Trust Me and other Fictions by Chuck Richardson

GOOD GRIEF, WHAT KIND OF SHIT IS THIS?

Ziggy Fumar, author of The Electroempathy Specrtometer, considering what Trust Me does: “It gradually reverse-metastasizes via reverse-engineering the malignant psyche into a benign, Alienist attitudinal perspective—that of an egoless schizoid biological psychogeograph whose content seems the effect of form. But whose form, exactly? Think about it. If your thoughts seem the effects of their form, what kind of be-ing are you? What does Mind belong to?”

* * *

As with his other fiction, Richardson’s able to make experimental work inviting (since so much of it these days comes off as “Who gives a shit if anybody ever reads this”). The opening story reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Circular Ruins”—although Richardson’s has a kind of grittiness to it that sends it in a somewhat different direction. I kept thinking, as I read along, that the kinds of tones and ways of focusing on material are like William T. Vollmann meets R. Crumb and Charles Bukowski. Many of the stories here reveal real innovation with respect to point of view (“Water & Stone,” “Gamblin’ Glen One-Eye”…), and I love the opening lines of “I Love You Too, Sweetheart” when Joachim Simple says “I’d like to clone myself then eat the baby. Make me my regular food supply….”

—DARYL SCROGGINS, This Is Not The Way We Came In

Maybe there’s “nothing more about it. Only the tears and what may or may not come next ” writes Chuck Richardson, author of Trust Me [and other fictions]. Perhaps all that’s left is our perception of experience, which is antithetical to the notion that there’s a universe at work. Richardson’s stories show us that life is constantly “emerging from and disappearing into ever-changing masques,” and like “The Caterpillar,” we shed our skins more than once throughout our lifetimes, with some changes being relevant “[or] not.” Sometimes there’s no lesson, no secret. But that’s also what can make life so beautiful.

—LOREN KLEINMAN, The Dark Cave Between My Ribs

The development of medieval armor is often credited with changing the face of war, and directly leading to the development of gun powder. Such cause and effect, of course, falls apart under a bit of scrutiny. What the rise of armor did directly lead to was a wide range of armor-piercing technologies, most often blades, double edged, sometimes wedged to have four cutting surfaces. In Trust Me, Richardson offers up the latest development in armor-piercing technology, wielding points of view incisive enough to force us into reexamining our own.

—MICHAEL SIKKEMA, January Found

Let’s propose that in poetry and prose Chuck Richardson is some kind of disturbing genius–though not that a single person on earth knows where poetry stops and prose begins or vice versa (run if they tell you they know). By the way, the second fiction here scares the living crap out of me. Also, the forests have been burning in Savoie and in Charente, where stags and boar, enveloped in flames, have been seen galloping from the trees. No one knows what happened to the plane. Read this book and win a surprise number of miles for your flight out of the next AWP.

—KENT JOHNSON, Homage To the Last Avant-Garde

Chuck Richardson lives in Western New York.

Book Information:

· Paperback: 174 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-176-4

$16

 

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