Che.: A novella in three parts

by Peter Money

Fiction/Hybrid/Poetry/Culture "epic"- Christian Peet (Tarpaulin Sky, Big American Trip) "Intense an powerful in the way the language and images flow like a raging sea" -Sinan Antoon (author of I¹jaam from City Lights) "amazing, such surprising and penetrating lines throughout...I want to hear Che read aloud...while floating in a sensory deprivation tank"-Haale (singer/translator) "Something as important as this book will find a home and a time." -David Oliveira (poet, co-founder of Solo) "extraordinary...an ocean of beautiful and harrowing language that casts up its characters like great drift logs seen through heavy surf. The novella... speaks to and out of his refusal of artificial separations between the possibilities of art and the strictures of history ... Peter reveals a commitment to the beauty and precision of language--lyrical flights end-stopped by a sentence like a punch to the 'People died trying.' This is writing that requires readers to think and feel in equal measures..."-Jan Clausen (poet, author of Apples and Oranges) "beautiful/powerful...playful and sad/tragic. The present and past happening at once."---Sharon White (AWP Book Award author) "a daring work. . .Its language is dazzling [and] shakes this gripping fear of the poetic...its sentiments are genuine. Its revolutionary spirit is very real and very American"-Shakir Mustafa (editor of Contemporary Iraqi Fiction) "filled with a crackling energy"-Philippe Tapon (novelist)

212 pages, Paperback

First published February 10, 2010

Reviews

[Richard S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter's book is difficult but fabulous, an amazing mix of creativity.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is, in a word, exhausting. It's incredibly dense, and while the language is good, I was really glad when it was over. Which is a shame, but hey. It's definitely more poetry than prose—actually, it's totally poetry, it's a novel-length poem. It's interesting that the subtitle is "A novella in three parts." That's a pretty long novella (186 pages). There is some scant hint of narrative, of characters and setting; the themes of death and war, and of location (being home vs. being abroad) dominate. You get the idea that this is what Mark Danielewski would write if he were to cut the bullshit and do something real. Which is more a dig on Danielewski than it is on Money. Che wavers between Gassy and gassy, which is to say it sounds like William Gass at its (very) best, and like Danielewski at its worst. I should add, actually, that comparisons to Gass are pretty much totally inappropriate. At times I was reminded of Gass, perhaps. Reminded. Like drinking cough syrup and getting hints of cherry or citrus.

I can't not mention the ridiculous proliferation of typos here. My GOD. I mean really, My God. Double hyphens instead of dashes, just . . . I mean it would take hours. Which was just really distracting. I understand this wasn't published by Random House or something, but did anyone look over it before it went to press? The fact that an epigraph is attributed to "a R.E.M. song" tells me: No.

And yeah, man, those epigraphs. My feeling is that these are like bumper stickers: One's okay, maybe, unless it only exists to state that you didn't vote for Clinton, back in 1990-whatever, so you're not the one to blame for all the shit going on in the world. Money piles these things on like a paint job, though; there are pages of the things, to the point where you're like, hey, buddy, this is your book. Let's have some of your words. Sure, the book is definitely "experimental," though I wasn't sure what these quotes were adding. The one from a R.E.M. song was pretty good, though, I have to admit. I'm lying, by the way.

Whatever. Really dense, good language, but.

[Christina Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prose Poetry.