temporoparietal

Kris Ellis

Description

Kris Ellis' debut novel follows Matt Pearce, OCD sufferer, low-achiever, film fanatic and Jack Kerouac enthusiast, who reaches an existential crossroads. He finds himself looking back on a life thus far of dead-end jobs, binge drinking, encounters with aggressive locals, sessions with therapists, and failed relationships with alluring but 'head-doing' young teenage girls.When one of these relationships, with an abused teenager called S., goes badly wrong, Matt flees the country and undertakes a Greyhound bus journey across the USA, partly to escape from S., partly as a pilgrimage to Kerouac's final resting place, partly to pitch his draft indie movie script to an unsuspecting Hollywood, but mostly to find himself.Matt's journey takes him from New York to Los Angeles via stopovers in Boston, Lowell, Chicago and Las Vegas. He travels across a variegated geographical and mental landscape which provides him with edgy encounters and glimpses of an existential NOW amidst flashbacks from his childhood, adolescence in Freetown, formative relationships with Mona, Alice and S., Socratic dialogues with his 'head doctor', movie-making ambitions and struggling attempts to write his own life script.temporoparietal is a candid, semi-documentary teenage beat novel, told through the hand-held camera-pen of its young adult narrator. The story is written in an experimental colloquial style resembling a philosophical, vigorously delivered stand-up comedy routine about being alive and young in the modern world. Author Kris Ellis describes his protagonist's state of consciousness as existing somewhere between Holden Caulfield and Bill Hicks. Influenced by J.D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac and Michel Houellebecq, temporoparietal will appeal to readers looking for an edgy, thought-provoking contemporary novel exploring modern youth in search of its soul.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 17 juillet 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789011883
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2018 Kris Ellis

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1789011 883

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To M.H
(O brave new world that has such beings and time in it)

In the world into which we are entering, in a time of mass accumulation and mass domination, of universal utilitarianism, crushing misery and banal happiness, it will again be the task of the individual to seek his own philosophical truth. No objectivity will teach him.
(Karl Jaspers, Man in the Modern Age )

I’m a high-tech lowlife.
A cutting-edge state-of-the-art bicoastal multitasker,
And I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.
I’m new wave but I’m old school,
And my inner child is outward bound.
I’m a hot-wired heat-seeking warm-hearted cool customer,
Voice-activated and biodegradable.
I interface from a database,
And my database is in cyberspace.
So I’m interactive,
I’m hyperactive,
And from time to time,
I’m radioactive.
(From I’m a Modern Man , George Carlin, November 5 th 2005, Beacon Theatre, NYC)

To whom, from where, does one write a letter to the world?
(Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed )


Contents
The Appalachians
Two Photos
America America
Proper Proper
Mona Part Two
Mona Part One
Boston
Willin’
I Think of Jack
Shit Job #2
Alice
On the Road
The Best Day Ever
From A to B in Two Weeks
Evangelista
ABC
Vegas Part One
Windows 98 Pre-Installed
Vegas Part Two
The Angel of Freetown
In the Shape of a Heart
Women
Coming Apart
Dirt
Vegas #3
Going Down
The Next Ten Seconds


Chapter One
The Appalachians
Whatever doesn’t kill you can still fuck you up for the rest of your life.
I read this book by Bill Bryson about the Appalachians. I forget the title but it was really cool. Apparently hiking the Appalachian Trail is like walking to Scotland and back seven times. Two thousand four hundred miles of mountain ranges, rapid rivers and dense hardwood forests full of bears. Not just bears of course. Mosquitoes that paralyse your central nervous system with one bite. Rats’ crap full of viruses that suffocate you when you lie on the ground. Mooses running around crazy with rabies. Lightning bolts that vaporise you in a millisecond. Copperheads that nestle in your nuts while you’re fast asleep in your tent and whose poison kills in ten minutes, so in the unlikely event of there being help around, no one would be able to get to you in time. And then of course there are the bears. They chew you up if they catch the faintest whiff of chocolate. Man, getting murdered is almost a holiday! I must stop saying ‘man’.
The thing about a bear is, if it attacks you, one book will tell you to stand still and another will tell you to run away, even though, as they also tell you, a bear can move much quicker than you. And they can climb trees. So basically you’re fucked whatever evasive action you take. And yet I’d feel cheated if there was no bear trying to munch on me.
Of course my biggest problem would be the cleanliness issue. In fact that would be the only reason for putting myself through all this pain. Extreme problems demand extreme solutions. Even if they don’t work, at least life stays interesting, and you get to wipe from your mind a lot of the stupid things people worry about in day-to-day living. If you get hungry, you just pick something off a tree and eat it wild, without worrying whether a squirrel’s shat on it. And cos you’re out walking fourteen hours a day, every day, hot or cold, sometimes you don’t get to wash yourself for a week. Apparently it’s not so bad. On the first day you feel like, nah, I’m alright, a little bit sweaty, but that’s OK. Second day you’re thinking, my hands are dirty, I’m getting very sweaty, I must stink. Third day, you think, God, I’m a mess, I don’t wanna eat anything with these hands, I don’t even wanna, like, smell myself. Fourth day you’re feeling a little bit better, getting used to it. Fifth day you can’t even remember what it was like to be clean. And by the sixth day it’s, you know, normal.
“And the seventh day?”
You have a wash and the process starts all over again.
“Why do you feel this need to go to extremes?”
I don’t know. I suppose because in extreme situations you haven’t got time to choose, because you haven’t got time to think. All my problems come from thinking too much. But you know that already.
“Are you aware that the Appalachians are the most popular location for Vietnam vets with post-traumatic stress disorders?”
Rambos? No kidding. I’m definitely going.
“All this is, of course, a fantasy. You like fantasy, understandably. You are a creative teenager. Fantasy is safe and fun. At the moment you are fantasizing about being on some TV survival show.”
Not at all. This is real. This is my life.
“No, it is a coping mechanism. A way to avoid dealing with things as they really are.”
But I don’t like things as they really are.
“Good. We are making progress.”


Chapter Two
Two Photos
But to be young was very heaven
(William Wordsworth, The Prelude )
I’ve got two pictures of me. One when I’m five years old; probably about four and a half, actually. It was taken before we had the extension, before my dad’s accident, before I started to think too much. When I look at it I can see in my eyes the one thing that I’ve lost by the time the other one was taken, when I’m about ten or eleven, when, according to Mum, something in me ‘soured’.
In the first picture, I’m happy. Very. But totally happy without even thinking about being happy. You can tell. Look at my eyes. You know this is a big day. I’m going to school for the first time. I should be shit-scared in that picture. But I’m not. Then I look at this other picture, when I’m older and having my passport picture taken. My eyes just ain’t the same eyes. These eyes have seen things. You know, this boy (older photo) has been through some rough times in the playground. This boy (younger photo) hasn’t seen those hard times yet.
This boy is small; he’s got a cool haircut. What I mean is, there aren’t a lot of people, even small boys, that could pull off that haircut. But I feel this small boy pulls off that haircut in a major way. Basically he looks like the sort of guy that in World War 11 would have got into some kind of Spitfire, gone up and shot down a few Jerries, come back down and gone ‘Hawhawhaw!’, like that, but real, like, suave, cool, but at the same time, you know, never taking anything too seriously, knowing he’ll always get the job done.
Secondly, I’ll tell you why I’m impressed with this kid. Not only is he pulling the haircut off; look at the purse! There ain’t no way around it, that’s a handbag-stroke-purse. But at the same time, he doesn’t look homosexual or gay in any way. Not only that, he looks good. I mean very good. I mean, like, this kid is just impressive. He’s pulling that bag off. What I mean is, he’s not self-conscious about it, he’s not anything. He’s almost proud. Other people looking at this kid are gonna say, that kid’s got style, he’s got, like, streetsmarts. He’s just a cool kid. He’s fly. Why? Look at him, man! Look at the tie; that tie’s a kickass tie! Look at the collar on that shirt!
Girls? What are they gonna make of him? Older girls, they’re gonna think he’s cute. Younger girls? I dunno – I think they’d like him. For the simple fact that he’s pulling off an outfit that could make someone look incredibly stupid, yet he’s making it look good. He’s making it look amazingly good. Look, plimsolls. Not many people can pull those off. Knee-high socks! I don’t know anybody but this kid that could do that. The gap there between the knee and trousers – impressive. Cool shorts. And the jumper. He just looks – very nice. You know, he looks like he’s put a lot of preparation in.
What is this kid gonna do in life? He doesn’t know yet, but he ain’t concerned. He just knows that he’s gonna go to school, have a good time. But that’s it – he doesn’t think too much. You can tell he’s just had a life of playing with Lego, micro-machines and He-Man figures. He ain’t seen none of the harsh realities yet. And he doesn’t know of harsh realities. He just believes that, like, you know, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. And as long as your mum and dad are there, no one’s going to break into the house. You know what I mean? He’s naïve, but at the same time he likes it that way.
And what about the other kid? The older one. This kid looks worried, paranoid and neurotic. One: he ain’t pulling off the hair where the other one was pulling off the hair. The shirt: it’s gone downhill. That shirt’s travelled with him. The younger kid looks, like, fresh, new, ready for the world. The older one looks read