Here's a quick back-story of this novel which is necessary to understand Gifted Disabilities' greatness. In 2003 & 2004 Justin Blackburn and Kenny Norsworthy, two college students in Columbia, SC typed out this book after many LSD-fueled sessions and wracked up thousands of dollars of debt printing out the novels on stacks of paper using the campus library. They then proceeded to hand out hundreds of copies of this novel, almost at random, all around South Carolina whilst searching for a publisher, to which they found none and ultimately had to self-publish, a costy procedure they paid for out of their own pockets, which shows their concern not for money or personal gain, but to have their work read. Somehow the unpublished manuscript got into the wrong hands and to the author's surprise, The Secret Service themselves comes knocking on their apartment one day and demands by threat of prosecution and possible jail time that the boys remove several pages from their fictional manuscript, before it was ever published in any book form, and calling it a "Manifesto" and a blantant "anti-George Bush" statement. After hours of harrasement and questioning the authors are forced to physically backspace and delete several pages and passages permanently from their home computer and master draft of Gifted Disabilties, which was still an un-published first novel by two young students self-printed on stacks of notebook paper. However, since Blackburn and Norsworthy obliged to the censorship of their book (of which I was later told was about 2 pages worth of material concerning George Bush) they didn't get in any real trouble but were forced to stop passing out free copies to strangers and were told by the men they never want to see them again or else there will be real trouble. Quite an uproar for something typed out by two stoned college students just trying to write an interesting novel, don't you think? All of this is explained on the back of the book itself as well. Folklore aside, this strange, endearing novel is a loose narrative about the adventures of an escaped mental patient named Haynes wandering the streets of Columbia, South Carolina (the actual town in which the novel was written) with the bloodthirsty task of seeking down his Father and brutally murdering him, because his Dad, a priest, savagely raped and beat Haynes countless times as a child, and ultimately led to his mental decay. Haynes accounts various events from his surreal life and plows through his never-ending quest for revenge through manic, scathing, poetic, funny, and downright insane ramblings about EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING. In between strange and often vulgar, yet hilarious rants about everything from life to death to sex to The Beatles to politics to George Bush to drugs to music to friendship to puppies to women to computers to college to movies to Coca-Cola and everything else, Haynes aimlessly wanders downtown Columbia and ends up in all kinds of crazy crap
Justin Blackburn is an awake among sleepers
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
This book is beauty in it's finest sense. Life wrote a book and his name was justin and kenny, they wrote life and it was Gifted Disabilities. This book made a lot of sense to me as a struggling young spiritualist in a world of commercialism and intellectual blandness, if you find your self asking a lot of questions you might want to pick up this book. Many beautiful aspects of life are discussed in this book, too many to name. I will admit that, when compared to "conventional" books, the manic writing style may be hard to follow, but once you get into it it makes a lot of sense and ends up being really beautiful. Justin likes to string words together in long-winded sentences that present a mental picture that conveys emotion directly into your being, almost as good as actually experiencing the event.
A Little Bit About This A Little Bit About Everything
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
If you can not handle yourself I would say the same thing the writer save. If you are not trying to say ten million people do not read it. I do not think it is for you. This book should be worldwide, the dynomite, it is really close to blowing up.
The Greatest Novel Ever Written
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
Gifted Disabilities is the greatest novel I have ever read in my life. This book displays reality at its finest and the realest level I have ever experienced it. The best way I can describe this novel is by saying its a reflection of everything you could ever know, from the positive to negative, comic and tragic, love to hate, yin yang. I you enjoy uplifting your soul and reading, spend your time reading Gifted Disabilities.
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