Weasels in a Box: a not so musical journey through partially truthful situations with eighty percent fictitious dialogue

by John Jughead Pierson

Weasels in a Box is a meta-fictional exploration that dangerously close to the edge of historical reality. John R. Pierson, a.k.a. Jughead, a.k.a. ian pierce, recounts, to the best of his ability, life on the road with a punk-rock band in the mid-1990s.

Genres: Music

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2005

About the author

John Jughead Pierson, hails from Chicago where he has spent his whole life creating art in many medias. He has been a part of The Neo-Futurists for over 15 years. (A Chicago staple theater company known for its show Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind www.neofuturists.org) John was the co-founder of the seminal punk band Screeching Weasel. (He recorded records and toured with the band for over 20 years. He is the founder of the acoustic punk band known as Even In Blackouts. He is was a puppeteer for the company Madcap Puppets out of Cincinnati. He has written two novels: Weasels In A Box and The Last Temptation of Clarence Odbody. He is now working on a third novel called The Plight of the Lampoons, a story about a cartoon family that inexplicably appears in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, house and all. He is working on this novel while performing as a Wizard in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Osaka Japan.

Reviews

[Mark Winchester · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever wonder what its like being an unknown band, going through band members like Ben Affleck going through dead prostitutes?

[nix · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't even begin to explain how much I love Screeching Weasel AND how much I love to learn useless info and trivia about the things that I like. This book is perfect and I love John Jughead and I don't care about other opinions.

[Brad · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Full disclosure: I did not know the author the first time I read this book and gave it five stars, but I do know the author now, having completed my second read over ten years later. Still five stars.)

This is a memoir that concerns itself with more than just the events. It wonders about the reliability of memory and how life's experiences color it. The author's fictionalized self wrestles with how certain moments shape our lives, sometimes against our will. But what about other moments from our lives simply get stuck in our minds for no apparent reason at all? Why is that?

But the memoir does not only deal in the philosophical. Readers also get treated to tales from Screeching Weasel's beginnings and their rise with the classic line-up. As with any book about Lookout! Records-era bands, I always wish there was more to soak up, but here I find the chunks we're given perfectly satisfying. I'm left wanting more not for lack of content, but because that desire is what true artists can manifest for their audience.

[Nate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am *so* interested in the subject matter of this book. I loved Ben Weasel's Like Hell, and I was super excited for another perspective on the topic. However, two things really rubbed me the wrong way in this book:

Number one....it's written in 2nd person! There's a reason most books are not written in 2nd person. It's horribly awkward. I can absolutely appreciate the amount of work that would go into writing something like that, but it is so goddamn taxing to read. It just killed all moment and made me feel weird.

Number two....the names of all the bands and all the people have been changed. Now, the new names are painfully obvious plays on the original names, and so for someone in the know, it's pretty easy to figure out who the author is talking about. But when your brain is constantly doing the calculations between fictitious
names and actual names, it slows down the reading.

I gave it 60 pages, and maybe some day I'll revisit it, but I just can't do it now....

I wish Jughead had just written a memoir instead.