Razorcake Issue #19

Foster Careby Ann Raber, 222 pgs.Coming-of-age novel about latchkey/juvikids who like to play with fire. It’s set in the late‘80s. One of ‘em finds salvation/damnation infoster care – and through the songs ofScreeching Weasel. It paints a picture of adolescentlife not unlike Matt Dillon’s cult film Overthe Edge, only it’s a decade later (but the clothesand haircuts are just as bad). The writing is reallygood as author Ann Raber touches on someimportant themes (alienation, desperation) aswell as dishing out a believable male protagonist,but the whole set up and delivery of thetome is disjointed as hell. It reads like a RobertAltman novel; it jumps from past to present inthe blink of an eye, making it problematic to followthe story line at times. A good example ofwhy writers need editors but nonetheless anexcellent first attempt. Nobody should ever befaulted for writing a novel. Nobody. But you willget called out on the cheese. Yes, you will. Imean, when she writes about towns likeFuckfaceville and shopping at the C-mart, sheonly reminds me that I’m reading fiction. If youcan get past the sappy first layer of clichés andpeel back the skin on this onion of a novel, thenyou might enjoy it. It might bring tears to youreyes. And yes, punky, that last line was a doubleentendre. –Greg Barbera (Post-Traumatic Press,PO Box 408021, Chicago, IL 60640)Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in theNew American CenturyBy Stan Goff, 192 pgs.This is an odd little book by an odd littleman. Here’s how I think you would make a“Stan Goff,” if you were so-inclined to do so:take Ollie North and drill a peephole into hishead – a la Jeff Dahmer – and then insert a strawand suck out most of the inert reptilian spongystuff. Next, pour in two parts essence of NoamChomsky and one part Essence of JohnnyRotten and add a pinch of Ilya Prigogine andshake well. Suffice it to say, Stan Goff is as exoticas a blue-footed booby; a career military manwho is as politically radical as Jello Biafra – butat once, more professorial and more vulgar.Full Spectrum Disorder is, on the surface, asort of travelogue detailing Goff’s various militarytravails in places like Haiti, Vietnam, Korea,and Somalia, but it is also a scathing critique ofU.S. global hegemony and what Goff calls“white supremacist patriarchal capitalism.” On adeeper level it is also a fascinating study ofchaos theory, epistemology, and entropy as itpertains to the U.S. Military. This book is multilayeredand not easily pigeon holed. As Goffsays himself in the introduction: “I don’t want towrite a book that ‘proves’ itself. I want to writea book that shakes up people’s thinking, and if itprovokes debates or even attacks, so be it. Idon’t even mind being proven wrong, if that’swhat happens. If the book were meant to supportsome overarching conclusion, it would be different,more confined within a genre. It’s not thatkind of frog.”It warms the cockles of this old ticker to seesomeone who’s endured the full battery of U.S.Army brainwashing indoctrination systems onlyto turn like a rabid pitbull and latch onto thespindly legs of Power Clowns like DonaldRumsfeld and G.W. Bush (“the spoiled preppyfrat-fuck”). And he is almost as vicious with histake on what he terms the “ovine American public”whose heads “have been softened by a dietof info-kibble and Survivor.” Goff writes:“American culture is a sheep culture – long ontalk about individualism, but even longer onabsolute conformity. Most still believe that individualityis based on which model car you likebest – commodity identity...” Lefties andNeocons alike do not escape Goff’s keen criticaleye.Goff certainly succeeded in shaking up mythinking and for that, I thank him. Watching themilitary equivalent of a ghastly multi-car pile upwhere human bodies are smeared like lipstickacross the road is bound to shake a person up –and there are plenty of body bags in the pages ofthis book. And while Full Spectrum Disorder isrambling in spots and occasionally trips up civilianslike myself with clunky military shibboleths,it is well written and powerfully presented.Maybe this isn’t much coming from me, but thisis quite possibly the single most intelligent exegesison the American politico-militaristic dungpie that I’ve ever had the good fortune to step in.Full Spectrum Disorder is certainly animpassioned call-to-arms, but it is ultimately apowerful treatise on just how utterly fucking disorderlywar and politics – and life – really are –no matter how you try to spin it. This book is,indeed, like its author, “a different kind of frog.”Stan Goff is one military “expert” you’ll neversee mouthing off on CNN. –Aphid Peewit (SoftSkull Press, 71 Bond Street, Brooklyn, NY11217)The Politics of Anti-Semitismedited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St.Clair, 178 pagesA few years ago, during a trip back to my oldcollege town, I saw signs everywhere saying,