This week’s selection is “Ablutions” by Patrick deWitt.  (GET IT HERE).  The story is a highly idiosyncratic first person narrative about the main character’s time spent in the employ of a fabled (and delightfully shitty) bar in Hollywood, probably on the corner of Vine and Melrose.  DeWitt Succeeds wildly in establishing a central character who is both misanthropic and tolerable, which, in all earnest is a thing I had previously believed was impossible.  It is not the confessionality with which he proceeds that achieves this: rather it is the thoroughness of the hatred he allows the protagonist to feel, for himself and everyone else.  If you are of the sort who needs politico/sexual scrutiability from your main characters (and their authorial imaginers by proxy), then I suggest you put down this novel and find something a little less accomplished and more incompletely human to read while you endeavor to try and ruin letters and criticism for the rest of us.

If you can hang with filth, read on.

DeWitt chronicles the seedy torment of the devil’s tincture, and elucidates the (quite substantial) difference between the impulse to suicide and the impulse to near-suicide.  The  contours of killing onesself slowly and nearly–but not all the way–are drawn beautifully in this debut novella from a unique voice that one can only hope will endure to produce more works.  After reading “Ablutions”, and “Help Yourself Help Yourself”, I would defend this writing and the writer to excessive personal expense; DeWitt’s prose evidences grave personal courage as well as formidalble voice and tone.  The novel pairs best with six short glasses of Laphroaig, one ice cube each.  The dedicated and ponderous reader could finish it in a bottle’s time, though the images of debauchery and the truly ugly fabric of humanity won’t fade for much, much longer.

Purchase Ablutions

Purchase Help Yourself Help Yourself