The Jaywalker

by Lisa Crystal Carver, Dame Darcy (Illustrator)

This collection is unlike anything I've ever read. Rapid-fire flash fiction flies at you like debris in a hurricane. Some pieces made me laugh, some made me think, and some just plain creeped me out. These delirious, tiny tales are interleaved with strange and exquisite illustrations by Dame Darcy. (Description courtesy of Hank Kirton)

72 pages, Paperback

Published February 29, 2016

About the author

Lisa Crystal Carver (born 1968[1]), also known as Lisa Suckdog, is an American writer known for her writing in Rollerderby.[2] Through her interviews, she introduced the work of Vaginal Davis, Dame Darcy, Cindy Dall, Boyd Rice, Costes (her ex-husband with whom she performed Suckdog), Nick Zedd, GG Allin, Kate Landau, Queen Itchie & Liz Armstrong to many. A collection of notable articles from the zine was published as Rollerderby: The Book.

She started touring with the performance art band Psycodrama when she was 18 years old.[3] It was also at this time that she became a prostitute, which has been a major theme in her writings over the years.[4] She began touring with Costes a year later, and would also tour without him when he was in France. She toured the U.S. and Europe six times, the last time in 1998. The noise music soap operas included audience interaction including dancing and mock-rape of audience members.[3]

Carver is the also the author of Dancing Queen: a Lusty Look at the American Dream, in which she expounds upon various relics of pop culture past, including Lawrence Welk, roller rinks, and Olivia Newton-John. In 2005, Soft Skull Press released her newest book, Drugs Are Nice, detailing her early childhood and later romantic relationships with Costes, Boyd Rice and Smog's Bill Callahan. In addition to writing her own 'zines and books, Carver has also written for various magazines (including Peter Bagge's comic book Hate) and kept a fictionalized journal about her sex life for the website Nerve. Although Carver no longer writes her journal for the site, she is still a semi-regular contributor. The online Journal at Nerve was subsequently published in book form as The Lisa Diaries: Four Years in the Sex Life of Lisa Carver and Company. (via Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes I think, how can I make a story more like an abstract painting? You know, where there’s no figure or narrative to let you in, but one must develop a dialogue on an almost spiritual level. It’s hard to impossible with words, as words are already symbols of things and are made to fit together sensibly, but it’s not the goal as much as the experiment that’s interesting. That’s what I love about THE JAYWALKER and all of Lisa Carver’s writing: you can almost see her thinking on the page, playing with the process. It feels improvisational, whether it is or not, in its freedom of choice in the moment, and there’s a danger inherent as well. It could all come tumbling down at any time. These very short stories, poems, musings, axioms, wordplays, puns, one-liners, autobiographical sketches and more defy categorization because that’s not important. Carver is pushing herself into the creative frontier like those cartoons of trains running on tracks that are being built just before the engine’s wheels land on them to carry them forward, and I’m happy to follow.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually love Lisa Carver’s writing so I don’t know what’s wrong with me this time around—maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. I did like the illustrations though.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was precisely what I needed it to be, a salad of images, jokes, dreams, fantasies, and observations bundled into one short vision of how everything is probable.