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Tables Without Chairs #1
This is the true story…of two writers [BUD SMITH and BRIAN ALAN ELLIS]… picked to fill up their own sections of the same book…sometimes having to solicit work from friends [WAYLON THORNTON]…so they can all party together…and have their work published…to find out what happens…when art and literature stop being polite…and start getting real…
164 pages, Paperback
First published August 18, 2015
3 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
About the author
Brian Alan Ellis
35 books128 followersBRIAN ALAN ELLIS runs House of Vlad Press, and is the author of several books, including Sad Laughter (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2018). His writing has appeared at Juked, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Fanzine, Electric Literature, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Funhouse, Heavy Feather Review, and Queen Mob’s Tea House, among other places. He lives in Florida, and tweets sad and clever things at both @brianalanellis and @HouseofVlad.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 1, 2017
Brian Alan Ellis and Bud Smith are a bit like beer and hot wings. You can, and do, enjoy them individually. Yet, when paired together, they are crazy complimentary and before you know it, you are wondering how you ever went through life having one without the other.
Brian's the jokester, drawing you in with his sharp wit and sarcastic comebacks, while Bud charms and disarms you by finding humor and hope in the most mundane things.
Reading Tables Without Chairs is like walking in on a conversation between two guy besties. You know the kind, where they are speaking their own language and laughing at their own jokes and stories, and at first you're like "are you kidding me right now, they are so full of themselves, they sure do like to hear themselves talk", yet the longer you sit there listening, the funnier their jokes and stories become. And then you realize that they are actually quite hilarious and you're all "dude, I want to be besties with you too", because they have been through the coolest, most fucked up shit ever and you think that if you hang with them, well, then some pretty cool and fucked up shit will start happening to you, because you'll totally be orbiting their awesomeness and isn't that how it works? Hang with the cool kids and cool stuff will start happening to you?
A fun and fantastic mashup by two of the hardest working and handsome fellas in the small press solar system.
Get them on your radar.
Brian's the jokester, drawing you in with his sharp wit and sarcastic comebacks, while Bud charms and disarms you by finding humor and hope in the most mundane things.
Reading Tables Without Chairs is like walking in on a conversation between two guy besties. You know the kind, where they are speaking their own language and laughing at their own jokes and stories, and at first you're like "are you kidding me right now, they are so full of themselves, they sure do like to hear themselves talk", yet the longer you sit there listening, the funnier their jokes and stories become. And then you realize that they are actually quite hilarious and you're all "dude, I want to be besties with you too", because they have been through the coolest, most fucked up shit ever and you think that if you hang with them, well, then some pretty cool and fucked up shit will start happening to you, because you'll totally be orbiting their awesomeness and isn't that how it works? Hang with the cool kids and cool stuff will start happening to you?
A fun and fantastic mashup by two of the hardest working and handsome fellas in the small press solar system.
Get them on your radar.
December 1, 2015
Entertaining collaboration between a pair of writers that bounce around literary fiction, quotidian humor and weird shit. The first half by Brian Alan Ellis includes a scathing send-up of literary ambition in the form of blurbs, writing prompts, and hilarious bon mots disparaging the shitshow that is AWP. The second half follows a handful of characters in a linked collection of charming short fictions by Bud Smith. The literary equivalent of an argument over the last slice of pizza between two dudes in a death metal band that were hella tight before the singer got sent to rehab.
August 20, 2015
I haven't been into the bizarro scene for quite some time, but occasionally I'll drop back in for a visit just to see what's going on. Brian actually posted a picture of the cover to this on Facebook and it looked like someone ate a bunch of cotton candy and then got pedigreed onto the floor and promptly threw up. It's the kind of cover that you see and instantly want to read. I have read three of Brian's books so far and I find that with each book he just strings a bunch of random ideas together and they somehow form a cohesive story. Case in point each of these stories range in topics from lost car keys. tripping balls on New Years Eve and finding that you're locked out of the apartment and the keys you have are the ones that someone lost. Brian was gracious enough to give me a copy on Facebook in exchange for an honest review and I was again drawn to that cover. You see what I'm talking about? It just grabs your attention and that's where Waylon Thornton comes into play. His artwork just works in holding this all together.
What sucks is that I'm the first person to review this. You have no idea how much pressure that is. Both writers are good at what they do, and their sections are both entertaining. You don't skip through Brian's section to get to Bud's hoping that his stories suck a whole lot less. This is three guys having a blast and writing whatever the hell they want. These stories are random. but are well written and you can't help but wonder how these stories came together. Brian has presented us with a weird little love story and advice and tips for writers. Now as a writer I found Ha-Ha! Sad Laughter to be informative and quite hilarious. Any writer reading it will relate and if you're not a writer you'll have a sense of what we go through. Bud gives us a guy who is just trying to escape New York while chilling in an inflatable Jacuzzi that he places in his apartment. It's bizarro fiction without the gross out or having something happen just to be outrageous.
Tables Without Chairs is all about making shit up as you go along and having fun doing it. If you're a fan of bizarro fiction you'll have a blast reading this and if you're not a fan you should still pick this up because it's the type of book that just is. It doesn't need a reason to exist and I have it under good authority that if you don't buy this Brian and Bud will show up at your house and piss all over your carpet. If you think that's bad wait until they bring out the flaming tables. In all honesty though this was a blast to read and I look forward to reading #2
What sucks is that I'm the first person to review this. You have no idea how much pressure that is. Both writers are good at what they do, and their sections are both entertaining. You don't skip through Brian's section to get to Bud's hoping that his stories suck a whole lot less. This is three guys having a blast and writing whatever the hell they want. These stories are random. but are well written and you can't help but wonder how these stories came together. Brian has presented us with a weird little love story and advice and tips for writers. Now as a writer I found Ha-Ha! Sad Laughter to be informative and quite hilarious. Any writer reading it will relate and if you're not a writer you'll have a sense of what we go through. Bud gives us a guy who is just trying to escape New York while chilling in an inflatable Jacuzzi that he places in his apartment. It's bizarro fiction without the gross out or having something happen just to be outrageous.
Tables Without Chairs is all about making shit up as you go along and having fun doing it. If you're a fan of bizarro fiction you'll have a blast reading this and if you're not a fan you should still pick this up because it's the type of book that just is. It doesn't need a reason to exist and I have it under good authority that if you don't buy this Brian and Bud will show up at your house and piss all over your carpet. If you think that's bad wait until they bring out the flaming tables. In all honesty though this was a blast to read and I look forward to reading #2
October 2, 2015
This book is like one of those nights when you're hanging with two of your good friends and you're too trashed to talk so you just listen and grin, except your friends are funnier and more amazing than any of your friends. This is some seriously nice writing. I wasn't sure how a Smith and Ellis pairing was going to go, but their work in here really complements. It's more spontaneous than I think I've seen them be before, but the attention to the line is rigid tight for both. It's a must for fans of Ellis or Smith, or the people who need to become fans of both (everyone). If you'll excuse me now, I need to go get an inflatable hot tub to put in a spook house.
June 4, 2017
The LOVE for Bud Smith and BAE is HUGE! Deep love for the blurb section! READ THEM! Here is a place where no egos rear their ugly heads!
January 17, 2016
From the obscure cover, to the writing which made me wonder if I ever knew where I was. Which, in terms of my own life, seems observant, I was in. I laughed and farted more than I ever have, and this might have been because of beer and french fries, but who cares. This is like being d.o.a. in some bad semi- fake- taxi and being stuck in traffic. Just read it, for chrissakes! And also, who the hell am I? I am still buying shit from these same two guys who also buy shit from the local bogeda! Buy it, read it, shit it, eat it.
November 25, 2015
A couple of dicks wrote a book!
February 17, 2016
Favorite part was the pissing on writers.
July 21, 2017
Released late last year from House of Vlad, “Tables Without Chairs #1” throws its readers face-first into an carnival experience courtesy of Bud Smith and Brian Alan Ellis. Combining recurring characters and shout-outs with uncanny art by Waylon Thornton, this book intersperses quips and self-reflection to paint its wild collage. From the get-go, readers find the duo exchanging cover band ideas before moving to hilarious blurbs such as: “Brian Alan Ellis is like a scratch-off lottery ticket that you get for Christmas and HOLY SHIT I JUST WON $250 but your aunt who you owe $400 to is sitting right there so you hand it over and now it’s fresh in her mind that you still owe $150 FUCK! But he writes really good stories” (7). Besides clearly having a blast with the whole project, these writers manage to blend their respective styles of humor without ever losing speed, resulting in a lighthearted mood of leaking hot tubs and hellacious half-friends that continues to surprise.
A dark turntable celebration in the face of desertion, Brian Alan Ellis’s first half, “Sexy Time in the Spook House, Oh Yeah!” kick-starts the show with a werewolf of a fellow on the rebound. Both resisting and seeking sexy times “for this nightmare to scare us both awake” (27), Ellis’s main character hangs himself on the words of others, remembering his lost lover. Yet from this chaotic violence where “Nobody is good to one another. Nobody is good to anyone” (35), Ellis shifts gears entirely in his second section.
“Ha-Ha! Sad Laughter” unfolds as an anti-literary litany, unloading non-stop cynicism and what-ifs to take on postal submissions, Goodreads trolling, and the #amwriting hashtag, among others. Rather than simply attacking the literary establishment with an outsider’s shallow contempt, Ellis confronts the scene’s sacred cows with an insider’s irony. Across thirty pages of fragments, we find suggestions for poetry readings at EDM raves, rejected submissions for a 25-words-only short story contest, 4 pages of pre-written blurbs, and other gems for making it big: “When at AWP, a productive thing to do is to frantically ask random people if they know what time Smash Mouth goes on” (70). Striking the right balance between self-deprecation and smugness, Brian Alan Ellis makes us laugh with one-liners like “Pop-Tart prize > Pushcart Prize” (58), while also bringing in relatable gloom from the writer’s life, trading your first novel for Burger King Groupons or hearing, “Good news: Your book just went into its third printing—meaning that it is print-on-demand and only three people have purchased it” (70).
After Ellis’s dark adventures and proposals for an “MFA in creative hiding” (80), Bud Smith brings readers into “Calm Face,” ten stories of everyday moments imbued with a kind of smooth wonder. Sometimes you forget your badge for work during a hectic morning commute, but everything falls into place so you don’t miss 30 minutes of pay (and you manage to steal a 5 gallon jug of gas to boot)! Whether laughing with his wife on mushrooms during freezing late night walks, or watching somebody almost get run over because there’s “NO SUCH THING AS HOLDING SPOTS” (96) in the world of big-city parking, Smith’s characters wander through so many quick, random moments, making us laugh at their oddness. In fact, true to Smith’s title, these characters somehow manage to keep calm in the face of an anxious world, just as the Zen-like main character from “Apartment 13,” talking about his neighbor:
He goes on and on and yells, “FUCKING BULLSHIT! MOTHER FUCKING SCUM SUCKING BULLSHIT!!!!” It comes and goes for hours. I sometimes wonder what he screams about but figure it’s probably just a video game. If it was anything else besides a video game, everyone in this apartment building would be dead. I’ve seen the neighbor in the hall but have never mentioned the screaming, because, yeah, it’s none of my business, he’s home when he does it, he can scream. If it bothered me, I’d mention that. But it doesn’t. I imagine he’s playing Battletoads and is at the lava Jet Ski board. Only thing it can be. (110-11)
Throughout his stories, Smith shows we can let everything build up until it gets scary, or we can strip down and submerge into your apartment-flooding hot tub when people start pounding on your door!
In a world of mental health days, 50 mousetraps in need of opening, and writer residencies where “you stay where you are but you stop paying rent. The residency ends when your landlord calls the police” (46), Brian Alan Ellis and Bud Smith are on a mission to kick ass and gather laughs, or die trying. These wild novellas serve up truths of heartbreak and drudgery with laidback charm—like a collision within a floor-shifting fun house, “Tables Without Chairs #1” keeps us smiling as it combines our monsters with the daily 9-to-5 grind.
A dark turntable celebration in the face of desertion, Brian Alan Ellis’s first half, “Sexy Time in the Spook House, Oh Yeah!” kick-starts the show with a werewolf of a fellow on the rebound. Both resisting and seeking sexy times “for this nightmare to scare us both awake” (27), Ellis’s main character hangs himself on the words of others, remembering his lost lover. Yet from this chaotic violence where “Nobody is good to one another. Nobody is good to anyone” (35), Ellis shifts gears entirely in his second section.
“Ha-Ha! Sad Laughter” unfolds as an anti-literary litany, unloading non-stop cynicism and what-ifs to take on postal submissions, Goodreads trolling, and the #amwriting hashtag, among others. Rather than simply attacking the literary establishment with an outsider’s shallow contempt, Ellis confronts the scene’s sacred cows with an insider’s irony. Across thirty pages of fragments, we find suggestions for poetry readings at EDM raves, rejected submissions for a 25-words-only short story contest, 4 pages of pre-written blurbs, and other gems for making it big: “When at AWP, a productive thing to do is to frantically ask random people if they know what time Smash Mouth goes on” (70). Striking the right balance between self-deprecation and smugness, Brian Alan Ellis makes us laugh with one-liners like “Pop-Tart prize > Pushcart Prize” (58), while also bringing in relatable gloom from the writer’s life, trading your first novel for Burger King Groupons or hearing, “Good news: Your book just went into its third printing—meaning that it is print-on-demand and only three people have purchased it” (70).
After Ellis’s dark adventures and proposals for an “MFA in creative hiding” (80), Bud Smith brings readers into “Calm Face,” ten stories of everyday moments imbued with a kind of smooth wonder. Sometimes you forget your badge for work during a hectic morning commute, but everything falls into place so you don’t miss 30 minutes of pay (and you manage to steal a 5 gallon jug of gas to boot)! Whether laughing with his wife on mushrooms during freezing late night walks, or watching somebody almost get run over because there’s “NO SUCH THING AS HOLDING SPOTS” (96) in the world of big-city parking, Smith’s characters wander through so many quick, random moments, making us laugh at their oddness. In fact, true to Smith’s title, these characters somehow manage to keep calm in the face of an anxious world, just as the Zen-like main character from “Apartment 13,” talking about his neighbor:
He goes on and on and yells, “FUCKING BULLSHIT! MOTHER FUCKING SCUM SUCKING BULLSHIT!!!!” It comes and goes for hours. I sometimes wonder what he screams about but figure it’s probably just a video game. If it was anything else besides a video game, everyone in this apartment building would be dead. I’ve seen the neighbor in the hall but have never mentioned the screaming, because, yeah, it’s none of my business, he’s home when he does it, he can scream. If it bothered me, I’d mention that. But it doesn’t. I imagine he’s playing Battletoads and is at the lava Jet Ski board. Only thing it can be. (110-11)
Throughout his stories, Smith shows we can let everything build up until it gets scary, or we can strip down and submerge into your apartment-flooding hot tub when people start pounding on your door!
In a world of mental health days, 50 mousetraps in need of opening, and writer residencies where “you stay where you are but you stop paying rent. The residency ends when your landlord calls the police” (46), Brian Alan Ellis and Bud Smith are on a mission to kick ass and gather laughs, or die trying. These wild novellas serve up truths of heartbreak and drudgery with laidback charm—like a collision within a floor-shifting fun house, “Tables Without Chairs #1” keeps us smiling as it combines our monsters with the daily 9-to-5 grind.
May 13, 2016
While the book is not thematically linked as such, all three artists share a similar sensibility and styles that are characterized by a sense of the absurd, playfulness, and a wickedly ironic sense of humor. I think Brian Alan Ellis's portion of the book could be described as more reflective and introspective. Not in an emo sort of way, but in more of a good natured, self deprecating humor kind of way. Much of it is comprised of one liners that could be delivered as stand up comedy. There is a segment devoted to facetious advice for writers that is no less than hilarious. Bud Smith's writing might be called more narrative. Reading Bud Smith's pieces is like watching the video feed from a GoPro camera he's wearing on his head as he goes about his life in New York City and New Jersey. Waylon Thornton's drawings are inhabited by fantastical characters that are like a combination of the twisted line drawings of Ralph Steadman and Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are."
An interview with both authors conducted by Sam Slaughter via Facebook Messenger serves as a kind of stream-of-consciousness "Afterword" to the main text of the book. It's a little like the freewheeling conversation that might take place in an episode of Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" or the improvised dialogue between the slacker/stoners in "Workaholics."
Tables Without Chairs is raucous, rowdy and irreverent, but beneath its crunchy surface is a soft, chewy center full of sly wisdom and some pretty thought provoking deep stuff. It's a ride well worth taking.
An interview with both authors conducted by Sam Slaughter via Facebook Messenger serves as a kind of stream-of-consciousness "Afterword" to the main text of the book. It's a little like the freewheeling conversation that might take place in an episode of Jerry Seinfeld's "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" or the improvised dialogue between the slacker/stoners in "Workaholics."
Tables Without Chairs is raucous, rowdy and irreverent, but beneath its crunchy surface is a soft, chewy center full of sly wisdom and some pretty thought provoking deep stuff. It's a ride well worth taking.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews