Eat When You Feel Sad
by Zachary German
Review by Stephen Tully Dierks
Just finished reading Eat When You Feel Sad by Zachary German. I liked it. It is a selection of scenes from the life of a young guy initially living at home with his parents, and then, for the bulk of the novel, living in Brooklyn. The author made a conscious decision to present all actions, words, and thoughts in stripped-down, simple declarative sentences. The effect is to strip away everything usually present in literature that does not relate to concrete reality and the experience of being inside a consciousness. For this reader, there is a tremendous feeling of honesty and familiarity as a result of this technique. This is what it is like to go through one’s daily routine. This is what it is like to be alone and to wish you were not alone and happier and OK. These are the kinds of random thoughts that often pass through one’s mind. This is what I often do, sleep and eat and go places and eat and talk and think and sleep. By radically deglamorizing, de-sentimentalizing, detaching life from abstractions (except in the case of thoughts, which are often abstract but rarely fluent as-they-speak-in-your-head, as is captured in the book), Zachary manages to evoke the palpable emotions of a young man’s life—trying his best, feeling sad, feeling okay, trying and sometimes failing to relate to others, but always trying, seemingly, to not be a ‘bad’ person and to find someone in whose arms he will feel ‘right.’
Stephen Tully Dierks is a writer living in Chicago. He is the editor of the new limited-edition art/literature print magazine Pop Serial. He has never "really" been published before, apart from a eulogy for J.D. Salinger that was accidentally published "as-is" on the Fanzine by an associate editor while the head editor was busy becoming a father, and then retracted for very understandable editorial reasons (he is still listed as a contributor at the Fanzine). He comments on HTMLGIANT "entirely too much" and will have a long-ish piece in his own magazine entitled "Some Trembling Melody."
by Zachary German
Review by Stephen Tully Dierks
Order Eat When You Feel Sad Now From Melville House
Stephen Tully Dierks is a writer living in Chicago. He is the editor of the new limited-edition art/literature print magazine Pop Serial. He has never "really" been published before, apart from a eulogy for J.D. Salinger that was accidentally published "as-is" on the Fanzine by an associate editor while the head editor was busy becoming a father, and then retracted for very understandable editorial reasons (he is still listed as a contributor at the Fanzine). He comments on HTMLGIANT "entirely too much" and will have a long-ish piece in his own magazine entitled "Some Trembling Melody."
