The Consumer

by Michael Gira

This weird-press offering is both deliriously repulsive and very well-crafted. It's a collection of short pieces -- sort of like stories, but more like wild fantasies -- that take surrealistic organ... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1880985268
• ISBN13: 9781880985267
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: 2.13.61 Publications
• Length: 233 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Hatred is purer than "self"

Some reviewers automatically equate an empathy for or perception of things hateful/evil with SELF-hatred: "Oh, he must hate himself." This may be true in some people, and has by his own admission been true at times in M. Gira's life. But let's not be "therapeutically correct" here, okay? This is a kind of art I've yet to read anywhere else, and as a lover of horror since a young kid I'm "eating it up." But slowly -- you really can only take so much at a time. It's that good. As with Swans, he goes where no one else has gone, to my knowledge, and with this kind of impact. Only about 10% of the time are these pieces a bit "wordy," as one person said below. Get with it: It's his first book, it doesn't hinder, and he's just letting out all the stops. Look at Lovecraft!! This book to me is almost as, well, genius as the works of Thomas Ligotti, who does more philosophical-type horror. Nothing too thinky here; Gira goes for the real-life slice of horror that might be interesting to actually "see" when we come upon it. And the images! I'll close with this, from the second or third story: You know how an animal can appear to be smiling sometimes (hey, maybe they are)? Well, there's this drugged-out teen in the scruffy area around a drainage pipe he's just come out of, and he watches a dog tumble down the hillock from the freeway, where it most likely has just been hit by a car. Its leg is severed completely off, a gaping red wound, and when the dog comes to a stop its first action is to look up askance at the boy with its tongue panting out to the ground and a smile on its face. Very creepy. Many times what the author goes for in these tales is a kind of ecstasy in pain. Transcendence of ego, all that... I've never read anything like this; can't believe he did Swans and also this. Someone rerelease this book!

Original and stylish

This is one of the most refreshing books I have read in recent months. The writing is very explorative. The imagery is intricate, gruesome, organic, scatalogical. M. Gira imaginatively conveys the darker and seamier side of the psyche in his examinations of self-destruction, delusion, orgiastic excess and loss of identity. Definitively worth noticing.

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As literature overall, this book is not really worth more than2 stars. But I give it 5 because it is immensely impacting and willremain with you forever once you've read it. I've never seen anythingelse quite like it. The cold, unrelenting, calculated villiany of these stories is amazing, and you will be consistently receiving powerful details that you did not want and never would've expected to get. Gira's music (the now disbanded Swans) is dark but not usually downright grotesque -- in his fiction, he seems dedicated to pulling up the most abominable arrangement of imagery and content that anyone could hope to imagine. He succeeds in his goal admirably. As writing, this really is ridiculously wordy and articulate, much like Nick Cave's work. It is fancy prose for the sake of being fancy and intelligent-seeming. Some stories are toss outs and few of them have any particular point, other than to disturb you. But they *do* disturb you, to the core, and that is what is remarkable about them. It's hard to be genuinely horrifying, and it's tricky to write stories that make you physically nauseous. Gira's success in doing these things causes me to admire this book. It is vivid, important, and unforgettable. Too showy and one-track to be taken especially seriously as a work of literature, but too impacting and original to be ignored. A freak of a book, which is undoubtedly what Gira wants and expects it to be, which evokes a twisted, horrifying, and taboo world. The most perverse literature I've ever seen, and that includes De Sade.

THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR THE SQUEMISH...

but if you like sick, twisted, disgusting images, then read this book and admire Gira for his detailed, brutal imagry. I like to call his style "Poetic Vomit", because, believe me, his stomach-turning text will do a number on your gag reflex...ENJOY!!!

very careful here

don't read this one if you are having trouble with recurrent nightmares, or phobias, or are inhibited about sexual fantasies, or believe that everyone should just be happy and love each other. this is twisted sick stuff, incredibly powerfully delivered. each nugget of a chapter lasts only as long as is necessary to create a lasting image, or surreal image-association complex. wonderful reading if you are interested in exploring the depths of human consciousness.