Monkey Girl: Swingin' Tales

by Beth Lisick

In her first collection of short stories, celebrated spoken-word artist Beth Lisick evokes the rollicking world of post-boom America. An impoverished but proud office drone ("I am the reigning queen of the Toshiba BD copy machine") gets a makeover. A teenager is drugged by her fraudulent, sadistic orthodontist. On a five-hour flight to Cabo San Lucas, the author psychically bonds with a flight attendant. In this collection of 25 hilarious, anecdotal short stories, spoken-word performer Beth Lisick creates a panoramic tapestry of strip malls, junk-food habits, and yuppie pickup joints, unveiling a world that most of us simply drive past. Blending the everyday and its sometimes grotesque underside, hallucinatory detail, and stripped-down dialogue, Lisick's descriptions are almost hypnotic with their complex rhythms and cadences. These stories - all of which Beth Lisick uses in performance - imbue the ordinary with unique and unexpected hilarity. Striking, witty, and vividly contemporary, these stories evoke what it's like to live now, in the suburban wasteland of the '90s.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1997

About the author

Beth Lisick is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller Everybody into the Pool. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies including Best American Poetry, the Santa Cruz Noir, and Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Movement. She has contributed to public radio's This American Life and is the cofounder of the Porchlight storytelling series in San Francisco.

Reviews

[Mateo · Rating 4 out of 5]

God bless Beth Lisick.

And if you're a nonbeliever, as I am, well, may the unfrozen head of Walt Disney bless Beth Lisick.

While Bay Area hipsters in the '80s and '90s--a sulfurous tar-pit of an era that somehow combined Oliver North, Ralph Macchio, Ivan Boesky, and "The Super Bowl Shuffle"--were busy leveraging proactive synergies, sniffing the coke out of their septums at Mission District oxygen bars, letting the wind surf through their BMW convertibles and onto their $90 baseball caps, and papering their South of Market cubicles with cutouts from Giant Robot until their first IPO achieved financial puberty, Beth Lisick was emigrating up from Saratoga with dreams of working in a bakery and hanging out evenings in the kind of bar that features a rancid ocelot skin of unknown provenance dangling under a dart board. It's not too much of an exaggeration that Beth Lisick and people like her kept a lot of us alive and sane during those drear years.

This is a book of generally quite short pieces, some poetry, some memoir, some anecdotes, some just pointed fishwrap, and it's a hoot and damn enjoyable. Yes, the book jacket describes Lisick as a "spoken-word artist," and, yes, most of us would rather spend an evening taking a crescent wrench to the jawline than experience a night of "spoken-word artistry." (And just what was it with the popularity of Spaulding Gray, anyway? I've done shit that would curl Spaulding's weenie like a pot of corkscrew pasta, and it never occurred to me to talk about it for an hour and a half, much less make a movie about it.) Fortunately, Lisick is by turns tender, charming, melancholy, scary, and frequently very funny ("I'd only recently stopped shaving and the half-inch-long hairs were really gross and a dead giveaway that I'd only recently discovered the systematic social abuse imposed on women by the the patriarchy. Plus, I think my deodorant had formed big white clumps in between all the stubble"). She never descends to ranting, never stoops to snideness, and by Jove some of her turns of phrase are so good that they can stay with you for days, as when she describes her "prepubescent hairless armpits" as "smelling like taco meat."

If it's true that many of these pieces are too slight to be anything more than literary gestures, it's equally true that Lisick never overstays her welcome. In a literary world where every other writer is a manifest genius elbowing his competitors in the gut with a thousand-page explosion of poo-flinging, it's nice to have someone who says her piece, says it well, and then hoofs off to her job dressing up as a banana.

I've never met Lisick, but I have a friend whose book she blurbed, and I'm more envious of that than I would be of a billionaire with a new car and an extra penis. I mean, who wouldn't be? Did I mention that she dresses up as a banana?

[Trin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Lisick's memoir, Everybody Into the Pool, in part because it's one of the few—perhaps the only—memoirs I've read that depicts a funny, weird, messed-up adult without pinning all those traits on a fucked-up, miserable childhood (No, look, my childhood is the MOST miserable! See how miserable it was? Wallow in the shit of my childhood a little more, plz).

ANYWAY...Lisick didn't do that! (Although Pool does contain a hilarious and squirm-worthy incident involving, um. Shit.) But I digress, as I'm actually supposed to be talking about Monkey Girl, her earlier collection of short stories/spoken word-type stuff. The idea of "spoken word" usually makes me cringe (that's not what I go to bars or coffee shops for, okay?) but as I said, I liked Pool, so I was willing to give this a shot. I'm glad I did. It's nothing revolutionary, but Lisick once again makes a good tour guide for the Bay Area underground: humorous, self-deprecating, not the least bit poseur-y, self-righteous, or faux. And I believe in her Bay Area; it touches on the Bay Area I experienced enough to make me pleasantly nostalgic. I'm not sure if this book would do much for you if the San Francisco/Berkeley scene isn't one with which you're familiar, but I liked it.

[Anastasia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked this up off the publisher's table at the Pop Culture conference, mostly because of the cover and title. Monkey Girl actually refers to the Zodiac symbol, and my fellow Rats don't come out too well...I'd like to think we're a bit better of a group than that. I found myself disappointed not to be able to hear the work aloud, because a lot of it had that feel to it, but the voice comes through strongly. It's a quick read that provides more fun than thought, but everyone needs that type of book now and again too.

[Sari Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting collection of short pieces, musings and ramblings by spoken word artist Beth Lisick. She definitely has a unique and often w perspective on things! Three and a half stars.

[Debra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love love love this book! Beth has some great stories to tell.

[Halley Sutton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up because someone whose writing I admired in college liked lisick--occasionally very funny, occasionally very angry, probably works better as a spoken word performance.

[Misti Rainwater-Lites · Rating 2 out of 5]

(((mediocre)))