A Crackup at the Race Riots is filmmaker
Harmony Korine's first
foray (the first published one, anyhow) into the
wild,
wacky world of
writing. Fans of the
text include
Jim Carroll and
Werner Herzog, who has said, "I believe that [Harmony Korine] is a great talent as a writer." Whatever. Moving along...
Here is what the back cover of the book has to say:
There is no place for plot, linear narrative, character development, or scene setting in Harmony Korine's audacious and original first novel, A Crackup at the Race Riots. The twenty-three-year-old filmmaker has created a bold work of fiction, a montage that takes literary convention and explodes it in a sequence of half-remembered scenes, suicide notes, dialogue fragments, movie ideas, rumors, and jokes. Korine's eye and ear are exquisitely tuned to the absurd, to the hypocrisy and hilarity that comprise our national obsessions with death, dirt, poverty, celebrity, religion, and gossip. He captures the fragmented moments of a life observed through the demented lens of media, TV, and teen obsession. The reinvented wheel of Korine's darkly bizarre imagination, A Crackup at the Race Riots is the ultimate postmodern novel--funny, offensive, depraved, and sad.
Calling it a "novel" is somewhat misleading, as there is no plot, and despite what the author says, it does not tell a story, and most people will think it is insufferable crap for this reason. There are, however, quite a few funny bits, and Korine's approach to writing is nothing if not interesting. It just shouldn't be taken too seriously, that's all.