Please Buy This Book So I Can Feel Validated & (Finally) Love Myself

by Homeless

A novella + poems & stories.

Previous praise for Homeless:

“Richard Brautigan meets James Purdy while waiting in line at McDonald’s.”—the Hamburglar

“[Homeless] balances comedy, nihilism, and grief to tell a heartfelt story that amuses you with its absurdity and makes you laugh with [the] unexpected…”—Heavy Feather Review

“[Homeless’s writing is] strangely profound and touching.”—The Big Smoke

“[Homeless] pushes fiction to its most audacious limits while avoiding being weird for weirdness’ sake. [His writing is] brilliant and insightful and hilarious and heartbreaking… packed with raw emotion and unadulterated insight.”—Popscure

Genres: Poetry

215 pages, Unknown Binding

First published August 1, 2019

About the author

Homeless is the author of five books, including the novel “This Hasn't Been a Very Magical Journey So Far.” He’s been published by Hobart, House of Vlad and Expat Press. He putters around NYC wondering whatever happened to predictability, the milkman, the paperboy, evening TV.

His second novel, “My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor,” was published by Clash Books, November 2024.

Reviews

[Benoit Lelièvre · Rating 3 out of 5]

The man calling himself Homeless' literary chops are undeniable. He's a true blue stylist and his prose look like Wes Anderson trying to adapt a Charles Bukowski novel.

It got under my skin a little bit that he insisted on telling me how poor and miserable he was every two pages, but I got a kick out of the small things in this book like his infatuation with fast food and pervasive childhood melancholia.

My favorite piece in this collection was "I Quit" where the president of the United States quits his job while eating MacDonalds' so make of that what you will, internet. It's by far not my favorite existential gutter prose book but it has its merits.

[Homeless Homeless · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe if I give
my own book
5 stars
I’ll love myself

or at least
come close.

[Ryan C. Zerfas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Homless' most recent book, which I thought was a favorite of recent memory. When I saw this existed, was pumped to consume it.

It did not disappoint.

The opening act, a story of poems that are binded together, has some early seeds of hooks that would eventually become My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor. I always love seeing the art process come together like that in art like seams of a baseball.

The rest was a really fun read as well. There's just an undeniable wordsmith and visionary greatness at work here.

I think there's some more Homeless literature I haven't gotten to yet. Will tend to that ASAP.

[Scott Cumming · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a way, I was not prepared for this one. Homeless hugely surprised me with his wonderful human touch amid the irreverence and surreal events. For all the strange goings on he keeps his writing tethered in reality by understanding the working of human emotion and interaction.

I loved the novella and poems more than the stories, but they all work in the same way to bring the feelings of the characters to the fore. The stories and poems relate to how they feel within the world and strange things inform this.

From nowhere, I can say that I love Homeless and I hope he can love himself now.

[Alan ten-Hoeve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! The stories are funny, stylistically bracing, and moving. Poems pick at bittersweet moments that often go unnoticed but are never far from the surface, like a piece of subdermal glass from an old car accident working its way out of the skin.

[David Catney · Rating 5 out of 5]

good shit.

[Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Life is just
shrugging your shoulders
over & over & over
until you eventually
die from it.”