A MODERNE KLASSICK REVISITED:  American Physick,

Breast Eton Lisle

By Constance Reeder

This month’s little lesson in looking at the standard works of contemporary literature is devoted to the work of Breast Eton Lisle, controversial wunderkind of the late 1980s,  hailed as being “like Jay McInnerny, but even younger . . . and more irritating!”  He scored a splash with his neomasochismo views of the battle of the sexes in Zero + One (1987), Rules of Distraction (1994) and more recently with Luney Park (2003), but also stirred the ire of traditionalists and moralists of all stripes, who (in the words of one such) felt Lisle was “just a nihilistic preppy jerk who makes Holden Caulfield sound like Socrates.”  You decide, on revisiting his big thriller American Physick (1991), a best-seller and now a fixture on freshman lit. syllabi across the country.  This is a skillfully edited and condensed excerpt for easy reading, from Chapter the XXIV, At the Herkyville A & W.

We was heading out to the A & W to look at them hardbody rootbeer-serving gals, me, Hooligan, Dewey and McHoon.  I was wearing my old Wrangler jeans, a J.C. Penney giant’s-checkerboard flannel shirt, Converse All-Star basketball shoes (no sox) and my second-best John Deere cap.  Dewey was in his cut-off cargo pants from Ed’s Used Duds, homemade huarches with Firestone treads, a T-shirt from Big Lots printed with Spanglish slogans and a red ball cap with the bill turned around all stylish-like.  McHoon wore a short-sleeved work shirt he recycled from a filling station job he had two years ago, with the name Ralph stitched in red on a pocket, worn Sears and Roebuck corduroy pants with semi-bell legs and black Doc Marten bovver boot knockoffs from WalMart.  He was bare-headed and wore a half-ponytail from a comb-over to hide his bald spot.  He had a bright red rubber band in the ponytail and a horseshoe nail in his right earlobe.  McHoon was outclassing us in a real suit jacket of dark pin-striped blue from the Cloze Closet (Re-Rags R Us), with one elbow torn out, a pair of stonewashed Billy jeans from the Army & Navy Store, girly shoes that look like jelly in bright fluorescent green from T.J. Maxx and a real straw hat with the top knocked out from Paul’s Pennzoil Shop.

* * * * *

Not many folk walked into the A & W, but we stood by the telephone order-gizmo and put in our orders for root beer and hamburgers and fries and whatnot.  We eyed them hardbody serving gals, who wore real tight red shorts, blue blouses with red stitching, calf-high boots of white zylon and sky-blue head scarves.  It was right awkward standing by the call-in gizmo and trying to balance food, root beer mugs and all that, so we made nervous banter to hide our downright gaucherie, stuff like “Whoo-ee, look at the bazooms on that black-haired one!” or “Lordy, save me from the likes of that gorgeous redhead with the heart-shaped ass!”  We jostled one another and whistled and made them folks in their cars feel real nervous.  Then McHoon said he was going to “score” some home-grown hemp from a ditch just outta town, and not just seeds and stems, either.  We perked up and chugalugged them icy root beers till we all had icecream headaches and double vision.  We set out walking to the hemp site.  It was going to be one of them late summer afternoons in Herkyville, and we all wore evil smiles.

The text continues on to describe bizarre sex and gruesome serial killings by the narrator, Dermot Dimwitte, written in vivid Technicolor detail.  We felt our passage was a more typical example of Breast Eton Lisle’s extraordinary writing virtuosity, skilled name-dropping and bravura management of the minutiae of food, drink, clothing, furniture, appliances, personal grooming habits, brand names, epic snobbery, irrelevant observations and cultural psychosis.  So, as the sun sinks softly in the west, we bid adieu to this author with three names, none of them which seem to be either a first or a last name, till next we meet over the agate type of another moderne classic! ###

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