Jeff Jackson

I record the events of my life, filling up one notebook after another. Maybe I’m not getting the details exactly right, but it doesn’t matter. The strict facts hold no currency here. What counts is the saliva I just spat on this very sheet of paper.

Jeff Jackson’s first book considers the formative years, those crucial years that see us coming into our own individuality and subjectivity while faced with traumas, trials, and, in this case, ever so many dogs who seem to be hungry for their pound of flesh. Like many childhood coming-of-age stories, Jackson’s inverts reality: like Alice’s world in the looking-glass, like Pip literally turned upside-down in the opening pages of Great Expectations, and like Lacan’s subjectival model of the inverted bouquet in the mirror stage, Jackson insists that in order to fathom the depths of childhood, one must approach it back to front.



Here, our narrator, also named “Jeff Jackson,” reveals his childhood in sketches or fragments, but whether these are “real”—the prologue mentions how the author chanced upon old notebooks that eventually became the finished product Mira Corpora—or “imagined” scenes of childhood needn’t matter at all. Isn’t one’s childhood filled with as many unreal or exaggerated scenes as it is populated by intense realities and crushing blows?

Jackson’s narrator meanders through fantasized realities, through waking nightmares. There are intense yearnings for intimacy—an alcoholic mother, a glimpse across the street to catch the eye of a young girl who is similarly (albeit differently) captured—as well as battles for self-discovery at the hands of exploitative authoritative figures who capitalize on childhood, “innocence,” and the social and cultural fantasies and anxieties about any transient state. How can the individual triumph when the oracle—a teenaged girl, doped up on some yellow pill—delivers the prophecy on a blank sheet of paper? How can the many figurative and literal bodies—dead or all-but-dead—be laid to rest: by funeral pyre or through some means of automation, consisting of dehumanization and brainwashing?

The scope in Mira Corpora is wide indeed, and one can only be vague in discussing a book like this whose beauty lies in the rhythm and the power to disturb and disorient. Jackson has immense skill in his reinvention of cultural myths and in moving almost seamlessly between ancient lore to an almost Dennis Cooper-influenced world of sex, drugs, and longing; from a David Lynch inspired cinematic world of interlopers, outsiders, and doppelgangers to an almost Carnivale-esque examination of reality and its discontents. With declarative prose that mimics the poise of the narrator as he navigates between dreaming and intense self-revelation, this is a book that can invoke the smell of burning flesh just as succinctly as it can make the reader feel the tongues of wild dogs licking skin, the pang of nearly getting away, and the sad drone of a singer’s voice who might have lost everything yet still possesses the most important thing of all: the power to affect, to entrance, to heal.… (mais)

The show must go on...
Curieux livre que ce roman, dévoré en 24 heures et, à l'arrivée, j'ai l'impression de n'avoir rien compris...
C'est l'histoire d'une vague de violence sans précédent qui déferle sur les États-Unis : à travers le pays, des musiciens sont assassinés en plein concert. On ne sait ce qui motive le geste des tueurs... et on ne le saura jamais.
Ce roman, c'est aussi l'histoire de Shaun, Xenie et de leurs amis musiciens. Certains vont mourir, d'autres vont rester...
Et c'est là que l'incompréhension commence. C'est un délice de lire les histoires croisées des différents personnages. Sauf qu'à un moment, on ne sait plus où on est. Ca n'a rien de dramatique, mais ça laisse une sensation bizarre à la fin.
Si vous avez un peu de temps, laissez-vous tenter par cette histoire construite comme un vieux vinyle (une face A et une face B ) car la question soulevée par ce roman est peut-être : que reste t'il du rock'n'roll ?
Dites-moi...… (mais)

This novel is comprised of two analogous stories that offer alternate versions of a world where (small time, mediocre) musicians are murdered onstage. I agree with one of the main characters, who says, "I prefer the B-sides. They're the tunes where the bands bury their secrets. Their obsessions." Some scenes are wonderfully surreal or sinister, with tantalizing glimpses of the possible meaning behind the violence, but nothing is "solved." Recommended for fans of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, where a mystery plot segues into existential inquiry, or David Lynch, where style outweighs substance.… (mais)