Wigger

Rating:
Summary: Braithwaite's non-novel speaks for a generation's emptiness.
Review: Arsenal Pulp Press took a chance issuing Wigger, the short experimental book that they generously labeled "novel" on the front cover. Actually the book runs about 35 pages total, when you leave out the blank spots. What's left is a series of fragmented scenes or disembodied conversations involving characters whose names are largely interchangeable. The action involves drug taking, aimless talk, and anomic sexual activity between men, some of them street hustlers. Occasionally Braithwaite writes with verve ("Then these young guys walk by. They got this blow-dried 'We're all called Scott' look"), but most of the book wouldn't pass muster in a creative writing workshop. I don't feel I have to care about characters that the author doesn't appear to care about, and who don't care about themselves. Overall it has a slight value in displaying how utterly wasted some people's lives can become. By the way, the "Scotts" mentioned above trash a transvestite prostitute who picks them up, in the novel's one moving scene.