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Soft
"The 258 micro-chapters of Ryan Werner's Soft tell the story of a failed rock band on tour. In sharp, spare, laugh-out-loud prose, Werner's misfit characters struggle to find their purpose in a world defined by alienation, death, and soul-sucking capitalism. These characters desire more from life, but are unsure what more looks like or how to get it. While they're figuring it out, they cope by trading clever one-liners, eating a lot of gas station food, obsessing over the world's extinction, and mailing koan-like postcards across the country. This is a small, smart book that asks the big questions about the age we're stuck in: What is the good life? Does it exist? How can we create authentic selves and art in a world that values neither?" - Megan Martin, author of Nevers
86 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 24, 2015
The title of this is particularly apt. This is some of the tenderest writing I've seen from Werner. I don't mean overly sentimental or maudlin by any means. It doesn't play up to that, but it regularly hits a quiet note that goes right through you. It's an honesty that can only show up in fiction, things pulled down right to the level of word by word. There's some great humor in it too, non sequiturs that show up precisely at the right time so the reader never expects them (and somehow seem exactly appropriate. It's funny, even the tiny little pieces seem just right. I don't think I'd buy that the narrator could put much longer structures together. This is the most he can handle, and it was a great thing for me to try to handle. Loved it.
October 6, 2015
A BRILLIANT BOOK BY A BRILLIANT, SLIGHTLY-INSECURE MAN.
July 9, 2015
My thoughts and an interview with the author here: http://correctivelenses.blogspot.com/...
February 13, 2016
Some quotes from this 86 page beauty with 258 chapters. I am enamored. It is what I think it would feel like to be disinterred. There is nothing that is not alive and not written in Times New Roman. Get it! LOVE!
“Years ago, Barry Meijer signed my band, The Summerbruise, to a contract that was undeniably bigger than us and, thus, irresistible. We didn’t blow advances or rent sports cars, but we didn’t make financially viable music, either. Barry went against the advice of everyone else at the record label and absorbed our private debt–my private debt, as sole songwriter–as his own. Now I meet with him every once in a while and try to even up the $400,000 I owe him by eating all the M & Ms in his office.”
“One thing I guess I still believe is that you lose twenty-five minutes of your life for every spoonful of macaroni salad you eat from a gas station.”
“I get rid of an afternoon by sporadically deleting Times New Roman from my computer and then scrambling to the recycling bin after it. I leave it in there longer and longer each time but it never gets easier, I never don’t want it back.”
“Best Flights screwed up and now I’m between twin boys around the age where everything stops going into their mouth and starts going into other people’s mouths.”
“I get so good at spreadsheets that I think I’m really on to something. All I have to do is look down and then back up, up and then back down. There’s a lot of room for multi-tasking, too, a word I knew before I started working here but never really put a lot of thought into until I saw it on a poster in the break room....I guess I could look up and then back down and see God. If he’s got time to appear on toast, he’s got time for my P&L statements.”
“I got an email from a boy with a partial haircut who says he’s reviewed the Greatest Hits album on his website. The review is long and reads like an entrance essay to get into the sort of college where you can major in Correcting People On How To Pronounce the Names of Foreign Tea, but I think he liked it.”
“Years ago, Barry Meijer signed my band, The Summerbruise, to a contract that was undeniably bigger than us and, thus, irresistible. We didn’t blow advances or rent sports cars, but we didn’t make financially viable music, either. Barry went against the advice of everyone else at the record label and absorbed our private debt–my private debt, as sole songwriter–as his own. Now I meet with him every once in a while and try to even up the $400,000 I owe him by eating all the M & Ms in his office.”
“One thing I guess I still believe is that you lose twenty-five minutes of your life for every spoonful of macaroni salad you eat from a gas station.”
“I get rid of an afternoon by sporadically deleting Times New Roman from my computer and then scrambling to the recycling bin after it. I leave it in there longer and longer each time but it never gets easier, I never don’t want it back.”
“Best Flights screwed up and now I’m between twin boys around the age where everything stops going into their mouth and starts going into other people’s mouths.”
“I get so good at spreadsheets that I think I’m really on to something. All I have to do is look down and then back up, up and then back down. There’s a lot of room for multi-tasking, too, a word I knew before I started working here but never really put a lot of thought into until I saw it on a poster in the break room....I guess I could look up and then back down and see God. If he’s got time to appear on toast, he’s got time for my P&L statements.”
“I got an email from a boy with a partial haircut who says he’s reviewed the Greatest Hits album on his website. The review is long and reads like an entrance essay to get into the sort of college where you can major in Correcting People On How To Pronounce the Names of Foreign Tea, but I think he liked it.”
October 19, 2015
It's like all that nasty banter you always wished you could remember, together in one clusterfuck of beauty.
Part satire on the rock and roll lifestyle, part horror story about the drag of modern life.
Soft is like Spinal Tap if Spinal Tap was one guy and the rest of the band exploded during every set, not just the drummer.
Soft is a book full of sadness and glee, smashing together at warp speed.
What we get from Soft, is probably like what people feel like after getting shot with a stun gun. It's not fun at first, but we've got to talk about it at every party.
There's not too many books as stuffed full of melee as this one.
It's glam rock for all the punk rockers.
It's a TV dinner that cooks into a Thanksgiving dinner in the microwave.
I ran into Ryan Werner in Indiana and he gave me this book.
A friend borrowed the book from me before I could get on the airplane to come back to NYC.
I didn't ever expect to see the book again.
The friend mailed it to me.
The friend said "I LOVE THIS FUCKING BOOK SO MUCH I AM GIVING IT BACK TO YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO READ IT!"
Can you believe that shit?
I've never given a book back to someone I stole one from, especially a close friend.
Anyway, Soft is what happens when you take all the glitter in the world and soak it in all the drugs in the world and go on the biggest adventure of your life, but you don't talk about it.
The sex, the glitter drugs, the music
You don't talk about it
That's why Soft is a miracle.
Part satire on the rock and roll lifestyle, part horror story about the drag of modern life.
Soft is like Spinal Tap if Spinal Tap was one guy and the rest of the band exploded during every set, not just the drummer.
Soft is a book full of sadness and glee, smashing together at warp speed.
What we get from Soft, is probably like what people feel like after getting shot with a stun gun. It's not fun at first, but we've got to talk about it at every party.
There's not too many books as stuffed full of melee as this one.
It's glam rock for all the punk rockers.
It's a TV dinner that cooks into a Thanksgiving dinner in the microwave.
I ran into Ryan Werner in Indiana and he gave me this book.
A friend borrowed the book from me before I could get on the airplane to come back to NYC.
I didn't ever expect to see the book again.
The friend mailed it to me.
The friend said "I LOVE THIS FUCKING BOOK SO MUCH I AM GIVING IT BACK TO YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO READ IT!"
Can you believe that shit?
I've never given a book back to someone I stole one from, especially a close friend.
Anyway, Soft is what happens when you take all the glitter in the world and soak it in all the drugs in the world and go on the biggest adventure of your life, but you don't talk about it.
The sex, the glitter drugs, the music
You don't talk about it
That's why Soft is a miracle.
January 17, 2016
I found reading SOFT like the best fellatio a guy might ever receive. One doesn't want it to end, and so the short flash chapters in which each momentary glimpse is flushed out has just enough irreverence, sadness, hilariousness and insightful everydayness that I couldn't stop reading it all in one GIGANTIC leap. It helps that this writer lives in the same state as I do, and yet we've never met. One day we will share some condiment and weep over some lady or man that we knew from the same band, and the same lives. In the meantime Robert, shut the fuck up and everyone: READ THIS!!!
April 25, 2020
I bought this book off Ryan Werner at a reading I did with him a few years back. He's a cool guy, but it took me some time to actually get around to reading it.
Soft is a novella, told in very short chapters, about the very short and chaotic reunion of the band Summerbruise. The guitarist and lead singer, and also the unnamed narrator, pulls the band together for three new songs for a greatest hits album and one more tour to pay off their debt to their record producer. Meanwhile, the narrator is torn between his feelings for the bass player Moxie and his ex-girlfriend, who still lives with him but disappears for weeks at a time, Holiday.
The song writing and the tour proves to be completely chaotic, both from circumstances and from the narrator just being a fuck up. He drives away the bass player by being an ass about his new band, the drummer has a heart attack, the narrator runs across his girlfriend and drivers her away by calling her a different name, and the record producer dies.
This is probably one of the most unromantic rock band stories I've read. That's not a bad thing. Most stories feature something about drugs, sex, or erratic behavior. Here, the band is destroyed by mundane problems rather than any exciting reasons. Even when they discuss the original break up, the narrator says to just pick two or three reason out of the rock and roll handbook on why it happened.
Werner makes all of this a funny and entertaining read, especially with this simple language. One of the funniest parts to me was when the narrator comes a cross a homeless person holding a sign that says "Will travel through time and kill the baby version of you or an enemy for $$$." The narrator is not exactly likable, but his scraping to put together his shattered dreams is understandable and his antics are entertaining.
I'm not sure if you can still get this, as Werner's been pretty quiet lately, but I recommend trying to get a hold of him to get a copy.
Soft is a novella, told in very short chapters, about the very short and chaotic reunion of the band Summerbruise. The guitarist and lead singer, and also the unnamed narrator, pulls the band together for three new songs for a greatest hits album and one more tour to pay off their debt to their record producer. Meanwhile, the narrator is torn between his feelings for the bass player Moxie and his ex-girlfriend, who still lives with him but disappears for weeks at a time, Holiday.
The song writing and the tour proves to be completely chaotic, both from circumstances and from the narrator just being a fuck up. He drives away the bass player by being an ass about his new band, the drummer has a heart attack, the narrator runs across his girlfriend and drivers her away by calling her a different name, and the record producer dies.
This is probably one of the most unromantic rock band stories I've read. That's not a bad thing. Most stories feature something about drugs, sex, or erratic behavior. Here, the band is destroyed by mundane problems rather than any exciting reasons. Even when they discuss the original break up, the narrator says to just pick two or three reason out of the rock and roll handbook on why it happened.
Werner makes all of this a funny and entertaining read, especially with this simple language. One of the funniest parts to me was when the narrator comes a cross a homeless person holding a sign that says "Will travel through time and kill the baby version of you or an enemy for $$$." The narrator is not exactly likable, but his scraping to put together his shattered dreams is understandable and his antics are entertaining.
I'm not sure if you can still get this, as Werner's been pretty quiet lately, but I recommend trying to get a hold of him to get a copy.
August 14, 2015
“Soft” is like Mary Robison’s “Why Did I Ever” meets “The Commitments” meets “Please Kill Me.” Rapid busts of caustic witticisms about a guy in a combustible rock band who can’t make anyone happy. Lovers leave, friends die, and people give guitar lessons to little girls and work data entry jobs to make ends barely meet. It’s so goddamn sad that it’s hilarious.
May 20, 2016
Even though my friend wrote this and a five-star review might read like, "Yeah, your friend wrote it so of course you're going to praise it, just like you'd tell your friend after his crappy band played, 'Hey man, great set.'" But seriously, this book was spectacular and pretty much unlike anything I've ever read.
August 16, 2015
Holy shit, this thing was good.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews