+++

Text: Serious Weakness

Author: Porpentine Charity Heartscape

Publisher: Insul Press

Plot: A self-diagnosed weakling-stroke-art conservator, Trianon, cultivates new layers of ecstatic/traumatic weakness when taken captive by a sociopathic vandal, Insul, with lovely beach house and multi-purpose tennis racket.

Subplot: A museum director faces her first real test after years of Krav Maga and boxercise.

Sub-subplot: The art world is rocked by a series of authentic/violent things happening way out on the fringes of its sealed-off misery dome.

+++

According to the more pedantic side of my psyche, the title Serious Weakness is either:

i] genuine self-recrimination

ii] reflection on self-recrimination + desire to fix it

iii] transgressive dive into said ‘serious weakness’

iv] ironic self-description

v] ironic twin description [of the two main characters, Trianon and Insul]

vi] outright lie, there is no weakness

vii] blank self-description

viii] blank self-description of total personality/psyche

ix] personification of weakness in human shell

x] abstract dragged from abstraction into human shell + forced to deal with things that to them, as a newly formed thing, feel serious

xi] someone called Weakness who is serious

xii] someone called Weakness who is never serious

xiii] alien MC whose name translates to ‘Weakness’ crashes in the US, in a town called Serious.

Looking at the cover pic, I’m gonna go with x], but there’s green blood sliding out of the nose so it could also be xiii].

+

I know about this book cos of the author’s story, Relative Time Knife, on Tragickal. This weird, barely-fleshed out, ambiguous but aggressive thing that had pain beggars and torture millionaires. Written by someone with a not bland name.

Continue reading →