Saugus To The Sea

Saugus To The Sea Bill Brown, art by Brad Yung, i84pgs, Smart Cookie Publishing, available through microcosmpublishing.com, $1745, (2001)

I was immediately drawn to the way in which Brown cuts out all the bullshit in his engaging and at times manic voice as he moves his protagonist Billy Brown through California City and its seedy underground. The details in the open segments concerning something as quotidian as the legitimacy and effectiveness of automated sprinklers was reminiscent of Don DeLillo's domestic masterpiece White Nobe and makes you think about those details long after the sprinklers have been shut off and forgotten on the page. Throughout this sunny and quick novel is artwork by Stay As You Are legend Brad Yung. Brown's writing is instant, alchemic and at times hyperbolic: "1 shoot past the lane dividers, those luminescent white hockey pucks that look like vertebrae, just to keep the simile rolling, laid out by hand, one by one, by a Caltrans worker in a bright orange hardhat who drives around in a little go-cart." (Nathaniel G. Moore)