What do you think?
Rate this book
Gag
GAG: a sequence of rotting doors / mild suburban hell / rooms lorded over by men of obscenity / a blighted novella /sister book to PX138 3100-2686 User’s Manual / a little limb, little dog / bodies trapped in basements / leather, plastic, film / pile of burnt manuscripts / Antonin Artaud’s body writhing on an asylum floor / the outside world of light and terrors / an offensive dictionary / a song of TV’s great criminals / mere book / the acorns on the forgotten grave of Donatien Alphonse François de Sade / a collection of evidence from taped cabinets.
“Strange and severe, reworking language into a series of ritual gestures, Gag takes the words and phrases you thought you knew and with them performs a new way of speaking, one that is sensation-based rather than knowledge-based. Gag is the kind of book that recomposes itself in the compost of your brain so that only days later do you realize what it’s done to you.”
--Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses, Altmann’s Tongue, and others
“Reading Grant Maierhofer’s Gag should feel like driving a manual car for the first time: jerky, disorienting, and neurotic.”
--Vi Khi Nao, author of Fish in Exile
“Gag takes place in a haunting and unpredictable world where silence is pure, violence is a career, and everyone is meat. Reading this book is like entering a dream, or a nightmare, depending on the page.”
--Chelsea Hodson, author of Pity the Animal
“Strange and severe, reworking language into a series of ritual gestures, Gag takes the words and phrases you thought you knew and with them performs a new way of speaking, one that is sensation-based rather than knowledge-based. Gag is the kind of book that recomposes itself in the compost of your brain so that only days later do you realize what it’s done to you.”
--Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses, Altmann’s Tongue, and others
“Reading Grant Maierhofer’s Gag should feel like driving a manual car for the first time: jerky, disorienting, and neurotic.”
--Vi Khi Nao, author of Fish in Exile
“Gag takes place in a haunting and unpredictable world where silence is pure, violence is a career, and everyone is meat. Reading this book is like entering a dream, or a nightmare, depending on the page.”
--Chelsea Hodson, author of Pity the Animal
- GenresFiction
148 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2017
3 people are currently reading
150 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 27, 2022
I am of the opinion that the best literature, be it a sprawling, naturalist epic of a bygone era, or an experimental exegesis of a singular human consciousness, gives readers a window into the lives of others. It's more than a good story; more than a clever twist or an entertaining wit; more even, than a work of art. It is a catalyst; an ON switch; a jolt. Rather than providing an escape from reality, it shoves us deeper inward, wrinkling our brains toward both self-knowledge and a more radical empathy, and fostering in us new vantage points from which to view the world. The best literature challenges us to think seriously about something other than itself, and even speaking as a fearless reader who's been exploring the Inside the Castle back catalogue for over a year now, I don't know that I've ever read a book quite so challenging as Gag.
This is my first foray into the work of Grant Maierhofer - something of a cult superstar in the indie lit world - and based on the descriptions I've read of some of his other work, I wonder if I may not have accidentally stumbled head first into the deep end of his oeuvre, rather than wading responsibly in through the shallows (which is not, by any means, to say that his other books sound like light reading - just that they might be a little more traditionally structured than this one). As with most of Inside the Castle's titles, to synopsize is largely futile and probably beside the point. Viscerality is their brand. Their books are about nothing quite so much as how they make you (and by "you" I mean the direct address You, the person reading this review right now) feel. But my capacity for relating esoteric art to the masses is why they pay me the no bucks, so here we go.
Gag reads like the stream of consciousness ravings of a head rejecting its own body. Disgusted by its vile processes, embarrassed of its daily abuses and indignities, it wails through a pitiless landscape of flop houses and psych wards, piss and shit, blood and meat, riding wave after wave of furious, frantic words, occasionally cresting into the realm of complete sentences, but always dragged under again into a benthic vortex of confusion and loss. Though I'm generally loathe to employ the tired trope of "this book feels like this other book ON DRUGS!," Gag does in fact feel like it was written partially on a strata of drugs I’ve never dared try (primarily heroin), and partially on the drugs that doctors give you to try and conquer those first drugs. But it's not a cool, counterculture, "Hunter S. Thompson watching the Kentucky Derby on acid" kind of thing. It's more of a "heroin and methadone are literally destroying my brain and this is what that feels like" kind of thing. There are redacted sentences throughout - blacked-out visual markers of things you once might have known, but never will again. There are entire paragraphs comprised of scrambled words - harparspga atth oolk keil shit - and honestly, even if you take the time to unscramble them, they still only give you so much in return for your trouble. The book itself is physically disjointed - a cadaver of a life dismembered and sewn back together wrong. Legs where arms should be. Ears attached to genitals. Toes for teeth. It is actively fighting for language through the fog of a permanently altered state that no longer grasps or conforms to it. Inasmuch as other people factor into the central figure's world at all, Gag acts as a true expression of the inability of a collapsed mind to understand the desire of those around it to help. Concepts of love and family seem unknowable and perverse, warped by something so far past addiction as to be wholly unsalvageable. Indeed, interspersed with unsettlingly damaged-looking newspaper collages, Maierhofer's writing can at times feel like a middle finger to the very concept of "cool" drug culture - a dumpster dive into lived horrors that modern art students are just digging through his trash trying to fabricate.
So yeah, not exactly a fun time at the movies - though it did repeatedly call to mind the closing shot of one of my favorite recent films, Carlos Reygadas's Post Tenebras Lux, in which a man reaches up and pulls his own head off of his shoulders in a fountain of blood (for whatever that's worth) - but for the daring and the bold, Gag executes a death-defying feat on the highest order of everything I spoke about in that opening paragraph. If you want to know what it might feel like to go absolutely fucking insane - what it might sound like inside your mind as it happens - without the hassle of, you know, mainlining horse for a few years and mutilating your own repugnant flesh, take Gag out for a spin. It's an inimitably wild ride to a place most of us will never get to on our own. Just try not to get so dizzy you throw up along the way.
This is my first foray into the work of Grant Maierhofer - something of a cult superstar in the indie lit world - and based on the descriptions I've read of some of his other work, I wonder if I may not have accidentally stumbled head first into the deep end of his oeuvre, rather than wading responsibly in through the shallows (which is not, by any means, to say that his other books sound like light reading - just that they might be a little more traditionally structured than this one). As with most of Inside the Castle's titles, to synopsize is largely futile and probably beside the point. Viscerality is their brand. Their books are about nothing quite so much as how they make you (and by "you" I mean the direct address You, the person reading this review right now) feel. But my capacity for relating esoteric art to the masses is why they pay me the no bucks, so here we go.
Gag reads like the stream of consciousness ravings of a head rejecting its own body. Disgusted by its vile processes, embarrassed of its daily abuses and indignities, it wails through a pitiless landscape of flop houses and psych wards, piss and shit, blood and meat, riding wave after wave of furious, frantic words, occasionally cresting into the realm of complete sentences, but always dragged under again into a benthic vortex of confusion and loss. Though I'm generally loathe to employ the tired trope of "this book feels like this other book ON DRUGS!," Gag does in fact feel like it was written partially on a strata of drugs I’ve never dared try (primarily heroin), and partially on the drugs that doctors give you to try and conquer those first drugs. But it's not a cool, counterculture, "Hunter S. Thompson watching the Kentucky Derby on acid" kind of thing. It's more of a "heroin and methadone are literally destroying my brain and this is what that feels like" kind of thing. There are redacted sentences throughout - blacked-out visual markers of things you once might have known, but never will again. There are entire paragraphs comprised of scrambled words - harparspga atth oolk keil shit - and honestly, even if you take the time to unscramble them, they still only give you so much in return for your trouble. The book itself is physically disjointed - a cadaver of a life dismembered and sewn back together wrong. Legs where arms should be. Ears attached to genitals. Toes for teeth. It is actively fighting for language through the fog of a permanently altered state that no longer grasps or conforms to it. Inasmuch as other people factor into the central figure's world at all, Gag acts as a true expression of the inability of a collapsed mind to understand the desire of those around it to help. Concepts of love and family seem unknowable and perverse, warped by something so far past addiction as to be wholly unsalvageable. Indeed, interspersed with unsettlingly damaged-looking newspaper collages, Maierhofer's writing can at times feel like a middle finger to the very concept of "cool" drug culture - a dumpster dive into lived horrors that modern art students are just digging through his trash trying to fabricate.
So yeah, not exactly a fun time at the movies - though it did repeatedly call to mind the closing shot of one of my favorite recent films, Carlos Reygadas's Post Tenebras Lux, in which a man reaches up and pulls his own head off of his shoulders in a fountain of blood (for whatever that's worth) - but for the daring and the bold, Gag executes a death-defying feat on the highest order of everything I spoke about in that opening paragraph. If you want to know what it might feel like to go absolutely fucking insane - what it might sound like inside your mind as it happens - without the hassle of, you know, mainlining horse for a few years and mutilating your own repugnant flesh, take Gag out for a spin. It's an inimitably wild ride to a place most of us will never get to on our own. Just try not to get so dizzy you throw up along the way.
Read
October 5, 2020I'm glad I read "Drain Songs" before getting my hands on this one, not sure if I would have had the patience to get through it otherwise. Definitely would not recommend this as an introduction to the author. The book looks amazing, totally warped chapter titles, cool collage artwork interspersed throughout, a few different fonts used - I was eager to dive in. But many of the sentences in the book read like they are put together in the wrong order, had me very nauseated at first, but after a while I just felt confused. It is really cool how occasionally there is a normally constructed paragraph and it's a real jolt to the system. Or the feeling you get after reading a paragraph made up of all jumbled words, after one of those I found myself trying to de-scramble normal words. An interesting experiment, even if I have no idea what the hell I just read.
I do not want to put on clothing and watch the world scumfuck itself for several hours each day. "I am a fuckwit sat on nails". Me the dream which although did not have the value which will get the honey. yM bmprelo aws I uldcon't tatcuireal jtus hwo or wyh I eneded it. Fuck me with this gigantic hammer!
I do not want to put on clothing and watch the world scumfuck itself for several hours each day. "I am a fuckwit sat on nails". Me the dream which although did not have the value which will get the honey. yM bmprelo aws I uldcon't tatcuireal jtus hwo or wyh I eneded it. Fuck me with this gigantic hammer!
March 13, 2019
maierhofer does things that only beckett could do, in my opinion. this is molloy as a rabid dog. 'how it is' freshly out of the sensory deprivation tank and into the chemical garbage fire of these late 2010s. the language is so raw and enticing and authentically psych-damaged, i couldn't help but read it too fast. luckily there is more, i'm sure my amygdala will be grateful.
September 2, 2020
Babble and swim with alien dead maybe.
November 13, 2021
Obnoxious.
July 31, 2023
a nightmare, a lobotomy, a trance. horrific in the best way once you surrender to the style. this book is haunting me
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews