A Crack Up at the Race Riots - Softcover

Korine, Harmony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385485883 ISBN 13: 9780385485883

Publisher: Doubleday, 1998

Synopsis

The original Ritalin kid, Harmony Korine burst on the scene with Kids, a film so gritty and unsettling in its depiction of teen life that it was slapped with an NC-17 rating and banned in some theaters across the country. In some ways, the media frenzy over the rating overshadowed the harrowing portrait of teenagers destroying their lives and the then twenty-one-year-old screenwriter who created them. "Whether you see the movie as a masterpiece or as sensationalism," wrote Lynn Hirshberg, "the movie is relentless and brilliant and extremely disturbing. It's powerful-both steel-eyed and sexy; horrifying and captivating."



Now, in this first book of fictional set pieces, Korine captures the fragmented moments of a life observed through the demented lens of media, TV, and teen obsession. Korine reinvents the novel in this highly experimental montage of scenes that seem both real and surreal at the same time. With a filmmaker's eye and a prankster's glee, this bizarre collection of jokes, half-remembered scenes, dialogue fragments, movie ideas, and suicide notes is an episodic, epigrammatic lovesong to the world of images. Korine is the voice of his media-savvy generation and A Crack-Up at the Race Riots is the satiric lovechild of his dark imagination.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

Ritalin kid, Harmony Korine burst on the scene with Kids, a film so gritty and unsettling in its depiction of teen life that it was slapped with an NC-17 rating and banned in some theaters across the country. In some ways, the media frenzy over the rating overshadowed the harrowing portrait of teenagers destroying their lives and the then twenty-one-year-old screenwriter who created them. "Whether you see the movie as a masterpiece or as sensationalism," wrote Lynn Hirshberg, "the movie is relentless and brilliant and extremely disturbing. It's powerful-both steel-eyed and sexy; horrifying and captivating."



Now, in this first book of fictional set pieces, Korine captures the fragmented moments of a life observed through the demented lens of media, TV, and teen obsession. Korine reinvents the novel in this highly experimental montage of scenes that seem both real and surreal at the same time. With a filmmaker's eye and a prankster's glee, thi

Reviews

Riding a gush of critical acclaim for his work on the films Kids (screenwriter) and Gummo (director), Korine, at the ripe age of 23, attempts to make a novel by using a little bit of everything, but botches the job. What we get, in fact, is more an MTV-style collage of lists, story fragments, indecipherable handwritten notes, crude drawings, photos, dialogue, bad jokes, wordplay and pop culture references to music, movies, drugs and deathall resolutely defying cohesion. Still, there a few identifiable thematic concerns. Suicide tops the list, as frequent references culminate in a group of 11 suicide notes, the last of which begins, ``Mother, I am in love with you.'' Not far behind is a focus on the celebrity life, and in this vein Korine demonstrates a certain breadth of knowledge and interest. A scandal involving silent movie star Fatty Arbuckle is given almost as much attention as the final thoughts of Tupac Shakur, and in between are snippets about Kris Kristofferson, Billie Jean King, Howard Hughes, Matt Dillon, and a cavalcade of others. Jessica Tandy earns especially randy attention (although the motivation behind this is never revealed), and sexual detail pops up in other ways as well, ranging from the incest angle to homophobes planning action. The racial component noted in the title features in a suicide note, and separate photos of the KKK and an unsmiling black boy round out the picture. A final observation notes that ``To feel nothing was peace''perfectly describing the impact of everything in the preceding pages. Neither the voice of a generation nor the ravings of a lunatic, but creative overreaching, clearlythe writing of a talent thrust too soon into the limelight. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385485883
• ISBN 13: 9780385485883
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192