Wednesday Mini Book Review: Diary of Indignities

Brian Doherty | September 12, 2007

The Wednesday mini book review returns, to Wednesday. Some past mini book reviews.

Diary of Indignities by Patrick Hughes. (M Press, 2007). I’m the first person thanked in the acknowledgements of the book, and the author, Patrick Hughes (who blogs at Bad News Hughes) is an old friend, though one I haven’t seen in over five years (and don’t talk to much anymore either). However, I was, as I keep repeating, the first editor to give him professional writing work as a columnist at the Independent Florida Alligator back in 1990 or thereabouts. So, consider this more of a friendly recommendation than a formal book review.

That said, damn, what a joy this book is. Short memoiristic essays about Hughes’s life and the strange and somehow barely lovable people he’s known in his years in Gainesville, Fla, my own old hometown and one I’ve found resisted literary capture, until Hughes came along and gets it all right: the effortless absurdist strangeness, the gasping good humor, the troubled and troubling attempts to keep ourselves amused and connected in a place where you really had to rely on your own resources, and relentless self-abuse and tasteless behavioral excess—artistic, romantic, even culinary--seemed inexpressibly vital to that task.

Through all the accounts of questionable behavior, you get the impression that the only one he’s trying to make a fool of is himself. While a fair number of his memories involve butt plugs, Q-tips in his penis, or psoriasis, he’s never going for gross-out humor for the sake of it—it’s just that the human body we have always with us, late and soon, and coping with its endlessly unpredictable travails is one of the things a sense of humor is best suited for.

Hughes is a thorough and heroic bard of hypochondria, Friend of the Library sales, late night drives to the next county where they’re still selling beer, his own superegoless redneck family’s celebrations and madnesses, mixing noise music and food poisoning, and Gainesville’s peculiar combination of inventive ways to stave off madness and poignant attempts to make even the most ridiculous of our efforts at fellowship matter and last.

Amid all the hilarity, the chapter “Butterfly-Knife Romance” is for real one of the truest, sweetest, and saddest tales of confused teen love I’ve ever seen. And the one that ends with Fessie telling Pat “You don’t respect women” really makes every teen dramedy ever made superfluous, especially the ones that are supposed to help you really understand the emotional travails of teen freaks and geeks. Every story where I know who he’s writing about—sometimes he protects identities, sometimes he doesn’t—are perfect evocations of exactly what is hopelessly peculiar about the person while still making them as big a human character as they really are, not just props for the writer’s amusement.

In general, he tells perfectly framed and perfectly timed comedies that, as he puts it regarding his ex-roommate Dirty Mike, frame his characters, including Hughes himself, “somewhere between ‘genius comedian’ and ‘brave martyr.’ ‘Subhuman asshole’ didn’t get added to the mix until after I had lived with him for a few weeks and my precious Samhain tapes ended up stolen and sold to support his drug habit.”

But without an ounce of mawkishness, Hughes shows this collection of drunken dickweeds and performance art maniacs and shit-frying existential pranksters the most tender love they’ll ever receive: getting every detail right and true, with head-shaking understanding of the inexplicable and forgiveness of the unforgivable in every line. And it's hard to get through any given page without a laugh, not only from the incidents described but Hughes' perfectly balanced, perfectly timed prose.

Comments

|9.12.07 @ 8:57PM|#

Allright, allright enough already, longest blurb I ever read.

Just ordered my copy from Jeff Bezos's little www store.

|9.12.07 @ 9:29PM|#

As a former resident of Gainesville who made a brief foray into graduate work at the UF College of Journalism and Mass Communication in the early 90s, I am now damned curious, and will be picking up a copy, likewise.

Like Mr. Doherty, I have often found that Hoggetowne (as some still call it) has been remarkably unsung on a literary level, and having lived further south in the state for almost 12 years now, I miss the place, and have grown wistful in recent days at the thought of it.

Thanks for the burst of nostalgia, Brian.

Tom Petty|9.12.07 @ 9:57PM|#

Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy baby
Make it last all night
She was an american girl

|9.12.07 @ 9:58PM|#

Against Me!, the greatest band to arrive in at least the past 10 years also hails from Gainesville.

|9.12.07 @ 10:01PM|#

Against Me!, the greatest band to arrive in at least the past 10 years

So what was it like, when your sense of taste finally gave up the ghost? Did it hurt?

FSU|9.12.07 @ 11:28PM|#

Go to Hell Gators!...Go to Hell...EAT SHIT!

SxCx|9.13.07 @ 12:04AM|#

So who's reviewing Naomi Klein's searing indictment of that bloodthirsty scoundrel Milton Friedman? I read a few pages in the store, and it appears he was little more than a bookwormy Jim Jones.

|9.13.07 @ 12:54AM|#

I've been reading Bad News Hughes for years...and one of the most hilarious/shocking/revolting/joyous things that I have read was the story of the apartment of ghouls that had a "Party Melon" and who would fry their own turds.

Let me give y'all a taste of the Masterpiece of Amurhican Literature that is Bad News Hughes:
http://badnewshughes.blogspot.com/2006/04/diary-of-indignities-dont-use.html

Jeff lived in a small apartment with several other sober guys, in conditions that even I, veteran maker of hijinx and squalor that I was, positively feared and envied. They called it Dick House. It was filthy, of course. The front door was studded with uncooked rice, embedded there during an experiment with black powder and a homemade cannon. It was this sort of experiment, as I understand it, that triggered some kind of disagreement between landlord and tenants, one that resulted in a police investigation into possible terrorist activities and a redecoration effort involving painted insults that referred to the landlord by name as well as many, many explicit images taken from pornographic magazines of the spectacularly gay variety.

Terrorism, ha! The cops had no idea. I'd rather have a thousand little rice-sized holes poked in me than put up with one - one! - of the indignities those guys inflicted on each other just to pass the time. These… these… sober people were just too goddamn comfortable with their own bodies. A little repression is not a bad thing, especially if it prevents you from posing for photographs naked in the shower with a carrot shoved up your rear end, like Jeff did. Or, god forbid, taking a shit into a pickle jar. Which someone there did, as a friendly prank.

Instead of disposing of the befouled pickle jar, as one might be expected to do when striving to remain inside the boundaries of modern civilization, those little goblins kept it around. And they'd offer you a pickle when you came over, then clap and dance and laugh and caper around with glee after you saw that damn turd-pickle swirling around in the brine. Gah! How?! Why?!

I salute you Patrick Hughes.

|9.13.07 @ 10:32AM|#

Did he include the story about Ivan and the toilet paper?

sv|9.13.07 @ 10:46AM|#

Frank_A: JEsus, thank you for posting that, that blog was the best laugh I've had in this past shitty week of mine. holy shit.

|9.13.07 @ 10:56AM|#

Gainesville was a dangerous place to go to college.

|9.13.07 @ 11:57AM|#

Tom---Let me put it this way--he has a story about some unnamed fellow and the toilet paper....inferences are left to the reader...

|9.13.07 @ 12:09PM|#

Brian, I owe you twice - for your most recent book, and for turning me on to Hughes. I'm the appointed Hughes watcher for my circle. When ever he posts I send out an email alert with the simple subject line "Hughes!!!"

|9.13.07 @ 3:57PM|#

So who's reviewing Naomi Klein's searing indictment of that bloodthirsty scoundrel Milton Friedman? I read a few pages in the store, and it appears he was little more than a bookwormy Jim Jones.
No Logo?

SxCx|9.13.07 @ 6:16PM|#

Good answer, but she apparently wasn't done.