The Garbage Times/White Ibis: Two Novellas by Sam Pink
My rating: 4/5 cats
this is one of those fun flippy books where you read about half of it and then THE WORDS START GOING UPSIDE-DOWN so you flip it over and start from the back-end page one like it’s a whole ‘nother book.
and it more or less is. the stories are connected without being continuous, and although they share a POV narrator (and a cat), the style and tone of the two are significantly different.
i’ve only read two of sam pink’s books: I am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It and No One Can Do Anything Worse to You Than You Can, but i thought i knew enough to know what to expect when you’re expecting sam pink, and when soft skull offered me this book, i was looking forward to revisiting his brand of choppy, fragmented, poetic sentences, imagery as unexpected as it is apt, and abrupt drastic moodshifts from “laughing so hard i’m crying” to “crying so hard i’m laughing.”
here is my confession—i was not crazy about The Garbage Times. it was very samey—lots of cleaning up of puke and shit, lots of garbage water and rats and flies and pigeons and strange encounters with strange people. it was surreal and nerve-jangly and an incredibly fast read, sure, but i didn’t love reading it; it was too repetitive and i felt trapped. which is, i suppose, the point.
Back at my place, I sat on the floor.
I looked around my shitty apartment and all of the shit all over and thought about how shitty it all was.
What is this shit?
Whose shit is this?
So much fucking shit.
i started to have more fun reading it once i began picturing that dude from High Maintenance in the role of the narrator because he’s just so nice and adaptable, absorbing uncomfortable situations by being super chill and just taking what comes, even the garbage times and the garbage people.
and although this book had some of those angry/violent/deeply sad moments i was expecting from his other stuff, on the whole it was almost…cheerful. or at least willfully, teeth-grittedly cheerful—there was a teflon-defiance to his confrontations with the garbage—pleasantly greeting the (literal) shit and puke, conquering it with a plunger, turning it into a game he can almost win.
he’s an observer delighted by unexpected encounters with unusual people
silently cheering on his next-apartment neighbor as he listens to him go through his hours-long throat-clearing routine, smoking pot with a raggedy-clawed drunk, defusing the aggression of drunk bros at the bar where he works, watching pigeons fight over french fries, joyfully bonding with a gentleman over hand dryers:
The guy put his hands under the hand dryer.
When it activated, he pulled his hands back, surprised by the force.
He looked at me.
I nodded towards the brand name on the front of the hand dryer.
He looked.
I read it to him in a firm voice. ‘eXtremeAir, motherfucker!’
He nodded and said ‘eXtremeAir!’ and put his hands back underneath.
‘eXtremeAir!’ I yelled over the noise.
‘eXtremeAir!’he yelled.
We yelled it a few more times.
And it made everything so much better, even shit that hadn’t happened.
i would enjoy the hell out of those episodes, as much as i enjoy the fine line between sarcastic and guileless that he manages to convey, which in anyone else, would read 100% sarcastic.
When I finally got up, I crossed the street behind traffic stopped at a light.
An approaching car waved me to cross between it and the car ahead of it.
I raised my hand.
Thanks.
Thanks for not pinning me against the other car and crushing my legs.
I appreciate it.
so, even with my media-tie-in game, i didn’t love it, but it had some excellent moments, most notably his pages-long read-and-response to a (sadly) apocryphal picture book called Fireman Dog which is essentially a book review and it is so adorable and vulgar and hi-larious with its occasional bursts into ALLCAPS INCREDULITY it makes me wish sam pink wrote book reviews on here. i would hit so many of his “like” buttons.
simultaneously cheerful and bleak = thumbs up
too repetitive = thumbs down
but then we FLIP and the second part—White Ibis, was all positive things. so, if you are reading this and you feel like bailing during The Garbage Times, know that one person who is in all likelihood a stranger to you liked the second part a lot better. it’s more structured than anything i’ve read of his—more (gasp!) narrative, and not so much an onslaught of unexpected imagery and nails-in-eyeballs emotion. it’s the narrator moving away from chicago and the garbage times to the sunshiney, animal-rich world of florida, with a girl and a cat where he has relatively healthy interactions with human beings that aren’t characterized by jangly energy and a whiff of hostility. also—animals!
I met many new kinds of animals in the bayou.
In Chicago there were two kinds of animals: squirrels and rocks.
But in Florida there were all kinds.
There were armadillos, which were basically like small armored pigs that wobbled around at night, into and out of sewers.
I badly wanted to pick one up and hold it like a baby or throw it like a football, but I found out they carried leprosy.
So, uh, no thanks!
Then there were possums, which were basically bigger/greasier rats.
Imagine a rat that broke a vial of some futuristic steroid over its head.
Every time I saw one, they paused and glared at me in the moonlight, like, ‘Take a good look, yoomin.’
There were alligators.
Bobcats.
Snakes.
Lizards everywhere.
Millions of bugs, including one named after not being able to see it, which, for that very reason, was the worst.
Spiders and frogs and birds.
All kinds of birds.
Gawky-ass, ornate birds just walking around.
Like this one that basically lived at the end of the driveway.
Every time I went outside, it’d be shuffling around where the driveway met the street.
Not really doing anything or going anywhere, just kind of pacing.
With a long white neck and a really long orange beak, walking around like a dumb-ass on its stilt legs.
Like what the fuck is this thing?
It was out tonight when my girl and I got on our bikes to go to the gas station.
‘Yo, what’s up, pea-head?’ I said, as we pedaled past.
The bird took a few steps in the other direction, head sideways, eyeing us.
My girl laughed.
‘I love that thing,’ I said.
‘That’s a white ibis,’ she said. ‘My grammy knows them all.’
White ibis.
Why, hello, white ibis.
I really wanted the white ibis to like me and to be my friend.
And to its credit, it — seemingly — did not.
in this section, the girl scout portraiture session is just perfection. this is the sweet flipside of socially awkward encounters and i so hope that it is based on a real-life experience.
laughter without unsettling undertone = thumbs up
goofy romance and screaming about beans = thumbs up
okay, i am going to type out two more favorite passages because with him, it’s easier to show than tell what reading him is like, even though this one (these ones?) were a bit different from the howling poetry/prose mishmash of yore.
from The Garbage Times
scenario: adopting a cat
There was an older, all-white cat lying on the top of a four-foot scratching post.
‘Well, say hi to Bruce!’ said the volunteer.
Bruce looked at me.
I started petting him.
He rubbed his head on me.
Oh, does Bruce like that?
He closed his eyes.
Bruce likes that shit, eh?
The volunteer told me Bruce didn’t get along with other cats.
Yo, me neither, Bruce.
Then Bruce swiped at me and hissed, glaring.
I laughed.
Fucking Bruce!
You would!
The volunteer said, ‘Oh. He’s just seen so many people today. He’s probably overwhelmed.’
I looked into Bruce’s eyes.
Yeah.
Wait, yeah…
It made sense.
It made sense in a way that made sense of everything else.
Everything made sense right then.
I got it.
Overwhelmed.
Too much.
Just, too much everything from everyone.
Yeah, Bruce.
Fuck.
God fucking damnit.
All these people.
Everyone all over.
Too much.
Overwhelmed.
Sometimes you have to swipe back.
You have to, Bruce.
But also, fuck you, you’re staying here.
and from White Ibis
scenario: looking for work
Come on, man.
Get it together.
Get a fucking job.
I searched local listings.
There was an ad for someone to dress up in a bagel suit and walk around outside.
Holy shit.
It was a job…I’d…had.
I’d dressed up in a bagel suit for a place I worked when I was sixteen.
I…had experience?
I turned my head sideways like a dog hearing a familiar but still distant sound.
I had experience.
Who else could say that about this job?
No matter what someone’s qualifications were, mine were better.
Shit, they could walk into my interview [me not even turning to address them but remaining seated with a smug look on my face, hands clasped over the knee of my folded legs] and be like, ’Stop, don’t hire him, I’m a fucking triple-quadruple PhD and I’m a cancer survivor and I’m Jesus.’
And I’d just say, ‘Yeah, well, have you ever actually done this, junior? Have you been deep in the shit like I have, just a slit to look out of, no peripheral vision, you’re sweating, each motherfucking cloth sesame seed weighing what seems like tons…goddamnit man, have you EVER DONE IT?’
still though…
Fuck that.
I closed the ad.
There was no way I’d do that shit in Florida.
That rig would kill ya in Florida.
Tell ya.
Felt like I was going to die just for wearing socks sometimes.
Shit.
No way.
Can’t/won’t die in a bagel suit.
Simply put: no, I would not die that way.
You have to make decisions and rules about your life and one of mine was: don’t die in a bagel suit.
i know i have more of his stuff around here. reading this makes me want to dig it up immediately.
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