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Limiters
LIMITERS is a disturbing portrait of Kyle Mason, a sixteen-year-old in aimless flight from a dysfunctional family. Once an honors student who loved to read, Kyle has run away from home and now seeks pleasure in the underground rave culture-his only way of avoiding the trauma of the murder of his older brother, which has thrown his grieving mother into a shrewish, overly critical frame of mind. Shocking but also full of humor, LIMITERS is a wild ride into American fringe cultures that never loses sight of the family dynamics and parental emotions almost all of us must face.
188 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 7, 2014
8 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Stoddard
7 books22 followersCHRISTOPHER STODDARD is the author of four novels: The Virtuous Ones (ITNA, 2022), At Night Only (ITNA, 2018), Limiters (ITNA, 2014), and White, Christian (Spuyten Duyvil, 2010). His most recent book, At Night Only, was praised by PEN award-winning author Edmund White, and was a staff pick in The Paris Review. For more than a decade, he worked at various ad agencies in New York City. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 3, 2014
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
Back when I was doing research into the "Nelson Algren at 100" series I started at the blog several years ago, one of the things that became really clear to me was how exactly the new community of "social realist" writers of the 1920s and '30s worked, as seen in microcosm in Chicago where Algren was located; that for each of the only handful of those writers who eventually became huge and stood the test of time (Algren, Richard Wright, John Steinbeck, etc), there were dozens of other writers working and publishing at the same time, with their short pieces in the magazines and their small cadre of devoted fans, but who were never able to make things click with their careers because their politically motivated work was just too heavy-handed, too obvious, too cartoonishly dark. And so it still is in the world of social realist literature, as typified in an almost textbook way by Christopher Stoddard's new Limiters; for while it's written in an engaging style, featuring a nice mix of plot and character development, Stoddard unfortunately just lays it on way too thick, almost to the point at times of writing an accidental parody of a social realist novel instead of just a social realist novel.
I mean, the book is fine, don't get me wrong, which is the whole reason that a literary scene doesn't have just two or three writers in it, but a whole circle of people who are generally liked by their peers; the tale of a modern lumpen-proletarian teen from about the most broken family you can even imagine (father in jail, mother a groupie skank, stepfather who's only nineteen himself, brother who's dead), it's a very readable and moving coming-of-age tale about our hero and all his Larry-Clarkesque loser friends, very literary in style but with a power over visual imagery almost as good as a screenplay. But man, the bleakness is relentless in this short, black, blackly short, shortly black tale, which defeats the "realist" part of trying to write a social realist book; and by the time we get to the part where the narrator recounts the day in his childhood when his pet cat was run over by a car while he watched, and his parents scooped him up half-dead into a discarded pizza box while the cat vomited and defecated on itself, I began to wonder if I hadn't actually stumbled into a sly Zucker-Brothers-style satire of the genre. A promising book but just with a few big flaws, it's getting a middle-of-the-road score but one slanting upwards; it's obvious that Stoddard is a talented young author, and once he learns how to inject a little levity into his dark but interesting writing, he's sure to one day have a truly great novel on his hands.
Out of 10: 8.2
Back when I was doing research into the "Nelson Algren at 100" series I started at the blog several years ago, one of the things that became really clear to me was how exactly the new community of "social realist" writers of the 1920s and '30s worked, as seen in microcosm in Chicago where Algren was located; that for each of the only handful of those writers who eventually became huge and stood the test of time (Algren, Richard Wright, John Steinbeck, etc), there were dozens of other writers working and publishing at the same time, with their short pieces in the magazines and their small cadre of devoted fans, but who were never able to make things click with their careers because their politically motivated work was just too heavy-handed, too obvious, too cartoonishly dark. And so it still is in the world of social realist literature, as typified in an almost textbook way by Christopher Stoddard's new Limiters; for while it's written in an engaging style, featuring a nice mix of plot and character development, Stoddard unfortunately just lays it on way too thick, almost to the point at times of writing an accidental parody of a social realist novel instead of just a social realist novel.
I mean, the book is fine, don't get me wrong, which is the whole reason that a literary scene doesn't have just two or three writers in it, but a whole circle of people who are generally liked by their peers; the tale of a modern lumpen-proletarian teen from about the most broken family you can even imagine (father in jail, mother a groupie skank, stepfather who's only nineteen himself, brother who's dead), it's a very readable and moving coming-of-age tale about our hero and all his Larry-Clarkesque loser friends, very literary in style but with a power over visual imagery almost as good as a screenplay. But man, the bleakness is relentless in this short, black, blackly short, shortly black tale, which defeats the "realist" part of trying to write a social realist book; and by the time we get to the part where the narrator recounts the day in his childhood when his pet cat was run over by a car while he watched, and his parents scooped him up half-dead into a discarded pizza box while the cat vomited and defecated on itself, I began to wonder if I hadn't actually stumbled into a sly Zucker-Brothers-style satire of the genre. A promising book but just with a few big flaws, it's getting a middle-of-the-road score but one slanting upwards; it's obvious that Stoddard is a talented young author, and once he learns how to inject a little levity into his dark but interesting writing, he's sure to one day have a truly great novel on his hands.
Out of 10: 8.2
April 4, 2014
Originally published on LitReactor.com: http://litreactor.com/reviews/booksho...
Regarding Stoddard's first novel, Publisher's Weekly said, "The novel apes Hubert Selby Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream, but lacks Selby's interesting characters and accomplished prose." I'm afraid this is still a problem in Stoddard's second effort, "Limiters".
It's very much a watered-down Selby Jr./Ellis hybrid. You can see it in the writing style and the heavy-handedness Stoddard employs when it comes to drugs, party culture, and fucking. Here's what sucks about writing about drugs, party culture, and fucking: everyone automatically puts baby in the corner as a wannabe Selby Jr. or Ellis, as if they own that portion of literary real estate in perpetuity. Same thing with erotica and E.L. James. Comparisons are impossible to avoid, and I thought Stoddard would've had the smarts to bring something new to the table seeing how Publisher's Weekly has slapped him on the wrist before. Although not wholly original, I enjoyed the writing style (quick and visceral, just like I like it) but was utterly fucking let down by the plot, or lack thereof.
Kyle, the main protag, does drugs (mostly coke), doesn't get along with his parents, embarks upon half-baked scams, and sucks a lot of cock. There's no real overall arc here...more like vignettes of depravity, but what really sticks out to me is that I've seen this before. I've seen it so many times I'm numb to it. Kyle starts out a drugged out teen experimenting with his sexuality, then the novel fast-forwards ten years to where Kyle is a drugged out adult inviting guys over to his apartment via Craigslist to give them head. In the character-development department, Stoddard's lead is pretty damn stagnant. The plot is barely there and the writing style is all-too-familiar.
Honestly, I love the whole drugs, party culture, and careless sex themes in modern literature...it's a big reason why I picked up this book. The mistake that "Limiters" makes is that it brings absolutely nothing new to the table and lacks a comprehensive story. Stoddard has potential, but I'd really like to see him break some kind of new ground. If Stoddard wants to make a name for himself, he's going to need to do something that we haven't seen before.
Regarding Stoddard's first novel, Publisher's Weekly said, "The novel apes Hubert Selby Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream, but lacks Selby's interesting characters and accomplished prose." I'm afraid this is still a problem in Stoddard's second effort, "Limiters".
It's very much a watered-down Selby Jr./Ellis hybrid. You can see it in the writing style and the heavy-handedness Stoddard employs when it comes to drugs, party culture, and fucking. Here's what sucks about writing about drugs, party culture, and fucking: everyone automatically puts baby in the corner as a wannabe Selby Jr. or Ellis, as if they own that portion of literary real estate in perpetuity. Same thing with erotica and E.L. James. Comparisons are impossible to avoid, and I thought Stoddard would've had the smarts to bring something new to the table seeing how Publisher's Weekly has slapped him on the wrist before. Although not wholly original, I enjoyed the writing style (quick and visceral, just like I like it) but was utterly fucking let down by the plot, or lack thereof.
Kyle, the main protag, does drugs (mostly coke), doesn't get along with his parents, embarks upon half-baked scams, and sucks a lot of cock. There's no real overall arc here...more like vignettes of depravity, but what really sticks out to me is that I've seen this before. I've seen it so many times I'm numb to it. Kyle starts out a drugged out teen experimenting with his sexuality, then the novel fast-forwards ten years to where Kyle is a drugged out adult inviting guys over to his apartment via Craigslist to give them head. In the character-development department, Stoddard's lead is pretty damn stagnant. The plot is barely there and the writing style is all-too-familiar.
Honestly, I love the whole drugs, party culture, and careless sex themes in modern literature...it's a big reason why I picked up this book. The mistake that "Limiters" makes is that it brings absolutely nothing new to the table and lacks a comprehensive story. Stoddard has potential, but I'd really like to see him break some kind of new ground. If Stoddard wants to make a name for himself, he's going to need to do something that we haven't seen before.
May 9, 2014
yeah this would have been more enjoyable jf 75% of the story wasn't told on the blurb, but was still a good read
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews