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When I say genre fiction is a double-edged sword and that it can be its own worst enemy, I mean that it creates the stereotypes it ends up having to avoid. It's an inevitability if you write fiction defined by a set of rules. It seems like American Bizarro Kingpin MP Johnson agrees with me on the problem, but developed a very unique solution to it in his novella Sick Pack: a story that mutates into different genres and styles as it goes along. It is extremely crass and strange and iconoclast, but not purposeless by any means. It's probably the most exhausting 100 pages story I've ever read, but I had the intellectual cardio to take it.
Fabulo has the most awesome abs you've ever seen. They enable him to earn a living as a model for Harlequin novel covers. They also have the power to hypnotize people and make them do Fabulo's bidding. His awesome life with his awesome abs comes to a screeching halt one day though, when he's attacked in the street by a fat and deranged abs worshiper on a mission to free his masters from Fabulo's undeserving body. When he succeeds, Fabulo's abs run away from his body and into Los Angeles, looking for a new life that involves less crunches and more self-actualization. What will Fabulo do to get his life back?
So, the first chapter of Sick Pack is an uproarious absurd comedy. The second chapter, while being the continuation of the same story, is DIS-GUS-TING body horror. Then it becomes oddly dadaist for a couple chapters with the sentient body parts looking for meaning to their existence. I've never read anything like Sick Pack before. It's a story that deconstructs itself and slowly sinks into surrealism like a shaman would walk into fire. Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp and the visionary provocateurs of history have nothing on MP Johnson. I've only seen one other man with the capacity to mutate a story as it goes along like this an his name is Alejando Jodorowsky. Johnson is a heir to his vision.
The best thing about Sick Pack though is that it's not just an exercise in form fluidity. It's a novella about vanity and the fragile nature of self-image. Fabulo is nothing without his abs. Just a stomach rebelling and engulfing everything to compensate for the countless hours of intense training and deprivation. He lost his social status too since his abs are way more popular than he ever was. So Fabulo scrambles to find the true bearings of his identity through an indifferent and self-involved Los Angeles. Sick Pack is a story about the vapidity of body worshiping, it just has a very strange and playful way to introduce itself.
The first question I asked myself after finishing Sick Pack was: "what the fuck have I just read?" but it was quickly followed by "did I like this?" MP Johnson created such a unique paradigm with that novella that it's hard to say, but I think that I did. If I did enjoy it, it sure was for completely different reasons than those I usually enjoy books for. Fuck it, I liked Sick Pack because it was a strange, mutant, dadaist thing that addressed our obsession with image as a society in the most playful and disorienting fashion. It's unlikely that anyone will feel comfortable reading this, but I don't think MP Johnson does comfort. Read it if you dare.
The best thing about Sick Pack though is that it's not just an exercise in form fluidity. It's a novella about vanity and the fragile nature of self-image. Fabulo is nothing without his abs. Just a stomach rebelling and engulfing everything to compensate for the countless hours of intense training and deprivation. He lost his social status too since his abs are way more popular than he ever was. So Fabulo scrambles to find the true bearings of his identity through an indifferent and self-involved Los Angeles. Sick Pack is a story about the vapidity of body worshiping, it just has a very strange and playful way to introduce itself.
The first question I asked myself after finishing Sick Pack was: "what the fuck have I just read?" but it was quickly followed by "did I like this?" MP Johnson created such a unique paradigm with that novella that it's hard to say, but I think that I did. If I did enjoy it, it sure was for completely different reasons than those I usually enjoy books for. Fuck it, I liked Sick Pack because it was a strange, mutant, dadaist thing that addressed our obsession with image as a society in the most playful and disorienting fashion. It's unlikely that anyone will feel comfortable reading this, but I don't think MP Johnson does comfort. Read it if you dare.