Stripmalling by Jon Paul Fiorentino

Imagine an artist wearing a black smock (stitched together from holy, old Ramones t-shirts) spattered with a palette of wild and crazy colours, having painted a canvas, the easel, the walls of the studio, the floor, ceiling, and the furniture, with a variety of genres ranging from classic, romantic, realism, impressionism, cubism, minimalism, modern, post-modern, and post-post-modern.

That is Stripmalling by Jon Paul Fiorentino, a collection of essays, narratives, footnotes, asides, and graphic art that is pulled together into a cohesive whole with a sweepingly classic post-post-modern panache.  Or is that a collective hole?  

Unlike a certain Montreal Gazette reviewer who obviously lost his sense of humour in a horrific childhood accident involving a unintentional tonsillectomy, this reader did notice the comedy lurking in the sentences.  Granted, the juvenile humour is spectacularly juvenile, and the shock-the-innocent-reader-out-0f-his-pants attempts at humour fail with resounding impact.  And the graphics are strangely disturbing - the narrator Jonny is drawn as a buff yet greasy 1950's era caricature.  And even more disappointing, there is nary a hint of any porn, not even drawn with the broadest of strokes.

Ironically, it is the last section of the novel, a workshopped 'screenplay' with inanely scribbled comments that pricked this reviewer's funny bone in the most effective manner.  Leave 'em wanting more, Jonny...  Is it genius or just in(bred)genius?  Perhaps we'll never know.