In the Gin-Perm: A review of Jon Leon's "Malady of the Century"
by Joyelle McSweeney on Mar.13, 2012
Gratuitous image of Tim Jones-Yelvington
I’ve written a review of Jon Leon’s new Future Poem Book, “Malady of the Century,” for the FuturePost blog, here. This book is really enjoyable in a drinking-gin-in-the-afternoon kinda way. Here’s a quote to get you interested.
Please read the review! And, if you’ve read this book, please comment below!
8 comments for this entry:
March 14th, 2012 on 12:05 am
Nuke ‘Em Till They Glow Then Shoot ‘Em in the Dark
Last summer, I suppose, I got a book in the mail unannounced and without explication. Elizabeth Zoe Lindsay Drink Fanta by Jon Leon. I don’t know him personally. I have his Hot Tub with Glory Hole by Dan Hoy from Mal-O-Mar. They slay me. No idea why me, or how he got my address.
It’s about 50 unnumbered pages of split screen gray & white outtakes from movies. I recognize Lindsay Lohan and the others must be Zoe and Liz whoosie but I wouldn’t know for I don’t watch TV go anymore to many movies or read magazines. I don’t even graze online. One stripper licking her pole I thought was clipped from Zombie Strippers (shit like that, I see), a few Fanta cans. No text. Look is all Warhol.
There’s a press release on paper folded in my copy. It reads like a shot. “To kill off the poems.” “And I wanted to be terminally lounging.”
Book’s from Content. You can read the entire press release at agioteurs.com. Order the book at contentseries.com
I didn’t toss it, which is how I grade books.
In truth it made me wonder.
Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle
March 14th, 2012 on 11:59 am
Great review. I read this book in manuscript form what feels like years ago. It’s interesting that a poet as deliberately anachronistic as Jon Leon would have his first full length put out by a press called FuturePoem. It’s like the future gets it. I don’t know if I have anything to add that I haven’t said before. Jon Leon is what the authorities call “a person of interest.” For those who sample culture of all kinds but haven’t yet sampled Jon Leon, you are missing out.
March 14th, 2012 on 1:26 pm
I just read this book yesterday. A lot of it I had read before, but I think the longer prose-poem/short story (I think it’s the second section) was for me the most interesting – mostly because it is such an incident-heavy “story” but also because it’s an extreme version of his myth in which poetry merges with fashion and pop music./Johannes
March 14th, 2012 on 5:22 pm
Last message I got from Jon Leon was about two years ago: a mailer offering a stylishly boxed and signed “Collector’s” set of all his micro-press books for some kind of price. The email emphatically stated that he had quit poetry and that people had better hurry up and order his rare titles because he was going to destroy them in short order.
If he still has those, I’ll buy them.
March 14th, 2012 on 8:33 pm
Geoffrey, just an FYI
The stripper is the “Elizabeth” referenced in the title of Jon’s content book — the image is of Elizabeth Hurley in Paul Verhoeven’s maligned/celebrated (ironically) “Showgirls”. I’m a fan of Verhoeven (the image on the Hot Tub / Glory Hole site is from his endlessly watchable Basic Instinct: see http://www.thehothole.com). Showgirls is truly a piece of work. I imagine screenwriter Joe Eszterhas typing loudly in a pair of gross underwear and a Hollywood hotel room that smells like cigarettes and his beard.
March 15th, 2012 on 7:27 pm
Bang a Gong
Denise Richards looks mo’ foxy chucking up in Starship Troopers than that blonde raw in the shower stall.
March 16th, 2012 on 1:31 am
Hey Geoffrey aka Ariana Reines.-
Nice to see you working your misogyny magick here. Keep it up, dude-bros. It’s your “secret” sauce.
March 16th, 2012 on 10:34 pm
Bananarama
Better motor to the hive and catch Machete.