Arsenal Pulp Press
Released: 2008
Pages: 149 pp.
Shuck by Daniel Allen Cox
One time I found someone’s diary on the SkyTrain while I was making my trip home from Vancouver into the suburbs. I flipped it open and read a couple pages. I couldn’t help it. This was someone I didn’t know and all of a sudden I had her thoughts. I could do whatever I wanted with them. It was a girl’s diary, probably in her teens, and she wrote in a blue marker that was way too thick to be legible. I couldn’t remember a thing that girl confided in her diary after I left it on the seat and got off at my stop.
Jaeven Marshall’s diary in Daniel Allen Cox’s latest book Shuck, however, is a little different. In Jaeven’s diary the reader gets a window seat into the mind of a wannabe short story writer who is also a barely functioning meth addict, kind of homeless, and a street-level whore turned gay porn star and hustler. More than anything though, he’s a muse for artists and painters alike.
It’s 1999 in a gritty and dark New York City and Jaeven is living in an abandoned room in a designer shoe warehouse. He writes all day and turns tricks all night. He’s 22 and trying desperately to become a published writer. When a man invites him to live with him in his condo, Jaeven moves in and slowly moves up the food chain. Jaeven starts modelling for gay porn magazines and over night he is a major it boy. He still turns tricks and continues to take meth, but he finally has a little bit of money. What he really wants, though, is some recognition for his writing. However, no one wants to publish his work about an outcast reform school kid and the reject letters keep piling up.
Cox’s writing is tight and funny. He captures your attention with the very first few lines: “I bet that right now, you’re not listening to Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” in your Walkman, which means you won’t understand a word I’ve written. You suck, but that’s besides the point.” Jaeven has ADD and Cox skilfully pushes his reader through the messed up head of a guy who takes meth in order to focus his mind. Cox is a very detailed writer, adding the most interesting nuances into his writing. When Jaeven stars in a porn movie, Cox gives us every gritty detail. There’s no glamour here.
Jaeven is an unreliable narrator. He lies and admits it, sometimes. Cox does a great job pulling together this book, but I would have liked to see some motivation as to why Jaeven wanted to get published so bad. From the summaries of the stories that Jaeven writes, it’s pretty clear that they are autobiographical stories from his adolescence. But, that’s the only glance we get about this character’s past. However, why does anyone want to get published? Maybe it’s something you just can’t put your finger on.
Shuck is a fantastic, quick-paced book that will have you laughing, cringing and hoping that something will happen for Jaeven.
Reviewed by Taryn Hubbard
