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.

[Ryan Bry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manuel licks his ink juice after dropping devastation like an enraged cloistered monk who has just discovered his Church is infected—the violence cure. The foray into active bedside, and he takes a visit like his presence is bottled wind. He writes himself into his apocalypse of caring, his public case against the runny, unyielding officials who butcher the natural faculties of the organic heart. However, they're clearly not the antagonist of NOT YET, which quickly becomes Manuel himself, using the hidden disruptives to nurture a careful apocalypse inside. Careful, not because it is with timid shivering but because it has that meek, treating salve that undercurrents all that boister. Manuel erupts with satin Shakespearean disregard at times, and his mythology is savvy as a delivered kiss. It's deadpan that clings to life with ironic plainness, but it's also the metaphysical fluid that lines the underworld with sallow mission. Manuel places himself garbing the Dantic mantle and sends you through the fallopian madness of spirit flares that can get goopy and etheric, impervious to any structure formerly known as the 4th wall. NOT YET will demand your compassion for animals, for that's what this is to most avail, a formation balked about for centuries, sleekness & theatrical sourness manifest as a villain rodent with a labyrinth as plain as a butter cookie.

His incarnation convicts him to ritualize the societal function—with ancient influx that erodes the stone of due process and forces out those crystal eyes. Manuel is speaking into the dark heart structure of a word that nobody knows. He writes with the veracity of those historical figures who discover their genius niche in the frivolous grind and only react against it, rebelling against sleep just because it’s a seduction. NOT YET etches its thoughts with ceremonial blasé that triangulates your soul. There’s also a romantic vulnerability in this literary banquet when Manuel spells out his comfort zone, a mumble humor with caustic generosity & pomp. Manuel lets the demon into your house so it can eat a bucket of KFC in front of you while its limbs contort like the microverse of shapes. I spilled candle wax all over my copy and let my mythology professor borrow it. The quirky consciousness of it rhythms out a mechanism that babumps like God’s last resort from a rainy motel.

Manuel’s novel is mind stew that knows it has to congratulate itself in order to be tasty, reflexive of an obscure axis of spiritual cognizance that delights & commiserates stockily. Gloomy basement writing for the experimentally saved. Reading this book at the campus greenhouse might strongarm you into a chance student government meeting. Lines such as “You will not survive the death of God,” pierce like intergalactic cries of fresh found communicative victory, standing outside of the miracle penning witness as quick as a candle. The destructive intimacy of the writing act, a star’s understanding reflex. Contains the marriage between the external and internal with a third generation of crazy beauty. The pure sluttiness of unfiltered gush & gruesome squeeze sculpting.

Genius on this planet is neverendingly cajoled to angle & angle, but Manuel’s pinprick of shimmers bubble with frosted beauty, and display the grim moss on the stature of messengers. There’s also low tide in this book, where your body is washed with the psychic gemini spectrum. At times, it’s like looking at your psychiatrist straight in the anus. The gorgeous downplay dancing & slang salvos suggest as well that Manuel’s well stocked for the zoomer confederacy. & Manuel takes you on a trip to the countryside of other planets. NOT YET is your reward of mirthy doom for successfully betraying yourself, as shadow royalty unwaveringly does. The epitome of Light Yagami’s “I’ll take a potato chip, and eat it!!” speech. America doesn’t kill animals, it kills souls. Referencing the review, NOT YET is an animal. The book buzzes like a satellite to fulfill unmetered resurrection and all of its cocoonish seizing. Manuel built the perfect stage for a bloody hiccup speckled with saint burst. A crackling radio that will lower reality into a convenient grave so you can dream with comfort and the safety of possession. Will make you muse on how many lifetimes you’ve spent encountering his prose, when you’re rushed into his saddened clouds of merit and spunk is bashed from a quill’s worth of creation that slipped through the hazy gown that morning wears. Read NOT YET by Manuel Marrero.