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Waste
Fiction. A spare and chilling account of the day-to-day experience of Sloper, a janitor in a big-city office building, WASTE explores the import of the discarded--for those who generate it, those who dispose of it, and those who are themselves discarded. From the humble prospect of his station, Sloper uncovers ominous possibility in lives he barely brushes. Brian Evenson says, "Only Eugene Marten can keep a reader enthralled with the minutiae of a janitorial existence.... Precisely and exquisitely detailed, WASTE is a stark little masterpiece." And Dawn Raffel writes, "[P]itch-perfect. WASTE wastes nothing--not a syllable, a beat, a ragged breath." And Sam Lipsyte writes, "There is nothing quite like the controlled burn of Eugene Marten's prose."
116 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2008
About the author
Eugene Marten
7 books37 followersEugene Marten lives in New Mexico. He is also the author of the novels In The Blind (Turtle Point), Waste (Ellipsis), and Firework (Tyrant Books).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
January 9, 2009
i enjoyed this book, but im wondering what greg must think of me to have recommended it. you know how when patrick mccabe is writing truly sick shit and you enjoy it but you're like, man - why am i laughing at this?? its like that. but told in this tight prose that still manages to leave so much implicit. i liked it but it's definitely not for everyone.
March 12, 2017
I picked up Waste because of the blurb by Brian Evenson, who called it "a stark little masterpiece". I am a fan of Evenson's fiction - his dark imagination and clean, sparse writing style. Reading Evenson is an experience which slices through flesh straight to the bone. I experienced Waste to be of similar quality, considering his ringing endorsement; it's not.
Waste is the story of one day in the life of Sloper, a janitor in a huge corporate building. Not much is revealed to us about Sloper, except for the fact that he is a loner and has difficulties - or maybe isn't really interested in - interacting with other people, both his fellow blue collar co-workers and the corporate employees. Not much happens in Sloper's life, until one day something does which changes things entirely.
It is difficult to discuss the plot of Waste, as the book is very slim - only 116 pages long - and mentioning almost anything specific would consider a spoiler. The most prevalent feeling which I experienced while reading the book was one of detachment - Sloper is barely sketched as a character and is almost completely defined by what he does , and we are exposed to what he does rather than witness him do it. We do not experience his isolation or loneliness as much as we are shown it; to make matters worse none of the other characters in this book are better defined or even matter in any way, which makes for a very distant narrative experience. There is not a lot of reasons for us to care about Sloper, or even be interested in what he is doing. All the time while reading the book, we end up asking ourselves one question: why push on?
This can, course, be intentional - as commentary on the soullessness of corporate culture and its daily grind (think Thomas Ligotti and his My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror), though I did not find it particularly insightful or even interesting. In the later part of the book, the storyline takes an unexptected and grim turn which is grotesque and quite disgusting but also completely boring - in the age of grim horror fiction and very graphic horror movies such content simply doesn't shock or attract the way it could have twenty or thirty years ago; it requires something more than just pure shock value. Reading Waste brings up to mind a pale imitation of Bret Easton Ellis - thought without Ellis's charismatic protagonist, dark humor and hallucinating, almost hypnotic narrative drive which made his work so compulsively readable and memorable.
In short, Waste is experimental fiction which ultimately fails to experiment and offer something new for the reader which would make him remember it in the years to come, and although it is a very short novel which doesn't take much time to finish you'd probably be better off devoting it to something else.
Waste is the story of one day in the life of Sloper, a janitor in a huge corporate building. Not much is revealed to us about Sloper, except for the fact that he is a loner and has difficulties - or maybe isn't really interested in - interacting with other people, both his fellow blue collar co-workers and the corporate employees. Not much happens in Sloper's life, until one day something does which changes things entirely.
It is difficult to discuss the plot of Waste, as the book is very slim - only 116 pages long - and mentioning almost anything specific would consider a spoiler. The most prevalent feeling which I experienced while reading the book was one of detachment - Sloper is barely sketched as a character and is almost completely defined by what he does , and we are exposed to what he does rather than witness him do it. We do not experience his isolation or loneliness as much as we are shown it; to make matters worse none of the other characters in this book are better defined or even matter in any way, which makes for a very distant narrative experience. There is not a lot of reasons for us to care about Sloper, or even be interested in what he is doing. All the time while reading the book, we end up asking ourselves one question: why push on?
This can, course, be intentional - as commentary on the soullessness of corporate culture and its daily grind (think Thomas Ligotti and his My Work is Not Yet Done: Three Tales of Corporate Horror), though I did not find it particularly insightful or even interesting. In the later part of the book, the storyline takes an unexptected and grim turn which is grotesque and quite disgusting but also completely boring - in the age of grim horror fiction and very graphic horror movies such content simply doesn't shock or attract the way it could have twenty or thirty years ago; it requires something more than just pure shock value. Reading Waste brings up to mind a pale imitation of Bret Easton Ellis - thought without Ellis's charismatic protagonist, dark humor and hallucinating, almost hypnotic narrative drive which made his work so compulsively readable and memorable.
In short, Waste is experimental fiction which ultimately fails to experiment and offer something new for the reader which would make him remember it in the years to come, and although it is a very short novel which doesn't take much time to finish you'd probably be better off devoting it to something else.
December 9, 2008
A wonderfully sparse and creepy novel about a janitor. There is something quite disturbing about this book, and it's not just the um, stuff (that I won't give away) that is overtly disturbing. If you can get a hold of this I'd recommend reading, the book has a kind of 'self-published' feel to it with the quality of the print on the cover, but look beyond that and read what really should be a book that gets a lot of attention.
January 21, 2021
Fifth time through this one (I think)--this time around, the experience has intensified to shivers of pure beautiful horror.
January 30, 2009
I have friend call amilcar… amilcar is more of a sick fuck than me, he enjoys watching news when there are big accidents so he can laugh at them… amilcar’s idea of a joke is go to Somalia set up a electric fence… get a big table fill with the most delicious food on the planet and put some fans so the smells gets everywhere… cuz he wants to laugh at the starving people getting electrocuted while trying to get to the food… while he eats… amilcar and I use to spend our nights trying to come up with the sickest sexual shit that we could ever imagine… you know funny shit like would you fuck a bitch with no legs, our you perform the black kiss on an old lady for a million pesos and if so describe how the experience would be like, if you were a necrophiliac how dead would you prefer your sex partners to be, just for the hell of it… I’m telling y’all this so y’all know that I’m a sick fuck, I mean seriously I have issues… the main reason why I’m so afraid of psychiatrist and that sort of people is cuz I think that If I don’t say the right thing around them they’ll put me on a psyche ward in no time… now I told y’all this so y’all know when I say must things don’t disturb me I actually mean it hell I find creepy stuff to be very amusing…! But today when Mr. Greg told me that this book has pretty disturbing things I said “nothing disturbs me I’m a sick fuck” I was saying the truth… but I wasn’t expecting this!!! I spend my entire train ride saying out loud WTF?? WAIT DID HE JUST…? OMG!!!!! WHY AM I LAUGHING LIKE THIS!!! THIS IS SICK!!! OMG! I’M TRAUMATIZED!!! And I’ve only read 30 pages…
Yay! Thank the gods (and Steven Erikson) that my fear of necrophilia is gone!!!
Yay! Thank the gods (and Steven Erikson) that my fear of necrophilia is gone!!!
September 5, 2011
I had high expectations for this book. A protagonist who is a janitor in a corporate building; strange co-workers; foul doings: the elements at play in this little volume were interesting, different, and ripe for modern noir. In actual fact, the elements that Marten put into play did not work for me.
I don't want to dish on this book. It represents everything that I want to support in publishing and books, in that it is a singular work that evades easy categorization. It also goes places that most writers cannot--not just in terms of writing explicit material, but in terms of how they handle it. Marten delves into perverse behavior without intruding upon the proceedings and poo-pooing it, and without manipulating events so that the participants get a moral comeuppance. Weirdness (and grossness) unfold in this book and dirty the pages without a hello, a goodbye, a backward glance, or even a slap in the face. It just happens, and then it's over.
I like weirdness in my fiction, and I have selective tastes in grossness (Joe Lansdale has painted a few scenes that gave me shivers of the good kind). The weirdness in "Waste" didn't take for me, and the grossness made me feel dirty and a little depressed.
I wanted to like this work; after I finished it, I was still wanting.
If you're reading this review because you're thinking about picking up the book, don't be easily dissuaded. Marten is talented, and he may be on to something that you're looking for.
I don't want to dish on this book. It represents everything that I want to support in publishing and books, in that it is a singular work that evades easy categorization. It also goes places that most writers cannot--not just in terms of writing explicit material, but in terms of how they handle it. Marten delves into perverse behavior without intruding upon the proceedings and poo-pooing it, and without manipulating events so that the participants get a moral comeuppance. Weirdness (and grossness) unfold in this book and dirty the pages without a hello, a goodbye, a backward glance, or even a slap in the face. It just happens, and then it's over.
I like weirdness in my fiction, and I have selective tastes in grossness (Joe Lansdale has painted a few scenes that gave me shivers of the good kind). The weirdness in "Waste" didn't take for me, and the grossness made me feel dirty and a little depressed.
I wanted to like this work; after I finished it, I was still wanting.
If you're reading this review because you're thinking about picking up the book, don't be easily dissuaded. Marten is talented, and he may be on to something that you're looking for.
June 20, 2021
Nicely creepy, edgy and weird. Definitely worth a go and moves along at a nice pace.
June 20, 2009
Um. Ulp. I'm pretty much speechless here.
Eugene Marten's very short novel is about Sloper, a janitor. While merrily performing his janitorial tasks one evening, Sloper runs across something unusual in the dumpster, and...well, you probably have some idea where this is going, and it's really every bit as "EWWWWWW" as you think it is.
Waste is one of those books where you finish reading and you're really not quite sure whether you've been had or whether you're in the presence of genius. Frankly, I think one is quite as likely as the other. I'm giving it four stars for two reasons; first, despite the bizarre turn the story takes, it does provide provocative comment on how society makes judgments about what's worthy and what isn't; and second, as with Donald Ray Pollack's Knockemstiff, one of my favorite books of the past few years, I really did find it hard to put down despite the fact that I desperately wanted to during more than one passage. That, and the fact that I actually laughed out loud a couple of times, even while wondering what a sick fuck I was for finding any of this stuff funny.
I would, however, recommend that you not read this novel if you're exceptionally squeamish. Seriously.
Eugene Marten's very short novel is about Sloper, a janitor. While merrily performing his janitorial tasks one evening, Sloper runs across something unusual in the dumpster, and...well, you probably have some idea where this is going, and it's really every bit as "EWWWWWW" as you think it is.
Waste is one of those books where you finish reading and you're really not quite sure whether you've been had or whether you're in the presence of genius. Frankly, I think one is quite as likely as the other. I'm giving it four stars for two reasons; first, despite the bizarre turn the story takes, it does provide provocative comment on how society makes judgments about what's worthy and what isn't; and second, as with Donald Ray Pollack's Knockemstiff, one of my favorite books of the past few years, I really did find it hard to put down despite the fact that I desperately wanted to during more than one passage. That, and the fact that I actually laughed out loud a couple of times, even while wondering what a sick fuck I was for finding any of this stuff funny.
I would, however, recommend that you not read this novel if you're exceptionally squeamish. Seriously.
June 24, 2020
Gordon Lish -- the talented, albeit controversial American writer known for heavily editing several of Raymond Carver's short stories -- has long served as a known singer of Eugene Marten's praises... and it was the now 86-year-old's glowing reviews that ushered this book forth onto my radar in the first place.
In all, I struggle to come up with a measured take on this one. WASTE is a difficult book to review -- in large part because I have never examined anything quite like it. The short novel is almost certainly the most disturbing story that I have ever read... and admittedly, I learned that it was not for me. The absurdist horror of the book was overwhelming to grapple with on a recurring basis, and the images that Marten conjures up were nothing short of distressing to think through. At the same time, Marten's narrative style deserves praise, as the slow burn of his prose was top-notch. The novel also asks fairly intelligent questions of its readers -- namely concerning that which we regard as waste on multiple levels.
Not quite for me, indeed... but Marten is a talented writer's writer, no doubt. That said, surrealist texts can be a tough sell, so I will err on the side of refraining from recommending this book to others.
In all, I struggle to come up with a measured take on this one. WASTE is a difficult book to review -- in large part because I have never examined anything quite like it. The short novel is almost certainly the most disturbing story that I have ever read... and admittedly, I learned that it was not for me. The absurdist horror of the book was overwhelming to grapple with on a recurring basis, and the images that Marten conjures up were nothing short of distressing to think through. At the same time, Marten's narrative style deserves praise, as the slow burn of his prose was top-notch. The novel also asks fairly intelligent questions of its readers -- namely concerning that which we regard as waste on multiple levels.
Not quite for me, indeed... but Marten is a talented writer's writer, no doubt. That said, surrealist texts can be a tough sell, so I will err on the side of refraining from recommending this book to others.
March 31, 2019
I enjoyed the economy of language and deliberate pacing of this tale of a slow witted, largely invisible office cleaner, Sloper. But once it took a disgusting and gratuitous turn, I found myself losing interest. Fortunately, it’s a slim volume, but that necrophilia plot line and the occasional gaps in coherence in the remaining pages don’t serve the story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2008
"This is surely one of the darkest and most jarring books I’ve read. It is also pitch-perfect. Waste wastes nothing–not a syllable, a beat, a ragged breath." –Dawn Raffel
October 5, 2019
No se que acabo de leer. No lo recomiendo del todo, es sumamente directo en cuanto a descripciones desagradables y asquerosas.
February 17, 2024
“You carried the box onto the freight elevator like all the other boxes that were to be flattened and recycled. Sloper had a manual-override key. He could park the freight between floors. He would sit on the foor eating with the fork he kept on his cart, smelling his farts, maneuvering the cups and balls in the little plastic cube. He almost broke his tooth on a staple embedded in mashed potatoes.”
September 17, 2021
Sparse prose and narrative, not as good as In the Blind but still enjoyable to read. Probably the first time I have ever truly been disturbed by a book, there were some very uncomfortable moments
June 30, 2021
Interesting to think about as the obverse of the contemporary office novel--e.g. as an attempt to narrate the dimensions of post-industrial labor that are occluded by the contemporary novel's interest in the office (in-person services, care work, etc.)--but on first read, the transgressive elements feel cheap and adolescent.
August 30, 2009
I defy anyone to not fall in love with Eugene Marten’s prose. Okay, I’ve never defied before, but I urge you to read this book published by Ellipsis Press in 2008. In an unnamed city a janitor called Sloper goes about his business at a highrise downtown and finds a few surprises. He is a loner, lives in his mother’s basement, plays a cup and ball game to pass the time and, not surprisingly, is socially awkward. He is a true voyeur in an age of covert computer geeks. He weighs the objects the workers, mostly women, leave behind after hours. He eats their food, they populate his fantasies.
At work, lines are drawn: Everyone sat grouped roughly according to nationality, each table a lingusitic faction. Sloper sat alone between Russian and Ethiopian, his appearances too infrequent for him to have established a place with anyone else. Your American women usually ate with her own kind at a table somewhere behind him, loudly or whispering, with their man problems and their kid problems, their potlucks and their acey-deucy. The only one decent-looking was also the loudest. Sloper wasn’t sure of her name, or if her hair was really that color.
The narrative hinges on the discovery of a body in one the enormous dumpsters at the ground level of the skyscraper. It is one of the most chilling scenes in recent fiction -Lynchian and mysterious in a way the ‘pop’ mystery writers of the day wouldn’t dare to write out of fear of offending the audience.
Elsewhere a simple walk up the stairs in his mother’s house is ignited by a poetic eye. The stairs have grown steep and narrow, the passage high and musty with secondhand air, the stillborn warmth of a breath held too long.
Psycho and Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God come to mind but the terrain is all Marten. The examination of a life on the margins is welcomed in our age of celebrity and fictions about Jackie Kennedy Onasis, Galileo and Hitler’s extended family. The great characters in literature come from the unconscious and like Lester Ballard in Child of God, Sloper has joined the ranks.
Thank you John Madera for the recommendation and a great review on Word Riot. Thank you Johannah Rodgers and Eugene Lim for publishing this book and thank you Eugene Marten. His first book In the Blind is being shipped to me and check out the elimae archives for some short fiction.
At work, lines are drawn: Everyone sat grouped roughly according to nationality, each table a lingusitic faction. Sloper sat alone between Russian and Ethiopian, his appearances too infrequent for him to have established a place with anyone else. Your American women usually ate with her own kind at a table somewhere behind him, loudly or whispering, with their man problems and their kid problems, their potlucks and their acey-deucy. The only one decent-looking was also the loudest. Sloper wasn’t sure of her name, or if her hair was really that color.
The narrative hinges on the discovery of a body in one the enormous dumpsters at the ground level of the skyscraper. It is one of the most chilling scenes in recent fiction -Lynchian and mysterious in a way the ‘pop’ mystery writers of the day wouldn’t dare to write out of fear of offending the audience.
Elsewhere a simple walk up the stairs in his mother’s house is ignited by a poetic eye. The stairs have grown steep and narrow, the passage high and musty with secondhand air, the stillborn warmth of a breath held too long.
Psycho and Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God come to mind but the terrain is all Marten. The examination of a life on the margins is welcomed in our age of celebrity and fictions about Jackie Kennedy Onasis, Galileo and Hitler’s extended family. The great characters in literature come from the unconscious and like Lester Ballard in Child of God, Sloper has joined the ranks.
Thank you John Madera for the recommendation and a great review on Word Riot. Thank you Johannah Rodgers and Eugene Lim for publishing this book and thank you Eugene Marten. His first book In the Blind is being shipped to me and check out the elimae archives for some short fiction.
August 21, 2022
Avec Ordure, qui aura bataillé de belles années avant d'être traduit et publié en France, Eugene Marten signe un très court roman glaçant et obsédant.
A travers le quotidien de Sloper, agent d'entretien qui révèle petit à petit ses secrets les plus sombres, l'auteur transforme la banalité en la pire des atrocités. Avec une plume minimaliste, Eugene Marten tait certains détails et laisse le lecteur vivre pleinement son expérience.
Une expérience de lecture dont on ne sort pas indemne, c'est sûr !
A travers le quotidien de Sloper, agent d'entretien qui révèle petit à petit ses secrets les plus sombres, l'auteur transforme la banalité en la pire des atrocités. Avec une plume minimaliste, Eugene Marten tait certains détails et laisse le lecteur vivre pleinement son expérience.
Une expérience de lecture dont on ne sort pas indemne, c'est sûr !
May 6, 2019
Child of God + American Psycho + Office Space = Waste
I'm excited to read the rest of Marten's work. I haven't felt this way about a writer since I got into Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner in high school.
Date Started: April 28, 2019
Date Finished: May 1, 2019
Time: 127 minutes (2.1 hours)
I'm excited to read the rest of Marten's work. I haven't felt this way about a writer since I got into Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner in high school.
Date Started: April 28, 2019
Date Finished: May 1, 2019
Time: 127 minutes (2.1 hours)
March 9, 2021
Grim story of a janitor who also happens to be . Then again, is there any other kind? Of said story, that is. Thanks for exposing me to a new aspect of this world we live in, Kareem.
January 5, 2009
I blogged about it here:
http://www.5cense.com/NYC_Revisisted.htm
http://www.5cense.com/NYC_Revisisted.htm
September 9, 2010
Grim experimental fiction.
May 27, 2014
El Bret Easton Ellis de los pobres, Eugene Marten: no tiene ni wikipedia, pero sí traducción al castellano, edición re linda y gente que lo recomienda en la feria del libro.
November 6, 2018
Surreal, disturbing, awesome.
January 7, 2020
Review to follow. Mark this in the “very dark” zone.
October 9, 2022
Eugene Marten relata la cotidianidad de Sloper, un conserje, y lo que hace con los desechos.
Hasta la página 53, este libro estaba siendo un 5 estrellas para mí. La sociedad, lo que desechan, lo que los desechados hacen con los desechos. Sloper empezó siendo un personaje solitario, marginado. No correspondía, no tenía tribu ni con sus compañeros de trabajo. Quizás me hubiera gustado ver más profundización en este aspecto: si uno existe ante una sociedad (o define gran parte de su existencia ante ella), Sloper era un vacío, un cero en el sistema.
Las primeras páginas me mostraron lo deshumanizante que puede ser trabajar como conserje en una gran empresa “You couldn’t make any noise”; “No one ever told him anything”; “Somebody had to do it”; “Employees worked late and offered to trade jobs with him without smiling”. Vi esta deshumanización incluso en el comentario de Brian Evenson impreso en la parte de atrás del libro: “Only Eugene Marten can keep a reader enthralled with the minutiae of a janitorial existence”.
A partir de la mitad, sin embargo, el libro se tornó simplemente escatológico, asqueroso, ¿extraño? Quizás hubiera querido algo para aferrarme. Algún sentimiento para entender, para compartir. Quizás exijo mucho, también, no todo pasa por una razón, no todas las existencias se justifican en empatía.
Total, me dio espanto, pero al principio, muy al principio, también sentí empatía, también me comencé a preguntar “¿por qué?”.
No odio el libro. Lo volvería a leer. ¿No sé si lo recomendaría? Algunas lecturas no son para todos. Quizás les preguntaría si les gusta Hannibal, asesinos en serie o algo así antes…
Hasta la página 53, este libro estaba siendo un 5 estrellas para mí. La sociedad, lo que desechan, lo que los desechados hacen con los desechos. Sloper empezó siendo un personaje solitario, marginado. No correspondía, no tenía tribu ni con sus compañeros de trabajo. Quizás me hubiera gustado ver más profundización en este aspecto: si uno existe ante una sociedad (o define gran parte de su existencia ante ella), Sloper era un vacío, un cero en el sistema.
Las primeras páginas me mostraron lo deshumanizante que puede ser trabajar como conserje en una gran empresa “You couldn’t make any noise”; “No one ever told him anything”; “Somebody had to do it”; “Employees worked late and offered to trade jobs with him without smiling”. Vi esta deshumanización incluso en el comentario de Brian Evenson impreso en la parte de atrás del libro: “Only Eugene Marten can keep a reader enthralled with the minutiae of a janitorial existence”.
A partir de la mitad, sin embargo, el libro se tornó simplemente escatológico, asqueroso, ¿extraño? Quizás hubiera querido algo para aferrarme. Algún sentimiento para entender, para compartir. Quizás exijo mucho, también, no todo pasa por una razón, no todas las existencias se justifican en empatía.
Total, me dio espanto, pero al principio, muy al principio, también sentí empatía, también me comencé a preguntar “¿por qué?”.
No odio el libro. Lo volvería a leer. ¿No sé si lo recomendaría? Algunas lecturas no son para todos. Quizás les preguntaría si les gusta Hannibal, asesinos en serie o algo así antes…
January 2, 2023
Ma première lecture de 2023 est on ne peut plus déroutante. Le genre de livre brillant par le style mais répugnant par l'histoire. On ne peut pas aimer ce livre, on est même parfois tenté de l'abandonner tant il est glauque et dérangeant. Et pourtant, l'écriture dépouillée, précise, et les nombreux non-dits qui font sens pour le lecteur lui confèrent toute sa force.
Sloper est agent d'entretien dans un immeuble de bureaux quelque part aux Etats-Unis. Il ramasse les déchets des autres (le titre original est waste : déchets, gâchis) et récupère dans les corbeilles les restes de nourriture qu'il mange chez lui le soir, dans la cave qu'il loue dans la maison de sa propre mère. Car Sloper n'a pas accès à l'étage, il vit au sous-sol, et n'a d'échange avec sa génitrice que le loyer qu'il lui glisse sous la porte.
Tout bascule quand il découvre un corps qui bloque le vide-ordures sur son lieu de travail. Je n'en dis pas plus.
Un bijou de littérature dérangeante, qui évoque pour certains Chuck Palahniuk et Brett Easton Ellis (je ne les ai pas lus). Si vous aimez les feel-good books, passez votre chemin sans hésiter !
La préface de Brian Evenson dit très bien ce que j'exprime maladroitement :
p. 10 : "Ordure est un livre dont il faut faire l'expérience - pas un livre qu'on aime. Il faut le traverser, le vivre, le subir même : ce n'est pas quelque chose pour lequel on éprouve du plaisir. Il st doté de cette dimension viscérale avec laquelle il passe en revue, sans la moindre concession, les paramètres implacables d'une froide existence." [...] p. 13 : "Ordure est un livre puissant et original, une réussite majeure, qui montre de manière on ne peut plus authentique toute l'étendue d'un style minimaliste."
Sloper est agent d'entretien dans un immeuble de bureaux quelque part aux Etats-Unis. Il ramasse les déchets des autres (le titre original est waste : déchets, gâchis) et récupère dans les corbeilles les restes de nourriture qu'il mange chez lui le soir, dans la cave qu'il loue dans la maison de sa propre mère. Car Sloper n'a pas accès à l'étage, il vit au sous-sol, et n'a d'échange avec sa génitrice que le loyer qu'il lui glisse sous la porte.
Tout bascule quand il découvre un corps qui bloque le vide-ordures sur son lieu de travail. Je n'en dis pas plus.
Un bijou de littérature dérangeante, qui évoque pour certains Chuck Palahniuk et Brett Easton Ellis (je ne les ai pas lus). Si vous aimez les feel-good books, passez votre chemin sans hésiter !
La préface de Brian Evenson dit très bien ce que j'exprime maladroitement :
p. 10 : "Ordure est un livre dont il faut faire l'expérience - pas un livre qu'on aime. Il faut le traverser, le vivre, le subir même : ce n'est pas quelque chose pour lequel on éprouve du plaisir. Il st doté de cette dimension viscérale avec laquelle il passe en revue, sans la moindre concession, les paramètres implacables d'une froide existence." [...] p. 13 : "Ordure est un livre puissant et original, une réussite majeure, qui montre de manière on ne peut plus authentique toute l'étendue d'un style minimaliste."
April 2, 2024
The premise of this book is that a janitor reuses the waste he collects from the office building where he works. This includes eating the food waste he finds, playing with certain items trashed by the women to get off, and using the scraps in trashcans as reading material. I kinda wish the book had remained on this plane and was a clear exploration of it but it added an uninteresting subplot about thuggish, noisy neighbors which just threw the whole thing into utter incoherence. The prose style is clipped, confused, and irregularly staccato owing to the main character's perspective. However, it just made the text harder to absorb. The only central concern I could find in this story was when he finds the woman's corpse in an office dumpster which just serves as the focus of periodic necrophiliac gross-outs and amounts to what everything else here amounts to - Nothing. The only real positive besides the core idea here is that the book is short and thus an easy and quick read. I would only recommend this if you want a quick read and a simple gross-out.
April 27, 2024
More disturbing than expected. Mila recommended because of the disturbing protagonist but this is a protagonist that isn’t relatable, I can’t imagine most readers thinking “well I get how the character made that choice”. It’s just all very gross and sad and scary how he seems to have no remorse or quandary about finding a body in the trash that he takes home and fucks. 🤢 really gross and disturbing, even more so because of the hollow nature of the character. The way he seems emotionless is eerie. Another review said he’s defined just by his actions because we don’t really get his internal world and I agree w that. There are parts I found confusing that’d id probably need to read another couple times to get fully. Some of the janitor bits at the beginning were boring. I see some of the art of this but it also wasn’t for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 31, 2023
2.5
Me súper pude haber ahorrado este libro. Hay que reconocer que Marten maneja una narrativa muy desconcertante. A ratos logra describir la vida de Sloper desde una monotonía y pesadez tremenda y después introduce unos momentos sumamente siniestros que te destantean por completo. Eso se le aplaude. Pero en general es burdo y terminé leyendo este libro sintiendo que cargo una tremenda bolsa de desperdicios apestosos que ya no se dónde poner y cómo deshacerme de ella. Desechos innecesarios, pues.
Me pregunto cómo lograría Mariana Enríquez escribir algo así.
Me súper pude haber ahorrado este libro. Hay que reconocer que Marten maneja una narrativa muy desconcertante. A ratos logra describir la vida de Sloper desde una monotonía y pesadez tremenda y después introduce unos momentos sumamente siniestros que te destantean por completo. Eso se le aplaude. Pero en general es burdo y terminé leyendo este libro sintiendo que cargo una tremenda bolsa de desperdicios apestosos que ya no se dónde poner y cómo deshacerme de ella. Desechos innecesarios, pues.
Me pregunto cómo lograría Mariana Enríquez escribir algo así.
February 3, 2024
Alright. This book is wild. It's best if you know as little as possible. Here's what you NEED to know. It's disgusting. Not in a 'to each their own' kind of way, but in an understood, across the board, unanimously abhorrent kind of way. And if you are open to living in that world for a few sittings, the prose in Waste is sharp and noxious. I think it maybe gets too in its own way with some of the nonsensical dialogue, almost like it's hammering home "things aren't quite right here," but overall I spent my time with Waste being gripped from page one and quieting my stomach on page ten.
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