Essays and Fictions

by Brad Phillips

Brad Phillips' collection of short stories adeptly walks a very thin line between taboo and propriety, with rigorous self-awareness and generosity. By confusing ideas around fiction and autobiography, Phillips writes with painful sincerity about shame, addiction, trauma, and the more troubling outreaches of sexual desire, with wit that is at odds with the subject matter.

"Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing . Brad Phillips peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul." —Anthony Bourdain

"Brad Phillips says, at the beginning of this incredible book, that honesty eludes him. Obviously, that’s a lie. When you read Brad Phillips, you understand why nice women write love letters to men on death row." —Sarah Nicole Prickett

"Last week, Giancarlo Di Trapano turned me on to Suicidal Realism, a short memoir by the Canadian painter Brad Phillips. It’s not exactly an edifying book. Phillips’s main themes are drugs and sex, in that order: “People who like to get fucked up with other people are not people I like to get fucked up with.” But Phillips has a watchful intelligence and self-knowledge, and an impatient sincerity, that sneak up on you (or at least, snuck up on me). He doesn’t ask to be liked, even by his groupies, but he does want to communicate: “I’m not interested in the ones who are drawn to the creator of the work, I’m interested in the ones who are drawn to the content.” —The Paris Review

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Essays, Contemporary, Literature, Book Club

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 2019

About the author

interested in trading for a jet-ski

Reviews

[Sommer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ever have a book you like so much that you slow your pace towards the end so that it lasts longer? This was one of those for me.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think my entire body of work is a suicide note.

I don’t know if it’s bad/strange that I found this book so comforting. Much of the material that could’ve otherwise seemed distasteful is transformed by the tenderness of Phillips’ writing. ‘Ophelia’ is also one of the finest strange stories I’ve read this year, even though ‘strange stories’ aren’t at all what the book is setting out to do.

[Cassie Rauch]

it is jan 29 and i am formally announcing that this is one of my top five books of 2021

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is an excerpt from my 21 January 2019 review at 3:AM Magazine: "As a project that stands somewhere between fiction and nonfiction, one might wonder if Phillips’ debut is more satisfying as a set of stories or as essays. I found it satisfying as both. As essays, each is focused on memories and meaning-making. These are all very personal, particular experiences that speak to the larger human experience. Yet Phillips is also freewheeling enough to follow where his mind wanders. There is, for instance, this scene in “Boo Hoo in Three Parts” where he encounters and parties with his junky father’s decaying corpse. Believe me, that story haunts. But these are essays that clearly evoke places and times, populated with characters who are inconsistent in the way good fiction should be. Phillips is a fiction writer, writing in a style so close to what we often expect from nonfiction, that a reader cannot tell what is true or not."

For the whole review, visit 3:AM can be found here: https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/coper...

[sam]

Theres something about Brad's writing in this book that is at once abrasively pretentious and sincerely heartfelt, in the best way possible. The book lives up to its name, drawing attention to the performativity of writing in all modes of "truthfulness". Solid self referential read

[Benoit Lelièvre · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both great and grueling.

This is a collection of short stories/vignettes where it's impossible to tell what actually happened to Brad Phillips and what is fiction, hence the title. It's a reflection on emotional flaws, self-destructiveness, drug addiction and how warped life can become when you lose control. Phillips stories all begin in realistic enough setting, build a relationship of trust with the reader and then wham! They swerve into weird Ballardian territory and shine a whole new light on what it's trying to accomplish. Thanks to Troy James Weaver for the recommendation.

[Rachael Wehrle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I want to read this book forever

[christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings. I finished this book with no particular section/theme/story sticking with me. As this is how I personally judge the quality of a book, based on how long it affects me in my thoughts after finishing it, the conclusion is just eh. It is vapid of any real substance, and could be boiled down to a troubled, yet privileged, male artist's attempt at making some deep meaning out of his fucked up past and traumas. I do love addict books, but this one was just boring. Near the end, all the stories began to get jumbled. Maybe because each chapter wasn't long enough to explore a full theme?
I will admit Phillips has a way with words that makes you want to write them down and remember the exact structuring to say for yourself in the future. A stand out quote going something like "I am a leopard and you are a gazelle. Show me your underbelly, and know my teeth are made of feathers".

In summary, fucked up artist writes fucked up book. Has a little too much fun with abstracting himself from the typical story format. Kinda makes you lose interest near the end. Good to read the short stories independently once in a while, but nothing to really make of it as whole.

[La La · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was pretty masturbatory but I don't know what else I was expecting. Brad Phillips instagram is cool and I thought maybe his writing would be interesting but it was pretty hard to get through. I usually really enjoy short stories and essays like this but the first person narrative got so boring so quickly. The game of "is he telling the truth or not?" is played out and not even done in an unreliable narrative sort of way. He is written like a bad Chuck Palahniuk character but with somehow less edge and grit.

[Gubly]

I feel kinda bad giving a bad review to an author who has a goodreads account. I mean no harm:
Writing about sex and drugs is a really difficult task in 2021. That's because they shouldn't be the forefront of any relevant novel. The whole binary of drug use (addict into hard line sober) feels incredibly outdated. People now are "LA Sober", theyll quit drinking but still smoke weed and do psychedelics. Drug use is a fluctuating thing as everyone in 2021 is on small subtle amounts of every substance imaginable. A million little pieces couldn't be published now. Do people really care about drugs? I don't think I do. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself. I like when drug use is incidental, an enhancer to prose, once the piece centers on drug use or sex or worse of all sex addiction (sex is kinda like drugs man? get it? and drugs, drugs is kinda like sex), I find myself wanted to read erowid forums, not this sappy shit. That's what I like about tao lin, hes not an addict in the classical sense, he's a freak, constantly measuring milligrams. That's not "cool", I like that stuff.
I'm writing this frustrated because I actually think brad phillips is a good fiction writer. The first story is really strong! But most of the autobiographic stuff falls flat. I really love the story about the online relationship with the woman in scotland though, that was really beautiful.
I think Brad phillips would be the last person to want pity or sympathy for his woes, but if you write about how fucked up you are / your life is you are inadvertently asking for it. The reader doesn't want to just leave you rotting on the sidewalk. And that gets tiring after a while.

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

occasional lows offset by some serious highs that a lot of contemporary fiction struggles to // never reaches. Phillips writes like it was his unfortunate obligation. The "Unexpurgated Craigslist Ad" story alone was almost enough to call this a new instant favourite.

[Phil Kramer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me realize I need more love and passion in my life

[Michel Ch · Rating 5 out of 5]

the play- make believe of the chapter suicidal realism has struck a nerve and would recommend everyone to read at least this chapter. a genetic void, one you make your life's work to fill it in increasingly ingenious ways. then death makes you embody the void. clinging to intensity to give and create meaning, finding yourself among people who equally as much are escaping their emptiness. Drugs as their own entity start to consume you, you are coursing through his veins. an endless path to self erasure led by monumental self hate, essentially making every thing you do part of one big suicide note

[blisstr · Rating 5 out of 5]

best thing i've ever read

[Bryce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brad Phillips is that art school kid who never grew out of it hanging out at a party talking really loudly about his problems, but doing it in such a charming and honest way that doesn't expect any sympathy of his audience that we just laugh and become inexplicably drawn to him. The young men in the room are envious that he can say the stuff they wish they could say and be taken seriously, the young women are attracted to the danger, to the attention he attracts, and the two or three adults in the room say to themselves, "good for you," and silently go back to their drinks and their own very real problems.

His charm keeps him endeared to us, but as soon as he lets it be known that he is serious, as soon as he becomes depressed, we instantly stop caring about him or his problems, which probably only makes him more depressed, thinking maybe, and accurately, that we only want to pay attention to him when he is showing off and playing a character. This happened for me in the final three or four stories. He says he's not looking for sympathy, as they do, but once he reveals that of course he is very much looking for sympathy, the whole facade kind of falls apart and he is a clown with the makeup washed off, asking if we still love him. If we feel sorry for him we say "yes baby i love you anyways," and if we have healthy boundaries we go back to our lives while he figures his shit out on his own.

I'm giving it four stars because it really fucking works for the most part. While I think in real life Brad Phillips would piss me off to no end, the way he blends fiction and nonfiction is something that requires a huge amount of bluster and I love it. Writers have been trying to pull that off for so long and they always draw a whole lot of attention to it, try to convince the reader that they're pushing the boundaries of literature or something as if it hasn't been done for hundreds of years. Phillips just goes ahead and does it and seems to not care what we think. He writes about drugs and sex in the unashamed and unrepentant way that I think is becoming more and more difficult in our strangely puritanical-yet-sex-obsessed north american culture. This book was inspiring and liberatory for me, a reminder that you can actually do whatever you want when it comes to reading and writing, that you can totally get away with never growing out of your art school obsessions and passions just because everyone else did.

The first story, ophelia, completely hooked me. I was genuinely taken by surprise at the sudden fictionalization. This became a theme, as in the unexpurgated craigslist ad. I have no idea what is fiction and what is nonfiction, and it keeps me on my toes, not because I'm wondering, but because I realize it doesn't actually matter, and that dose of truth just makes the fiction all the more real and relevant. Kind of like writing about fictional murders while in prison for an actual murder. Harder to write you off.

[Si · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the last two essays of Essays and Fictions in a Parisian metro car, returning from a long-needed therapist visit, sweltering in 30 degrees heat in a season-inappropriate outfit, complete with an obligatory covid19 mask. As the mask slowly absorbed my third-coffee breath and as the salty sweat dripped down my nose, I sensed a smooth wave of velvety nausea up my throat and a shiver down my spine. I looked up to see if I’d missed my stop, stared at the strangers each a safe meter away from me, and looked back down at the book. They didn't understand what had just happened. For a split second I thought I understood everything. Never had nausea felt so cathartic, so exhilarating. Never have I been more inspired to turn what cripples me on the daily into an opportunity to heal. If anyone's wondering, yes, this book is severely triggering and yes I'm deeply triggered, in that I feel like a gun of possibilities ready to blow.

[Ethan Ksiazek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely devoured this. It’s everything. Masterful. Every story dovetails perfectly. The drug-laden, thread-laden insouciance of it all—fucking drenched all sensibility in a mournful mess. The writing, Jesus H, is adroit, casual, clever, and stylistically sentimental (vowels stretching into whale music / mirrors as emissaries of unwanted consciousness / clouds bereft of silver). The story ‘Unexpurgated Craigslist Ad’ steamrolled me, bore holes into my heart sending blood every which way. One ceaseless tumult. Total fiver.

[Nat · Rating 2 out of 5]

This falls between 2 and 3 stars. The writing is very compelling but I couldn’t wait to be done with this book. I feel like I rolled my eyes every other chapter. Over the top narcissism can be fun to read about but this get really whiney at parts, most noticeably when he says being an artist is the hardest job there is lol.

[Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really fucking loved this book.

[Johan]

äcklig bok

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Knowing what’s wrong with you is only half the battle now do something about it damn

[Ruthie · Rating 1 out of 5]

New David Foster Wallace just dropped

[Levi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brad Phillips’ honesty (and/or his ability to mimic the inflections of honesty) is quite remarkable here. It’s great that a book so ostensibly concerned with what truth’s relationship to art is(/isn’t) is actually just a book about a man’s drug-and-sex-riddled coming-to-terms with The Truth, which, as it happens, cannot be found within libraries’ doors and between books’ pages, but which can be found beneath the bolted hood of that industrial dumpster in the alley off the corner of Hastings and Main where the addicts shoot up during the day and the hookers lurk during the night. Herein lies The Truth – don't lose it.

Sidenote: the cover for this book is an obvious ode to the 1956, Garnett-translated edition of Crime and Punishment (see below); Phillips is not at all unlike Dostoevsky, but I wonder what the specific inspiration was here...

[sexynietzsche · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterfully-written travel log from the underbelly of the zeitgeist. I was racing to finish it before I threw up. The latticework of fiction and reality is provoking and satisfying, an itch and a scratch. The gross-out material is humble and the references, gold; no cheap shots to be found. Not once did I roll my eyes while reading the whole thing. I would only recommend this book to my friends who have 1. Eaten out of a trash can 2. Would eat out of a trash can or 3. Have used the phrase “court-ordered” when describing something on their to-do list. So, cool friends only. Thanks for the, dare I say, “edifying” share.

[Seb · Rating 4 out of 5]

sometimes this book felt very honest. it also annoyed me at times. the relentless focus on sex/death/trauma/addiction felt occasionally too on the nose and gaudy. i also found brad’s articulation as to why he spreads disinformation re: his public image a bit exasperating (i think he would agree with this). still, will be thinking about this for a while

[Tess Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, what an exhausting fucking nightmare book. I couldn’t put it down. I don’t know if I can even call it a book since it’s nothing like any book I’ve ever read before. And I bet the same applies to you. I laughed and cried and cursed Brad Phillips and said oh Brad Phillips you clever dog I want you. This possibly biographical possibly fictitious disjointed collection of memories and hypotheticals is an altar of depravity that slashes open the tender stomach of life and reveals the starlit sky inside. And then shits on it. And then says fuck you!! And then curls up with it and cries like an unheld child. You get the gist, I wholly recommend it, it’s a distillation of what it means to be human and a fucking scumbag

[Parker Lapointe · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had a lot of potential, but it fell flat for me. The idea of mixing reality with fiction is so cool — I just felt like it could have been pushed further. The authorial voice was also too self-loathing, and never went beyond the surface level of depth.

Great concept and a few great moments tucked within a lot of bleh.

[Richie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. It contained many themes that I like reading about. The protagonist in all of the stories is a sexual deviant and drug addict (presumably modeled after the author) and I found the descriptions of his behavior and thought patterns to be comprehensible and plausible and very engaging.

I found the book to be a bit thematically monotonous, but it didn't bore me. It may have if it were longer and as thematically monotonous.

[Inge Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thought I liked it, in the end I didn't. The first story really promised something good and something I would like, but I guess this book is not for me.

[Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle · Rating 5 out of 5]

lots of drugs, sex, and insanity, but didn't feel like "another drug book". grim but also funny. brad might be insane but he's a good storyteller.