This is one of my favorite books of all time. Susan Smith Nash is an absolute genius. Her writing is inventive and lyrical, and her stories are fantastic and realistic at the same time. Whatever else you do, read this book...buy this book. You will not regret it.

Most of what you read you felt like you've read before, but not with this one. Susan Smith Nash combines intellect and art in a totally unique way. It is a book that moves so fast that you can't put it down. It takes your breath away while you are reading it and pleasantly exhausts you when you are done.

I started reading, and I couldn't stop. I was laughing & completely entertained -- not just by the campy, drag queen viciousness of Nash's humor, but because it's all true -- too true --

I'm just a little paranoid about Y2K & I'm saturated w/media depictions of that -- so a raw, ribald, irreverent look at doomsday cults and/or the madness associated with all that really appeals to me.

My favorite story is Dubuffet Dances. I like the art of Dubuffet -- &his collections of the art produced in psychiatric institutions. But the idea of a woman who takes the stage name of Dubuffet & invents "mad" routines that are pure revenge fantasies is hilarious, but at the same time it's satisfying. A sort of This is Spinal Tap deconstruction of cabaret acts.

I'm running out of space. I'm not running out of words. Channel-Surfing the Apocalypse is amazingly good & I expect at least some of the stories will be the basis of a movie...

These stories have the ring of lived experience in them & it is deeply unsettling -- this is very troubling, since it is a little unnerving to be laughing out loud even as you (the reader) are aware of the tragicomic implications of such gallows humor. For example, if this IS autobiography, what are we to think of the idea that a clearly intelligent woman who's very up-to-date with her deconstructive philosophy is completely helpless in the face of a very transparent Paraguayan con artist who proposes to her after knowing her three days in Asuncion, then gives her a fake diamond (cubic zirconia) engagement ring, then hits her up for a loan for $25,000?? All the while, she's infatuated with the dictator wannabe presidential candidate & fantasizes about being tortured... And then, in another adventure in Paraguay, she falls in love with a Paraguayan after going to a succession of wakes in various Asuncion funeral parlors with him...

I really like the Paraguay stories, but I like the others, too -- the one where the protagonist wonders what gender she is as she searches for meaning in life and an encounter with her biological mother at Denny's. The story which places the protagonist somewhere between Oklahoma and Maine is outrageously funny, too -- again, a fake psychic mother-usurper appears, along with the father / uncle figure who is a compulsive gambler, but is tagged "entrepreneurial" or a "wildcatter" by society. It appears that having a wildcatter patriarch is altogether as damaging to the scions' psyche as having a skid-row bum for a father or a crack addict dad...

Many of the stories take place in Oklahoma. Two are in Paraguay. That alone makes me suspect this is not real autobiography; and yet the details make me think that Nash is there, & her life appears in every last terrible detail & hilarious confession. I hope so & I hope not...

& I just want to read more of these!!!!

The feeling one gets when reading the bilingual poems here is heart-shattering, stirring. I was reading the Spanish poems while it was raining, on a very dark, warm night in South Florida while I was on vacation, and I felt I could almost smell, touch and feel the deeply romantic Paraguayan night that the author writes about. These seem so real, they were almost painful, especially the story about crossing the border from Paraguay into Argentina. It is not magical realism. It is pure magic.

This was one of the first books I can say that really challenged me to get to know what modern poetry is all about. I have to say that I never really liked the "new poetry." I thought that things had to rhyme, at least! But this is different. It is about secret feelings and confusion. It reminds me of a hidden diary, especially when Nash talks about how she used to have dreams of really making a difference in Bolivia. I used to be a Peace Corps volunteer, and this book made me remember all the reasons I kept going, even when it was a lonely, hungry, hard job.