The Bomb Inside My Brain

by Jim Goad

All heart, no politics this time around. Forty-two gut-ripping, heart-stomping, mind-stabbing essays about brain surgery, heartache, broken friendships, shattered families, drugs, religion, PTSD, and fatherhood. More raw emotion than you'd expect from the man his friends call the Iron Marshmallow. This bleedingly personal collection starts off with what Jim considers to be the best thing he ever wrote by FAR—“Ode to Bucky Goad,” the harrowing life story of his deaf brother who was murdered in Paris. ... Chapter titles: Ode to Bucky Goad • Blood Is Thicker Than Logic • Born Spastic • The Bomb Inside My Brain • Why You’re Dead to Me • Boys Don't Cry • I Hate Your Happy Family • The Bad Mom • Combat Training for Toddlers • 10 Commandments for My Son • Uncle Juney and Aunt Marion • Love Among the Damaged • Slow-Dancing in Wheelchairs • You Didn’t Mean That? Yes, You Did • Why I’m Now Against Abortion • Teenage Jesus Freak • Fuck You, Father Jones • The First Time I Got High • Why I'm an Agnostic • Serenity Now! • Talking to My Father While Tripping Balls • Acid Beatdown • Where Has All the Angel Dust Gone? • No Need to Die Twice: Why I’ll Never Do Ketamine Again • Doin’ Propofol and Lovin’ It • Madman of the Catskills • Better Dead Than on Meds • Sometimes I Don't Feel So Bad When an Ex-Friend Dies • When People Love Animals Too Much • Pug Fag • Why Pit Bulls Are the Best Kissers • Feeding the Nutria • Don't Fuck With the Masons • You Meet the Nicest People in Prison • The Only Convict Who Couldn't Get Into Australia • A Small Sip of Success • Halloween in Da Hood • Shout at the Jersey Devil • The Sweetest Man Alive • My Penis Is Better Than Yours • Toss Another Bag of Coal on the Christmas Fire • A World Without Politics

199 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 9, 2019

About the author

Goad started his writing career with the magazine "ANSWER Me!" Which got connected with a triple suicide by British gothics and of the white house shooting of Francisco Martin Duran.

In 1998 he was convicted of abusing his girlfriend and was released in 2000. In prison he wrote his autobiography "Shit Magnet."

Reviews

[Norm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This personal journey into the life of the inimitable Jim Goad gives the reader’s own upbringing a new benchmark from which to judge. If you are as enamored with Jim’s brain - bomb and all - as I am, you will henceforth feel the need to always speak the honest truth.

Get your signed copy at jimgoad.net

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Goad has mellowed with age. It happens to the hardest and angriest of us.

But plenty of his old piss and vinegar shoots through the essays herein, which aren’t in chronological order. Jim talks about his miserable childhood and that of his deaf/mute older brother Bucky, who was stabbed to death in Paris. The Goad paterfamilias sees most of the focus this time; in SHIT MAGNET, I recall Jim’s mom as the target of most of his ire, maybe as part of the theme of the triptych of women in his life who, let’s say, had considerable influence.

It’s kind of a mystery to me why I’m a fan of Jim. Certainly he has a few convictions that run counter to mine, but I don’t necessarily see as a problem, since I’m naturally intellectually curious and want to read things that take a different view of the world than I do. He beat the shit out of a woman, served prison time for it, rejected Jim Hogshire’s FREE JIM GOAD/GOAD IS INNOCENT movement because “I’m not innocent,” and to this day says he doesn’t regret it. I almost find that attitude refreshing in a long era of people abdicating personal responsibility for absolutely anything. His writing is the same—it’s wickedly honest and doesn’t apologize for it, and I can’t help but love that when there are millions of 22-year-old Twitter cops smothering me in woke hot takes that become our new cultural dictates.

[Radu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extraordinarily provocative and incredibly hilarious at the same time. Jim Goad shoots from the hip in the only way he knows how about some very personal subjects.

[cadfael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heartfelt but slammy.

[Larry Singleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jim Goad is a divisive figure, and when it comes to art these are the best types of people. This book is no different, and it's a pretty good collection of his essays. It made me want to reread Shit Magnet, which I remember being a really powerful reading experience. That's not to say The Bomb Inside My Brain isn't good, but it's more something to read if you're already a fan/familiar with his work.

[Baby Monster #563 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fanfuckingtastic .