It’s a book review! I never write book reviews, but something about this book, this author, this writing, compelled me to do so.
It’s a short book; I read it in about an hour. The paper is thick, and you can see the fibres in it, feel them between your fingers. It reminds me of the kind of paper that comes out when you get a “make your own paper” kit from your spinster aunt for Christmas, and you use it once and then it sits in your closet until you move away to college and get rid of everything you don’t care about. The second thing you’ll notice, after the paper, is the fact that it’s written in cover letters, each one beginning with a greeting, and ending with a name. What happens in between, however, is anyone’s guess.
Sometimes Joey Comeau writes with the short, stuttering lines that Nico Muhly hates so much, sometimes he writes with too many commas, and his language is raw, and gauche, and sometimes graphic–but all those things add to it, like the rough sound of trumpet fluttertonguing in its low register, distorting near the end. It’s not a scream, it’s not triumph, it’s not a masterpiece, but it knows its purpose–to evoke emotion. Really good fiction writing, like really good composition, is meant to express emotion; to get inside not your head, but your heart. And that’s what Joey Comeau’s Overqualified does in the experiences he describes in language so graphic that you can feel the razors against your skin, the sticky, powdery feeling of rust on your hands.
Overqualified isn’t just a bundle of emotions, though. There are images and ideas and memories all swirled together as though they are cinnamon and chocolate and hot peppers and Joey (because after this book, we are on first name basis whether he likes it or not), before he was a writer, was an angry sous chef who took unnecessary risks. Ideas like a board game based on disaster and International Stalker Day, memories like the barn your relatives had when you were young; not a barn with animals, but just to keep the tractor in. Those days when you multitask, do a million things, and can’t remember any of them at the end of the day; when you used to sit at the back of your grade four classroom and read the book that you had for “quiet reading time”, except you read during math, during spelling, during recess; not understanding euphemisms the first time you hear them; running as fast as you can down the stairs just because–Joey’s done that, too.
You’ll laugh, too. You’ll laugh at the letter applying for the job as linguistics professor that is one, two-and-a-half-page run-on sentence. You’ll laugh when Joey writes, “I think the Internet is trying to kill me.” You’ll smile when the letter has nothing whatsoever to do with the application, when it becomes just a lonely man trying to find someone to listen. You’ll smile, thinking of the reactions of the people who received these letters.
And little bits of truth. “The names we choose for ourselves aren’t meaningless. They’re self-fulfilling prophecies.” “Everything falls apart, and it fucking sucks, and we’re all going to be in those wooden boxes eventually. Pause for effect. But the first and middle parts are amazing!”
So that’s what this is all about, you think to yourself. Just another book telling you to live for today. But Joey will call you a retarded little shit when he tells you to live. It’s not encouragement, it’s not inspirational, it’s a demand, it’s an insult, it’s an implication; it’s not advice, it’s proof positive that the crazy things are the ones worthwhile.