Not Yet

by Manuel Marrero

1103 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Elizabeth Aldrich · Rating 5 out of 5]

Juicier than going through your girlfriend's phone. More insane than any psychosis you've gone through.

[Damien Ark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not Yet breaks boundaries of what is considered a novel – even listing all of the things that it is would take time and kill the magical experience of reading it. Behind the many different forms of storytelling and sometimes cacophonic word salad, there remains the disjointed author behind the curtains. More or less, the book is about everything and nothing. It’s hard to think of any topic or idea that isn’t included or at least mentioned in the book, which might be part of the word salad as well. At times, Manuel is less human and we dive into his subconscious brain, his dreamworld, hallucinations, and maybe some fervid insanity as well. At other points, we are brought into ultra-close conscious realism of sexting DMs, love and loss, despair. Once you’re done, you see the writing on the walls, and the man within the room, standing naked in front of you, presenting his madness to you. This is his book Thousands of Lies on crack, although more mature at the same time. Here and there, we return back to characters (a love affair, various women Manuel fucks, possible alter egos), along with ideas and symbols that exist in his previous work, whether it be an ethereal world on fire and bent upon crime, or political rage, and personal reflections.

While you can read it from volume one to two and then close it, you could just randomly jump into chapters as well. Two-thirds of the way through detail one, I then felt curious to jump into volume two and read half of it, and then I went back to finish the first volume. I believe Manuel once said that a book is dead once it is published. How so? Is it the fact that we are so granulated into the linear storytelling that we will even follow a nonlinear story as if it begins at page one and ends on the last page? Or maybe to think that this isn’t linear just because of its cryptocracy also makes us killers as we read/bludgeon it with our assumptions. Manuel hasn’t explained Not Yet, at least not in details of how it’s meant to be read or offering a codex. And that’s just fine.

For the postmodern beat poet doomer that can’t decide between Bernie or Yang, for the voyeuristic romantic glossing over sexts, a trial of taking a blue and red and black pill all at once, casually offensive in many different ways, to those who want a futuristic crime drama wrapped in cellophane romance and semen and pussy juice leaking from the pages of personal messages. Not Yet is fearless and says whatever it feels like saying no matter how offensive at times it might come across. Nobody is free of being mutilated by Manuel, especially himself. One can only imagine how destructive it is to write something this possessed. Very few books take me back to what it’s like to be locked up in a mental hospital and wanting to kill everybody inside of it, but here I am again.

[Ted Prokash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manuel Marrero is my favorite rapper. I don't know what more you could need for an endorsement, but my full review is posted here: https://www.joylesshousepublishing.co...

[Mike Corrao · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cyberpunk Hyper-object(s). Free-flowing technobabble.