The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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David McCord, �The World Owes Me Lunch�

Started August 25 � Finished August 26, 2002; 108 pages. Posted 28 August 2002

Somebody help me out here. Is this the same guy who wrote columns for MaximumRockNRoll awhile back? Don�t tell me I picked up some random book by some random guy just because I have a bad memory?

School started today. I needed to force my way into a screenwriting class, so I showed up early to campus. Really early, as it turned out. I thought the class started at 10:30, and I got on campus at 9:00 in order to load up on coffee, pay for the rest of my classes, get my books and then march into class. It turned out the class didn�t start until 1:30.

So I read. And read. From the feel of these short stories, it certainly feels like it�s the same guy that wrote for MRR, but I don�t have anything to base that on — I can�t remember any of the columns he wrote, and these are all short stories steeped in fiction. But there�s something punk rock about them as well. Not meaning that it needs to take a shower, but that it has an attitude.

This is obviously self-released, and I want to support anybody who is trying to do it that way. Well, almost anybody. Actually, probably not very many people at all, but if this is the same guy who DID write for MRR, then I�m glad to help him. Of course, since I got it from a used store, that means David McCord won�t get a dime from the sale, so I guess I�m really not helping at all.

First time writers, and writers of short stories in particular, always seem to fall into this trap of sounding like a cheap rip-off of Charles Bukowski or Hunter S. Thompson. This homage/plagiarism actually works in McCord�s favor. There are a few points where he tries a stab at serious gothic horror, and it frankly doesn�t work. Unfortunately, these are the larger pieces. I�m not sure if he kept at writing, but if he did I�d be interesting in seeing how he�s progressed. In the meantime, I�m just glad he had the good sense to keep this really short.


Rating: Worth working in a used bookstore and getting for really cheap.

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