Banango Lit

Please welcome Katey Metcalf to the Banango family. Here she reviews Chokeville by Joshua Allen. Chokeville is available in its entirety here.

The problem is, I’m not sure if he’s joking or not. Chokeville, the long-awaited and still incomplete novel from copy-writer-by-day, American-absurdist-blogger-by-night Joshua Allen is a funny, clever, bewildering series of tales about Allison Hull. Upon her twin brother’s mysterious death she receives a telegram from Feddema Global, a “courier company” that deals in moving sensitive materials, looking for a special sort of person to replace him. Because it seems interesting and because she has nothing better to do, Allison says “ok, god, fine,” and joins up.

Chokeville is both laughably ridiculous and heartbreakingly eloquent, in true Joshua Allen style: the style is hard to describe in words. A teenage boy who plays a lot of COD but also loves Salvador Dali? Lorca, reborn as a sullen Rutgers freshman? “The Venture Bros”? The characters are irreverent, but serious:

Allison coughs and coughs until she thinks she’s going to throw up, then stands back up and takes another deep drag. “So nice of you to say,” she wheezes. She spies something that looks close enough to an ashtray and stubs out the cigarette.
“Hugo told me that after their passing, you and he became estranged.”
“Yeah he used the cunt word,” Allison says.

The writing is full of gems like this (my favorite being “What am I wearing? Nary but a monocle—it is Thursday.”) But despite all of this puerile fucking-around, Joshua Allen does have something to say, something real, and memorable, and startlingly astute. In one of the first few vignettes we see Allison’s tattoo sleeve (something I picture as really bitchin’)—the language is both absurd and beautiful.

“God damn her arms are on fire. She told that sketchy ex-con militia tattooist nutjob — only a couple days ago but it felt like forever — that she wanted the ocean with her wherever she went. She was convinced she’d never see it again. She wanted to be able to raise her arms and tear a hole in whatever dead prairie or landlocked suburb she found herself in, revealing the churning sea that flowed beneath it all.”

When I say that I like Chokeville, I mostly mean that I like it despite itself. It’s self-consciously terrible in a way that makes me love and hate Joshua Allen with a fiery passion, which I suppose is what he intended. I hate that there is a ridiculously absurd ship full of whores. I hate that there are giant spiders and a character named Hogwild. And yet I’ve read it all three times, and I’m mad that it’s incomplete—spitting mad. I want to punch J. Allen and then kiss him passionately, violently, angrily. I want to give myself Allison’s tattoo with India ink and a rusty needle.

All of this is to say: read Chokeville. You might not like it but you will certainly have feelings about it, which is more than I can say for most things in this day and age.