Author(s): Gary J. Shipley

FICTION | APOCALYPSE PARTY

"Gary J. Shipley's So Beautiful and Elastic entwines elegant prose, blistering suspense, and art criticism, all shot through with a dark secret.

Exploring creators as diverse as René Magritte, Clarice Lispector, David Lynch, Dennis Cooper, Bruno Dumont and Gary Indiana, Shipley claims his spot as a singular disciple of this genealogy of experimental art.  Ann's voice will stay with you long after you exit her mind's haunted house.  You won't even realize its cursed magic until it has already swallowed you whole." —Claire Donato, author of Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts.

"Recalling Barnes' Book of Repulsive Women and Hadean in its academic waste, this miserabilist's trance of "fed-on thinas" dons a destructive getup. Cogitating on the "ignominy of actually having to exist." toxicity is king and identity gets tricked-up, looted from philosophy, film, art, plus porn . The metamuck of the erudite sex worker. The punk muck of the abused stray.  The gothic muck of the terrible secret from the terrible past.  Shipley's anti-heroine thinks, thinks, thinks her way into and outta existence.

So Beautiful and Elastic is a visceral and psychological portrait of disguise.  If Wuornos were on a spree with Cioran; if their stops were mapped by Magritte; if the map was an appointment for Die Familie Schneider." —Kim Gek Lin Short, author of China Cowboy.  "This brutal book is one of the best-worst nightmares l've ever had—as if Kathy Acker had written a movie novelization of a grimy true crime documentary and then studded it with exactly the kind of art-historical and countercultural references I love.  Or as if Katherine Faw's Ultraluminous had an evil twin." —Philippa Snow, author of Which As You Know Means Violence