTambor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very exciting book.

[Jaspal Malhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly amazing read and a nice look at psychosis

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Logan Ryan Smith's collection of stories about Luke, a poet and possible lunatic living in San Francisco, is hilariously twisted. The comparisons to Bret Easton Ellis are much deserved, and if you're also a fan of Joyce Carol Oates' dark short stories, ENJOY ME is a must read. As with reading Bret Easton Ellis, these stories often made me laugh out loud and then question my sanity. Luke is often disgusting, drunk, and anxious, and always unreliable, but his weird misadventures through San Francisco (amid cricket-people and other monsters and drunks) are irresistible. He's one of my favorite unreliable narrators since Patrick McGrath's Spider. "Bret Easton Ellis" is a standout, but all of these stories are delightfully demented and the work of a talented writer. Buy it, and I promise you'll laugh, cry, and vomit your way through the whole thing. (Kindle readers, it's only $2.99.)

[Jenelle Compton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was weird. And kinda gross. And interesting. And well written. And funny, at times. I liked it a lot!
Luke is...something, as a protagonist. He's a creep sometimes, and pathetic at others, and likeable once in a while. It's hard to know what's real, and what it is he's actually done. I don't know if I could handle this character in a full novel, but a series of collected stories was a fun approach. The story with Bret Easton Ellis was downright hilarious.
I'm pretty excited to see there is a second book!

[Piera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Following the story of Luke felt like drinking champagne while suffering a brain haemorrhage. His was not a happy tale, but there was a deliciously dark glamour to the reimagined city which left me craving more gory detail. Hugely enjoyable from start to finish, with a 'why am I reading this' edge.

[Andrew Schultheis · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up to 4

[Requisody · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars to get Luke to a doctor 😭🪳👹💊

[Þór Carlsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this writer, he's chaotically surreal one minute then heartfelt and funny the next but manages to blur the line between these two opposing aspects in the narrative he presents to the reader. It's never pretentious, never "too much" (Don't get me wrong, things get WILD but it belongs in the world we are reading about) This book's structure in particular is very free and loose but very much together at the same time, does that make sense? It's just a wild book that still sits with me. This is the kind of weirdly surreal and often nightmarish type of stuff I LOVE. If you enjoy this one, it only gets better with his follow-up books.

[Lynn-Cee Faulk · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories are low on plot and high on vibes, those vibes being total chaos. The ultimate unreliable narrator, Luke suffers from hallucinations and can rarely tell them apart from reality. Even the other characters don't believe a word he says because you can't. You simply can't. That is part of what makes this series great, in my opinion. The premise allows for things to get wildly messy before resetting again at the beginning of the next story. Yet, through it all, there are threads of reality soaking through.

[ghoulkeats · Rating 2 out of 5]

the writing fluctuated between beautifully grotesque and crudely awful. leaning towards the later nearing the end. all in all, a pretty forgettable read.

[Connor Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty good and interesting. a little too edgy at points but still pretty fun

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoy Me is a strikingly unsettling collection of interlinked short stories set in San Francisco about a troubled young man called Luke. The opening story introduces us to his bizarre, nightmarish world where zombies and giant crickets seem to coexist side by side with the regular world. As the book progresses, it gradually becomes clearer that Luke is probably hallucinating these mad visions, although tantalisingly this is never made clear to the reader. We follow Luke through a series of episodes during which his mental health steadily disintegrates and his connection with the ‘normal’ world breaks down in a spectacular manner.

I can be completely honest in saying that I’ve never read anything like this book, and that it is startling in its originality. There are elements of Naked Lunch, American Psycho, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and Donnie Darko (some hints too of Stewart Home’s ’69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess’) but it is entirely its own beast. Smith’s biography explains that he was formerly a poet and this shines through in his wild and vivid use of language. Luke’s damaged and unsettling world will stay with me a long time, and I look forward to reading more of Smith’s work.

[Aleksandra]

Ok probably I wasn't in the mood for such fiction this time and shall give it a try another time - but lack of plot bothered me a lot. The book is fun for those who enjoys such type of lit like me but I'd rather it had more sense like Y is for fidelity by the same author - I loved that one.