Book Review : Kelby Losack & J. David Osborne - Dead Boy (2021)
Kelby Losack and J. David Osborne are two creative dudes living in Oklahoma who basically write novels, talk about subversive art together in public and exist on the internet. That makes them the coolest kids in class for marginal middle-aged men like me. They don’t matter in the sense that J.K Rowling or… I don’t know, Colson Whitehead matters in the greater scheme of things, but it makes them infinitely cooler to me. They live and breathe art. They embody a rare form of freedom and artistic integrity.
The two unexpectedly dropped a co-signed, pamphlet-sized novel called Dead Boy in late 2021, like someone would drop a mixtape and it is thoroughly unique and fascinating.
Dead Boy tells the story of Brian Shuck, a dispossessed young man trying to cope with the recent suicide of his girlfriend. They owned a dog named Mike Jones together who let himself go after his favorite human decided to abandon him with her weirdo boyfriend. Brian doesn’t take kindly to this double abandonment stunt and decides to bring his dog back to life using electricity and Monster energy drinks. With a new lease on life, Brian and his zombie dog try to settle his other, less existential problems.
Twenty-first century void
There’s a dog fighting plot in Dead Boy, but it only matters marginally. If you’re expecting some type of Southwestern noir or a zombie novel, you should definitely reconsider your expectations because it’s not going to deliver that. Kelby Losack and J. David Osborne specialize in portraits of a certain type of living, like white trash magic realism with a healthy dose of provocation. It’s crass, impolite and hops over boundaries with the gracefulness of a horny bull. It isn’t for every sensibility, but it’s smart and good natured.
What the two authors address in this novel is emptiness. Both the psychological and the physical kind, which overwhelms you when you lose a core piece of your life. In order to cope with his unmoored existence after the deaths of his girlfriend and his dog, Brian first decides to play God and bring his pet back to life. The procedure is unexpectedly successful and Brian finds himself with a wish automatically granted. His dog is alive again. But it does not do anything. It just follows him around and stares at nothing.
This is our first stance on emptiness: you cannot fulfill it with things you wish for. Because it’s not having them that matters, it’s the path that lead you to them. The thing itself it an empty shell of experiences that transformed you. After being appropriately creeped out by his zombie dog, our boy Brian understands that and turns to another idea to fill the void left by his girlfriend: social media. He creates a TikTok account and starts making content about his life with zombie Mike Jones, which isn’t all that successful.
But Brian gains something from his TikTok account: connection and in order to foster that connection, he seeks out new experiences alongside his zombie sidekick and because of that, his dog comes to represent something else than the unexplained tragedies he recently experience. Brian uses his zombie dog to literally come back to life. This is some twenty-first century Weekend at Bernie’s meets Resident Evil shit and I mean that in the most complimentary way.
Poetics of a decaying dog
Everything in Dead Boy is accessory to the point I just made. If you’re taking anything in this novel at face value, you’re a fool and you deserve to simmer in your anger. Even the dogfighting has a symbolic component. While Mike Jones is getting chopped into pieces like an extra from The Walking Dead, Brian is finding purpose. He’ll losing connection to his hurtful past and moves forward with his life. Because it’s not until you’ll let the past rot and decay that you’ll be able to do so.
I usually don’t like novels where only one character feels real, but Dead Boy works because it’s so short and focuses on a protagonist who’s physically and emotionally alienated. Brian only connects with other human being on a superficial level, which allows other characters to be caricatures of real human beings. When you only meet people in transactional pursuits, you don’t have to worry about who they really are and can enjoy who they pretend to be. Dead Boy “gets" this really well.
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Should you read this book? If you think that the way you consume entertainment helps the world become a better place, probably not. This book doesn’t care about you. Otherwise, it’s such a modest investment in terms of time and money, you’d be crazy not to. I’ve read forty percent of it in my Osteopath’s waiting room. Don’t think of Dead Boy in terms of whether it’s good or bad or whether it’s suited to your sensibility. It’s one of these things you read and carry with you afterwards like a scar.
