Fistful of Feet

by Jordan Krall

A bizarro tribute to Spaghetti westerns, H.P. Lovecraft, and foot fetish enthusiasts.

Screwhorse, Nevada is legendary for its violent and unusual pleasures, but when a mysterious gunslinger drags a wooden donkey into the desert town, the stage is set for a bloodbath unlike anything the west has ever seen. His name is Calamaro, and he's from New Jersey.

Featuring Cthulhu-worshipping Indians, a woman with four feet, a Giallo-esque serial killer, a crazed gunman who is obsessed with sucking on candy, Syphilis-ridden mutants, ass juice, burping pistols, sexually transmitted tattoos, and a house devoted to the freakiest fetishes, Jordan Krall's Fistful of Feet is the weirdest western ever written.

Genres: Bizarro Fiction, Horror, Westerns, Fiction, Lovecraftian, Weird West

210 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Books include:

TENTACLE DEATH TRIP
FISTFUL OF FEET
MOTEL MAN
KING SCRATCH
BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE APOCALYPSE DONKEYS
PIECEMEAL JUNE
SQUID PULP BLUES
NEWLY SHAVEN SAINT
UNFRUITFUL WORKS
PRELUDE TO SPACE RAPE!
SQUID KILLS
THE PISTOL BURPS
ALL POEMS MUST DIE
FALSE MAGIC KINGDOM
BAD ALCHEMY
THE GOG AND MAGOG BUSINESS
YOUR CITIES, YOUR TOMBS

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A drifter named Calamaro drags a wooden donkey into Screwhorse, Nevada, and enters a web of trouble involving people with bizarre fetishes, an ineffective sheriff, a depraved mayor, a rich man and his goons, and a gunfighter called the Hard Candy Kid. Will anyone be left alive when Calamaro leaves town?

Jordan Krall's Fistful of Feet is the weirdest of weird westerns. There are sexually transmitted tattoos, whores that cater to any bizarre fetish a cowboy may have, a woman nursing a giant starfish, and Calamaro, the gunslinger with the burping gun. Calamaro's the typical western strong and silent lead. Except for the shoe fetish, I guess. There's a fair amount of gore and cursing but I think that's unavoidable in a book of this kind. I loved how syphilitic men were used in a zombie type of role.

Any complaints? Only that it had to end.

As outlandish as the concepts sound, Jordan Krall weaves it all together into a bizarre but coherent plot. There's some Lovecraftian subtext and homages to various westerns. The only books I can compare it to in terms of tone are the two Joe Lansdale books featuring Ned the Seal, Zepplins West and Flaming London. Fistful of Feet will appeal to fans of bizarro and weird westerns alike. 3.75

Click here to read my interview with Jordan Krall.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, so, I'll make it clear: This book I wrote.. it's entertaining if you enjoy bizarro (weird) westerns. It's an homage to Spaghetti Westerns, giallo cinema, and HP Lovecraft.

But don't take my word for it, just give it a try.

[Andersen Prunty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jordan Krall’s third release and first full-length novel is a must for spaghetti and weird western fans. I’ve never actually read a western novel but I find many of the movies to be plodding and dull to the point that most of the characters and plots are nakedly obvious in the first few minutes, thus beginning an endless barrage of the protaganist asserting his masculinity. Krall brings something new. The framework still draws heavily from the tried and true formula of the western film but is presented with such a love for the outre, weird, and fetishistic, that I found myself wanting to read on just to find out what happened next. And like the best spaghetti westerns, there are gems of existensialism like this: “Maybe there isn’t a Heaven and Hell like they tell you in church. Maybe you end up spending eternity riding on the back of a giant scorpion that keeps going in circles and you can’t tell him the right way to go because your mouth is full of dust.”

Calamaro is the hero in the book. He enters the trippy town of Screwhorse, Nevada, dragging a wooden donkey behind him (an homage to the film Django). Calamaro has a hazy past and an extremely chivalrous disposition. The town of Screwhorse is a wreck. It contains a legendary whorehouse where customers can come and indulge their sickest, strangest fantasies. The mayor is corrupt. The cattle have tentacles instead of udders. The drugstore sells a powerful hallucinogen. These things are just the beginning. Part of the thrill of reading Fistul of Feet is discovering the odd characters and situations and picking up on all the winks and nudges.

Many of the characters lack depth, which is one of my only real criticisms with the book. One of the reasons for this is that Krall introduces A LOT of characters. There are basically good guys and basically bad guys but nearly everyone is weird. This can sometimes make it difficult to keep the characters straight. Some of the chapters are little more than these odd characters gathering together to indulge their fetishes with little to no plot development. However, this book is definitely not intended to be any kind of character study. And while it does have a plot that advances at a decent pace it is a writer creating an homage to various film and pulp fiction genres. In this respect, I think Krall succeeds and creates a very worthwhile and entertaining piece of oddity. After reading the 2008 novella Piecemeal June and the novella collection Squid Pulp Blues, I had been wanting to read a full-length work from Krall and Fistful of Feet left me very satisfied and looking forward to his next book.

[Eric Hendrixson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing I remember about Jordan Krall goes back to when we were in college together. We weren’t roommates, but we both stayed in the Fish House on the wooded side of campus, near the biology labs. Now, Jordan’s family didn’t have enough money to pay for school outright, so Jordan had one of those work-study programs, sorting plankton by species and flavor for the Marine Biology department. He was always complaining about that job. One day he’d complain about the lack of microscopes, the next day it would be about the insufficient number of aquariums. I’ll tell you, I’ll bet that guy used up fifteen bottles of my mouthwash freshman year alone. Anyway, one day Jordan and I were out walking Kitty, his bathynomus giganteus. Of course, the thing was only about two and a half, maybe three feet long. “Gigantic” is a pretty relative term when you’re talking about an aquatic pillbug, and it didn’t have a neck, so the leash had to attach to one of those harnesses, like the kind you put on a German Shepherd or a toddler.
It was one of those sunny days on campus, the kind of really shiny day that you only get the morning after a thunderstorm. As we came around the corner of the Berkowitz Lecture Hall, I asked Jordan, “What are those things called, the things with the one horn?”
“You mean unicorns?”
“No, the other thing.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Narwhals.”
“Right, narwhals.”
“What about them?”
“Well, it can’t be safe to store them like that.”
Kitty had started to fall behind, so Jordan pulled a little at the leash. “Come on, Kitty. Let’s take a look.”
The narwhal was balanced point-first in the center of a small garden in the traffic circle where Speck Boulevard and University Drive intersect. I explained, “The problem is center of gravity. He’s just too top-heavy like that. We stood there for a while, trying to figure out what to do about it. I kind of wanted to ignore it, since people would probably blame us if we got involved. “It’s not like we put it there or anything.” Jordan was just looking around and didn’t say anything until the breeze picked up a little and that narwhal started swaying.
An activities bus came up Speck as the narwhal started thrashing his tail, trying to maintain his balance. He swayed and thrashed while the bus approached, and it was pretty clear what was about to happen. I tried to yell out to the bus driver, but I couldn’t figure out what to say. I just couldn’t imagine anything I could yell that would actually help. I mean, “Look out for the narwhal” didn’t seem right, and would be an awkward thing to yell anyway. While I was still trying to figure out what to yell, the bus entered the traffic circle, just as the narwhal lost his balance.
The whale hit the bus at an angle, causing the bus to swerve on the wet asphalt. The bus spun and hit the wall of the Gacy Sculpture Garden, which caused the bus to fall over on its side. That’s when Jordan sprang into action. He quickly found a stick on the ground and ran toward the bus. A small fire had already started near the back of the bus, and I was calling 911, but Jordan ran toward the fire, impaled his sea creature, and started roasting it over the fire.
I yelled out to Jordan, but he yelled back, “Don’t worry. These things are not as explosive as you would think.” He sat there, roasting his sea-bug as the fire trucks and ambulances arrived. I sat against the wall, covering my eyes.
When I opened my eyes again, the fire department had arranged a row of corpses in field hockey uniforms on the asphalt. The firemen were all pretty bummed until Jordan offered them some hot crab’s legs. As the firemen feasted, Jordan walked over to the women on the road. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a seahorse. Well, when he got to the first girl, he flipped her over, stabbed the seahorse into her spine, and started turning the thing, like the key on the back of an alarm clock. He did the same for all the other girls. Long story short, by the time the firemen were done eating, all the dead girls were walking around in their plaid skirts and seemed to be doing just fine.
So that’s how Jordan got to have his own wind-up field hockey team. He taught one of the girls how to wind up the other girls to keep them going, and Jordan never had to taste plankton again. I remember asking Jordan, "So, what? Are these wind-up girls going to be your slaves forever?"
Jordan said, "Someday, I will write the great American Bizarro Spaghetti Western. It will have foot fetishes. It will have whores. It will have a wooden donkey-cannon. There will be teeth and starfish. It will be awesome. Until then, I can't spend my life eating out of aquariums."
Jordan has finally written that novel, and the souls of the field hockey team members are finally at peace.

[Dustin Reade · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love westerns. As a kid up until now, I have held a unique fascination(sp?) with all things relating to this genre usually held sacred only by the elderly. Eastwood, Leone, Van Cleef, and so on have been personal heroes of mine since middle school. I have seen every cheezy seventies western ever made, and have made it my personal goal to read every book L'Amour ever wrote, or thought about writing (i can do that, I have what they call "Cowboy-Kenesis").
However, I have always felt one thing has always been lacking in this incredible, horse-filled fantasia: Sexual Fetishism.
While L'Amour may have a character or two cast a sidelong glance at his horse here and there, the remainder of the sexuality of the genre has always been limited to the occasional, somewhat confusing prostitute rape scene. Or an informal indian orgy.
No more. Jordan Krall, sensing this lack, has written the ultimate in fetish-riddled (instead of "bullet-riddled"...get it?), face burping, donkey-masked, shoe sniffing western novels, and the world will forever be in his debt because of it.

Thank you, Mr. Krall.

Cowboy Thanks.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

A town called Screwhorse that caters for the wacky and bizarro fetishes of people. You have guns that burp when they shoot, a wooden donkey, starfish babies, and a brothel that caters for fetishes unheard of. This strange blend of wackiness makes it an fun packed read a page-turner of sorts that leaves a lot to the imagination with cringing effects of disgust.

[Steve Lowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jordan Krall's `Fistful of Feet' is a bizarro tribute to Spaghetti Westerns and claims to be the "weirdest western ever written". It does not disappoint. As this story unfolds, you can easily imagine the characters speaking poorly dubbed English as the onscreen actors mouth their dialogue in Italian. This book reads how TV re-runs of the film `The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly' used to look before digital retouching came into vogue: gritty, dirty, violent, occasionally out of focus, regularly unsettling, but never, ever boring.

The triumph of Fistful of Feet, like Krall's first book `Piecemeal June', is the palpable mood that it creates in the mind. You smell and taste (and regurgitate?) FOF as much as read it. This story is a visceral, dripping romp through Screwhorse, Nevada, a town with hardly a redeeming inhabitant. Even the main character, the drifter Calamaro, has his issues and fetishes, though compared to the rest of the sorted cast, they're minimal and downright normal.

The final 50 pages of FOF are like running a gauntlet of bizarre, outlandish, disgusting, and even hilarious imagery. An exploding wooden donkey flinging women's shoes like flaming daggers, a horde of syphilitic men, split-open heads that spew two-tailed scorpions, and much more. Krall runs the reader through the ringer with his special, nearly breathless brand of weird, violent, sexual mayhem.

FOF, which recently made the short list for the Wonderland Award for novel of the year, is so full of wild bits and squishy pieces that the language is kept to a stark minimum, which suits the story well. There is no time or need for poetic description when recounting slopping sex scenes involving squid or tattoos that spread like a virus. Krall is at his best when the tentacles begin to fly, which is early and often in this one. Let the reader be forewarned.

[The Shayne-Train · Rating 3 out of 5]

On paper, I should have loved this book. I like both Westerns and bizarro.

There were TONS of good ideas in these pages, a very likable protagonist, great character development, lots of gross-out sex and violence. So what's wrong with me?

I think the three-star (instead of four- or five-) is due to two things:
1) The author REALLY likes putting things in his characters' mouths. It got a bit old. Sort of like 'Drag Me to Hell.'
2)The action got a little convoluted, in my opinion.

All in all, though, I DID enjoy it, and I'll definitely check out more of the author's work.

[Matthew Revert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into Jordan Krall’s latest novel, Fistful of Feet, with a certain bias. I am an avid fan of the Western, be it the traditional Hollywood kind or the Spaghetti kind. This same bias could have ultimately worked against it however, if it wasn’t pulled off very well. It might have fallen into a Western pastiche, stealing the associated aesthetics and bastardising them superficially. Fistful of Feet doesn’t do this. It is a triumph and clearly written by someone with a deep respect for everything a Western stands for. The characters one would expect to populate a Western abound; the mysterious stranger, the busty brothel owner, the town crazies, a corrupt sheriff, hardened cowboys, gamblers, whores and storeowners. They’re all touched upon, and touched upon beautifully. Wrap this up in a gooey, Bizarro shell and it makes for a wild, touching and unforgettable ride through the dusty landscapes of a surrealist hell.

Set in the nothing town of Screwhorse, Fistful of Feet begins with our hero, Calamaro, dragging his wooden donkey into the story. His reasons for being there aren’t clear. He’s looked upon with an equal amount of suspicion and lust from the townsfolk. He quickly makes an impression, busting up Nix, one of Screwhorse’s troublemakers. This earns him respect from some and vengeance from others. From this situation, Fistful of Feet unfolds in a cornucopia of oddity, violence, sex and death. The narrative jumps from character to character, almost reaching Robert Altman levels of interplay and complexity. What could be a fine mess is wrangled brilliantly into shape by Krall, who never once lets the story get away from him. Special mention should be made about The Hard Candy Kid, who in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest characters to appear in any medium. This psychopathic man-child is an unpredictable town pariah, taking bites out of horses and sending fear into the hearts of even the most hardened criminal. He has one vice, hard candy, and if you want to escape an encounter with your life in tact, you better damn well have some on you. It’s a brilliant character. I could read an entire book on The Hard Candy Kid’s exploits alone.

Beyond the violence, sex and oddity lays a genuinely compelling story. You come to care about Calamaro deeply, as well as the many periphery characters you meet along the way. His journey is an emotional one and you feel it from the page. Krall transcends the cliché of the Western and produces something fantastic. This story would still be damn entertaining without the depth, but it’s a much better story for it being there. For every bizarre, unpleasant sexual act, there’s a moment of tenderness and a contextual base for everything existing. It’s obvious that Krall has a love for his characters and subject matter.

So well done Mr. Krall. The way you’ve developed as a writer in such a short time is inspiring. Squid Pulp Blues was a fantastic book, but Fistful of Feet takes it to a whole new level. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year and could very well be the best Bizarro novel I’ve ever read.

[David Barbee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m going to be honest and say that I’m a huge fan of Jordan Krall and he’s one of my favorite bizarro writers. I once heard Krall mentioned as the Quentin Tarantino of bizarro, and I think it’s true in that he has a perfect mastery of genre fiction. Squid Pulp Blues paid homage to crime noir, and now with Fistful of Feet, Krall is entering one of my personal favorite genres: the western.

So of course I love this book, but I’m also going to tell you why. Fistful of Feet is a bloody love song to all the cool Spaghetti Westerns made back in the 60’s and 70’s, full of superhuman gunplay and a moral code enforced by graphic violence. The setting is the town of Screwhorse, a bubbling cauldron of corruption and mischief. The frontier of the west was a brutal and lawless environment, where everyone is just trying to survive. In this sense, Krall has stayed true to the roots of the western, giving it the proper atmosphere and the sort of characters we’ve come to expect. The cast is large and varied, with all the classic western characters represented. There’s the stand-up-for-justice hero, the whores-with-the-hearts-of-gold, the corrupt mayor, the incompetent sheriff, the scum-of-the-earth thugs, the mystical Indians, the con man, and even a few psychos. That’s a large cast, but I wasn’t put off by it, as I felt that Fistful of Feet was just that kind of western. Westerns like this are like operas. There needs to be a large cast in order to produce as many corpses as possible.

Jordan Krall proves that he knows the western like the back of his hand, but at the same time, he’s created his own brand of bizarro over the years. Fistful of Feet has tentacles, bodily fluids, deformed feet, weird drugs, sucking, screwing, hermaphrodites and much more. I’ve always been a fan of weird westerns but the best I could ever find was Trigun or old Jonah Hex comics (Sex and Death in Television Town by Carlton Mellick is very good, but at times it’s barely recognizable as a western). Jordan Krall has created the TRUE weird western here. It conforms to the classic themes the genre has to offer, yet twists it with the sort of weirdness that Jordan Krall is known for. What we get is something far more interesting than just “werewolves in the west” or “cowboys in space.” Here’s hoping we get to see more weird westerns in the bizarro scene.

[William III · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading bizarro for a long time now, long enough to know that there are basically two categories of authors that write bizarro - those who prefer to write the strangest, weirdest stuff that they can think of and string them together with a thin/weak plot and those who write wonderfully intricate plots with strong characters and bizarro subtleties peppered throughout. Jordan Krall is one of the latter.

FISTFUL OF FEET is by far Krall's best work to date (which says a lot - his books SQUID PULP BLUES, KING SCRATCH and PIECEMEAL JUNE are fantastic). His characters don't just exist in print - they breathe, they live, they bleed, off of the pages.

If you are reading this review, then I am sure you already know what the book is about, so I will save you from reading yet another description of the plot. Just know this, Krall is an author who delivers. He will take you to strange, freakish places - do yourself a favor and take the ride.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. The book had so much going on, yet never lost it's cohesion. There were bits of so many genres blended into the weirdness. Entertaining and recommended.

[Sheldon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should admit right off that I've never been a big fan of westerns, movies or books. That's not to say that I'm opposed to them or haven't enjoyed them. I've found several western movies enjoyable if a bit derivative. But I've never sought them out, and have really just seen them in passing.

Fistful of Feet is one of those enjoyable westerns but with bizarro overtones. In fact, the bizarro parts are mostly in the details, which would make this an otherwise normal western tale. I'll explain about this part more in a little bit.

The story follows the town of Screwhorse, Nevada at so point after the Civil War. In from the desert wanders a stranger with a burping pistol and a wooden donkey who has a run-in with the local bullies, who work for the town's wealthy citizen, William Lyons, who is friends with the mayor, who both have the town sheriff under their thumb. Did you get all that? Rounding out the cast are a card cheat, the local crazy gunslinger, a group of robbers, the general store manager, a hostile Indian tribe at the gates, and the local madam and her girls, and you have a cast mixed together from all the great western movies. See? A perfectly normal western mashup.

But this is Jordan Krall we're talking about here. My only previous standalone experience from Krall was Beyond the Valley of the Apocalypse Donkeys . So it's not going to be that normal. The interesting thing about this is that, as I mentioned, the bizarro elements are relegated to the details of the novel. For example, there are lots of appearances and references to two-tailed scorpions, in dreams and being used as drugs (that one takes some explaining, but you'll have to read the book). Or the appearance of a starfish creature in one the rooms. But for the most part, this book remains an easily identifiable western.

There are multiple plot threads that intersect to varying degrees. There's the stranger in town causing trouble with the local bullies, the robbers out for revenge, the con man trying to make a big score, and a murder mystery. These aren't all immediately related, and Krall does jump around between various viewpoints easily and quickly, sometimes to the point that it gets a little confusing. It's a pretty big cast for a reasonably short novel, too, which can add to some of the confusion as you switch between viewpoints and ask yourself “Wait, who is this person again?”

Ultimately, Fistful of Feet is an enjoyable western novel, and a worthwhile bizarro read, and while the writing is really solid, it does come up a bit short from being a perfect novel. There can be feelings that things got away from Krall a bit and that it may have been a more ambitious effort than was really needed. Still, Fistul of Feet is definitely worth your time, and comes off as a genuine if twisted tribute to the western genre.

Fistful of Feet by Jordan Krall earns 4 pistol burps out of 5.

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second book by Jordan Krall, and i enjoyed it but not as much as his other book- Squid Pulp Blues. I don't know if this was entirely to do with the book, or, more likely I suspect, my own preferences. Although I think the writing in SQB was a bit higher quality than this one.

FoF is a bizzaro-style spaghetti western set in a town like no other you will ever encounter callled Screwhorse. Honestly, I'm not too into the western genre but the book still kept me engaged. I love that it was entirely unique. If your looking for something totally one-of-a-kind, this book fits the bill. A promising author i would like to read more from in the future.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this was absolutely insane. Cowboys, Indians, serial killers, deformed hookers with extra feet, shoot outs, squids, all different types of gross fetishes, the list goes on. Incredible novel, like nothing I've ever read before. The weird west doesn't get any weirder than this.

[Nathaniel Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reads like a Spaghetti Western with the governor clip surgically removed.

[Chris Bowsman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bizarro + spaghetti western = absolute win.

To determine whether you should read this book, you have but to ask yourself one question: Ever hear of Ass Juice?

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jordan Krall, Fistful of Feet (Eraserhead Press, 2009)

I finished this book quite a while ago (16 April 2011; it's 7 July as I write this). I've been trying to come up with something to say about it other than “OMGYOUMUSTREADTHIS”, because while that's the case, it doesn't quite give you an overview of the book's strengths and weaknesses, does it? I want to give it the attention it deserves, but every time I start trying to come up with a “this book is like...” gig, I end up tripping over my feet. And then I end up coming back to Alejandro Jodorowsky, but Fistful of Feet is absolutely nothing like El Topo plotwise. (The movie it kind of is like plotwise is hilariously bad, and I refuse to mention its name here, mostly because as soon as I was finished writing the review for it I blocked it from my mind, and thus no longer remember it.)

Plot: In the small frontier town of Screwhorse, Nevada, pretty much anything can be had for a price. Problem is, sometimes that price is a little higher than you might want to pay. This problem is exacerbated when Calamaro, a gunslinger form the dusky wilds of New Jersey, walks into town pulling his wooden donkey. Very few people in town like Calamaro when they first meet him. (Snap judgments can be a bad thing, kiddies.) But eventually he finds himself with a small core of friends. More enemies, though, including a few wannabe card sharps he embarrasses on his first night in town who work for the Big Boss Man(TM). So of course we have a showdown between the mysterious gunslinger and the town power brewing. How much more western can you get than that?

But telling you about the plot of this book doesn't tell you about all the wonderful little side bits and details that make it so great. The hallucinogenic blue starfish still haunts my dreams three months later. He may be my favorite character in a book I've read so far this year. In fact, he may deserve a book all his own. [elbows Krall] And come on, a wooden donkey. You have to love that. And the secret in the boss' basement (which is actually revealed on the back cover, but not explicitly, so I won't spoil it for you here). The OTHER posse of mysterious gunslingers converging on the town for an entirely different reason. And then there's the climax, which takes all the best blood-flying bits of a Sam Peckinpah film and makes them weird. And, come on, TENTACLE COWS.

Not to say the book doesn't have its weaknesses, and they're the same ones I usually write about when I start talking bizarro. The characterization could've been stepped up some, especially with the minor characters; too many of them smell a little too much like symbols or archetypes rather than thinking human beings (or thinking tentacle cows). Most of the major characters, however, are well-drawn. Krall turned in a book that's about twice as long as most bizarro novels I've read to date, and he used the extra space wisely. Still, make no mistake, this is plot-based fiction for the most part, and what usually gets sacrificed in the service of plot-based fiction in characterization. As long as you're ready for it, or don't care about it, you shouldn't have a worry in the world.

The short answer: OMGYOUMUSTREADTHIS. *** ½

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jordan Krall and I have very similar tastes in movies. Horror sure, but we also share a love for brainless 80's action movies and spaghetti schlock, not just Westerns, but Italian zombie and post apocalyptic mad max rip offs. There is a certain vibe you get from watching a a brilliant filmmaker with modest means do the best they can without enough resources. There is a charm to bad but ballsy films, the Italian filmmaker of 60's, 70's and 80's don't give a shit about looking silly that is why they produced some the weirdest movies of the era. (Look up trailers for Raiders of Atlantis, Deep Red, the Beyond, Django movies, After the fall of New York).

Krall has no limitations, certainly he has powerful imagination drips off every page of this short and effective novel. Fistful of Fist is many novels in one, a horror novel, a bizarro novel and most of all it's a spaghetti western. Sure this novel has Cthulhu cult native Americans, sexually transmitted tattoos, pistols that burp when fired and mutants mad from syphilis. It's a bizarro novel no doubt, but the greatest strength of Fistful of feet is that is feels 100% like a western.

There are pages that pass that feel like a straight western novel and I would forget about the bizarro elements. This was really effective because I would get comfortable with the western vibe and some kind of bizarro crazy-ness would come out of nowhere and shock me.

This is rare thing in a bizarro novel, when you crack open a genre novel, doesn't matter the genre it is an absolute pleasure to be tricked consistently throughout the pages. That more than anything else impressed me about this novel. The weird elements managed to still weird me out, thwe balance with a western sorta “realism” was impressive.

The story is about a man named Calamaro walking across the old west pulling his wooden donkey. He happens about Screwhorse Nevada which is the weirdest town in the history of westerns, that is no small feet. It has the corrupt mayor, the town gang led by the town thug, the weird brothel and a saloon and hotel named after Charles Bronson. Krall gets many points for naming the guy running the place Kersey, if you don't get you are not watching enough Bronson.

I dog eared a page (80) because the scene so captured the spirit of the western for me. I cast Lance Hendrickson (Bishop from Aliens) as sheriff in my mind. If there is any weakness in this novel it is not the authors fault but the fault of the genre. Towards the end the novel takes part in the stereotype of the “western movie Indian” when a battle erupts between the townspeople and the savages. Considering the level of tribute Krall could hardly avoid this, it is sadly a trope of the genre.

Fistful of Feet is a excellent western that just happens to be amazingly weird as well. It is also one of the best written works to come out of the bizarro genre, Krall demands attention and I think if he keeps up his Italian genre capture and release program he will go far.

Yeah read Fisftul of Feet is must read for spaghetti western fans. Get it!

[Edmund Colell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jordan Krall's tour guide of Screwhorse, Nevada is an example of the wild west truly being wild. The characters are paranoid of each other, the flesh designs are grotesque, and the sexuality has the force of a stampede. A stampede which can choose to maul, confuse, or gross-out the trampled reader as needed.

Fresh from his previous adventure in Krall's "The Pistol Burps," Calamaro is found once again dragging his wooden donkey, Sartana, through the desert. As he happens upon the lustful and potentially gold-laden town of Screwhorse and parks Sartana among a herd of tentacled cattle, he runs into the Hotel Bronson and Betty Black's brothel. Several other out-of-towners have also arrived to take advantage of the town via prostitution, treasure hunting, cons, and revenge. The locals are not completely savory either, what with a candy-munching serial killer, a gang of three bandits led by a powerful businessman, and a mayor with a sex slave trade of his own, among others. When all of these characters combine, the town finds itself lost in a murder mystery and an impending attack from altered Indians which Calamaro and his burping pistol are dragged into. Thankfully, Krall made sure to add in scenes of a squid being fetishized as Abraham Lincoln and a four-footed hooker taking a motherly attitude towards a malignant starfish creature. It's just not Krall without out-of-place sea creatures, and his fluid prose rarely if ever gets too choppy for them to swim. With all of these qualities combined, Fistful of Feet is a smooth ride with the occasional squid-blasting explosion happening outside of the car.

Maybe my only issue with the story is that the Indians are said to be worshipping Cthulhu on the back cover and yet their actual worship seems to be a bit more clouded than that in the text, with their chants sounding like a series of burps that do not include the phrase "Cthulhu Fhtagn" anywhere. While the squid from before is said to be something the Indians worshipped, I feel that maybe it could've been a new kind of sea-based elder god from Krall's creation. Granted, there is a chance that he did not write the back cover.

What matters more is that he wrote the book itself, and considering the excellent two days I had in reading Fistful of Feet, I can't think of any better reason to jump on the musky, salty, squishy Krall bandwagon.

[Mike Kleine · Rating 5 out of 5]

First things first, Jordan Krall is an amazing writer. His Bizarro literature is unique and quite fantastic. When someone tells you, "this author has a voice," Jordan Krall is one of those. I say this because after having read everything by Krall (save for Piecemeal June,) there definitely is an authorial voice hidden behind the Bizarro curtain that is this book. If you enjoy the type of writing found in pulp novels, then you will enjoy FISTFUL OF FEET. There's dialogue, fantastic imagery, memorable heroes, crazy villains, strange fetishes, stunning one-liners and tons of superb spaghetti western-worthy moments. If I were asked to describe the best thing about the book, I would have to mention the characters. Though they are quite zany and out-of-this-world, no character would be complete without dialogue and as I have mentioned before, Krall has a talent when it comes to writing believable dialogue. Where Palahniuk has failed (repeatedly,) Krall shines. FISTFUL OF FEET reads like a spaghetti western written by Quentin Tarantino (for the dialogue and violence) and directed by Stanley Kubrick (for the truly bizarre and unexplainable moments.)

Now don't get thrown off by my description of the novel. Yes, it is bizarre and it definitely has its fair share of "odd" moments but Krall manages to nail the Western feel. It could have been very easy to create a Bizarro story situated in the West with no real semblance of the Western genre but somehow, and I applaud him for this, Krall succeeds. There are dozens of unforgettable characters and as David W Barbee puts it, "Westerns like this are like operas. There needs to be a large cast in order to produce as many corpses as possible." I was able to snag a pre-order of this book, which came with a lollipop, collectible card, miscellaneous goodies, a personal inscription and the text itself. While I would have liked to have received a MEGA-AWESOME-BONUS edition, I understand that these are hard times and we cannot all release Steven Spielberg/George Lucas-esque 64th anniversary bundles. Nevertheless, I am quite pleased to have read this book and it needs to be handed out to as many people as possible. Now. Sequel, please. Now.

[Monster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fistful of Feet is the first full-length novel published by bizarro author Jordan Krall. It’s not your typical bizarro title… scratch that… NO bizarro is “typical”, actually. However, Fistful of Feet is a mesh of genres, leaning heavily towards being a Spaghetti Western title. The story takes place in the desert town of Screwhorse, which consists of many typical townsfolk for a western setting. There’s the bartender that knows everyone, the major, the gals from the whorehouse, and many more to stumble upon as our main hero, Calamaro, passes through town. I can’t say that I’ve read any other westerns in my time and about my only experience with western movies is the Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen movie, How the West Was Fun, which is so far from being like Fistful of Feet that I shouldn’t even mention it here, but… I think I can go out on a limb and say that Krall has created a novel unlike any other Spaghetti Western out there! Sure, some characters are similar to your run-of-the-mill western, but they all have a bit of a twist, which is what makes this novel so interesting. The gals of the whorehouse don’t just have sex with the men that come to them, but they allow them to live out their ultimate kinks. Trust me when I say that some of them I can’t even believe Krall thought of and if they really do exist… well, EWWW!!! The owner of the town store sells not only your every day groceries, drugs, basic necessities, but he specializes in a special “juice” that I’ll let you read about all on your own. And our hero, well… let’s just say that he brings to town with him a gun that burps when you shoot it and also a wooden donkey that comes in surprisingly handy by the end of the book. These are only a few of the strange characters you will meet as you make your way through Fistful of Feet, the fabulous bizarro/spaghetti western novel by Jordan Krall. Whether a fan of the spaghetti western genre or not, all fans of the bizarro genre will love this book. I’ve read all of Jordan Krall’s books to date, and I have to say, this is by far my favorite! Highly recommended!
Contains: Adult Language, Adult Situations, Graphic Sex
Review by Rhonda Wilson

[Matthew Vaughn · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can’t read the Bizarro genre without seeing the name Jordan Krall. But as many times as I’ve seen his name it took me awhile to get around to reading one of his books. Fistful of Feet was where I decided to start with Krall, and I believe I choose well.

Taking place in Screwhorse, Nevada we are introduced to this strange desert town when our hero Calamaro wanders in with his wooden donkey. It doesn’t take him long to get the attention of some of the thugs that push around the rest of the town, and in typical heroic fashion win the hearts of regular townsfolk. But in this book even the regular folks are weird. Playing a large role in the story is the local whorehouse, which is known for indulging customers in their strange fetishes. We have women like June who has a little foot growing out of each of her ankles, giving her a total of four feet. Then there are the Brady sisters, who specialized in burping. This is only a couple examples of the strange characters from this town.

There are a few different story lines involving the different characters, some that run into each other. It can be a little confusing with so many characters, but not so much to ruin the book. Krall does a good job with it all, he doesn’t leave any loose ends, which can typically happen with so much going on.

Overall this is a pretty action packed story. Between Calamaro battling it out with the rich William Lyons or Sergio and his friends plotting to rid the Mayor of his gold, the weird cows with tentacles instead of utters, or the sexually transmitted tattoos, this book will keep you entertained.

I’ve never really been into westerns, this is the first book I’ve read that in that genre. I’ve seen people say that there are a lot of nods towards certain westerns. I think that’s pretty cool, even if I wouldn’t know them to catch them. I will definitely be reading more from Jordan Krall, and I will be encouraging others to do the same.

[Colleen Wanglund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calamaro has come to Screwhorse, Nevada in search of gold to start a new life in California. He’s not the only one looking for gold. Sergio, Clayton and Leonard are also headed to Screwhorse for gold. Rebecca is going there to work at Black Betty’s in the hopes of making enough money to also get to California, and Bluford is hoping to con a few people out of some of their money. Mayor Douglas just wants to continue running the town and using women as he sees fit. There are Cthulhu-worshipping Indians on the outskirts of town, a woman with four feet working in the brothel, another with some very strange tattoos, and a killer on the loose.

FISTFUL OF FEET is a wonderful ode to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and 70s. Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood would be proud. It’s also one of the strangest Westerns I’ve ever read, and I loved it. With nods to Leone, Claudia Cardinale, and Charles Bronson it brought to mind such classic westerns as Once Upon A Time in the West, A fistful of Dollars, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Like Clint Eastwood’s unnamed cowboy, Calamaro is a reluctant hero, fighting because he feels it’s the right thing to do. Betty is the whore-with-a-heart-of-gold who takes care of her girls and Stacklee is her quiet and unassuming muscle in case the boys get out of hand. The mayor is corrupt with William Lyons being the real power behind the office, and the sheriff who’s pretty inept at his job. Jordan Krall has all of the pieces necessary for a great Western as well as for a great Bizarro tale. With a large and strange cast of characters, action galore, and a fast pace FISTFUL OF FEET is a must-read for Western and Bizarro fans alike.

[Jess Gulbranson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rate this 5 stars for sheer ambition and awesomeness. A booby-trapped wooden donkey, filled with razor-tipped women's shoes? Krall brings together two disparate genres- Lovecrafteana and Spaghetti western/giallo, which would seem to nullify the moody terror of the former. Besides, aquatic horrors in the dry desert? Active gun-toting protagonists never stopping to read a book that would threaten their sanity? Surprisingly it works, and works very well, accentuating what must have seemed to many at the time to be an alien landscape, and reverting our modern mythologized (and even demythologized) vision of the West to abjectly horrid garden of earthly terror. Krall throws a kitchen sink of human depravity and cruelty at the inhabitants of Screwhorse, and holds a looming threat of Injun attack over their heads- then drops it on them, in full Weird West style, obliterating all the tangled revenge plots in a torrent of bloodshed and strangeness. Then, like an upside down pyramid of death, the characters are further winnowed by a Mexican standoff outside town, then a final duel that leaves the protagonist alone to die. This very short denoument is the only part that really irks me, in that for such an action-filled story it seems a letdown, but as a quiet coda it also is unsatisfying. One final note- the shoutout to De Sade in the text is appropriate. The constant sex in this book is, like that of the Marquis', gratuitious in the sense that it does not primarily serve to titillate, but open up a session of philosophical discussion. For better or for worse, in transgressive fiction, this is a classic way to go, and Krall handles it masterfully.

[Outerspace Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars really, but they don't offer that)
So, this was my first dive into the bizarro spaghetti western genre and it was certainly an original and peculiar ride! When the hero of our novel, a drifter named Calamaro, shows up dragging a wooden donkey into the town of Screwhorse, he becomes entangled into the lives and nefarious plots of the local townsfolk. Now about the townsfolk…this is not a normal town. It has elements like normal towns; corruption, inept sheriff, brothel Madame with a big heart and such- but beyond that things start to go loopy. Screwhorse becomes like some parallel universe’s version of the wild west where the inhabitants include a prostitute nursing a mind controlling giant starfish, a hero whose gun emits a burping noise when it shoots, a psychopath named “The Hard Candy Kid”, a hallucinogenic drink called “ass juice”, a whore with four feet who caters to foot fetishists, cows with squid tentacles instead of udders, syphilitic zombies…well you get the point. I am mixed about how I feel about this book- on one hand, it was so original and strange I couldn’t stop reading it, on the other hand it, was so bogged down with gross out details that it dragged at parts. As it got more and more outlandish and weird I just sort of started speed reading through it. It was so bizarre at times I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the vision the author was trying to create. None the less, it was entertaining, stunningly original, and totally worth a go if you dig crazy weird sci-fi westerns rife with gratuitous violence, gore, bizarre sex, and ludicrous situations.

[John Bruni · Rating 5 out of 5]

It says "bizarro" on the cover of this book, and sure enough, it qualifies, but it has more in common with the weird western tale. It's a wonderful mixture of Lovecraft and Leone. You're just as likely to run into lifeforce-sucking starfish than with cutthroat bandits.

Meet Calamaro. All he wanted to do is get away from the memory of his family's death at the hands of drunken scumbag Union soldiers near the end of the war. Instead, he's found his way to the town of Screwhorse, where everything is about to go to hell. There's the Hard Candy Kid, a psychopath with a taste for candy. Then there's William Lyons, the local land baron whose thugs have it in for Calamaro for being kindly to black people. There's a special brew of booze that causes hallucinations, there are guns that burp, and there are sexually transmitted tattoos, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The real star of the show is Betty Black's whorehouse, where a man can find any sort of gal, even one with four legs. And boy, these girls are willing to do anything, no matter how weird!

As crazy as it all seems, this really is a western at heart. Krall seems to know just as much about the western tale as he does about weird things. It's a perfect marriage, and I highly recommend this book.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious,weird western. I enjoyed every page. This is a bizarro western set in a town in Nevada. Home to a fetish brothel, a hallucinogenic drink called ass juice, a hero with a wooden donkey any many other characters and features of a strange existence. If you like gunfights, hookers, violence, romance cowboys, Indians and evil mayors then this is a book to check out.

[Mike Maski · Rating 5 out of 5]

If all westerns were written this way, I'd be a huge fan of the genre! This book is weird, different and very entertaining.

[Jarrod · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clumsy, random plotting. Limited character development... I could go on but despite all its flaws it was bizarre and it was enjoyable in its own weird way.