Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person

by Daniel Zomparelli

Overview

In these unconventional, interconnected stories of first-person narratives that also include text messages and Facebook posts, gay men look for love, steal office supplies, hook up on Grindr, bake pies, see therapists, have threesomes with ghosts, and fear happiness. With wry abandon and a beguiling heart, Everything Is Awful and You're a Terrible Person is a deadpan, tragicomic exploration of love, desire, and dysfunction in the twenty-first century.

Daniel Zomparelli is editor and founder of Poetry Is Dead magazine, and the author of the poetry collections Davie Street Translations and (with Dina Del Bucchia) Rom Com. This is his first work of fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551526751
Publisher:	Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date:	04/25/2017
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Daniel Zomparelli: Daniel Zomparelli is the Editor-in-Chief of Poetry Is Dead magazine and co-podcaster at Can’t Lit. He is the author of the poetry collections Davie Street Translations and (with Dina Del Bucchia) Rom Com.

Editorial Reviews

Written in flat, earnest prose reminiscent of the "Alt-Lit" movement, Zomparelli's stories pull humor from the banalities of lives devoted to anonymous sex, cellphone apps and social media.

The New York Times Book Review - Lincoln Michel

05/22/2017
Within Zomparelli’s (Davie Street Translations) hit-and-miss debut collection of 32 short and flash fiction stories, readers will find a young gay couple in a ménage with a ghost ex-boyfriend; a shy monster clothed in the loose skin of a human, desperately seeking love; and a fake boyfriend helping a grieving mother uncover deep, heart-wrenching truths about a son she didn’t know was gay. There are also random hookups—a lot of them. The stories vary greatly in quality. For much of the first half of the book, the writing is sparse, pared to a point of disaffection and disengagement; characters make decisions about their lives without external forces propelling them to do so. In the second half, however, Zomparelli’s staccato emotional rhythms find their place in some of the more surreal and strange pieces, including “Craig Has Very Nice Skin” and “Dream Boy.” The book is at its best when it sloughs off the confines of reality and leans into the impossible. It shows its worth in the way themes come together in the final, titular story, in which the narrator, a “terrible person,” tells his friend “I’d be better as a ghost, or a monster, or a memory.” As readers witness throughout, ideas are often easier to love than people. (May)

Publishers Weekly