or the emperor’s new bindle stick
lately it seems like the whole internet is populated by slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies. i will tell you what is not populated by slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies, though: grace krilanovich’s novel the orange eats creeps is not populated by slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies. it is populated by a narrator who refers to herself and her friends as slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies, or variants thereon, often enough that i feel comfortable using the phrase slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies again.
good enough for you?
listen, this is not a review of the orange eats creeps. this is a review of your reviews of the orange eats creeps.
your reviews say things like, “the orange eats creeps is about slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies,” and “it’s not clear if the slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies in the orange eats creeps are actually slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies,” and “this ain’t no twilight,” and “this is not your grandma’s vampire novel.”
- the book is clearly not about slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies.
- it is clear that the “slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies” in the orange eats creeps are not actually slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies.
- it ain’t no twilight; but, then again, twilight ain’t no blood and guts in high school, and fans of both the former and the latter are bright enough to know there’s no point in saying it, because no one would think to blame stephanie meyer for not being kathy acker and vice versa.
- it is not my grandma’s vampire novel. it’s not a vampire novel. it’s not even a vampire novel in the way that naked lunch is a mugwump novel.
a rudeboy like me father
what it is is a novel about gutter punx in a style reminiscent of both kathy acker and william burroughs with a dash of artaud (a dash because there’s no evidence of artaud’s genuine madness and because the horrors of the novel are maybe too cozy with the novel’s camp leanings to really drain any buboes), with an atmosphere that approaches early david lynch and gus van sant for creepiness and moodiness, but with an ethos that reminds me more of an attempt to rewrite on the road by combining the sal and dean characters and trying to balance sal’s melancholy-tinged romanticism with dean’s agency.
that last balance, the mixing of self-conscious romanticism and agency in a single protagonist, doesn’t quite work. the constant self-identification as a slutty teenage hobo vampire junky is at odds with what an actual slutty teenage hobo vampire junky would do. let me translate that into english for you: if i was a bloodsucker, i wouldn’t need to say, to myself or you, that i was a bloodsucker every time i sucked blood, anymore than i need to proclaim myself a carnivore every time i bite into a burger. and i love burgers.
let me put that into the context of the novel for you: our narrator doesn’t sound so much like the kind of spanger who’s constantly hopping trains because she’s got nowhere to go and really has rejected civilization as most of us know it; but she sounds convincingly like a girl who’s been at many of the same shows and parties as those spangers. then she goes home and yells at her stepmom that her stepmom can never understand her because she’s so punkrock.
this is not a weakness of the novel. it’s arguably a strength. as long as we can agree that self-identification as a slutty teenage hobo vampire junky is the kind of obnoxiously adolescent metaphor that the narrator would use to freak out the civilians.
my question is, why is that not good enough for you? sure, as a marketing angle, “slutty teenage hobo vampire junkies” has some appeal — it gives the mainstream critics a chance to feel dirty. and mainstream critics have been parroting press releases for years. but not you, right? you’re a real slutty teenage hobo vampire junky. so what exactly are you trying to sell me on?
