Review of Murder Suey by Brad Phillips and Gideon Jacobs
Murder Suey
by Gideon Jacobs and Brad Phillips
Autre, 2021, $20
Dear Brad and Gideon,
Thank you for mailing me your book, Murder Suey. Actually, I should just be thanking Gideon. Brad did not send me the book. Brad did not make the post on social media offering to send the book to people who wanted to review it. Gideon did both of those things. I responded to the post Gideon made, mentioning that I might review it for Full Stop, where I regularly review books, and Gideon sent me the book. It arrived the day before I left Berkeley, where I live, to spend the holidays in west Texas, where I am "from." I read the whole book in two big bites, but not on the plane.
You have written a strange, confusing little book. It resists being reviewed because it resists being read (I read it quickly but only because I was avoiding my family, and everything happens quickly when you're avoiding something), as I believe it resisted being written. I believe this based on evidence within the book, but I don't want to give the whole thing away.
These are some things I want you to know about me:
1. In 2019, I interacted with Brad a few times via Instagram, after reading Essays and Fictions and seeing his show at Harper’s Apartment. I posted an Instagram story after I read I Love Dick by Chris Kraus, saying that if you like Brad you’ll like Chris. Brad said thanks. I asked what he thought of I Love Dick. He declined to comment.
2. In 2020, I wrote a series of poems, stories, and letters to and about a particular romantic obsession. I used his real name while drafting these poems, stories and letters, but decided before submitting them that I should change his name, in the event that they were published and he googled me and saw the pieces and recognized his name (not that he wouldn’t be able to recognize himself under another name; not that he would likely be inclined to google mine). While searching for a new name for my romantic obsession, I saw an Instagram story in which Brad had tagged Gideon. I chose “Gideon” as the name for my romantic obsession, citing the appropriate number of syllables, the musicality, and the relatively rare contemporary use as reasons. None of the poems, stories, or letters were published. When I began writing a novel about a different romantic obsession, I also called him Gideon. I haven’t finished writing the novel. I’ve written and published a number of poems about that romantic obsession, but in the poems he is known as Shadow Wolf.
Essays and Fictions (2019) by Brad Phillips
3. I didn’t realize that “Murder Suey” meant murder-suicide, as in the “act in which an individual kills one or more people before (or while) killing themself,” (Wikipedia) until the last few chapters of your conceptual co-authored novel. This makes me feel stupid. Kind of like a fraud. How could I, a writer, a self-proclaimed observer, interpreter, and producer of the English language, miss this obvious and fun new spin on the traditional nomenclature? Instead, I thought of Chop Suey — perhaps as you intended, I think now, soothing myself with projected fantasies of your intentions. The book, like the Chinese-American dish, is a quickly cooked combination of whatever you can find in the kitchen: a little bit of murder, a little bit of meat, some philosophy, some broccoli, some suicidal ideation, heated over the flames of introspection in hot oil, the oil being the perhaps impossible challenge you set for yourselves to create an exquisite corpse novel in which you would take turns writing chapters.
4. Once I was the Circulation Desk Assistant at a library. This was an art school library. I checked in and out and shelved many reference books on the Quaker mode of furniture production, architecture at Sea Ranch and in Las Vegas, the earliest standardized typefaces. (It was at this library that I discovered I Love Dick. I discovered Essays and Fictions on Instagram). I wanted to read many of the books I checked in and out, shelved, unshelved, checked in and out. I didn’t have time to read most of them. But sometimes, just holding them was enough. Just knowing that they existed, that they were set and printed and bound and shipped and wrapped in plastic and given a call number and there, in the library, for me to read whenever I wanted, was all I needed to experience in order to experience the book. Book object, I thought vaguely. I wanted to write about it. Instead, I wrote about my romantic obsession. I named him Gideon. I named him Shadow Wolf.
5. Pretty early into your experiment I think you start to lose faith in your ability to complete your experiment. I mean, it’s meta (as in, "referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential" as per the Oxford English Dictionary, not as in the tech company formerly known as Facebook which owns Instagram which is how I know about both of you) from the very beginning. From the first page of the second chapter, I’m like, “Hold on. I don’t think they’re following the rules they set. Do they even want me to think they’re following the rules they set?” And it’s not long afterwards that you’re like, “There’s no way we can follow these rules we’ve set.” (This is not a direct quote. It’s a paraphrase.) You talk about concepts. Knausgaard. Gideon writes (as himself, not a character, except as the character that is himself) in a letter to Brad, “From what I understand, that guy spends like 50 pages describing what’s in his fridge. I like that as a concept, but I don’t need to actually read those 50 pages, as the concept, his insane and meticulous commitment to mundanity, is the art.” I underlined that quote. I started thinking again about book object. I started thinking about a story about a person who became obsessed with the idea of a book object, instead of a romantic object. Why do I always find myself writing about the objects of my romantic obsessions?
6. The next line I underlined was in the next chapter, in a letter from Brad (as himself, not a character, except as the character that is himself) to Gideon: “It’s like a wall label in art, and this is how my perspective is the right one: if you read the label about this work we’re doing, you’d know or become suspect that something was up. But if you just read it, you’d enjoy it for what it is and not leave worried that someone sorta picked your pocket intellectually.” A line like that makes me want to stop writing this review. A line like that shows me why it was Gideon who offered to send the books out for review, and not Brad. I don’t think Brad wants people to talk about this book. I think he just wants people to read it, to experience it. But Gideon wants people to talk about it, maybe more than he wants them to read it. Can a book exist simultaneously as object, or concept, and experience? I think Brad is pointing to the short introduction at the beginning of this book, the one that sets up the conceit that Murder Suey is an exquisite corpse novel. Maybe Brad thinks that without the introduction people would be more willing to experience the text as what it is, not what it was intended to be or could have been if you were different people, different writers. But whatever Brad wanted (in the letter, which is part of the novel, and thereby, we might assume, fictional), the introduction remained, and so I read the book with the conceit in mind. I am unable to experience it otherwise. Concept and experience are inextricably linked.
7. I have been writing this letter for a long time. It’s been weeks. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say anymore. I tried to reread Murder Suey, but now I am back in Berkeley and the things I would prefer to avoid don't share my DNA and are in fact the things that pay my rent, which is extremely high, because I live in Berkeley. This review will most likely not pay my rent. Did your exquisite corpse novel pay your rent, even for a month? At a gathering of friends this morning (three of us, all of whom happen to be writers) the object of writing was discussed. It wasn't to make money, my friends said. The process is part of the value. Maybe. Is that why we write? For the joy of seeing the squiggly lines make meaning on the blank page/screen in front of us? But does meaning matter if we can't pay the rent? Does joy? Yeah, I think it does.
8. I think joy matters more than most things. You don't seem very joyous in this book. You seem frustrated. But sometimes you seem like you're having fun. Last night I opened the book at random. I opened to a page in chapter seven. Brad wrote that chapter, in case you’ve forgotten. Brad talks about how he likes making the reader feel confused, like a piece of shit who can’t understand the art. Well Brad, I hope you’re happy. I can’t understand the art. I can’t understand it so much that I have no idea what I’m doing here, what I’m saying, if I have anything to say at all. (Also, later in the book, after I wrote this point, Brad’s like, “I’ve never experienced joy. It’s a girl’s name,” or something like that. You’ll have to read it to find out (“You” being the audience of this review, not you, Brad and Gideon, the objects of my letter.).)
Gideon Jacobs
9. There’s this TikTok trend my roommate told me about. You’re supposed to open the book on your nightstand to page 30 and read the first line. Apparently it describes your love life. Murder Suey is the book on my nightstand. In Murder Suey, page 30 is blank.
10. How do I review a book like Murder Suey, a book that, from almost the very beginning, is reviewing itself?
11. In character as your editors, Gideon spends a chapter (“Time for a Check-in?”) imploring you both to chill out. “If this novella has, in any way, become a negative force on your mental health, we would like to pull the plug immediately, and make sure you both have the psychological support you need.” I have only told one editor, Austin, that I’m working on this review, and he was like, “I’d love to see it when it’s done!” Since then, I’ve kept this document open. Since then, I’ve made the decision that I would write 12 points in the review, to mirror the 12 chapters in Murder Suey. Since then, I’ve re-read the book. Since then, the suggestion that I would review the book in exchange for the book (and the car fresheners Gideon included in the package; thank you for those, by the way), and also the suggestion that I would have something of substance to send to Austin — suggestions, to be clear, I made myself — have deployed what might be considered “a negative force” on my “mental health.” There’s a weight where there should be a lightness. Let’s be real. It’s not like I’m going to get paid. Anyway, Austin doesn’t know I’m having a hard time writing this review, so Austin hasn’t reached out to me to be like “Hey, chill.” I would have to do that for myself.
12. Re-reading this review, I note some trends: romantic obsessions, book objects, frustration, narcissism. I write a lot about myself in this review! Have you noticed? Also, I write about how hard it is to write this review, which I think is a good representation of what Murder Suey is; it’s ultimately a lot of bitching about how hard this project is that they’ve given themselves. But it’s interesting. There’s some interesting philosophy, like the bit I mentioned above about concepts and wall labels. Some, let’s call them short stories, crime short stories, that are fairly entertaining on their own, if you’re into that kind of thing. Also, there’s smut. Meditations on endings. It’s definitely worth reading, especially when you’re trying to avoid something. But I wouldn’t recommend writing about it.
Love,
Hannah
Brad Phillips
