The Crock of Gold Book

What the hell did I just read?! This is one of the most bizarre, tense, paralyzing novellas I've ever experienced. Lying in wait within these scant few pages are the noxious suffocation and claustrophobia inherent in jealousy, manifested in an extremely original, shockingly cumulative way. The reader is insidiously imprisoned, trapped in an endless circular labyrinth of stifling, oppressive stillness. This confinement, however, rapidly becomes a perverse pleasure. It both enervates and intoxicates; there is no desire whatsoever to leave. The consuming addiction, the taut, closed loop of suspicion, is all.

While reading this was exquisitely excruciating, now that it's over, I find that I'm suffering even more acutely from the withdrawal. I need to get back into that singularly airless reality, to submerge myself in that relentless inertia once more. To borrow a word from David Foster Wallace, I'm completely aghasted. Often, I'm not entirely sure what to make of experimental literature, but this, I can safely say, was a masterfully meticulous mind fuck of the first order. The sensation I had upon finishing it reminds me of what I felt after viewing Eraserhead for the first time:



Read at your own risk. You may never truly escape. But then, you probably won't want to.