Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino: Stories

by Julián Herbert, Christina MacSweeney (Translator)

Virtuosic stories by one of “the more interesting and ambitious prose stylists of our time” (Los Angeles Times)

In this madcap, insatiably inventive, bravura story collection, Julián Herbert brings to vivid life people who struggle to retain a measure of sanity in an insane world. Here we become acquainted with a vengeful “personal memories coach” who tries to get even with his delinquent clients; a former journalist with a cocaine habit who travels through northern Mexico impersonating a famous author of Westerns; the ghost of Juan Rulfo; a man who discovers music in his teeth; and, in the deliriously pulpy title story, a drug lord who looks just like Quentin Tarantino, who kidnaps a mopey film critic to discuss Tarantino’s films while he sends his goons to find and kill the doppelgänger that has colonized his consciousness. Herbert’s astute observations about human nature in extremis feel like the reader’s own revelations.

The antic and dire stories in Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino depict the violence and corruption that plague Mexico today, but they are also deeply ruminative and layered explorations of the narrative impulse and the ethics of art making. Herbert asks: Where are the lines between fiction, memory, and reality? What is the relationship between power, corruption, and survival? How much violence can a person (and a country) take? The stories in this explosive collection showcase the fevered imagination of a significant contemporary writer.

The ballad of Mother Teresa of Calcutta --
M.L. Estefanía --
White paper --
NEETS --
The Roman wedding --
There where we stood --
Caries --
The dog's head --
Z --
Bring me the head of Quentin Tarantino

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Spanish Literature, Contemporary, Literature, Crime, Latinx

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2017

About the author

Julián Herbert (Acapulco, 1971) es escritor, músico y profesor. Es autor de dos libros de relatos, Soldados muertos y Cocaína (manual de usuario), dos novelas, Un mundo infiel y Canción de tumba (Literatura Random House), dos libros de crónica, Algunas estúpidas razones para volver a Berlín y La casa del dolor ajeno. También es autor de varios libros de poesía entre los que destacan El nombre de esta casa, La resistencia, Kubla Khan y Pastilla camaleón.
Julián Herbert ha obtenido varios premios: Mención honorífica en el Premio Nacional de Poesía Joven Elías Nandino (1999), Premio Nacional de Literatura Gilberto Owen (2003), Premio Nacional de Cuento Juan José Arreola (2006), Premio Nacional de Cuento Agustín Yáñez (2008), Premio Jaén de Novela (2011) por Canción de Tumba, Premio de Novela Elena Poniatowska por Canción de Tumba (2012).

Julián Herbert vive en Saltillo, México

(source: CARMONA LITERARY AGENCY)

Reviews

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was AMAZING. Short stories and a novella with that perfect postmodern mix of comedy and existential depression, genre and literary, style and substance. The topics are wide ranging, but all have at the core of them the idea of corruption, and how everyone in contemporary Mexican culture is corrupted by the drug trade and its effects on government, economics, and daily life. The zombie-ish story Z is probably the most explicit example of this, with its allegory of cannibalistic zombies still hungering for illegal TV:

"Now it's Tadeo who hesitates. But a hundred and forty television channels and fifty music stations, plus ten hard-porn signals and a universal pay-per-view password, all free, is the sort of bribe that no one, not even a cannibalistic Lacanian psychoanalyst, can resist."

The titular novella is a masterpiece, combining academic explorations of Tarantino's movies (including a discussion of parody and its authenticity and the similarities between Shakespeare and Tarantino's characters' soliloquies), a Tarantino-esque tale of frustrated bloody-minded assassins sent to kill the director, and a memoir of a film critic (who is the author of the academic passages) kidnapped by a drug cartel leader who happens to look exactly like Quentin Tarantino (and who sent the assassins to the US to kill his lookalike). It's a mouthful to describe but it is a very fun ride.

The other stories, while not as virtuosic, are a great read as well, entertaining, thought provoking, and enlightening. One of my favorite books in a while.


**Thanks to the author, translators, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Glenn Russell]

¡Vuela mi mente!

Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino by contemporary Mexican author Julián Herbert - nine short stories and one novella collected here, stories that zoom along in hallucinogenic overdrive, stories that will - this time in English - blow your mind.

In one story, an artist agonizes over the prospect that his ghastly pornography will actually wind up as a killing machine; in another piece, a conceptual artist picks sheet music from his teeth only to find out the hard way his creation is anything but original; in yet another, the title work, the narrator, a film critic, watches as the front door of his house is blown out by a bazooka. He's then taken to the secret lair of a drug king to discuss, among other topics, creativity, art and the aesthetics of postmodernism.

And here are the opening lines from three more JH blasters:

The Ballad of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “Stop kidding yourself: that thing you call “human experience” is just a massacre of onion layers.”

M.L. Estefanía: “I was forty years old and smoking between twenty and thirty rocks a week when I transformed myself into Marcial Lafuente Estefanía.”

The Roman Wedding: “There isn’t a single car left in the Cadereyta prison lot, and the sun is beating down like a bottle-blow to the head.”



To share a more specific hit of what you'll encounter, I'll turn to a batch of direct quotes from one remarkable story, White Paper, dedicated to multidisciplinary artist Carlos Amorales (thus the pics of the artist's work).

WHITE PAPER
"They brought us here with the promise that we'd get some hands-on experience. Our specialty is crime-scene analysis. This particular scene has become a labyrinth. The house has been purified."

"A pale powder covers the furniture and the fixtures in the bathroom and kitchen. It's as if a whole family had been massacred in a tub of whitewash."



"We don't know who we are, what authority we have to be here, or when our task will be completed. We don't even know one another."

"In contrast to the flush of dawn on the outer edges of the investigation, our identities are obscure. And what's more, we're hemmed in by music that prevents us from going outdoors, even to the garden."



"They say that the curtains are evidence: one more white spatter pattern that bleeds into everything. Others think we are ghosts: murder victims eternally trapped in the private residence of our extinction. Yet others doubt if it's that simple: it would be easier if we were just ghosts rather than witnesses for the prosecution."

"The one indication that we might be dead is our recognition that we are on the verge of insanity: madness is the nearest thing to being a ghost."



"We have no idea how big the garden is, which is why we don't dare venture across it: what if the music were to catch up with us and slice us in two before we reached the street?"

"We're only human: from time to time we amuse ourselves with vain pastimes. The other day, in the garbage (despite having been purified by white spatter patterns, the house is still a monumental trash heap), we found a cardboard box containing hundreds of transparent spinning tops....We put aside the tweezers, cameras, and precision rulers to sit on the floor and spin tops. We watched them dance under the light of our flashlights, placed bets, and held tournaments until the room was, in forensic terms, a dunghill."

"It's an aggressive plan but destruction has its own music. Soon we'll be free: when the walls fall and the ceilings of the crime scene we're investigating finally gives way and descend on our heads."



Here's critic Chris R. Morgan on these Julián Herbert tales: "Sophisticated protagonists convene with subterranean society and return to report surreal, nightmarish encounters in the vigorous and cynical language of hardened adventurers."

Ready to join the adventures? Sure you are. Pick up Julián's book and feel the jolt ten times over.


Mexican author Julián Herbert, born 1971

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The titular novella stuns but then abandons its theory-fiction cred to slip into a somnambulist drag, a fitting allegory to the piece’s nominal Q, a Tarantino who is often criticized for not knowing how to end a film. Those people are of course mistaken.

The other stories both amuse and beguile. My favorite occurs on a train in Berlin. My least favorite contained a number of dead birds. A certain Slovenian would see the Hitchcock in both. Paglia could celebrate the cthonic in the novella’s featured bunker but transvestism is absent.

Of course it was the title which grabbed me but the experimental nature and the use of parody across genre were rather captivating. I will undoubtedly be reading more from him.

[Jean Ra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hace unos días Julián Herbert rondaba una calle mexicana y al pasar por una librería de segunda mano, descubrió este preciso libro expuesto en el escaparate. Alguien lo había leído y decidido que su afecto no era tan grande como para conservarlo en casa. Tras acabar su lectura hoy mismo, creo que puedo comprender los motivos del hipotético lector/a.

Porque se trata de un libro de humor chocarrero, imaginativo, diez relatos variados en cuanto a temática y extensión, desde relatos muy breves hasta una nouvelle que es la que titula al volumen completo, que dan cuenta de la corrupción, la violencia, pero también del peculiar sentido del humor mexciano, la gracia y colorido de su lenguaje coloquial e incluso ciertas meditaciones entorno a la estética narrativa.

Pero la verdad es que ninguno me pareció memorable. Puede que correctos, a ratos divertidos, pero sin entusiasmo. La nombrada nouvelle, en la que un jefe narcotraficante que es idéntico a Quentin Tarantino pone precio al director norteamericano por ejemplo, a banda de varios relatos criminales, también contiene una reflexión a propósito de la ironía y lo sublime muy interesante. El narrador es un crítico cinematográfico, que escribió su tesis sobre Tarantino, y que disecciona esa problemática de la narrativa recurriendo al austríaco Herman Broch o Harold Bloom, Shakespeare juega un papel decisivo y no creo que sea un texto pedante, muy al contrario, resulta pertinente dada las condiciones anteriormente nombradas. El desenlace es potente, llega a conjurar momentos de Pulp Fiction encajados en una historia de narcotráfico y corrupción policial, pero tampoco creo que ese buen final haga bueno una historia de 80 páginas.

Una muestra más. Otro relato, titulado Z, dónde habla de un mundo distópico dónde los chilangos se convierten en zombis caníbales a causa de un extraño virus, es ilustrativo del nivel general de los relatos. Tiene un humor jocoso, incluso cínico, nada sentimental, el engranaje narrativo funciona correctamente sin que en ningún momento sorprenda o maraville especialmente, de hecho tienes la sensación que los relatos se alargan o bien un poco más de la cuenta o bien se quedan cortos. No creo que sea por deficiencia de Herbert, en todo caso puede que no fuese el momento de leerlo.

El relato que si encuentro objetivamente flojo es uno titulado La boda romana, dónde no se habla de una boda, si no de un entierro, al que van personajes que mayormente son unos adictos a la caspa de diablo. Se lee sin gran interés.

Frente a cierta insistencia de las editoriales por ofrecer narrativa autorreferencial o fantasías adolescentes, es de agradecer que se apueste en un narrador competente como Herbert, capaz de conjugar el género fantástico con la reflexión estética, haciendo honor al homenajeado Tarantino y a la vez mostrando la cara más cruel de la violencia, honrando así al segundo homenajeado, Sam Peckinpah, quien filmó Tráiganme la cabeza de Alfredo Garcia, todo ello unido a la sátira e incluso algún esbozo autoficcional como ese relato que cuenta un rato pasado junto a la también escritora Cristina Rivera Garza, donde ambos que se explican los libros que están escribiendo (Cristina menciona Había mucha neblina, humo o no sé qué y Herbert La casa del dolor ajeno) y terminan por ver la aparición de Juan Rulfo. Nadie se esperaba esa combinación. Por lo tanto, el viaje es rico y variado, entretenido, lo que se dice un juguetón aparato estético. Me ha gustado, pero no maravillado. Yo tampoco me lo quedaría en mis anaqueles personales y por eso lo devolveré a la biblioteca con buenas palabras pero sin añoranza.

[Allen Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.themaineedge.com/style/br...

Sometimes, all it takes is a title.

I usually read and review 60 or so books over the course of a year. And I consider several times that many. A fair amount of the coverage is somewhat predetermined – if certain authors have new work coming or a new book is generating a lot of buzz, attention tends to be paid – but there is a degree of wiggle room, allowing me to occasionally take a chance. These chances don’t always pay off (though I should note that I rarely review the misfires), but when they do, they pay off big time.

With Julian Herbert’s “Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino,” I hit the jackpot.

This collection of short stories by the noted Mexican writer, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney, captured my attention with its title. Upon closer investigation, I discovered an assemblage of excellence, 10 short works that captivate and confound. These stories are surreal and absurd even as they uncover certain realities – harsh and otherwise – about the Mexican experience.

As I said, it was the title that caught my eye – no surprise, considering my affinity for the work of Mr. Tarantino – and the description was certainly intriguing, but I didn’t anticipate … this. It’s rare to encounter fiction that functions effectively both as commentary and as pure narrative, but these stories do just that. They are weird and visceral and deliberately difficult to define, but each of them has the power to work its way into your imagination. Funny and poignant, driven by moments of hilarity and sadness and fury, “Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino” is an exceptional reading experience.

Each of these stories is worthy of some exploration – some go long, while others are just a scant handful of pages – and every reader is likely to have their own ideas with regard to highlights. They’re all good. That said, there are a few that, to my mind, stand just a touch taller.

The collection’s leadoff offering is a strange little story titled “The Ballad of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.” A story from the point of view of a successful ghost writer, it’s structured around an attempt to punch up a businessman’s memoir. Said attempt involves a chance encounter with the famed Mother Teresa at an airport – and how wrong it could go. Except it doesn’t. Or does it?

“Caries” is definitely one of the collection’s standouts, a surreal bit of magical realism (magical surrealism?) involving a conceptual artist and, well … teeth. Specifically, the fact that he discovered sheet music in his teeth. A trip to the dentist reveals a mouth full of exquisitely rotten enamel that, once removed, proved to be interpretable as music. But when questions arise about the veracity of the claim – specifically, whether he may have plagiarized his mouth music – circumstances begin to spiral.

There’s a story about a partially-eaten croissant on the subway and the ways in which we choose to uphold and violate the social contract. There’s a tale of a man wandering the country, making a living pretending to be a noted writer of Westerns. And in “Z,” a riff on the literary zombie, we meet a man who is one of the few left uninfected by a pandemic that leaves the infected with a slowly-buy-steadily growing appetite for human flesh, though he doesn’t let that stop him from, among other things, maintaining a relationship with his infected (and very hungry) therapist.

Lastly, we should talk about the titular tale. The collection’s longest, it’s about a moderately well-known film critic who is kidnapped on behalf of a fugitive drug lord and tasked with instructing his captor in the nuances of all things Tarantino, all in the service of learning the best manner in which to have the auteur killed. His reason? No spoilers, but suffice it to say that QT’s impact on his life has been significant ever since the director’s work first graced the big screen.

(Seriously – it’s split between a critical theoretical discourse on Tarantino’s oeuvre and a through-line of the plot to kill him, all with a liberal sprinkling of a drug kingpin who has LITERALLY gone underground. I dug this story so much.)

Those are my favorites, but the truth is that a different day could bring a different answer. There isn’t a dud in the bunch. Herbert a gift for the challenging and the evocative – images and ideas alike. In the space of just a few sentences, he crafts whole worlds, populating them with idiosyncratic idealogues and idiot idealists. He uses these strange situations and stranger characters to address some of the very real issues of Mexican life. Poverty, drugs, corruption – all viewed through the distorted fluidity of Herbert’s finely-honed storytelling lunacy.

It’s also worth noting that, while it can be difficult to discern the impact of a translator on the work being translated, there’s little doubt that MacSweeney has done right by Herbert – the wit, the energy, the insight are all front and center. A great translator is one who does not leave their prints behind, and as far as that goes, MacSweeney is a ghost.

“Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino” is short fiction at its finest. Julian Herbert is unafraid to push boundaries with his storytelling, resulting in a collection of pieces that aren’t quite like anything I’ve ever read. Ten gems, each possessed of their own unique sparkle and shape – a precious and worthwhile collection.

[Curtis Trueblood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Curtis once said "So it's a book written by a Mexican author translated into English so there is a bit of a cultural as well as location as well as language Gap that persists in the translation but the stories were all fascinating and diverse the lacked the classic structure and conclusion that short stories from European/first world countries have. A lot of the stories definitely drew heavily from surrealism, magical realism, and absurdist literature but there is a nice Arc to the whole book in that it takes you from the most out there story to the most grounded of the stories. Definitely a creative dude and the namesake story was worth reading the rest. I should have mentioned it's a compilation of short stories by the author."

[Alyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, man. I don't even know where to start with this collection except to say - it's not for the faint of heart. Julian Herbert's set of ten short stories - each unique - are wild, hyperviolent, absurd. I could not put it down.

"...there's no more profound horror than an untroubled conscience."

I'm not sure that I could pick a favorite, but the bookend pieces were definite highlights. In "The Ballad of Mother Teresa of Calcutta," a vengeful memoirist teaches a client a lesson. Midway through the work, I went from "what the hell am I reading" to "this is brilliant." I was bought in by the end. The title piece, "Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino," left me out of breath - a scholarly film critic is kidnapped by the head of a drug cartel to discuss Tarantino films. What a ride!

This is a collection I will read again.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino: Stories by Julián Herbert, translated by Christina MacSweeney.

When you’ve written one good (long) short story or (short) novella how can you, or your publisher, market and sell it?
That question must have faced Herbert here. The title story, 60 pages, is the only thing worth reading in this collection, and I almost didn’t get to it, some of the others were so poor.
I know some publishers release ‘shorts’, and I suppose that’s one idea, marketing them at about £1.
The novella is a favourite form of fiction of mine, I read and enjoy a lot of translated books of between 80 and 200 pages, but do often have a moan at the price they are sold at. Does it not seem reasonable that they should be the corresponding fraction of the price of a full novel?
I learnt recently that Pascal Garnier’s publisher were considering putting two of his together to sell as one book.

Back to Mexico though and the Herbert..
The title (and final) story is one of unlikely circumstance, in which a hapless film critic is kidnapped as part of a mission to decapitate the famed director after an inadvertent error involving the doppelgänger of a fearsome cartel boss. As with a Tarantino film, it is blood-spattered, bizarre and great fun. As a surreal parody it clearly demonstrates Herbert’s talent. There’s a hint of Tonino Benacquista’s Badfellas about it, which is high praise. I’m just concerned that some who start reading the book at the beginning may give up and not get as far as this..

Here’s a clip from early in the piece..

This is where Greek and contemporary treatise writers go down the drain, where the only thing left to tie us to the world is the irrationality of parody and the sublime. To give one example: Barry White’s voice when he singes “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe.” No one believes that voice to be true. But we all know that it’s the voice of Truth.

[Ulises · Rating 4 out of 5]

este es el segundo libro que leo de Julián Herbert. es un autor al que quiero mucho porque no escribe como habla. siempre que lo leo, siento que estoy ante otro escritor completamente distinto a como lo conozco.
este libro de cuentos me gustó y me pareció bastante ácido en momentos. la buena literatura: la que incomoda. me encanta que haga referencias culturales y que le dedique un cuento a Valeria Luiselli, jeje.

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for a good title and this book delivers on the promise of that titular story. The other short stories are all good to varying degrees. Some feel like sketches. I like a collection having a variety of pieces, like looking through a sketchbook. It lends itself to a loose and experimental expression, which sure beats most dull and accomplished stories.

[Sani_a1 · Rating 4 out of 5]

more of an exploration of art and literary tradition than anything else. I find Latin American art to always be particularly interesting and introspective as it deals with both external issues and the whole picture of a country as well as the internal issues and lives of the character.

[Aaron McQuiston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julian Herbert is someone whom I have never read, but the title of this short story collection, Bring Me The Head of Quentin Tarantino, made me preorder it immediately. In my teenage years, I was a much bigger fan of Tarantino than I am now, so the title has two different appeals to me. One is that it refers to a director whom I am largely familiar with, and two the loathing of this director might be something I can agree with. (I didn’t know at the time that the title is a riff on the 1974 Sam Peckinpah film Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia).When I started to get into this collection of stories, I was more interested in the style and stories Herbert told than the actual title.

Julian Herbert writes about everything. From crack addicts to gangsters to zombies to finding a pastry on the train and wondering whether or not to eat it, all of these stories are very interesting, have a surreal quality to them, and are very entertaining. Reading about his life and some of his interviews, he is versatile, writes everything, in every genre, and feels like no one should limit what they write. In an interview from November 2, 2020 in The Southwest Review, Herbert state:

“One of my favorite descriptions in sport is something said about the Dutch soccer squad during the 1974 World Cup: “They all defend and they all attack.” In Mexico sportswriters called the team The Clockwork Orange. They used to say that they played “Total Soccer.” I’d like to be able to write literature in that way, not thinking too much about genres (or my position on the field), but trying to do everything at the same time, as writers did in Rabelais’s day.”

This philosophy is really apparent in Bring Me The Head of Quentin Tarantino. This is one of those short story collections where you do not know what is coming next because there is so much variety. The title story, the longest by far in the book, is a little over 60 pages. “Z” the story about the man who is living with zombies and has one for a “psychoanalyst” is 10 pages. The story before that is 4 pages. What I love most about this collection is that he also knows when to stop a story, right at the point where the reader is settling in and is ready for more. Every story in this collection is masterful, and with so many different themes and varieties, it makes me think about some of his other books and how I feel like he might be one of the best living Latin American authors.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a conflicting book to rate. Let's look at it from both sides, shall we?

This book was on display in the selected racks at my local bookseller's and immediately attracted my attention because the idea of a decapitated Quentin Tarantino is *chef's kiss.* In hindsight, I'm deeply embarrassed for not recognizing this might (and indeed is) an homage to Tarantino. (And seriously, this didn't occur to me until I was knee-deep in the novella for which this collection is named. Ooof!)

I loved the unapologetically brash narrative details and phrasing. Overall, it's a meticulous use of the grotesque without tumbling into torture porn. (That's probably a horrifying sentence for the folks who usually read my reviews - but that sentence is borne from my love of horror movies, but low tolerance for horrific books.) Back to my point: Herbert is clearly a formidable and fearless author.

And yet... I did not love any of the stories in this collection. In fact, I don't think I enjoyed most of them. There were a couple towards the beginning that pulled me in - The Ballad of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, M. L. Estefania, and NEETS in particular. But the novelty I felt for these three is outweighed by the snoozefest that is The Roman Wedding. I appreciate Herbert's playfulness in transcribed sheet music and cell phone mouth photos in Caries, but it fell flat for me. (Maybe it's better if you can read sheet music? And yet, I can't see how much that would have helped?)

If you decide to start it, I recommend seeing it all the way through - and not just because I need you to suffer alongside me, but because it does come full circle. There is intention in the way these stories weave together, and to which degree the characters overlap. In the end, I'll stick with a solid 3 stars because there is clear intention and execution worthy of praise - though, sadly, it's not for me.

[Carlos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tras leer “Canción de cuna”, y sumándole un título tan apantallador como “Tráiganme la cabeza de Quentin Tarantino”, supuse que Julián Herbert había conseguido una obra memorable. Craso error.
Es cierto que su obra se inserta “en el quicio entre lo popular y lo culto, lo sublime y la parodia, el testimonio y la ficción, la tragedia y la comedia”, pues historias como que un hombre descubre que en su dentadura aparece la partitura de una obra sublime, o que el fantasma de Juan Rulfo deambule y persiga a Cristina Rivera, o que el apocalipsis zombi revele una relación lacaniana entre un psicoanalista caníbal y su paciente, o –el que es, a mi parecer, el texto más rescatable– que un crítico de cine sea secuestrado por un capo de la droga que resulta ser idéntico al cineasta hollywoodense, desde luego anuncian un universo caótico, vertiginoso, excéntrico, irreverente y sin esnobismo. Desafortunadamente, el asunto se queda en eso, “en la capa más superficial de la cebolla”, y no trasciende.
Dice Carlos Velázquez que “este libro tiene todas las luces de no haber sido planeado. Parece que el autor juntó textos sueltos para entregárselos al editor para que dejara de molestarlo”. Yo agregaría que quiso matar dos pájaros de un tiro, pues más de la mitad de los textos están dedicados a algún escritor contemporáneo; así, Herbert se liberaba del compromiso de quedar bien con sus colegas además de cumplir con la editorial.
Siendo sinceros, no está ni cerca de ser la gran obra, pero hay que reconocerle que sí consigue devolverle a la literatura una función humorística: muchas partes podrían ser citadas en plena borrachera.

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

bring me the head of quentin tarantino (tráiganme la cabeza de quentin tarantino) is the third of julián herbert's works to be rendered into english (after tomb song and the house of the pain of others). the mexican author's new book is a collection of ten short stories, many featuring narcoviolence, sex, and an almost absurdist imagination. herbert's tales, each mirroring the darkness of a world increasingly out of control, flirt with the seedy underbelly of a realm just around the corner from polite, mannered society. with strong prose, acerbic wit, and an unflinching foray into peripheries funny, fantastical, and ferocious, herbert's stories offer a juxtaposition of the zany and the sincere. the title story (which is more of a novella) and "the ballad of mother teresa of calcutta" burn brightest, though every entry in the collection offers something worthwhile. recommended if you like roberto bolaño and santiago gamboa.

apologies if i'm ruining the story for you. i'm doing it to take my revenge on max and also, maybe, to give myself the pleasure of depositing a little vomit on those readers who adore straightforward literature, with no digressions or contradictions or shortcuts, those adult babies who read as if the story were the nipple of a baby bottle.

*translated from the spanish by christina macsweeney (luiselli, saldaña parís, navarro, gerber bicecci, barrera, rabasa, et al.)

[Carla (literary.infatuation) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever picked up a book solely because of its title? I couldn’t resist Julian Herbert’s Bring Me The Head of Quentin Tarantino. It was a crazy, violent and unbelievable ride. Just like its title, the stories felt like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film: insane, unexpected, violent and creative. It had the musical references and a touch of Western just like Tarantino’s trademark appeal.

Here we meet a lot of unconventional characters: a vengeful personal memoirs coach, a junkie journalist turn Westerns’ author impersonator, a Quentin Tarantino drug lord, and corrupt members of the police. Quirky characters, parodie and creative plot lines make this a very fun short story collection. I am now intrigued and look forward to reading Herbert’s previous works.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

These stories live at the intersection of nihilism and something akin to whimsy. I enjoyed the writing, but struggled with the hyperviolent content.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

over the very top top of la cultura del muerte, y chistes. y eso no es chiste.

[Megan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oof. Not for me. I really struggled through this collection of short stories. I think Herbert is really pushing the boundaries of writing styles in these essays but I found them to be too wordy. There were so many characters that felt half baked, plot lines that got lost, and a lot of pretty graphic descriptions of violence. It was shocking but a bit of a snooze fest because of the writing. I picked up the book because the title is *chefs kiss* but the titular story about Mr Tarantino’s head is 60 pages long and rambling. Not my favorite.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it! At times the almost essay like nature of some of the passages had me searching for my phone, but for the most part I was entertained. I found all of the short stories unique and the colorful characters were engaging. Would definitely read more by Julian.

[Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this wild, aggressive, absurd shoot-out of a book. Herbert drags you deep into a territory of his own construction without bothering to convince you of it.

[Saad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironic how the Mexico portrayed here resembles the work Tarrantino. About the most pretentious thing I’ve read but I love it no doubt.

“That thing you call ‘human experience’ is just a massacre of onion layers”

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories are a 4, some are a 3.

[Frederick Gault · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dark. At first I was put off by the violence. The author puts you inside hyper-violent Mexican drug gangs. However, I recommend that you stick with this book of short stories. In particular the last story, the one that is the book's title, is nothing short of incredible. The author's genius at bringing together a story that can have a nihilistic drug lord, Shakespeare, Harold Bloom's analysis of Hamlet, Quentin Tarantino and soliloquy in Pulp Fiction left me gasping for breath! It is a story worthy of Borges.

[Dory Ford · Rating 4 out of 5]

ironically, I thought the title story was the weakest of the whole bunch. it felt like the story was pretty much over halfway through and I felt very satisfied with it. But then it goes into another half where they explain why he wants the head of Quentin Tarantino which I didn't really want or need an answer to.

Otherwise, the book is full of stories that I thought were chaotic and depraved in the best ways. A very enjoyable and fun read overall!

[Rommel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primera lectura a Herbert.

"La Balada de la madre Teresa de Calcuta" es excelente apertura. Lo tuve que leer dos veces antes de seguir al siguiente cuento. Es buenísimo. Y la vara no baja: cuento tras cuento la diversión se mezcla con una extraña pero placentera tensíón.

[Reneesarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was sent to me as a selection for a book of the month club for an independent bookstore. In one of the first stories it became clear that the author enjoyed sharing gross and disgusting descriptions. Of women. And saying that an entire town smelled like fishermen's butts. WTF! How does the author know how fishermen's butts smell, assuming they somehow miraculously all smell the same? I don't really want to know the answer to that. That is only one example of the kind of gross and disgusting descriptions the author shares with us. I begin to wonder if there are some people, perhaps the author included, I don't know, who think that gratuitous passages of disgusting descriptions are somehow hip and cool.

They are not. At least not to me.

Then we move along to a story about a group of losers with no consciences and no interest in transformation or redemption who set up shop calling people and threatening them to get their money. I get two or three calls like that EVERY DAY despite making a practice of blocking their number every time this happens. Innocent people lose thousands of dollars having been taken in by these criminals who do not care that they are wrecking lives. For me, if you are going to write a story about these losers the protagonist has to grow a soul, a conscience, have some regrets....something.... for me to be able to care about him. That doesn't happen. The protagonist is just a loser and a criminal and I don't care what happens to him.

I hung in for four stories and decided I did not want to spend any more time on this book.

[Josh Mlot · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I appreciate what Julian Herbert is doing with "Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino." This collection of stories is very much about style, form, and breaking loose of convention. The stories here are always interesting, often clever, and sometimes funny as they explore the often violent lives of quirky characters living on the fringes of Mexican society.

That said, it didn't always connect with me. Maybe it was just the timing and I'm not looking for something so stylistically elastic right now.

I really enjoyed the title story/novella, and there are images here that will stick with me. I think it will be worth revisiting this collection again sometime—there is quality here.

[Manu Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disfruté los cuentos, en especial M. L. Estefanía y La Boda Romana. La aparición de Cristina Rivera Garza en uno de sus cuentos me hizo relacionar el estilo en que él escribe su último cuento, Tráiganme la cabeza de Quentin Tarantino, con el que usó Cristina en su novela La muerte me da, intercalando el ensayo con ficción, con la diferencia de ser más conciso por tratarse de un cuento, pero logra el mismo efecto espectacular que suma el motivo de parodia/homenaje al director de cine.

[Jaime · Rating 5 out of 5]

Divertido, inteligente, crudo y más breve de lo que hubiera querido. Historias cortas (más no sencillas) narradas con soltura y sabor. No había leído antes a Julián Herbert, pero me propongo leerlo más de aquí en adelante. Recomiendo.