What do you think?
Rate this book
Disposable Thought
Cole Scott-Knox-Under, an idealistic technophobe purposefully relegating himself to a minimum-wage fast food job, suddenly notices he is suffering from a strange neurosis: inanimate objects appear to be speaking to him, and the symptoms are worsening.
Hallucinations of lethal drink lids, personified congratulations balloons, desperate old VHS tapes, buried-alive beepers, a holocaust of waste, and chatty styrofoam cups threaten to sever him from his family, friends and job. Or are they hallucinations at all?
This final installment of a triptych of novels about technology & madness sends characters both animate and inanimate on a sweeping adventure into neurosis, metaphysics, drinking, garbage, crazed artists and entrepreneurs, powerful furniture magnates, family politics, world revolution, hyperbolic intellectuals, and, eventually, into South Dakota.
A weird dark comedy examining one of the foundational pieces of U.S. modernity and crisis — disposability, in all its concrete and abstract forms.
"Bramble's postmodern maximalism calls to mind Thomas Pynchon and William T. Vollmann; his grim dystopianism, Orwell and Margaret Atwood; his overt social criticism, Richard Wright and Kurt Vonnegut ... confirms the prodigious talent of its author." —Kirkus
Hallucinations of lethal drink lids, personified congratulations balloons, desperate old VHS tapes, buried-alive beepers, a holocaust of waste, and chatty styrofoam cups threaten to sever him from his family, friends and job. Or are they hallucinations at all?
This final installment of a triptych of novels about technology & madness sends characters both animate and inanimate on a sweeping adventure into neurosis, metaphysics, drinking, garbage, crazed artists and entrepreneurs, powerful furniture magnates, family politics, world revolution, hyperbolic intellectuals, and, eventually, into South Dakota.
A weird dark comedy examining one of the foundational pieces of U.S. modernity and crisis — disposability, in all its concrete and abstract forms.
"Bramble's postmodern maximalism calls to mind Thomas Pynchon and William T. Vollmann; his grim dystopianism, Orwell and Margaret Atwood; his overt social criticism, Richard Wright and Kurt Vonnegut ... confirms the prodigious talent of its author." —Kirkus
433 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2015
313 people want to read
About the author
Steven T. Bramble
4 books14 followersSteven T. Bramble's most recent novel, DISPOSABLE THOUGHT (2015), completed a thematically connected triptych of novels called the Psychology of Technology Trilogy. His work courses through political, sociological, economic, cultural, and scientific issues of the contemporary world, attempting to explain and theorize with a philosophically demanding style. He is one of the co-founders of ZQ-287 (zq287.com), a small publishing label. He lives in Long Beach, CA.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 28, 2017
I won this book in a goodreads drawing.
A chronic underachiever by choice tries to change the world.
A chronic underachiever by choice tries to change the world.
July 7, 2019
Prescient. It's not an exaggeration to say that this novel changed my everyday interactions with the world around me. In fact, though I read the novel a few years ago there are times when I'm still taken back to a particular image or thought that the novel evoked. Bramble delivers a world that feels a calendar page away... distant enough to question but close enough to cause discomfort. A good, haunting, necessary type of confrontation with the way we navigate, engage and participate in the rapid changes in our physical environments and our culture at large.
January 3, 2021
"Disposable Thought" is a tough book review, for it is several types of books all wrapped in one cover. It is part novel, part philosophy, part manifesto. Unfortunately, the three styles don't always merge well together. Still, the book had me thinking - and that's ultimately a good thing.
The book focuses on our disposable culture - the trash, consumer goods, single use plastic objects that pervade our surroundings. The protagonist (if we can call him that) Cole works at Burger King and is obsessed (in a clinical sense) with the amount of waste his fast food chain generates in just one work shift. Straws, plastic lids, paper cups lined with plastic (thus making them plastic), containers... All of this piles up and up and up, so much that Cole that think of little else. Rather than have these items end up in a landfill, he ends up hoarding them in his bedroom, and thus begins his neurosis. All of this is fantastic, and the amount of crap I've acquired (rather than dispose of, lest it end up as waste) truly connected me to the book.
Yet before the reader has a chance to pursue this narrative, the plot takes a detour to focus on AR glasses. Unless I missed it, these glasses are never fully described - so I assume they are similar to Google glasses which were introduced to the consumer and quickly abandoned as a failed product. The glasses essentially connect the internet to the body, and everything we look at becomes social media, recordable, potable, ratable. This plot line proved frustrating to me. It seemed a distraction from Cole's neurosis, and it turned the reader's attention to another character - West.
Ultimately, the two plot lines merge into a third, with themes 0f revolution and social change central to the story. Throughout, there are some fantastic passages with fantastic ideas - a mylar balloon announcing "It's a girl" - with the narrator musing that the balloon will live infinitely longer than the very girl it announces; the fact that products have replaced art. But this wasn't enough for me. The characters have no back story. Why does Cole suffer from the neurosis of disposability and no one else? What led him to his mental state? Unfortunately, the character of Cole is rather unimportant to the overall book. He is merely a vehicle for Bramble to advance the critique of our culture. Indeed, the narrative often breaks away from the plot only to delve deeply into politics or philosophy, else large sections of other works of fiction are excerpted (e.g., Don Delillo). This was incredibly frustrating, and it suggested to me that Bramble was not fully committed to the plot at all. I'd also prefer that Bramble use his own words to advance the main points, rather than rely so heavily on the words of others (perhaps this is the teacher in me who constantly cautions my students against over-quoting).
Still, "Disposable Thoughts" was definitely an interesting read, and it left me with things to think about as I continue to navigate our disposable culture. In that regard, the book was hugely successful.
The book focuses on our disposable culture - the trash, consumer goods, single use plastic objects that pervade our surroundings. The protagonist (if we can call him that) Cole works at Burger King and is obsessed (in a clinical sense) with the amount of waste his fast food chain generates in just one work shift. Straws, plastic lids, paper cups lined with plastic (thus making them plastic), containers... All of this piles up and up and up, so much that Cole that think of little else. Rather than have these items end up in a landfill, he ends up hoarding them in his bedroom, and thus begins his neurosis. All of this is fantastic, and the amount of crap I've acquired (rather than dispose of, lest it end up as waste) truly connected me to the book.
Yet before the reader has a chance to pursue this narrative, the plot takes a detour to focus on AR glasses. Unless I missed it, these glasses are never fully described - so I assume they are similar to Google glasses which were introduced to the consumer and quickly abandoned as a failed product. The glasses essentially connect the internet to the body, and everything we look at becomes social media, recordable, potable, ratable. This plot line proved frustrating to me. It seemed a distraction from Cole's neurosis, and it turned the reader's attention to another character - West.
Ultimately, the two plot lines merge into a third, with themes 0f revolution and social change central to the story. Throughout, there are some fantastic passages with fantastic ideas - a mylar balloon announcing "It's a girl" - with the narrator musing that the balloon will live infinitely longer than the very girl it announces; the fact that products have replaced art. But this wasn't enough for me. The characters have no back story. Why does Cole suffer from the neurosis of disposability and no one else? What led him to his mental state? Unfortunately, the character of Cole is rather unimportant to the overall book. He is merely a vehicle for Bramble to advance the critique of our culture. Indeed, the narrative often breaks away from the plot only to delve deeply into politics or philosophy, else large sections of other works of fiction are excerpted (e.g., Don Delillo). This was incredibly frustrating, and it suggested to me that Bramble was not fully committed to the plot at all. I'd also prefer that Bramble use his own words to advance the main points, rather than rely so heavily on the words of others (perhaps this is the teacher in me who constantly cautions my students against over-quoting).
Still, "Disposable Thoughts" was definitely an interesting read, and it left me with things to think about as I continue to navigate our disposable culture. In that regard, the book was hugely successful.
Read
September 15, 2017Wanted to share this review from Kirkus, released in August of 2017:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
A literary novel chronicles a young man’s peculiar relationship to objects.
In a near future where increasing levels of technology have made people both interconnected and more isolated, Cole Scott-Knox-Under chooses a different path. A 27-year-old with eyes that “embody the observant fearful gaze of the autodidact: deep skepticism fused to emotional vulnerability,” Cole has chosen to work at Burger King, taking lunch orders while (mostly) avoiding the invasive demands of modernity. He has been instructed to wear virtual reality glasses at all times (which allow him to view his customers’ online lives as presented in clouds around their heads), though he refuses due to a strong aversion to VR that goes back to his teenage years. Cole is more attracted to the analog than the digital, compulsively collecting objects—cup lids, papers bags, plastic utensils—and storing them under his bed in his mother’s apartment. He is already balancing the pressures of family, identity, and a host of social expectations demanded by the colorful characters that populate his life, but things get really strange when the garbage Cole collects begins to speak to him. A plastic cup named Jason thanks Cole for picking him off the ground, but tells him, “There are more. They need to be rescued as well.” Cole isn’t sure if he’s crazy or uniquely sane, but whatever his neurological state, it is driving him to exhaustion. In a world where everything, both animate and inanimate, is made to be disposable, Cole desperately seeks something permanent on which to anchor his life.
Bramble’s (Grid City Overload, 2012, etc.) work evokes that of many 20th-century authors who sought to grapple with their eras’ technological tumult. His postmodern maximalism calls to mind Thomas Pynchon and William T. Vollmann; his grim dystopianism, Orwell and Margaret Atwood; his overt social criticism, Richard Wright and Kurt Vonnegut. The prose is clear and precise, though it accumulates with the heft of bricks piled to form a wall. The author possesses a particular interest in the physicality and unnaturalness of the objects in Cole’s world: “Aerosol deodorant cans; wasted steel shells burnt from escaping xylyl bromide; stockpiles of burned CDs now too scratched and so laid to death; lungs withered and crusted with sulfur.” Cole may be the protagonist, but the story’s strongest personality is its authorial third-person narrator, who routinely pulls the reader away from the hero to offer essayistic digressions on the nature of technology and society using frequent (and sometimes-multipage) excerpts from sources as varied as scientific studies, Salon articles, and Will Self novels. On its own, the book represents an impressive intellectual feat. As the third volume in a triptych of novels concerned with technology’s impact on the way humans think and feel, the work confirms the prodigious talent of its author. Cerebral and often funny, this is by no means a tale for everyone. But those readers who like their fiction built on heady concepts will find this book to be a challenging and gratifying experience.
A dense, ambitious social saga with a sci-fi tinge.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-re...
A literary novel chronicles a young man’s peculiar relationship to objects.
In a near future where increasing levels of technology have made people both interconnected and more isolated, Cole Scott-Knox-Under chooses a different path. A 27-year-old with eyes that “embody the observant fearful gaze of the autodidact: deep skepticism fused to emotional vulnerability,” Cole has chosen to work at Burger King, taking lunch orders while (mostly) avoiding the invasive demands of modernity. He has been instructed to wear virtual reality glasses at all times (which allow him to view his customers’ online lives as presented in clouds around their heads), though he refuses due to a strong aversion to VR that goes back to his teenage years. Cole is more attracted to the analog than the digital, compulsively collecting objects—cup lids, papers bags, plastic utensils—and storing them under his bed in his mother’s apartment. He is already balancing the pressures of family, identity, and a host of social expectations demanded by the colorful characters that populate his life, but things get really strange when the garbage Cole collects begins to speak to him. A plastic cup named Jason thanks Cole for picking him off the ground, but tells him, “There are more. They need to be rescued as well.” Cole isn’t sure if he’s crazy or uniquely sane, but whatever his neurological state, it is driving him to exhaustion. In a world where everything, both animate and inanimate, is made to be disposable, Cole desperately seeks something permanent on which to anchor his life.
Bramble’s (Grid City Overload, 2012, etc.) work evokes that of many 20th-century authors who sought to grapple with their eras’ technological tumult. His postmodern maximalism calls to mind Thomas Pynchon and William T. Vollmann; his grim dystopianism, Orwell and Margaret Atwood; his overt social criticism, Richard Wright and Kurt Vonnegut. The prose is clear and precise, though it accumulates with the heft of bricks piled to form a wall. The author possesses a particular interest in the physicality and unnaturalness of the objects in Cole’s world: “Aerosol deodorant cans; wasted steel shells burnt from escaping xylyl bromide; stockpiles of burned CDs now too scratched and so laid to death; lungs withered and crusted with sulfur.” Cole may be the protagonist, but the story’s strongest personality is its authorial third-person narrator, who routinely pulls the reader away from the hero to offer essayistic digressions on the nature of technology and society using frequent (and sometimes-multipage) excerpts from sources as varied as scientific studies, Salon articles, and Will Self novels. On its own, the book represents an impressive intellectual feat. As the third volume in a triptych of novels concerned with technology’s impact on the way humans think and feel, the work confirms the prodigious talent of its author. Cerebral and often funny, this is by no means a tale for everyone. But those readers who like their fiction built on heady concepts will find this book to be a challenging and gratifying experience.
A dense, ambitious social saga with a sci-fi tinge.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews