Rating: 
Summary: a feast for the brain
Review: Based on the technique alone, this novel is a feast for the brain. Most if not all of the text was appropriated from various sources and is seemlessly woven together in bizarre patterns. The narrator is pulled along, forced to discover and re-discover him/herself and the family background as s/he continually switches from male to female and back again. It is disturbing, funny and touching, and often all at the same time. I read this over a month ago and I still find myself asking questions and re-investigating this work. A must-read for anyone interested in the avant garde side of contemporary american fiction.
Rating:
Summary: a feast for the brain
Review: Based on the technique alone, this novel is a feast for the brain. Most if not all of the text was appropriated from various sources and is seemlessly woven together in bizarre patterns. The narrator is pulled along, forced to discover and re-discover him/herself and the family background as s/he continually switches from male to female and back again. It is disturbing, funny and touching, and often all at the same time. I read this over a month ago and I still find myself asking questions and re-investigating this work. A must-read for anyone interested in the avant garde side of contemporary american fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Faulkner would turn in his grave
Review: if he knew what Rice was doing with his "Cady," the family, and the literary legacy. He'd probbaly turn in his grave with delight. Rice says this book was almost impossible to write -- maybe he shouldn't have written it. It's pretty unreadable, like language poetry, but I give him three stars for some damn fine images and perverse sexual longings. This isn't a novel. It's more like a prose poem. I've read some other works by Rice in literary zines and he's getting more and more obscure, and writing about the same characters in this book. The photos are a nice touch. Whatever this thing is, it's worth a try.
Rating:
Summary: Faulkner would turn in his grave
Review: if he knew what Rice was doing with his "Cady," the family, and the literary legacy. He'd probbaly turn in his grave with delight. Rice says this book was almost impossible to write -- maybe he shouldn't have written it. It's pretty unreadable, like language poetry, but I give him three stars for some damn fine images and perverse sexual longings. This isn't a novel. It's more like a prose poem. I've read some other works by Rice in literary zines and he's getting more and more obscure, and writing about the same characters in this book. The photos are a nice touch. Whatever this thing is, it's worth a try.
Rating: 
Summary: Just how it is...
Review: This author came into my english class and talked about the books he has and will write. The books are an exact replication of himself. He is just as weird and strange and creative and confused as his texts. He is not trying to BE anything through his writing, that just how he is, he told us he doesn't even realize what he is writing until he is finnished he just starts typing and this whole load of (...) goes pouring across the page. He may be strange, and write strange warped things, but that is just how he really is. It's not his fault... :)
Rating:
Summary: Just how it is...
Review: This author came into my english class and talked about the books he has and will write. The books are an exact replication of himself. He is just as weird and strange and creative and confused as his texts. He is not trying to BE anything through his writing, that just how he is, he told us he doesn't even realize what he is writing until he is finnished he just starts typing and this whole load of (...) goes pouring across the page. He may be strange, and write strange warped things, but that is just how he really is. It's not his fault... :)
Rating: 
Summary: Flesh driven mad by confused desires and words
Review: This novel (nearly an autobiography of the desires of my flesh) was impossible to write. I sat without language for 13 years as my body changed shape. Finally, I unearthed language, words lost along the streets in deep corners. The Mugwump characters (Catholics who appear to be infected by vampire blood) keep changing their identities, their sexes, through a language that cannot be tamed. The protagonist has barbed wire in his mouth but tears his lips open (bloodied by the boots of the past) to tell the story of their hysterical past
Rating: 
Summary: I would give this 0 stars if I could
Review: This seems as if it were written by a schizophrenic. That pretty much says it all.
Rating:
Summary: I would give this 0 stars if I could
Review: This seems as if it were written by a schizophrenic. That pretty much says it all.
Rating:
Summary: Oh, please (...) let us start giving out zeros!
Review: _Blood Of Mugwump_ is unreadable twaddle. That's the real definition of anything "avant garde" anyway. Isn't it? This little project of Doug Rice's certainly would qualify. Rice tries to be shocking, instead he's just stupidly vulgar. He tries to be brutal, but only manages to be clumsy and self-aware. He tries to be intellectual, instead he's entirely incoherent. I guess that's really the problem with this book; it tries to be something when, in reality, it's a big fat nothing. Perfect reading for all those goths who want to impress their ersatz vampire friends with some obscure scribbler's forced attempt at something bizarre. For anyone with any taste in craftsmanship and art, leave this one to die a lonely, unread death on the clearance table. I certainly wish I had.
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